Colonialism: Political Aspects
usually selfish and largely economic. But alongside
was a genuine commitment to the principles of
trusteeship and paternal development. Attempts to
evaluate the costs and benefits of colonialism coin-
cided with its formal ending (Perham 1962), but a
growing revisionist literature, in part reflecting the
reduced status of Marxist scholarship, is emphasizing
the advantages for the modern state of the enlargement
of scale, modern educational and economic practices,
and the opportunities provided for some (but not all)
by integration into the world economy. Nevertheless,
it is equally important to acknowledge the relative
short period of colonial rule. Davidson (1964)
was right to observe: ‘Looking back, one may see now
that the colonial period was no more than a large
episode in the onward movement of…life; in another
sense, it was an unexampled means of revolutionary
change.’
See also: Colonialism, Anthropology of; Colonization
and Colonialism, History of; Fourth World; He-
gemony: Anthropological Aspects; Imperialism, His-
tory of; Imperialism: Political Aspects; Nationalism:
General; Nationalism, Sociology of; Postcoloniality;
Third World
Bibliography
Boardman J 1980 The Greeks O
erseas: Their Early Colonies and
Trade, 3rd edn. Thames and Hudson, London
Crozier B 1964 Neo-colonialism. Dufour Editions, Bodley Head,
London
Davidson B 1964 The African Past: Chronicles from Antiquity to
Modern Times. Little Brown, Boston
Hartz L 1964 The Founding of New Societies. Harcourt, Brace
and World, New York
Kirk-Greene A H M 2000 Britain’s Imperial Administrators
1858–1966. St. Martins, New York
Lugard F 1922 The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa.
Edinburgh, UK
Mansergh N, Moon P (eds.) 1970–1983 The Transfer of Power.
Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London
Mortimer E 1969 France and the Africans. Faber, London
Perham M 1962 The Colonial Reckoning, 1st edn. Knopf, New
York
Robinson K 1965 The Dilemmas of Trusteeship. Oxford Uni-
versity Press, London
Said E W 1978 Orientalism. Pantheon, New York
R. Hodder-Williams
Colonization and Colonialism, History of
1. Introduction: Problems of Definition and the
Semantic Field
‘Colonization is [...] a phenomenon of colossal vague-
ness’ (Osterhammel 1997, p. 4), because it covers large
and rather different parts of the world and its history.
2240
Therefore, a convincing theory of colonization and
colonialism in general or of European colonialism in
particular does not exist and will probably never exist,
because it is not feasible. But scholars have still to
define the concepts they use, because an agreement
upon their meaning makes communication possible.
Colonization has to do with migration, because it
describes the movement of people from one part of the
world to another to establish a settlement, quite often
an agrarian one. In this sense, the term has a neutral
connotation. In contrast, colonialism has become a
general invective against western policy, especially
since the Bandung conference of recently decolonized
Asian countries in 1955. In the nineteenth century,
however, it was used more or less neutrally to
characterize the condition of colonies and the (speech)
habits of colonials (Fieldhouse 1981, p. 6).
We have no choice but to accept the change of
meaning that colonialism has undergone, though we
can try to neutralize political emotions. In this sense,
colonialism can be defined as the control of one people
by another, culturally different one, an unequal re-
lationship which exploits differences of economic,
political, and ideological development between the
two (Reinhard 1996, p. 1). People instead of nation or
state is used because basically no sophisticated pol-
itical organization is necessary on either side. And the
terms difference and de
elopment are used in a strictly
descriptive sense and without any value judgement.
They do not suggest that it is more desirable to have
nuclear weapons instead of bow and arrow or that
there exists a general and ‘normal’ path of human
development with the West at the end. But differences
of development are essential to distinguish colonial
rule from empire in general. Roman rule over ancient
Greece and Russian control of East Germany were
imperial, not colonial.
