Colonialism

Colonialism is the practice of extending and maintaining political, social, economic, and cultural domination over a territory and its people by another people in pursuit of interests defined in an often distant metropole, who also claim superiority. While frequently an imperialist project, colonialism functions through differentiating between the targeted land and people, and that of the colonizers (a critical component of colonization). Rather than annexation, this typically culminates in organizing the colonized into colonies separate to the colonizers' metropole. Colonialism sometimes deepens by developing settler colonialism, whereby settlers from one or multiple colonizing metropoles occupy a territory with the intention of partially or completely supplanting the existing indigenous peoples, possibly amounting to genocide.

Colonialism monopolizes power by understanding conquered land and people to be inferior, based on beliefs of entitlement and superiority, justified with beliefs of having a civilizing mission to cultivate land and life, historically often rooted in the belief of a Christian mission. These beliefs and the actual colonization establish a so-called coloniality, which keeps the colonized socio-economically othered and subaltern through modern biopolitics of sexuality, gender, race, disability and class, among others, resulting in intersectional violence and discrimination.

While different forms of colonialism have existed around the world, the concept has been developed as a description of European colonial empires of the modern era. These spread globally from the 15th century to the mid-20th century, spanning 35% of Earth's land by 1800 and peaking at 84% by the beginning of World War I. European colonialism employed mercantilism and chartered companies, and established complex colonialities.

Decolonization, which started in the 18th century, gradually led to the independence of colonies in waves, with a particular large wave of decolonizations happening in the aftermath of World War II between 1945 and 1975. Colonialism has a persistent impact on a wide range of modern outcomes, as scholars have shown that variations in colonial institutions can account for variations in economic development, regime types, and state capacity. Some academics have used the term neocolonialism to describe the continuation or imposition of elements of colonial rule through indirect means in the contemporary period.

Colonialism is etymologically derived from the Latin term colonia, originally a designation for a type of city or outpost that was founded and populated by newly settled Roman citizens at the direction of the Roman government. The word colonia is then in turn derived from the Latin word colonus ("farmer") and its root word colere ("to cultivate, to till").

The earliest uses of colonialism referred to plantations that men emigrated to and settled. The term expanded its meaning in the early 20th century to act as a historical reference for European imperial expansion and the imperialist subjection of Asian and African peoples, while also serving as a paradigm for analysing the form of rule. Defining colonialism became necessary for the international anti-colonial movement, and it was discussed in the 1955 Bandung Conference and the contexts it applied to disputed. The concept entered the forefront of academia in the late 20th century, followed by the development of postcolonialism.

Collins English Dictionary defines colonialism as "the practice by which a powerful country directly controls less powerful countries and uses their resources to increase its own power and wealth". Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary defined colonialism as "the policy of a nation seeking to extend or retain its authority over other people or territories". The online Merriam-Webster Dictionary offers several definitions: "domination of a people or area by a foreign state or nation", "the practice of extending and maintaining a nation's political and economic control over another people or area" and "the policy of or belief in acquiring and retaining colonies".

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines it as "a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another" and uses the term "to describe the process of European settlement and political control over the rest of the world, including the Americas, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia". It discusses the distinction between colonialism, imperialism, and conquest and states that "[t]he difficulty of defining colonialism stems from the fact that the term is often used as a synonym for imperialism. Both colonialism and imperialism were forms of conquest that were expected to benefit Europe economically and strategically".