Who Gets to Decide? A Philosophy of Colonialism

Imagine you’re playing a game on a playground. You’ve been using the same slide for years. Then a group of older kids shows up, says the slide belongs to them now, and tells you that if you want to keep using it, you have to follow their rules—and give them your snacks. They say they’re doing this for your own good, because you don’t know how to use the slide properly. When you protest, they point out that they’re bigger, that they have better equipment, and that really, you should be grateful they’re letting you play at all.

This is a simple version of something that happened on a massive scale, over centuries, across the entire planet. European countries—Spain, Britain, France, Portugal, and others—sailed to other continents, claimed the land for themselves, and told the people already living there that they were now under European control. They called this colonialism.

But here’s the strange thing that philosophers noticed: the people doing the colonizing usually believed they were doing something good. They didn’t think of themselves as bullies taking over a playground. They thought they were bringing civilization, religion, progress, and modern ways of living to people they considered backward or savage. And they had elaborate arguments to explain why this was not only acceptable but actually morally right.

Were they fooling themselves? Were they just making up excuses for theft and violence? Or did they genuinely believe they were helping? And even if they believed it—does that make any difference to whether what they did was wrong?

These questions aren’t just historical. They’re alive today, because the effects of colonialism haven’t gone away. Indigenous peoples in North America, Australia, and elsewhere still live under the governments that took their land. Former colonies still struggle with poverty and instability that began under colonial rule. And the arguments used to justify colonialism—about who deserves to be in charge, about what counts as “civilized,” about whether some people need to be guided by others—still show up in debates about everything from international politics to how we treat each other at school.

The Problem of Justification

The first serious philosophical debate about colonialism happened in the 1500s, when Spanish conquistadors were conquering the Americas. The Spanish had a problem. They were Catholic, and their religion said it was wrong to kill innocent people and steal their property. But they were doing exactly that. So they needed a way to explain why this was different.

The explanation they came up with went something like this: The Pope (the head of the Catholic Church) had authority over all human beings, even non-Christians, because God had given him the job of caring for everyone’s souls. If non-Christians were living in ways that violated God’s laws—and the Spanish quickly decided that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas were doing exactly that—then the Pope could authorize Christian rulers to take over and set things right. The Indigenous people, the Spanish argued, were like children who didn’t know any better. They needed to be conquered for their own good, so they could be taught Christianity and civilization.

But some Spanish missionaries who actually went to the Americas noticed something disturbing. The Spanish weren’t really teaching anyone anything. They were enslaving people, stealing their gold, and working them to death. On the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic), the Indigenous population dropped from 250,000 to 15,000 in just twenty years. If this was civilization, it looked an awful lot like murder.

A priest named Bartolomé de Las Casas became one of the loudest critics of this system. He argued that the Indigenous people were fully rational human beings with the same rights as Europeans, and that the Spanish had no right to conquer them. Another thinker, Franciscus de Victoria, gave lectures arguing that the Pope didn’t have authority over non-Christians, and that you couldn’t just take people’s land because they violated your moral rules. (He pointed out that if you could, then no European king’s territory would be safe, since every kingdom had people committing sins.)

But here’s where it gets complicated. Even Victoria, who was trying to defend Indigenous rights, ended up justifying colonialism. He argued that there was something called the “Law of Nations”—a set of principles that every reasonable society should follow, like allowing peaceful travel and trade. If Indigenous communities violated these principles (for example, by refusing to let Spanish traders enter their territory), then the Spanish could use force to make them comply. So even the critics of colonialism found themselves drawing lines that made conquest seem acceptable.

Civilization as an Excuse

By the 1700s and 1800s, European thinkers had developed a new way of thinking about human history. They believed that all societies moved through the same stages of development: from hunting and gathering, to herding animals, to farming, and finally to commercial civilization. Each stage was more advanced than the one before. And “civilization”—meaning European-style civilization—was the highest stage of all.

This might sound like a neutral description, but it wasn’t. It was a ranking system. People who lived differently from Europeans were seen as stuck in earlier stages of development. They weren’t just different—they were backward. And if you’re backward, the argument went, you need help moving forward. Even if you don’t want that help.

John Stuart Mill, one of the most famous defenders of individual freedom, used this argument to defend British rule in India. Mill worked for the British East India Company, which controlled much of India. He argued that Indians (and other “savage” and “barbarous” peoples) lacked the capacity for self-government. They were too undisciplined, or too obedient, or too attached to their own freedom in the wrong way. Only “commercial society”—the kind that existed in Britain—produced the kind of people who could govern themselves. So Britain, Mill said, had a duty to rule over India until Indians were ready to rule themselves. He called this “despotic government,” and he meant it literally: rule by a foreign power that wasn’t accountable to the people it ruled.

