Colonial war - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Colonial war is a blanket term relating to the various conflicts that arose as the result of overseas territories being settled by foreign
powers creating a colony

Colony

In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....

. The term usually refers to wars fought during the nineteenth century between Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an armies in Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

and the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

.

The wars may be split into several categories.

A revolt of the indigenous population against rule by the Imperial power. In the 19th century these were rarely successful due to the technological and organisational superiority of the Imperial forces. One notable success was the Haitian slave revolt against French rule. In the 20th century these types of conflict were often termed "Wars of National Liberation" and due to better armaments and a heavily politicised leadership strategy achieved much better results by wearing down the will of the Imperial power to continue with an expensive and politically unpopular struggle rather than militarily defeating them, although the Vietnamese also managed the latter against the French at Dien Bien Phu

Dien Bien Phu

Điện Biên Phủ is a city in northwestern Vietnam. It is the capital of Dien Bien province, and is known for the events there during the First Indochina War, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, during which the region was a breadbasket for the Việt Minh.-Population:...

in 1954 leading to their expulsion from Indo-China.

A second category was the war of self-determination by settlers and descendants of settlers against rule by the "mother" country. This did not necessarily involve what was left of any indigenous population but often took the form of a civil war between supporters of the status quo and revolutionaries. The prime example of this was the American War of Independence against British rule followed by the various South American Wars of Liberation against the Spanish Empire. Success was often dependent on external factors and alliances, the American colonists were helped by the French winning naval superiority at a crucial time and the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman empire was aided by the destruction of the Turkish fleet at Navarino by a combined Anglo/French/Russian fleet.

A third category was the conflict with neighbours of the colony as part of Imperial policy, either expansionism such as the Anglo-Zulu and Anglo-Boer wars of the late nineteenth century and the Italian attack on Abyssinia or as part of a wider conflict such as the World War I campaigns between British/Belgian/French colonial forces and their German neighbours in Africa and Asia.

Victory against colonial powers

Although colonial wars usually resulted in victory for the European forces in the long term, there were several defeats for their forces especially in the early stages of a conflict when the Imperial power had not brought its full force to bear. These include the Battle of Isandhlwana and the Battle of Adowa

Battle of Adowa

The Battle of Adwa was fought on 1 March 1896 between Ethiopia and Italy near the town of Adwa, Ethiopia, in Tigray...

where over-confident European forces were defeated by native African soldiery. In both of these battles, the African armies greatly outnumbered the European armies, suffered heavy casualties but overwhelmed their enemy.

Examples

Examples of colonial wars include the Java War

Java War

The Java War or Diponegoro War was fought in Java between 1825 and 1830. It started as a rebellion led by Prince Diponegoro. The proximate cause was the Dutch decision to build a road across a piece of his property that contained his parents' tomb...

, the Indian Rebellion

Indian Rebellion of 1857

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began as a mutiny of sepoys of the British East India Company's army on 10 May 1857, in the town of Meerut, and soon escalated into other mutinies and civilian rebellions largely in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, with the major hostilities confined to...

, and various conflicts waged during the Scramble for Africa

Scramble for Africa

The Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa or Partition of Africa was a process of invasion, occupation, colonization and annexation of African territory by European powers during the New Imperialism period, between 1881 and World War I in 1914...

, such as the Anglo-Zulu War

Anglo-Zulu War

The Anglo-Zulu War was fought in 1879 between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom.Following the imperialist scheme by which Lord Carnarvon had successfully brought about federation in Canada, it was thought that a similar plan might succeed with the various African kingdoms, tribal areas and...

and the Mahdist War

Mahdist War

The Mahdist War was a colonial war of the late 19th century. It was fought between the Mahdist Sudanese and the Egyptian and later British forces. It has also been called the Anglo-Sudan War or the Sudanese Mahdist Revolt. The British have called their part in the conflict the Sudan Campaign...

. The Anglo-Ashanti Wars of the late 1800s were a typical example of colonial warfare, in which small British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

armies, equipped with modern artillery

Artillery

Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...

and machine gun

Machine gun

A machine gun is a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire rounds in quick succession from an ammunition belt or large-capacity magazine, typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute....

s, repeatedly defeated much larger forces of local warriors. During the 19th century and early 20th century colonial period there was endemic warfare on the frontiers of many colonies in tribal areas, notably for the British Empire on the North West frontier of India, for the French and Spanish in their North African colonies and for the United States in North America.

Victory against colonial powers

Examples

See also