hello there geographers and welcome back to the Mr sin Channel today we are going to talk about different political processes if we go back in time and look at the history of states around the world we'll quickly see that countries like to expand and take over other countries for example we could look at the colonial era where countries would establish settlements known as colonies and other territories around the world states with colonies imposed their political economic and cultural principles on the territories they control we can also see the impact of imperialis M which is the idea of growing a state or Empire by exerting force over other nations to gain economic and political power both colonialism and imperialism are pretty similar and they're easy to get confused when trying to remember the big differences between the two concepts just remember that colonialism is about claiming territories and settling there whereas imperialism does not involve creating a colony often times imperialism is the ideology or driving force behind colonialism now both imperialism and colonialism have reshaped World they led to the global diffusion of different religions languages cultures resources people and ideas they also led to the creation of new countries reshaped political boundaries and reshaped different political and economic systems around the world however imperialism and colonialism also led to the forced migration of enslaved people across the world such as the Atlantic slave trade it also created an imbalance in power between core countries in the world and pery and semi- pery Country newly formed political boundaries favored the colonial rulers and did not accurately reflect the local cultures and people not to mention that many of the developing regions were taken advantage of by more developed regions with their Workforce and natural resources being exploited by developed countries which disproportionately benefited them from the exchange today we can see former colonies that are still dependent on their former rulers and other developed countries leading to a commodity dependence and trade imbalances AC across the globe we can look at historical events such as the Berlin Conference which was when European powers colonized the continent of Africa and created borders based on longitude and latitude and what worked best for them instead of recognizing the different ethnic linguistic and cultural groups in the area here the goal was to create states that benefited the Europeans and set up systems which would allow for the extraction of natural resources from Africa to Europe colonies and newly formed states lack sub substantial infrastructure education and had facilities that were set up to be dependent on European powers instead of being self-sufficient when African countries started to gain independence many of the newly formed States had a large variety of different nations ethnic groups and linguistic groups residing within their border which led to conflicts Civil Wars and unfortunately in some cases ethnic cleansing and genocide to show how the political boundaries in Africa do not match the cultural boundaries we can look at the Murdoch ethnic map which was created by George Murdoch an American Anthropologist this map shows the distribution of ethnic groups throughout Africa notice how the majority of the political states have multiple ethnic groups within their borders the boundaries were not created with the cultural groups in mind if we take this map one step further we can look at conflicts within Africa based on state borders and ethnic regions traditionally one thinks of conflicts is happening between two different states however here we can see that many of the conflict points are occurring inside a state's border but if we look at ethnic borders instead of state borders we can see that many of the conflicts are between different ethnic groups now I also do want to point out that many of these conflicts are also near areas with rivers water and access to other natural resources which could also be causing some of the conflict over time we started to see more Independence movements grow around the world as more people advocated for separation from their ruling state it turns out people just don't really like being controlled by a foreign power who knew now the process of a state leaving a former colony and leaving the state for Independence is known as decolonization today we can see there are still non-self-governing territories which the United Nations defines as territories whose people have not yet attained a full measure of self-government however this list does not include uninhabited areas or areas that have a relatively high amount of autonomy such as places like Puerto Rico so we've been talking about history political States and ethnic groups but I also want to talk about shifts in power and how that impacts a state when a state sees its power shift from the central government to a regional government or when power is broken up from a central government to Regional governments it's known as Devolution we can see an example of devolution when looking at the United Kingdom with Scotland Northern Ireland and Wales each have authority over their own lands and are still part of the United Kingdom the United Kingdom granted the Scottish Parliament the National Assembly for Wales and the Ireland assembly their own governing power which makes us example of devolution since power is shifting from the national government down to Regional government one thing I want to note that Devolution is different from balkanization now sometimes Devolution can lead to balkanization but that's not always the case balkanization is when a state separates into multiple other states the term originally comes from the breaking up of the former Yugoslavia a state that was composed of different nations the state started to split as the Soviet Union started to collapse and the different nations that existed within Yugoslavia pushed for Independence political leaders such as the communist leader Tito originally acted as a centripetal force and held the different ethnic groups together as one state however after Tito died the different cultural groups started to push for Independence and power started to shift from the national government to the regional government eventually leading to the breakup of the state so here we can see an example of devolution as power shifted from the national government down to the regional governments and balkanization since the state broke up into smaller States if you're interested in learning about some of the complexities of Yugoslavia and how it eventually collapsed you can go to the description of this video for more resources all right now comes the time to practice answer the questions on the screen and when you're done check your answers in the comment section down below or in the description of the video also don't forget to hit that subscribe button if you found value in this video and consider checking out my ultimate review packet for more help with your AP Human Geography studies the packet is a great resource that'll definitely help you get an A in your class and a five on that National exam as always I'm Mr sin and I'll see you next time online