Colonialism: The Rise of Destruction Through Occupation

Colonialism in Europe is synonymous with capitalism; the occupation of countries is but a result of the merchant's occupation in action. As the movement of commerce spread across the globe, prospective explorers set out to discover new lands - or at least, new resources. Essentially all of the travel during the renaissance was for the purpose of trade and commerce, with the concept of tourism not yet existent. Merchants such as Marco Polo and others set out with a distinct goal, the search for a product or service to be turned into a profit.

These capitalistic goals of exploitation and conquest, carried out by a society that did not yet appreciate cultural differences, had an unexpected effect: the essential destruction of the places that were colonized. Merchants first traded in goods, and then began to affect the culture, determining what products were to be grown and choking out the other resources of the previously self-sufficient society. Then came civilization, with education, missionaries, and political dominance in the colonized region; and this social trio inevitably brought with it conflict, confusion, disease, and ultimately the suppression of the original culture.

This suppression had a dramatic power over the native people being civilized. Instead of pursuing their traditional art forms, depictions of their own Gods and Goddesses, temples built in their own style, native artists were often drowned out or changed completely in favor of the dominant western styles. Those handicrafts that did attract western attention were reproduced in great effort, saturating the market and making the most valuable of creations no longer valuable. The "primitive" culture tried to imitate what they believed to be a higher way of life, at the cost of their own lives.