Some historians of colonialism have argued that the conquest of Ireland by the English Normans was the fist colonialist expansion in Europe. There is an irony here in that Ireland was a most Christian country when the Vikings who invaded Normandy (and later conquered England) were still pagan marauding savages. If the argument were valid, then why not describe as early colonialism the Aghlabid (Tunisian) invasion of Sicily? Or for that matter the Muslim Arab conquest of the Middle East? We shall stick to the traditional definition of colonies as those territories incorporated into European maritime empires after Portugal started exploring the coast of Africa in the first half of the 15th century.

Portugal began with enclaves on the coast of Senegal and on the Gold and Slave coasts (gulf of Guinea). Spain colonialized the Caribbean shoreline before the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached India (1497). An English ship first sighted Newfoundland, but it was the French who sailed up the St. Lawrence (1534). By then Spain had the nuclei for viceroyalties in México and Perú. British colonialism really got started with the chartering of the East India Company by Queen Elizabeth on 31 December 1600. Quebec was founded in 1608.

The British Colonial Empire was the largest the world has ever seen. It reached its apogee either in 1918, when it obtained large League of Nations mandates in the Middle East (former provinces of the Ottoman Empire) and in Africa (former German colonies), or in 1946, depending on whether Eritrea and Libya can be considered ephemeral additions to the empire. Sarawak certainly was ceded to Britain as a colonial dependency (1946), but by then Iraq, a former mandate, was an independent state. France granted independence to its African colonies in 1960. Algeria was surrendered in 1962. The French legally did not consider it a colony but a part of France. Portugal laid down its arms in its colonies in 1975. East Timor was abandoned in 1976. Spain relinquished the Western Sahara (known as Rio de Oro) in 1979. The last sizable British dependency to become independent was Belize in 1982.

Of the twenty lowest ranking nations in the UN Human Development Index (2002), nineteen were long-term former colonies and only Ethiopia was an independent state except for a brief Italian colonialist interlude (1935-1941). Of these colonies, the French had nine, the Belgians, British, and Portuguese three each, and the Italians one (Eritrea). In all, Belgium only had three colonies. In justice, of the former French colonies, five are either totally or mostly desert.

Uganda, a former British colony, ranks slightly above the twenty lowest, but it has had one of the unhappiest post-colonial histories, its last scourge being a murderous crew called the Lord's Resistance Army, which apparently kills in the hundreds when it can for the fun of it. Uganda spawned Idi Amin, a former non-com in the British army and one of the most murderous of Africa's tyrants. Before the crazies in Liberia and Sierra Leone appeared, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, emperor of the formerly French Central African Republic, and a diamond-giving friend of French president Valery Giscard D'Estaing, gave a Amin a run in savagery having even been accused of cannibalism.

In considering whether it is fair to insinuate some colonialist responsibility in Africa's tragedies, it is necessary to keep in mind that in Rwanda and in Burundi colonialism found intense and ancient ethnic hatreds, which it contributed to worsening by making them legal and mandatory. After the genocidal frenzy in Rwanda in 1994, even the mention of Hutu or Tutsi is banned. In Burundi, where the distinction is still very much alive, the reciprocal killings have continued.

Of the total of 36 countries in the lowest development category, 31 became independent after 1945. But Haiti, independent since 1804, is the 28th most underdeveloped country, and Liberia, independent since 1847, was in such a chaotic state in 2001-2002 that it could provide no meaningful statistics. The UN development index includes, besides the standard GDP per capita income measurement, such factors as life expectancy, adult literacy, and school enrolment. The per capita index is adjusted to the cost of the necessaries of life, which usually tends to increase the figure upwards in very poor countries.