Britain's Duke of Gloucester and the Sultan of Malaysia appear at the country's independence ceremony in 1957. Most British colonies won their independence after the Second World War, but a few remain in what's left of Britain's empire.

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Once Britannia ruled the waves and France spread its language and economic reach to every continent and ocean. Spain colonized the Americas, and Portugal ruled Brazil and some of Africa's richest territory. The Kaiser's Germany sought foreign possessions from the South Pacific to East Africa. Even tiny Belgium got into the imperial act, annexing the Congo, and present-day Rwanda and Burundi.

It was the age of Empire, when European mercantile interests bonded with national navies and armies to conquer other parts of the world. Such conquests sought raw materials for industry, captive markets for trade and national glory. Christian missionaries spread their religion, through military might if necessary.

European imperialism has largely faded away. Scholarship and independence movements have thoroughly discredited the notion that distant "savages" were being brought the benefits of "civilization." Smallpox and racism were more likely to keep company with European colonizers, although France and Britain did build railways and national institutions in their vassal states that continue to function today.

It was not until the aftermath of the First World War that Europe finally began to curb its hunger for faraway corners of the world. Germany and Italy were stripped of their colonies after losing the war. Belgium and the Netherlands were broke and began to divest themselves of empires within a few decades. Britain surrendered first India, then most of its Caribbean and all of its African possessions throughout the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

Not everyone was in such a rush. French troops fought in Vietnam and Algeria in unsuccessful attempts to quash independence movements. Paris clung to its African colonies longer than many other European powers, and even today maintains close cultural, economic and military links with many of its former possessions.

Imperial scraps

There's not much left of traditional empires anywhere. But for a variety of odd reasons, a few European countries and the United States retain control of scattered and thinly populated overseas territories. Britain runs Bermuda and a few islands in the West Indies – all have rejected independence from London. So too in Gibraltar, claimed by Spain but proud of being British. A dispute with Argentina over the Falkland Islands flared into a brutal war in 1982. Farther out in the southern Atlantic Ocean, Saint Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha stagger along on subsidies and a small stream of tourists who collect obscure destinations.

France keeps a slice of South America – French Guiana – to launch its rocket ships while clinging to New Caledonia and French Polynesia despite occasionally violent local independence movements. St. Pierre and Miquelon are a duty-free day trip for Newfoundlanders fond of a good Bordeaux, and several Caribbean islands have been incorporated into the government of mainland France as overseas "departments."

It could just be the Dutch love of a good tan and beach holidays that maintain Holland's attachment to a few islands in the Caribbean. One of them, a volcanic peak named Saba, is home to the highest point in the Netherlands (888 metres) despite being just 13 square kilometres in size. Aruba, another Dutch-governed island just off the coast of Venezuela, is one of the top tourist destinations in the West Indies.

A former colony itself, New Zealand finds itself a somewhat reluctant colonial power. All British dominions, including Canada, got full sovereignty in 1931 when Parliament in London passed the Statute of Westminster. Various Pacific archipelagoes got their independence from European capitals over the next few decades, but a few were considered too small and unviable to be independent. So New Zealand ended up in charge of an island chain called Tokelau. It rules to this day.

Canada has twice had a chance to join the ranks of post imperial colonial powers. Proposals to annex the Turks and Caicos islands, near the Bahamas, made the rounds in Parliament in the 1970s and 2004. Much as we may think we need our own tropical paradise, the idea never got off the ground.

U.S. holds overseas territories

In terms of actual territory held, Denmark is the world's largest remaining colonial power, but only because Greenland is Danish territory. Political parties demanding independence are big players in the Greenland parliament. But the island's sparse population and vast topography – just 57,000 people in a territory the size of Quebec and Newfoundland put together – cast doubt on the viability of independence. Between Greenland and Denmark, the Faroe Islanders acknowledge Danish sovereignty but enjoy significant autonomy from Copenhagen.

Then there's the United States. The U.S. might deny that it's an imperial power, but it holds several important overseas territories, which were acquired largely by military means. There was anguished debate in the U.S. after victory in the Spanish-American war in 1898 led to control of Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Only the latter achieved freedom from Washington's direct rule and only then in 1946 after nearly 50 troubled years as a U.S. colony. The United Nations has placed Guam and another U.S. Pacific territory, American Samoa, on a list of places that should probably be independent or affiliated with a nearby country.

These days, the language of imperialism is used largely for political purposes, to build sympathy by those unhappy with foreign rule. Beijing views Tibet as part of its territory, but many Tibetans feel their homeland is little more than a reluctant colony of China. You find similar semantics, and high emotions, around the issues of Kashmir, Chechnya, Western Sahara and Nagorno Karabakh in Azerbaijan. Beyond nation states and dissatisfied swathes of territory, left-wing political campaigners use the language of colonial struggle to oppose cultural and economic imperialism.

The sun has definitely set on the halcyon days of European empire. But people still struggle against colonialism in its myriad forms, and will continue to do so for some time.

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