Colonization

Colonization or colonisation is defined as "the act or process of sending people to live in and govern another country". The term "colonization" is sometimes used synonymously with the word "settlement".

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, 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. Karl T. Muth notes in The Oxford Handbook of Global Policy and Transnational Administration that "Under the colonial framework, the administrative functions of government are partitioned according to the political convenience (and, often, economic interest) of the parent state rather than at the behest of the colony's residents."

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). This resulted in laws and ideas such as Mexico's 1824 General Colonization Law and the United States' manifest destiny doctrine which furthered colonization.

Etymology

The term colonization is derived from the Latin words colere ("to cultivate, to till"), colonia ("a landed estate", "a farm") and colonus ("a tiller of the soil", "a farmer"), then by extension "to inhabit". Someone who engages in colonization, i.e. the agent noun, is referred to as a colonizer, while the person who gets colonized, i.e. the object of the agent noun or absolutive, is referred to as a colonizee, colonisee or the colonised.