No Cheers For Colonialism

Colonialism or imperialism should not be praised. As seen in European history imperialism came about through the want of power and wealth. Many leaders and people said that through imperialism they wanted to diminish all the small states and make the bigger states even bigger and more powerful. I believe that the ideas presented by Dinesh D’Souza in the article “Two Cheers for Colonialism” are flawed.

The main problem with imperialism is that due to the Europeans want for major wealth and power, imperialism brought about a great wave of oppression. Western countries would colonize third world countries and completely diminish the culture of the colonies they colonized. Europeans would attempt to westernize and modernize these countries and many times veer far away from the traditions of the countries. Also, since Europeans colonized to gain more wealth, they used the people of the colonies to do their work. In many cases, the native people living in the lands the Europeans colonized became slaves to the Europeans. Who cares if the West did not become “rich and powerful” (Dinesh D’Souza) through colonial oppression? The point is, the West attempted to become rich and powerful through colonial oppression, that is the real problem.

Dinesh D’Souza fails to see the real problems imperialism created. Instead of looking at the immediate effects of colonization, D’Souza focuses on long term effects which do not give a good idea of how European colonization really damaged many states. D’Souza also tries to justify his points by saying European countries were not the first to colonize. Again who cares if they were not first to colonize, the fact that they did colonize in an extremely cruel way is the problem. To say “Two Cheers for Colonialism” is moronic when speaking about European colonialism.