Colonialism, as an unequal relationship between
human groups, very often was the outcome of imper-
ialism, defined as a political activity with the intention
to establish colonialism. But if the meaning of imper-
ialism is limited to expansive policy of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, colonial expansion has to be
used to designate earlier policies. After decolonization,
colonialism as a form of political dependency has
become a mere phenomenon of history. But economic
and cultural domination by former colonial powers
such as Britain and France on the one hand, and by the
US and the US controlled world economy on the
other, still exists. It has been labeled neocolonialism. In
the 1960s and 1970s theories of structural dependency
explained economic underdevelopment as a conse-
quence of western economic domination and as self-
reproducing without chance of escape because of
western control of the world economy. Several success
stories of former colonies have falsified these theories,
but their lesson on informal control as an element of
colonialism remains. Semicolonies such as China or
the Ottoman Empire about 1900 were formally in-

dependent, but in reality under economic and there-
fore indirect political control of the West. Western
colonies in the Americas, in South Africa, and Aus-
tralia established a secondary colonialism in their parts
of the world. Even in European countries unbalanced
internal group relations as in the case of Britain’s
‘celtic fringe’ were qualified as internal colonialism
(Hind 1984).
2. The History and Geography of Colonization
and Colonialism
The expansion of Europe between the fifteenth and
twentieth centuries was one of the most momentous
processes of history. World history in the sense of
global history became possible only through that
process, because no part of the world escaped the
direct or indirect impact of Europe. In 1914 half of the
land surface of the earth and one-third of its popu-
lation were still under direct colonial rule. But this was
only the last chapter of a long story, because coloni-
zation and colonialism are essential components of
history in general, especially, if we do not omit
continental expansion in Russia, the Americas, and
elsewhere in favor of overseas colonialism. Coloni-
zation in the sense of expansion of settlement and
agrarian land use could even be considered the
quintessence of human history before industrializa-
tion. Chinese colonialism is perhaps the most re-
markable case because of the relative continuity of
Han-Chinese expansion starting from the lower
Huang basin thousands of years ago and leading to the
present penetration of Tibet, Mongolia, and Xinjiang.
The ancient world of the Mediterranean was full of
Phoenician, Greek, and Roman settlement colonies.
Colonial phenomena of the European Middle Ages
became predecessors and models of the later expansion
of Europe. Spain and Portugal colonized the re-
conquered South of the Iberian peninsula and the
Canaries, whereas England did the same in Wales and
Ireland, Old World experiences to be used in the New
World later. People from central and western Europe
settled in the East, a process to be continued by Russia
in Siberia until the Pacific Ocean was reached. The
French who were excluded from the colonization of
the East became protagonists of the crusades in-
stead. The first European colonies established by the
crusaders in the Middle East were a failure, but in that
context Italians developed a system of maritime trade
and factories combined with the colonial production
of high value commodities such as sugar. Not by
chance America was ‘discovered’ by a Genoese and
‘baptized’ after a Florentine.
Beginning in 1415 the Portuguese followed the coast
of Africa until they found their way to India in 1498.
To control the spice trade of the Indian Ocean they
established a trade empire based on fortified ports,
Colonization and Colonialism, History of
factories, and colonial rule over spice producers such
as Ceylon and the Moluccas, extending from East
Africa to China and Japan, with Goa in the center.
During the European conflicts of the early seventeenth
century, the Dutch East India Company, in contrast to
Portuguese crown capitalism, a privileged private
corporation of shareholders, conquered most of the
Portuguese system, but established a new capital in
Batavia on Java. Arriving at the same time, the French
and English East India Companies created their bases
on the coast of India, a comparative advantage when
European demand changed in the seventeenth century
and Indian textiles became the leading commodity. In
the eighteenth century they were replaced by tea and
coffee with the China trade as core business. But trade
remained under strict control of the Chinese and
Japanese empires and ‘western barbarians’ were only
tolerated until the middle of the nineteenth century
when China and Japan were ‘opened’ for free trade by
western military aggression. On Java and in India,
however, the Mataram and Mughal empires began to
disintegrate in the eighteenth century. This led to the
control of Java by the Dutch and the conquest of all
India by the British until 1818–49. Most of it was the
result of contingency, but besides the interest in profits
the ambition of local military, the ‘men on the spot,’
was a constant factor.
Since 1492 Castilians competing with the Portu-
guese discovered and conquered their India in the
West. Spaniards emigrated to live in the cities of a New
World. But despite a tremendous loss of native
population, mostly through infectious diseases im-
ported by the conquerors, the labor force consisted
mostly of Amerindians, especially when, after the
discovery of silver mines in northern Mexico and
highland Peru, America became the treasure house of
the Spanish monarchy. A proto-bureaucratic system
of colonial government was established instead of
traditional feudal lordship desired by the conquerors.
