colony

Country under the control of immigrants who remain subject to the jurisdiction of the parent state. Historically, the acquisition of colonies occurred for a variety of reasons. In general, rivalry with other powers and the expansion of commercial interests were the major factors, but a variety of factors influenced the establishment of particular colonies. The need to protect trade routes and the desire to control the sources of various products were important in colonial development in Africa and Asia, including India.

The classical world The ancient Greeks colonized extensively along the coast of Asia Minor, Thrace, southern Italy, north Africa, Sicily, and the Crimea (see also colonies, Greek); a Greek colony was called apoikia, and the colonists apoikoi, literally ‘people from home’. Generally speaking, the city thus founded was entirely self-governing and independent, and was connected with the parent city only by ties of sentiment and religion.

The Roman colonia was a settlement in conquered territory (see also colonies, Roman). The colonia Romana was made up exclusively of Romans, who retained their citizenship; the colonia Latina included Romans who, on becoming colonists, lost their citizenship, and also‘Latins’, people who possessed only limited rights.

European colonization After the fall of Rome, colonies were not heard of again until early in the 16th century, when Spain and Portugal took the lead in establishing colonies followed closely by England, the Netherlands, and France.

Portugal had, as early as the 15th century, placed trading factories along the west coast of Africa, which it later extended as far as India. Portugal then developed its empire in South America, as well as in Africa, its great rival in the former region being Spain. The colonies of Spain and Portugal were directly subject to the government at home; they were ruled by highly paid, self-seeking officials, whose one ambition was to make so much out of the new country that they might return home enriched with their gains. The Spanish colonists were chiefly engaged in mining. The Portuguese aimed at placing factories at convenient ports for trading purposes. Neither country aimed at cultivating the land it had seized, and neither was successful in governing the indigenous peoples or at settling down in the new conditions.

By the end of the 18th century Portugal had lost much of its empire, but retained some small possessions in India, a number of possessions in Africa (including Angola and Mozambique), Brazil (which later asserted its independence and became a republic in 1822), and Macau on the south coast of China. Spain lost its possessions in South and Central America during the 19th century, and ceded its other colonies to the USA after the Spanish–American war of 1898.

There followed considerable colonial expansion by other European powers, notably France (which had lost many overseas possessions in the wars of the 18th century), Germany, and Italy during the 19th century, when most of the hitherto uncolonized parts of Africa and Asia came under colonial rule.

British colonization The earliest British colony was Newfoundland, annexed by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583. Historically British colonies may be divided into two main types: those to which significant numbers of people emigrated from the British Isles and in due course came to constitute a majority of the population; and those in which the indigenous people remained the overwhelming majority, although in some cases significant white minorities were established.

Britain's North American colonies (including the 13 colonies which subsequently formed the United States), Australia, and New Zealand fall into the first category and most other colonies into the second. The distinction is an important one because it had a fundamental effect on the subsequent development of the colonies.

Those colonies peopled entirely or substantially from the British Isles came to demand an increasing say in their own affairs, resulting, in the case of the American colonies, in the Declaration of Independence of 1776, and in the remainder in the creation of self-governing Dominions which became, in due course, to all intents and purposes independent of Britain. Demands for self-government in colonies in which the British presence was largely administrative and military came much later, however, and their realization saw the transformation of the British Empire into the Commonwealth (see Commonwealth, the (British)).

In the mid-19th century Benjamin Disraeli, later to become a leading imperialist, spoke of the British Empire having been acquired in ‘a fit of absent mind’ and described the colonies as ‘millstones around our necks’. Australia and, before the American Revolution, North and South Carolina, were regarded as useful repositories for convicted criminals, but the acquisition of colonies in Africa and Asia led others to speak of Britain's ‘civilizing mission’ in the world. Britain's role in the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery, and the activity of missionaries reinforced the view that Britain held these colonies in trust, and the concept of colonial trusteeship laid upon Britain the obligation to assist the indigenous colonial peoples in economic development and prepare them for ultimate self-government within the framework of the British Empire. This was the foundation of the imperialism which dominated colonial policy in the last decades of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th. That others should regard such views at best as illusory, at worst as hypocritical, is understandable, but it is doubtful whether the imperialist visions of men such as Disraeli, Joseph Chamberlain, and Lord Rosebery can be dismissed solely as a facade for economic exploitation.

What destroyed the imperial project was both a sense of exploitation on the part of colonial peoples and a response to the principle which dominated the Versailles Conference of 1919 – that of self-determination. The demand for self-determination, already apparent in India before World War I, grew in the inter-war period and became virtually irresistible after 1945, so that all but a handful of British colonies have secured their political independence. Those few that remain are mainly islands in the West Indies, or in the Atlantic, Pacific, or Indian Oceans, and most of these have been granted a considerable degree of internal self-government.