Compare and Contrast settler colonialism to Economic Imperialism in the period 1750-1900.

Settler colonialism is the practice of establishing colonies in other countries with settlers---people who plan to live there indefinitely and establish a new society. At its best, settler colonialism is just a form of large-scale immigration. At its worst, it can overlap heavily with imperialism and attempts to force out local populations, or even lead to genocide.

Economic imperialism is the use of economic institutions, particularly multinational corporations, as instruments for conquering and colonizing other countries.

For the period 1750 to 1900 in particular, the British Empire was a particularly prominent example of both types of colonialism, and it's worthwhile to compare the outcomes in each case.

Emigration from Britain to the United States was largely settler colonialism: British citizens who wanted to build a new life away from Britain set up colonies in North America that would eventually become the United States and Canada. By the period in question, the east coast of the US was already largely settled, and new colonization was spreading westward to fill the continent. Once the United States officially became its own country in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence, we could consider the settlers spreading out west to be American settlers rather than British settlers, though the harmful effect on indigenous Native American populations was largely the same. Warfare and forced resettlement killed hundreds of thousands of natives. Disease killed almost 100 million.

Meanwhile, the British Empire was also engaging in economic imperialism in India and Africa, where private corporations like the East India Company and East Africa Company actually held large territories---many larger than Great Britain itself!---and ruled over them as if they were countries themselves. But these were a particularly terrible kind of country, ruthless dictatorships operated on an entirely for-profit basis that functioned primarily to extract natural resources and sell them far away in Europe. Imagine if Exxon or Walmart ruled an entire country, and you may have some sense of what life was like under the East India Company.

Eventually these multinational corporations grew so powerful that the British Crown decided they could not tolerate it anymore, and broke them up in order to make the colonies into official British territories. A few decades after that, most of them became independent countries.

In both cases, a wealthy and powerful country exploits other, poorer countries. In both cases, indigenous populations suffer and many die. However, the starkly different effects of settler colonialism on the one hand versus economic imperialism can still be seen to this day. Countries that were colonized by British settlers are now among the most prosperous countries in the world today: The US, Canada, Australia. Countries that had economic imperialism imposed upon them by the British Empire are now among the poorest countries in the world today: India, Kenya, Zimbabwe. Settler colonialism can have a happy ending---economic imperialism almost never does.