Everything about Colonisation totally explained
Colonisation (or
Colonization) occurs whenever any one or more species populates a new area. The term, which is derived from the Latin
colere, "to inhabit, cultivate, frequent, practice, tend, guard, respect," originally related to humans. However, 19th century
biogeographers dominated the term to describe the activities of birds or bacteria, or plant species.
Human colonization is a narrower category than the related concept of
colonialism, because whereas colonization refers to the establishment of
settler colonies,
trading posts, and
plantations with the
metropole's own population, colonialism deals with this and the ruling of new territories' existing peoples.
Historical Colonisations
Classical Period
In ancient times, maritime nations such as the city-states of
Greece and
Phoenicia often established colonies. These appear to have been more benign, emphasizing the farming of uninhabited land. In classical times, land suitable for farming was often claimed by migratory "barbarian tribes" who lived by hunting and gathering. To ancient civilized people, the land simply appeared vacant. However this doesn't mean that conflict didn't exist between the colonizers and native peoples.
Another period of colonization in Ancient times was from the
Romans. The Roman Empire conquered a large part of
Western Europe,
North Africa and
West Asia. In North Africa and west Asia they were often conquering civilized peoples, but as they moved north into Europe they mostly encountered rural tribes with very little in the way of cities. In these areas, waves of Roman colonization often followed the conquest of the area.
Many of the current cities around Europe began as Roman colonies, such as the German city Köln (better known in its French form
Cologne), which was originally called
Colonia Claudia by the Romans; and the
British capital city of
London which the Romans started as
Londinium.
Middle Ages
The decline and collapse of the Roman Empire saw (and was partly caused by) the large scale movement of people in
Eastern Europe and Asia. This is largely seen as beginning with nomadic horsemen from Asia moving into the richer pasture land to the west and so forcing the people there to move further west and so on until eventually the
Franks and their ilk were forced to invade the Roman Empire, beginning the
Dark Ages. It was this period that saw the large scale movement of peoples establishing new colonies all over western Europe, the events of this time saw the development of many of the modern day nations of Europe, the
Franks in
France and
Germany and the
Anglo-Saxons in
England.
The
Vikings of
Scandinavia also carried out a large scale colonization. The Vikings are best known as raiders, setting out from their original homelands in
Denmark, southern
Norway and southern
Sweden, to pillage the coastlines of northern Europe. In time, the Vikings began trading, rather than raiding, and established colonies. The Vikings discovered
Iceland and establishing colonies before moving onto
Greenland, where they briefly held some colonies. The Vikings also launched an unsuccessful attempt at colonizing an area they called
Vinland which probably is on the rocky coast of
Newfoundland, on the eastern coastline of
Canada
'Colonial Era', colonialism and imperialism
Modern Colonisation
In some cases,
expatriate communities do set up permanently in target countries, which is a 'truer' colonization, though in many cases (especially when not gathered into a community) expatriates don't necessarily seek to 'expand their native civilization', but rather to
integrate into the population of the new civilization.
Many nations also have large numbers of
guest workers who are brought in to do seasonal work such as harvesting or to do low-paid manual labor. Guest workers or contractors have a lower status than workers with visas, because guest workers can be removed at any time for any reason. Many human colonists came to colonies as slaves, so the legal power to leave or remain may not be the issue so much as the actual presence of the people in the new country.
In the 1980s and 1990s, an elite class of well-educated, highly-paid managers, lawyers, professionals, and business people began a new type of colonizing. Since they'd highly-sought after skills that were needed in many different countries, they treated the world as their playing field. They moved between countries to seek better jobs and opportunities. In the event of a downturn, they'd the resources to pack up and leave to a different country.
However, unlike this elite professional caste, people with lower-paying jobs don't have international mobility. International professional mobility may also be considered a type of
colonialism (rather than colonization) since these professionals don't move permanently. Instead, they move to a target region temporarily and leave.
Neo-Colonization
This term, usually pejorative, refers to a sort of "unofficial" colonization, in which a country's government is overthrown by larger country and replaced by a government that coincides with the larger country's interests. In effect, this makes the country a colony, dealing with the problem of a revolutionary uprising by delivering the impression that the colony is still self-governed.
Other ways of using the term
The theory of
Science policy colonization (Weingart and Mouton (2004)) argues that
science policy is increasingly being dominated by scientific experts from developed, industrialized democracies. Scientists from poorer, emerging or developing democracies may mainly be given the role of collecting raw data. Experts from developed, industrialized democracies may have biases unchallenged that run counter to the best interests of emerging democracies such as South Africa (Weingart and Mouton (2004)). There are also concerns (UNESCO 1999) that the accountability mechanisms imposed on knowledge experts are inadequate.
The term "
cocacolonisation" is used to describe cases where a country's indigenous culture is eroded by a corporate mass-culture, usually from a powerful, industrialized country such as the United States (see
cultural imperialism). This is more metaphorical usage as people need not move, to the colonized country; only cultural signals, symbols, forms of entertainment, and values move need to move to the colonised country.
Hypothetical or fictional types of Colonisation
The hypothetical permanent habitation of locations in Earth's
oceans is called
ocean colonization. Related ideas such as the
floating city are much less hypothetical - funds are presently being sought to build several large ships that would have permanent populations of up to 50,000 people each.
In
science fiction,
space colonization is sometimes more benign. Humans find an uninhabited planet, and inhabit it. The
colonization of Mars is an often-used example of this type of space colonization. In more recent science fiction, humans may create inhabitable space (by
terraforming or constructing a space habitat) and call that a "colony."
On the other hand, if the planet is already inhabited, much less benign consequences ensue: indeed, some science fiction authors have used the colonization of alien planets by humans, or the colonization of
Earth by aliens, to explore the real-world issues surrounding the phenomenon. Such works include those of
Mary Doria Russell,
The Sparrow and
Children of God.
The ultimate form of space colonization is the
Kardashev scale which assumes that a single dominant intelligent species will take over all energy on one planet, then one star, then a whole galaxy full of stars. However, this wouldn't necessarily be so if other species were to be discovered during a galactic expansion. This may require more than one species to share the galactic space with each other as they both develop.
Further Information
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