Without the West and its innovations, the world would have moved forward anyway and there would never have been colonialism.
Executive summary
The claim that “without the West and its innovations, the world would have moved forward anyway and there would never have been colonialism” compresses two separate propositions — inevitability of technological/political progress and inevitability of colonial expansion — into one. Historical scholarship and the alternate‑history discussions assembled here show that non‑European pathways to modernization were both plausible and frequently realized, while colonialism was not a foreordained global outcome but a contingent set of political and economic processes tied to specific European capacities, choices, and accidents [1] [2]. Any confident counterfactual must therefore separate long‑term dynamism in human societies from the particular institutions and violence of European colonial empires [3].
1. Innovation is not a monopoly of the West: other centers could — and did — generate transformative change
Longstanding work and speculative histories regularly note that political, economic, and technological change can and did emerge outside Europe: Japan industrialized and became a colonizing power by choice and reform; Asian, African, and American polities developed complex states, trade networks, and technologies that could have furnished alternative modernities absent European domination [1] [4]. Even commentaries skeptical of counterfactuals concede that peaceful contact, trade and selective adoption of institutions—what some writers call “Westernization” by borrowing—could spread broadly without formal empire, meaning global forward movement was not uniquely dependent on European rule [1].
2. Colonialism was contingent, not inevitable — but conditions made it more likely
Forums and alternate‑history exercises underline that colonialism arose from a confluence of maritime technology, military asymmetries, commercial incentives, and European political competition; change in any of those could plausibly have prevented large‑scale territorial empires [5] [6]. However, the presence of powerful, expansionist actors is the more general risk: in many counterfactuals the absence of European colonialism simply opens space for other empires to project power [5] [4]. Thus colonialism as a phenomenon—extraction, territorial rule, racial hierarchies—was a contingent policy choice enabled by capabilities that could have been exercised by different peoples or avoided under different international arrangements [7].
3. Removing European colonialism does not mean removing Western influence or its institutions
Several alternate histories emphasize that “no colonization” often still entails intense contact—trade, missionary activity, legal and institutional borrowing—that disseminates technologies, religions, and state forms labeled “Western” without direct rule [1] [6]. The Peace of Westphalia and other European legal templates were powerful models of statehood that could diffuse indirectly; therefore, non‑colonial worlds might still be “Westernized” in key respects even as they retain political independence [1]. That complicates the simple either/or: progress can occur through diffusion and adaptation, not solely through empire.
4. Anti‑colonial perspectives stress the epistemic and moral alternatives colonialism foreclosed
Scholarly critique highlights that colonial modernity produced distinctive political forms and injustices—bifurcated states, racialized legal frameworks, and epistemic domination—that shaped postcolonial trajectories; removing colonialism would therefore produce not just different growth paths but fundamentally different political imaginaries and intellectual projects [2]. Decolonial writers warn that counterfactual play can obscure present realities, yet they also use “what if” scenarios to reveal how colonial arrangements were choices that closed off other forms of social and political innovation [3] [2].
5. A balanced verdict: forward movement likely, colonialism avoidable but not guaranteed
Synthesis of the sources suggests a moderated answer: human societies possessed multiple capacities to “move forward” technologically, economically, and institutionally without European colonial rule, but whether colonialism would never have occurred is uncertain—other imperial projects or alternative forms of domination might have arisen, and the diffusion of Western institutions could still happen through non‑imperial channels [1] [4] [5]. Assessments depend on which variables change: maritime technology, intercontinental disease dynamics, commercial incentives, and the internal politics of Eurasian powers; the sources document many plausible alternate outcomes while cautioning against teleological claims [8] [7].