But Iberian America was to remain a racially stratified
society. Metropolitan Spain did not profit much from
American silver which, because of differential inflation
rates and overambitious policy, flowed out of the
country to feed the Asian trade of the Dutch and the
English. Via Europe and directly via the Philippines
much of the American silver ended up in India and
China. A kind of world trade system originated, but
probably with rather marginal economic impact on
Europe and on Asia. Brazil became a Portuguese
colony almost by chance, economically important
only in the later sixteenth century when sugar cane was
grown on its abundant fertile soils. Indian labor was
scarce here but the Portuguese controlled the opposite
coast and therefore were able to provide the sugar
industry with African slaves. When the sugar cycle
reached its end, gold and diamonds created a new
boom in Brazil during the eighteenth century, but with
similar negative consequences for Portugal as for
Spain 200 years earlier.
2241
Colonization and Colonialism, History of
In the seventeenth century the Dutch transferred the
Brazilian plantation economy to the Caribbean where
the English, French, and Dutch had conquered several
islands from Spain. No Amerindian labor force was
left there, but the Dutch had occupied some of the
Portuguese strongholds on the West African coast
with the British and the French to follow. Thus the
West Indies could be provided with African slaves.
The English were the leading slave traders of the
eighteenth century when the sugar business reached its
culmination point. Large parts of the Caribbean were
converted into an agro-industrial complex with a
completely artificial society of black slaves, white
lords, and an increasing number of mulattos.
In the meantime, another type of artificial new
world had originated in North America which in the
long run became a white man’s country, the first and
most successful of several ‘new Europes’ created by
about 60 million Europeans who emigrated between
the sixteenth and the twentieth century. North
American Indians were few in number and not able to
defend the land white immigrants desired. Whereas
French Canada with its small settler population could
at least attempt their integration, British North
America had no room for them. They were removed,
marginalized, or wiped out. Around 1780, British
North America had more than 2.6 million inhabitants,
compared with about 8 million inhabitants of England
and Wales.
In 1775–1823 Europe lost most of her American
colonies. But Britain, which dominated the colonial
scene for most of the nineteenth century, compensated
for the loss with the conquest of India and with several
new colonies, some of them acquired during the wars
against France, like Canada from France and South
Africa from the Netherlands, other new foundations
in Australia and New Zealand which had been
explored during the late eighteenth century. But they
were accepted rather reluctantly, because in an age of
British dominated free trade colonial rule was con-
sidered unnecessary and too expensive. Therefore,
self-financed self-government of white settler-colonies
was now welcome. Between 1840 and 1931 these
British ‘dominions’ became quasi-independent.
This relaxed attitude was to change in the age
of imperialism (see Imperialism, History of ), when
nervous competition of old and new powers under the
ideological impact of nationalistic social Darwinism
led to the division of Africa within a few decades. Most
of what was left of Asia was also occupied or at least
controlled economically. Besides Britain’s notorious
rival France and the old colonial powers Portugal and
Spain new competitors entered the stage: Russia and
the King of Belgium, Germany and Italy, the USA and
Japan, the first non-western imperialist power, which a
few decades earlier had been close to becoming a
semicolony. After World War I (see First World War,
The) the German colonial empire and the Ottoman
Empire were divided among the victors. The formal
2242
qualification as mandates of the League of Nations did
not make much difference. Neither was the League
of Nations able to prevent the Japanese occupation
of Manchuria in 1931–2 and the Italian conquest of
Ethiopia in 1935. Ethiopia had defended herself
successfully against Italian aggression in 1896, but as
the last African country had to yield to colonialism—if
only for a few years. Times were beginning to change.
Less spectacular than expansion overseas, and
therefore often ignored by historians of colonialism,
was the ‘quiet’ continental expansion of Russia and
the USA, of Canada, Australia, and South Africa, of
Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. This expansion was
possible only at the expense of indigenous populations
and through the exploitation of differences of de-
velopment. This turned out a very effective variety of
colonialism, because the result was most often a white
man’s country, another ‘new Europe,’ where the
former population was marginalized or wiped out.
Only in few cases such as South Africa, Russian
Central Asia and Caucasia non-western groups were
numerically and culturally strong enough for later
successful decolonization.
3. Typology of Colonization and Colonialism
There was no master plan for colonial expansion.
