Colonization and the Making of Mankind

Herbert Lüthy

The Journal of Economic History, 1961, vol. 21, issue 4, 483-495

Abstract: A meeting of historians on “Colonialism and Colonization” certainly raises a terminological problem. Colonization is a great and old subject of historical study. The word “colonialism,” on the contrary, seems to me to have come to us from the international rostrums where diplomats and propagandists wage the psychological wars of today; and to my taste it has that Basic English quality of an international vocabulary ready-made for simultaneous translation, where the suggestive power of words is in inverse relation to their accuracy. In its current use it seems to be a synonym of imperialism or, more generally, of domination of one country by another, or by the rulers of another country. But imperialism, at least, says what it means: the policy of building and holding together an empire, a unit of domination which transcends the national state. Foreign domination is a self-defining expression apt to describe all degrees of dependency, from straight political and military to economic or even cultural ones. What, then, is the use of forging yet another term?

Date: 1961
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