Mill wasn’t stupid. He knew that foreign rulers could be unjust and exploitative. He listed four reasons why colonists tend to make bad rulers: they don’t understand local conditions, they don’t sympathize with local people, they favor their own kind in disputes, and they go abroad mainly to get rich. But his solution to these problems was not to end colonial rule. It was to create a special class of trained administrators who would be fair and knowledgeable. He never fully explained how to make sure these administrators would actually be fair when no one held them accountable.

Other thinkers were even more blunt. Alexis de Tocqueville, famous for his writings about democracy in America, also wrote about French colonialism in Algeria. He admitted that the French were fighting more barbarously than the people they were supposedly civilizing. He acknowledged that the French weren’t bringing good government or advancement. But he didn’t care. He supported French colonialism because it benefited France: it gave France more power relative to its rivals, provided an outlet for its excess population, and created a sense of national pride. For Tocqueville, the interests of France were what mattered, and moral considerations were just obstacles to be pushed aside.

The Marxist View: It’s About Money

Karl Marx had a different take. He thought colonialism was terrible—but also necessary and ultimately progressive. This might sound contradictory, so let’s unpack it.

Marx believed that capitalism had an internal drive to expand. Businesses compete with each other, wages get pushed down, and eventually there aren’t enough people who can afford to buy the products being made. The only way out of this crisis is to find new markets. Colonialism, from this perspective, wasn’t about civilizing anyone. It was about finding new places to sell goods and new sources of raw materials.

When Marx looked at British rule in India, he saw a society that was being violently dragged into the modern world. The traditional village communities, which Marx thought were oppressive and backward, were being destroyed. Peasants were losing their livelihoods. People were suffering. But Marx also thought this destruction was necessary to clear the way for something better: modern industry, modern agriculture, and eventually, a socialist revolution.

So Marx was critical of the cruelty of British rule, but he wasn’t opposed to it in principle. He thought it was a painful but necessary stage in human progress. The British were greedy and violent, but they were also, unintentionally, laying the groundwork for a better future.

This is a strange position. It says that terrible things can be justified because of their long-term consequences. But who gets to decide whether the suffering is worth it? The people doing the suffering don’t get a vote.

Fighting Back: Decolonization

Not everyone waited around for Europeans to change their minds. People in colonized countries fought back—sometimes with weapons, sometimes with ideas.

Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist and philosopher from Martinique who became a leading voice for the Algerian independence movement. He wrote about the psychological damage caused by colonialism. When you grow up being told that your culture, your skin color, your way of life are inferior, you start to believe it. You become divided against yourself. Fanon argued that violent revolution could be healing—not just because it could overthrow colonial rule, but because it could restore a sense of agency and dignity to people who had been taught they were powerless.

Mahatma Gandhi took a very different approach in India. He developed a philosophy of non-violent resistance called satyagraha, which means something like “holding on to truth.” Gandhi argued that the force of truth was stronger than the force of violence. By refusing to cooperate with British rule—by boycotting British goods, refusing to obey unjust laws, and accepting punishment without fighting back—Indians could expose the injustice of colonialism and force the British to confront their own hypocrisy.

Gandhi also made a more radical argument. He said that Western civilization itself was sick. Modern medicine, technology, and materialism weren’t signs of progress. They were symptoms of a spiritual sickness that had turned people away from what really mattered. The British claimed to be bringing civilization, but they were actually destroying what was valuable in human life.

The Debate That Isn’t Over

Here’s something that might surprise you: many Indigenous people in countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia feel that colonialism never really ended. The formal structures of colonial rule—the governors, the colonial offices, the explicit policies of dispossession—may be gone. But the land is still occupied. The governments that make laws over Indigenous communities are still settler governments. Indigenous languages, cultures, and ways of life are still under pressure.

Some Indigenous thinkers argue that the whole project of “reconciliation”—of apologizing for past wrongs and trying to move forward together—is actually a way of avoiding the real issue. It settles settler guilt without giving land or power back. They call for “resurgence”: rebuilding Indigenous political systems, revitalizing traditional practices, and refusing to accept that the settler state has the authority to decide what justice looks like.

Others argue that working within existing political institutions—participating in elections, making legal claims, negotiating with governments—is the best way to achieve real change. This is a live debate, not a settled question.

So Who Was Right?

