I read an interesting article a few days ago about colonialism — the article was in National Geographic, and it did a nice job of discussing the subject. It defined colonialism as “control by one power over a dependent area of people.” In practice, colonialism is when one country violently invades and takes control of another country, claims the land as its own, and send people — usually called “settlers” — to live on that land.
There were two great waves of colonialism in recorded history. The first wave began in the 15th century, during Europe’s Age of Discovery. During that time, countries such as Britain, Spain, France, and Portugal colonized lands across North and South America.
The second wave of colonial expansion began during the 19th century, centering around the African continent. It’s been called the Scramble for Africa, with European nations such as Britain, France, Portugal and Spain, sliced up the continent like a pie.
After reading the fairly lengthy article, it occurred to me that some of the words we use today probably originated during those colonization periods — particularly the second — and were the result of those conflicts.
I did a bit of extensive research and came up a few terms that seem to have originated during the “colonialism battles.”
Washout — a term that came from the British rifle range during the 19th century. If a shot landed completely wide of the target, it was called a washout, because on old iron targets the space they landed on was covered with some kind of paint or “wash.” At first, washout simply meant a bad shot, but it soon was broadened to mean any kind of failure, and it’s still used that way.
During the colonization of Africa, there were many conflicts between the British and the Boers (descendants of the early Ditch settlers.) The Boars found life unbearable alongside the British, and they began a mass migration, away from British rule. This movement was known as the Great Trek — trek being Dutch for a journey by ox wagon. Today it is used for any difficult journey. It’s interesting that it also appears in Star Trek, the motion picture and television series about space travel.
The Boars had a lot of problems with hostile native tribes, so they organized small military units or kommandos, capable of making quick raids against native villages. During World War II, the British anglicized the term to commando and applied it to small elite units trained to engage in some specially hazardous undertakings. What may be the first commando raid (in 1941) the commandos destroyed a plant in occupied Norway that was making glycerine for the Germans. Americans also used the word as an adjective to describe military actions involving surprise and shock, as in “commando tactics.”
The Boars and the British went after each for a long time — the British suffered losses, but kept getting reinforcements from various sources. Once when the Australian came to their rescue, they expressed their exasperation and said they were fed up. That phrase continues to a synonym for “disgusted” or “having had enough.”
It was during this British conflict with the Boars that the British army adopted khaki as the proper color for active-service uniforms. The name for this greenish shade of brown comes from the Urdu word for dust or dust-colored and was adopted in English in the mid-1800s by British troops serving in India. But it wasn’t generally used until the Boar War, during which “khaki” also was a slang name for a volunteer. That usage has died out, but the color and its name remain, not only in British and American soldiers’ summer uniforms (also called khakis,) but in all kinds of nonmilitary clothing.
The South African War, or the “Boer War” was the first major conflict in what would be a century marked by wars on an international scale. The war began on October 11, 1898, following a Boer ultimatum that the British should cease building up their forces in the region. The Boers had refused to grant political rights to non-Boer settlers, most of whom were British, or to grant civil rights to Africans.
Finally, in 1910, the Unio of South Africa was formed, but for much of the remainder of the 20th century the legacy of the Boer War survived in tensions between the Boers and the British. Once in control of the government, the Boers enacted a policy called apartheid. That term has also entered our language, where it refers to any practice that separates people on the basis of race or caste.
The National Geographic article mentioned a lot of terms that seem to have originated in during the colonialism periods that have become a part of our language.
But I guess the more important message is that it’s easy to brush colonialism off as a relic of the past, burt we still live in a world shaped by the histories of those conflicts. The wealth and prosperity of some of the most powerful nations can be attributed to the theft of land, resources — and people, from former colonies.
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