International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, in an April 26 interview in the Financial Times, urged Western patience with China's oppression of Tibet. Rogge stated that the People's Republic of China has existed since 1949, and he noted that European colonial powers abused their colonies for a long time. He concluded: "we owe China to give them time."

Does anyone know a good source for the lengths of European colonialism on a colony-by-colony basis? Some colonial periods (e.g., Portugal's rule of Angola) were very long, while others (some of the latter European conquests in Africa) were not much longer than the nearly six decades that Rogge imputes to the PRC's colonial rule of Tibet.

I realize that one could argue about whether Rogge is correct in dating Chinese colonialism only to the time when the current regime came to power. The French government went through a complete regime change as a result of the French revolution; would French colonial masters in 1791 then be entitled to tell their colonial victims: "Please be patient with us; our regime has existed for only two years. Never mind that the previous French government put you under the French colonial thumb decades ago."

But let's just use Rogge's timeline. The Tibetans, Uighers, and Inner Mongolians have lived under PRC colonialism for nearly six decades. How long does this compare to the period of European rule of various colonies, as well as to the length of Russian/Soviet rule for the various captive nations which were part of Imperial Russia and the USSR?