The philosophers in this story disagree about almost everything. Some said colonialism was justified because it brought civilization. Some said it was justified because it benefited the colonizers. Some said it was terrible but historically necessary. Some said it was pure theft and violence, pure and simple.

But there are a few threads that run through most of the criticism:

First, there’s something suspicious about arguments that justify using force against other people “for their own good.” These arguments are almost always made by the people with the power, not by the people being helped.

Second, the people who benefit from an unjust system tend to have a hard time seeing it clearly. The Spanish missionaries who condemned slavery were still part of a colonial system. Mill, who worried about the abuses of colonial rule, still worked for the company that ran India. Marx, who criticized the cruelty of British rule, still thought it was progress.

Third, the idea of “civilization” has been used to rank and dismiss whole peoples, to treat them as less than fully human, and to justify terrible things. This doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as better or worse ways of living. But it does mean we should be very suspicious when someone uses the word “civilized” to explain why they should be in charge.

The questions colonialism raises aren’t just historical puzzles. They’re alive whenever anyone says “trust me, I know what’s best for you” while taking something from you. They’re alive whenever a group of people decides that another group doesn’t deserve a say in their own future. And they’re alive whenever we have to decide what we owe to people whose lives were made worse by choices our ancestors made.

Nobody has fully answered these questions. But they’re worth thinking about.

Appendices

Key Terms

Term	What It Does in This Debate
Colonialism	The practice of one country settling its people in another territory and taking political control over the original inhabitants
Civilizing mission	The idea that colonialism was justified because Europeans were bringing “higher” culture to “backward” peoples
Natural law	A theory that certain moral rules are built into the nature of rational beings and apply to everyone, everywhere
Stadial theory	The belief that all societies pass through the same stages of development from “savage” to “civilized”
Paternalism	Governing people like a parent governs a child—for their own good, without their consent
Decolonization	The process of ending colonial rule and establishing independent sovereign states
Settler colonialism	A form of colonialism where colonizers come to stay permanently, taking land and replacing the original population
Resurgence	An Indigenous approach that focuses on rebuilding traditional cultures and political systems rather than seeking recognition from settler states

Key People

Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484–1566): A Spanish priest who witnessed the brutal treatment of Indigenous peoples in the Americas and became one of the first European critics of colonialism.
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873): A British philosopher who defended individual liberty at home but argued that “backward” peoples needed to be ruled by civilized nations like Britain.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859): A French political thinker who supported French colonialism in Algeria purely for France’s benefit, even while admitting the French were acting barbarically.
Karl Marx (1818–1883): A German philosopher who argued that colonialism was driven by the economic needs of capitalism, and that it was both terrible and historically necessary.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948): The leader of the Indian independence movement who developed a philosophy of non-violent resistance and argued that Western civilization was spiritually sick.
Frantz Fanon (1925–1961): A psychiatrist and revolutionary from Martinique who wrote about the psychological damage of colonialism and argued that violent revolution could be healing.
Glen Coulthard (1974–): A Canadian Indigenous scholar who argues that seeking “recognition” from the settler state is a trap, and that Indigenous peoples should focus on rebuilding their own political traditions.

Things to Think About

Mill argued that some people aren’t ready for self-government and need to be ruled by others “for their own good.” Can you think of situations where this might actually be true? What’s the difference between those situations and colonialism?
Gandhi said that Western civilization itself was a kind of sickness, not a model of progress. What would it mean to take this seriously? Are there aspects of modern life that we assume are good but that might actually be harmful?
The philosophers in this article disagree about whether violence is ever justified in overthrowing colonial rule. Fanon thought it could be healing and necessary. Gandhi thought non-violence was essential. Who do you find more convincing, and why?
Some Indigenous thinkers today argue that “reconciliation” (apologizing and trying to move forward together) actually lets settler societies off the hook without giving land or power back. Can apologies and recognition be meaningful without changing who controls the resources and decisions?

Where This Shows Up

Land acknowledgments that many schools and organizations now give before events—these are attempts to recognize whose land you’re on, but Indigenous critics argue they often become empty gestures that don’t change anything.
Debates about foreign aid and international intervention—when rich countries send money or troops to “help” poorer countries, the same questions about paternalism and hidden self-interest come up.
Arguments about reparations—should governments pay money or give land back to descendants of people who were enslaved or dispossessed? This is still a live political debate in many countries.
School dress codes and rules—who gets to decide what’s “appropriate”? When adults say “we know what’s best for you,” is that always justified, or can it be a form of control dressed up as care?