Colonization
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Colonization (British English: colonisation) is a process of establishing control over areas or peoples for foreign people to advance their trade, cultivation, exploitation and possibly settlement. Colonization functions through establishing a differentiation between the area and people of the colonized and colonizers, establishing metropoles, coloniality and possibly outright colonies. Colonization is commonly pursued and maintained by, but distinct from, imperialism, mercantilism, or colonialism.[1][2][3][4] Conquest can take place without colonisation,[a] but a conquering process may often result in or from migration and colonising.[5][b] The term "colonization" is sometimes used synonymously with the word "settling", as with colonisation in biology.
Settler colonialism is a type of colonization structured and enforced by the settlers directly, while their or their ancestors' metropolitan country (metropole) maintains a connection or control through the settler's activities. In settler colonization, a minority group rules either through the assimilation or oppression of the existing inhabitants,[6][7] or by establishing itself as the demographic majority through driving away, displacing or outright killing the existing people, as well as through immigration and births of metropolitan as well as other settlers.
The European colonization of Australia, New Zealand, and other places in Oceania was fueled by explorers, and colonists often regarding the encountered landmasses as terra nullius ("empty land", or literally "nobody's land" in Latin).[8] This resulted in laws and ideas such as Mexico's 1824 General Colonization Law and the United States' manifest destiny doctrine which furthered colonization.
- ^ "Colonialism, Coloniality and Settler Colonialism". UnLeading. August 11, 2022. Retrieved December 27, 2023.
- ^ Marc Ferro (1997). Colonization. Routledge. p. 1. doi:10.4324/9780203992586. ISBN 9781134826537.
Colonization is associated with the occupation of a foreign land, with its being brought under cultivation, with the settlement of colonists. If this definition of the term "colony" is used, the phenomenon dates from the Greek period. Likewise we speak of Athenian, then Roman 'imperialism'."
- ^ "colonization noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes". Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com. Retrieved 2023-03-29.
- ^ "Different Paths: Colonization is More than Exploitation". LPE Project. October 20, 2020. Retrieved July 15, 2024.
- ^
For example:
Bartlett, Robert (27 February 2003) [1993]. The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950 - 1350 (reprint ed.). London: Penguin UK. ISBN 9780141927046. Retrieved 17 July 2025.
This book approaches the history of Europe in the High Middle Ages [...] by concentrating on conquest, colonization and associated cultural change in Europe and the Mediterranean in the period 950-1350. It analyzes the establishment of states by conquest and the peopling of distant countries by immigrants along the peripheries of the continent: English colonialism in the Celtic world, the movement of Germans into eastern Europe, the Spanish Reconquest and the activities of crusaders and colonists in the eastern Mediterranean.
- ^ Howe, Stephen (2002). Empire: A Very Short Introduction. United States: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191604447.
When colonization takes place under the protection of clearly colonial political structures, it may most handily be called settler colonialism. This often involves the settlers entirely dispossessing earlier inhabitants, or instituting legal or other structures which systematically disadvantage them.
- ^ Howe, Stephen (2002). Empire: A Very Short Introduction. United States: Oxford University Press. pp. 21–31.
- ^ Painter, Joe; Jeffrey, Alex (2009). Political Geography. London, GBR: SAGE Publications Ltd. p. 169.
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