Quite often it happened as an unintentional conse-
quence of some other action. Nevertheless, typical
sequences of actions occurred again and again, for
instance preventive occupation to keep out possible
competitors. The Portuguese used this in sixteenth-
century Brazil, as did most European powers in
nineteenth-century Africa. Military intervention in
Africa was sometimes not intended as permanent
occupation, because it was much too expensive. But
when African resistance made a retreat impossible
without loss of national prestige, the temporary
occupation became a permanent colony. If not a
matter of prestige, colonial policy was always based on
a kind of cost-benefit analysis. Colonies were expected
to be profitable. At least they had to finance their own
government. The famous British model of indirect rule
did originate much less from political wisdom or
respect for other civilizations than from the necessity
to keep administration costs down. In reality national
budgets only profited from colonial empires in ex-
ceptional cases, because infrastructural costs were
considered the responsibility of the government,
whereas colonial profits remained private.
The most common individual motives for partici-
pating in colonial activities were indeed the desire for
extra profits and the improvement of social status.
These were certainly not the only motives, but they
were almost never absent. Of course, their character
changed over time. The conquerors of British India
were capital accumulating profit seekers, but like those
of Spanish America still with the intention to invest in

social status and not in capitalist enterprise in the way
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The second
most common motive, missionary zeal, also changed
over time. Instead of spreading the gospel and Euro-
pean civilization, modern colonizers followed the urge
of a civilizing mission to educate barbarians. In the age
of imperialism, however, it became common con-
viction that inferior races could not be ‘improved,’ but
were doomed to serve or to die. Thus colonial
adventurers could feel entitled to pose without re-
straint as the master race.
From the fifteenth to the twentieth century colonies
usually represented one of three basic types, sometimes
as a mixture:
(a) Trade and\or military bases such as the strong-
hold system of the Portuguese trade empire or Britain’s
naval bases in the nineteenth century or the frontier
forts of the US, Spanish ecclesiastical missions some-
times served a similar purpose.
(b) Colonies of settlement, probably the primitive
type of colony, especially when combined with a kind
of stronghold as in the case of the roman ‘Colonia.’
Larger settlement colonies could only be founded at
the expense of indigenous people who were either
removed (New England) or transformed into a de-
pendent labor force for an ‘improved’ economy
(Spanish America, Algeria) or replaced by workers of
foreign origin (Africans in the Caribbean, East Indians
in Guyana).
(c) Colonies of exploitation with only a small number
of members of the ruling people present most of them
only temporarily, to run business, administration, and
defense. Parts of colonial Latin America resembled
that type, but it became the dominating type during
nineteenth and twentieth century colonialism with
British India as the prototype and much of Africa to
follow.
Colonies of exploitation could not be ruled without
massive collaboration of indigenous people (Robinson
1972). Collaboration had already been a necessary
precondition for the Spanish conquest. To consider
such collaborators as traitors, though, is an
anachronistic value judgement of modern nationalist
historiography. People like the Tlazcaltecans quite
rationally served their own interest regardless of a
Mexican nation that did not yet exist. Recent research
on the colonial situation from the perspective of people
under colonial rule has corrected such simplifications.
Non-European history no longer looks just like an
inversion of the eurocentric pattern when the colon-
ialist image of benevolent western heroes ruling
inferior races for their own benefit is simply inverted in
the anticolonial story of western rascals systematically
abusing helpless non-western victims. To some extent,
the image of the helpless native itself is a creation of
latent racism. In reality, a broad range of options to
cope quite successfully with colonial domination
ranging between complete acceptance of western
patterns of behavior and very subtle methods of
Colonization and Colonialism, History of
boycott was available to indigenous people, to some
extent even to African slaves (see Sla
es\Sla
ery,
History of ). The traditional contrast between colonial
lords as active initiators of colonial processes and
colonial subjects who had no choice but to suffer
passively or at best to react against the actions of their
betters has been questioned. But to believe after
decolonization that colonial rule was only a short
episode without much impact on the colonies seems to
be an anticolonialist oversimplification.
4. Decolonization
The term decolonization was created in 1932 (Albertini
1966, p. 28) but the process is much older. A first wave
of decolonization, the independence movements of
most American colonies 1775–1823, reduced Euro-
pean colonial empires drastically. But Britain at least
knew how to compensate for these losses. On the other
hand, some lessons of the first wave were learned and
made the second wave, the gradual increase of self-
government in Britain’s white dominions 1840–1931,
much more easy going. Between world wars, anti-
colonial movements emerged in several exploitation
colonies, with British India in the lead. Japanese
occupation of Asian colonies during World War II
(see Second World War, The) fostered independence
movements which were successful after the war in a
third wave of decolonization in the 1940s and 1950s.
