St. Augustine

1492

The first settlement in the way was the fort of Sancti Spiritu, established in 1527 next to the Paraná River. Buenos Aires was established in 1536, establishing the Governorate of the Río de la Plata. Africans were also conquistadors in the early Conquest campaigns in the Caribbean and Mexico.

The United States invaded Cuba in 1898 to protect their interests and to avenge the destruction of the USS Maine, which had blown up in the Havana…

Natives also rebelled over unjust taxation and forced labor. Most of these revolts failed because the majority of the local population sided up with the well-armed colonial government, and to fight with Spanish as foot soldiers to put down the revolts.

48 years

The Philippines were claimed in the name of Spain in 1521 by Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer sailing for Spain, who named the islands after King Philip II of Spain. They were then called Las Felipinas.

1898

When the Spanish-American War ended in December 1898, Spain sold the entire Philippine archipelago to the United States for $20 million. The Philippines had acquired a new colonial ruler.

If Philippines was not colonized by Spain the country would have been part of either China, Indonesia or Brunei or even the Kingdom of Sulu. The people of Indonesia, Brunei, China and sultanate were in the Philippines long before the Spanish invaded the country.

If the US hadn’t taken the Philippines from Spain they probably would’ve remained Spanish and eventually somewhere down the line declared independence, either peacefully being decolonized or fighting an independence war similar to what Indonesia went through.

If colonisation never happened, everything that we know or do will never exist. Without colonisation, cultures will not mingle, technological advancement will never occur, the Industrial Revolution itself will not happen.

A few things might occur: English never becomes the worlds lingua franca due to the widespread territories of the British Empire. French may remain the common tongue of diplomacy and trade. Or Spanish, maybe, with a greater spread by Spain into the colonial void created by Britain’s lack of participation in colonizing.

If Africa wasn’t colonized, the continent would consist of some organized states in North Africa/Red Sea, city-states in West and East Africa, and decentralized agricultural tribes in Central and Southern Africa.

Very few countries have never been either a colonizing power or become colonized. They include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Thailand, China, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and Ethiopia. Despite never becoming fully colonized, many of these countries had to fight back attempts at colonization.