Thank you for your reply. Do you happen to know of any reference in English?

maybe worth looking at 

Colonialization: A Global History

M Ferro - 1997 - London: Routledge

or 

The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories

P Chatterjee - 1993 - pup.princeton.edu

or

Global shift: Mapping the changing contours of the world economy

P Dicken - 2007 

or

http://www.nber.org/papers/w5661.pdf

(discusses colonial legal history)

best, Christian 

maybe worth looking at 

Colonialization: A Global History

M Ferro - 1997 - London: Routledge

or 

The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories

P Chatterjee - 1993 - pup.princeton.edu

or

Global shift: Mapping the changing contours of the world economy

P Dicken - 2007 

or

http://www.nber.org/papers/w5661.pdf

(discusses colonial legal history)

best, Christian 

Thank you Christian, I'm definitely going to look at them.

You can also see this book:

Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450

Thomas Benjamin,,2007 Thomson Gale

The chapter on "The Geography of Imperialisms" in Peter Taylor's "Political Geography, world geography, nation state  and locality" is probably very useful and is based on data compiled by Henige D.P. (1970) Colonial governors from the 15th Century to the Present, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. Taylor's book has been re-edited several time with an additional author Colin Flint, who became the first author.

You might also contact Pieter Saey (formerly from the University of Gent, Belgium) who has complied such a list, but probably only in Dutch: [email protected].

Thanks to all for your replies they have been most helpful.

http://didyouknow.org/lists/independence/

The above link is helpful.

The dataset by CEPII "GeoDist" is a bilateral dataset which contains information about every country in the world indicating colonial links with other ones. I think it can be very useful for you.