At that time, Africa was apparently not yet ready for
decolonization. Colonial powers once again tried
instead to compensate for their losses in Asia by
economic development of their possessions in Africa.
However, under the growing political pressure of the
superpowers, the UN, and world public opinion some
African countries became independent in the 1950s,
and most in what was the fourth wave of deco-
lonization during the 1960s. A fifth wave began in
the Portuguese colonies in 1974–5 and accelerated
political change in South Africa. But the sixth wave
of decolonization in the 1990s, this time internal,
included not only the end of South Africa’s white
minority regime, but also quite unexpectedly the
breakdown of Soviet rule in Central Asia and Caucasia
and Israel’s first arrangements with her Arabs.
Decolonization was a truly dialectical process,
because colonial rule produced its own contradiction,
that is politically frustrated new indigenous elites.
Everywhere westernized groups and not the traditional
authorities were in the lead of independence move-
ments. But an independence movement or even an
independence war was not enough. In most cases a
triangular constellation of political factors was the
essential precondition: besides an internal indepen-
dence movement, favorable international conditions
such as allies, anticolonial policies of the world powers
and the UN, and the willingness of the colonial power
to accept the unavoidable were also necessary.
2243
Colonization and Colonialism, History of
5. The Consequences of Colonialism and the
Postcolonial World
Colonial processes were certainly never a one-sided
affair, but it is simply not true that they left no impact
on former colonies. The postcolonial world is not the
same as before, even in Europe. Several American
plants, the potato in particular, became essential for
Europe’s population and economic growth. Colonial
bullion and colonial profits contributed to the rise of
Europe, if rather marginally and indirectly. They were
certainly not the sufficient precondition of industriali-
zation. Colonial problems influenced European power
relations, but rarely dominated them. Europe assimi-
lated new cultural elements from all over the world,
but without changing her character. In the colonies,
however, ecology, economy, politics, society, and
culture often changed more thoroughly, sometimes
even fundamentally.
Intentionally or unintentionally colonial rule has
transformed ecological systems. After new plant foods
had been introduced, American savannahs changed
into corn fields suffering from soil erosion and new
weeds. Domesticated animals formerly unknown in
the Americas, in Australia, and New Zealand revo-
lutionized working and eating habits, transportation
systems and even the whole way of life of such groups
as the Indians of the North American plains. Un-
known infectious diseases killed millions who were
replaced by a new population of immigrants and
imported slaves.
The deliberate diffusion of European and especially
American cultivated plants such as maize and manioc
created a new agriculture and allowed an expansion of
food production, a necessary precondition of modern
population growth in the colonies. But colonial econ-
omies were first of all based on the systematic
exploitation of mineral resources such as American
silver, African diamonds, gold and other ore, and
more recently of oil in the Middle East and other parts
of the world. In addition, they specialized in the
production of high value agrarian products such as
sugar, coffee, and tea on large plantations. Mines and
plantations more often than not ruthlessly exploited a
colonial labor force of slaves, contract and forced
laborers. Because, as a rule, colonies could not
industrialize, their independent successor states re-
mained dependent on the world market price of their
raw materials, which only in the case of oil took a turn
to their advantage.
The essential political heritage of colonialism is the
modern state (see State, History of ) with its legislative,
administrative, judicial, military, and educational
apparatuses. Every former colony has changed into a
modern nation state, but strictly within the arbitrary
and sometimes absurd colonial borderlines. Therefore,
some are extremely poor and very few are powerful
enough for an independent foreign policy. But in
contrast to former periods of history weak states today
2244
have their existence guaranteed by the international
community (Jackson 1990). Internally, only few of
them can build upon the tradition of a historical
community. Instead of a modern civil society their
colonial heritage is ethnic fragmentation, to some
extent artificially created by colonialism. Quite often
they had no alternative to the language of the former
colonial power as national language. Under these
circumstances the modern state in general and western
democracy in particular could not become a success
and were replaced by the para-stateliness of self-
organizing groups based on remarkable combinations
of traditional and modern elements.
