In The Dynamics of Global Dominance, David B. Abernethy (2000) maintains that ôIdentifying the legacies of European rule is fraught with conceptual and methodological perilsàTo assert that colonialism had consequence X or Y is not to claim that it is the only cause of X or Y. Indeed, a safer assumption is that outcomesàwere shaped by many factorsö (p. 363). In this reading and well as MisraÆs (2003) Lessons of Empire and The Heritage of the Past, we see the truth of AbernethyÆs claims. An attempt to identify the legacies of European Colonial rule on the Global South permits few generalizations about impact, because the impact of it varies so markedly from one region to the next. This analysis will demonstrate this marked variance in order to show that it is not possible to generalize about the impact of colonialism on the global south.
There are some generalizations that apply to European colonialism, but they are superficial and broad. These include such things as colonialismÆs tendency to spread Christianity around the globe, large-scale redistributions of peoples, and, as Abernethy (2000) asserts, ôThe racially based stratification system of the colonial era is a primary determinant of social relations todayö (p. 365). Perhaps one of these broad generalizations, that colonial rule fostered the idea that economic development is ôgoodö and ôdesirable,ö helps explain why generalizations about the impact of European colonial rule on the global south cannot be made from region to region (Abernethy, 2000, p. 371).
Economic development, along with social and cultural developments, often characterized colonialism in the global south, but it is such development that created such a varied impact upon different colonial regions. In The Heritage of the Past, we see that from Africa and Latin America to South Asia and the Middle-East economic development and the impact of European colonial rule varied greatly. In eac...