Answers:
Colonialism/Imperialism: The simple way to distinguish these two is to think of colonialism as practice and imperialism as the idea driving the practice. Colonialism is the implanting of settlements on a distant territory.
Colonialism in its modern form first began to take shape about 400 years ago, and it changed the economic landscape of the world forever. For one thing, it enabled Europe to get fabulously rich on the trade it produced. The foundations of what we now think of as free-market capitalism were invented during the colonial era, partly to handle trade.
It’s an undecided question in academic circles (amongst historians for instance) as to whether colonialism is important purely for its economic consequences, or whether cultural factors (such as missionary Christianity or a sense of racial superiority) also plays a part.
Imperialism is a word with a long history. It was first associated with ancient Rome (a fact that is borne out quite emphatically in the first pages of Heart of Darkness, where the presence of the Romans gives a sense of history). It didn’t begin to be used much in the English-speaking world until the late 1800s. Imperialism has a specifically expansionist connotation.
Globalization generally refers to the period since 1989, following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the break-down of the Cold War system. In contrast to the earlier, colonial era, globalization is characterized by the decay of national boundaries and state institutions in favor of transnational economic activity. The “globalization” era has also been characterized by intensified cross-cultural interactions (facilitated by technology), as well as an explosion in migrations of various peoples in many different directions.
There is considerable debate amongst historians and economists as to when the elements that we now think of as constituting “globalization” first appeared. Some say the most important moment was 1970, when the “gold standard” was dropped. Others see the structure of the global political hierarchy, as well as the patterns of economic growth and development (where some countries have grown fabulously rich while others have largely languished, or been exploited for low-level labor) as roughly similar to that achieved in the high imperialist era of the 1890s. For these scholars, “globalization” is simply “imperialism” with a different name.