Everywhere colonialism has created new social
groups living in western-style urban environments:
workers and employers, school teachers and pro-
fessionals, civil servants and professional soldiers.
Women have found new roles and quite often eman-
cipated themselves from traditional restrictions. All
this is based on western science and technology, on
western ideas and ideologies like rationalism and
individualism, the rule of law and human rights,
Christianity and socialism. Nevertheless, it is essential
to understand that this state of things no longer
implies cultural dependency, but rather the opposite:
non-western people in the meantime have become
owners of a cultural heritage of western origin. For
example, the role of English as common language of
the world stems from historic British and American
dominance. Increasingly, though, the acceptance of
‘new Englishes’ all over the world indicates that
the Anglo-Saxons have been expropriated of their
language.
See also: Civil Society, Concept and History of;
Colonialism, Anthropology of; Colonialism: Political
Aspects; Environmental History; Ethnic Groups\
Ethnicity: Historical Aspects; Frontiers in History;
Global History: Universal and World; Imperialism,
History of; Imperialism: Political Aspects; Migrations,
Colonizations, and Diasporas in Archaeology;
National Liberation Movements; Nations and
Nation-states in History; Racism, History of;
Slaves\Slavery, History of
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All rights reserved.
Color Classification and Symbolism
‘Color classification’ is an ambiguous concept. It may
refer to ‘classification of colors,’ or ‘classification by
colors’. Most research on color classification has opted
for the first approach, which is concerned with the
variation of linguistic categorization of colors in
different cultures. This kind of research has been
undertaken by linguists, psychologists, and cognitive
anthropologists. By contrast, the few anthropologists
who have opted for the second approach have been
concerned rather with symbolic anthropology, or have
worked in a structuralist tradition of sociocultural
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
Color Classification and Symbolism
anthropology. Research into color classification has a
long history, dating back to the 1870s (Allen 1879,
Gladstone 1877, Magnus 1877). However, it was not
until Berlin and Kay published their seminal book on
basic color terms (1969) that research in this field
virtually exploded, especially within cognitive and
linguistic anthropology. Over the last 25 years, a
wealth of data on color categories has been meticu-
lously collected in different parts of the world, mainly
with the help of the ‘Munsell color chips.’ As a general
rule, randomly chosen informants have been asked to
define the colors on these chips, and to ‘map’ them.
The findings have then been tested as ‘hard data,’ often
using quantitative methods (e.g. MacLaury 1986, Kay
et al. 1991). This ‘hard-wire’ approach to color
classification research has been further strengthened
by the general assumption that color perception is a
matter of neurobiology, universality, and evolution.
Although the evolutionary paradigm had featured
in research on color classification for almost 100 years,
Berlin and Kay were the first scholars to present
substantial evidence for a theory concerning the
universality and evolution of basic color terms. In the
original formulation of their theory, they defined a
particular sequence of developmental ‘stages’ of basic
color terms, and suggested that these stages would
correspond to the stages of technological evolution.
The few cultures in which only two basic color terms
were used would represent Stage I on the evolutionary
ladder, while the prevalence of three color terms would
place a particular culture one step higher up (Stage II).
Four basic color terms would imply Stage III, five
terms Stage IV, and so on. Societies with the maximum
number of color terms (11) would represent the highest
level of technological evolution.
Although Berlin and Kay have modified the original
formulation of their theory (Kay et al. 1991), the main
features of the paradigm have been generally accepted
by scholars in their own and related fields. Part of the
reason for this is that Berlin and Kay backed up their
theory with a wide range of cross-cultural linguistic
data, which showed a remarkable regularity with
respect to the sequence of basic color terms: if only two
terms were found in a particular culture, they were
invariably white and black. If three terms were
recognized, these were always white, black, and red.
The fourth basic color term to be introduced was
either yellow or green, the fifth either green or yellow,
the sixth blue, and so on. In spite of some revisions and
later developments of the theory (see Hardin and
Maffi 1997, MacLaury 1999), there is still a general
consensus among anthropologists about the sequence
of basic color terms—even though the hypothesis
about a corresponding technological evolution has yet
to be proved. It would, for example, be difficult to
maintain the theory about technological evolution,
given that many hunting\gathering societies recognize
more basic color terms than agriculturalists. In Africa,
even the most sophisticated Bantu-speaking agricul-
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ISBN: 0-08-043076-7