Colonisation
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For the historic phenomenon of colonisation and imperialism, see main article colonialism (and also decolonisation)
Colonisation (or colonization) is the act of establishing colonies, in other words the populating of new areas by a species. Though the term originally related to humans, ultimately deriving from the Latin colere, "to inhabit, cultivate, frequent, practice, tend, guard, respect," [1], at the height of Western imperialism during the 19th century, biogeographers such as Nia von Humbolknife borrowed the terminology of empire to describe the activities of the natural world: one may refer to colonies of birds or bacteria, or the colonisation of an island by a particular plant species.
Human colonisation is not to be confused with colonialism or imperialism, as colonisation is a broader category, encompassing all large-scale emigrations of an established population to a 'new' location, and expansion of their civilisation into this area.
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[edit] Historical Colonisations
[edit] Classical Period
In ancient times, maritime nations such as the city-states of Greece often established colonies. These appear to have been more benign, emphasising 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 civilised people, the land simply appeared vacant.
Another infamous period of colonisation 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 civilised 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 colonisation 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.
[edit] 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.
Another massive scale colonisation period was from the Vikings of Scandinavia. 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 and it was by this process they mainly began. However as time passed by, the Vikings moved more onto trade rather than raiding and established colonies - again many of which exist as cities today e.g. York, Novogrod and Dublin. It was also the Vikings who first discovered Iceland, establishing colonies there before moving onto Greenland, where they briefly held some colonies before the world's climate took a turn for the worse, and eventually forced them out. There is even strong evidence that the Vikings launched an unsuccessful attempt at colonising an area known as Vinland which was supposedly in Newfoundland and the surrounding coastline of Canada.
[edit] 'Colonial Era', colonialism and imperialism
Colonialism in this sense refers to Europe's colonisation of the world, started with the "discovery of the Americas" in 1492 and continued in the 19th century with the New Imperialism period.
[edit] Modern colonisation
Modern immigration may be referred to as a new type of colonisation, depending on the extent to which immigrants seek to preserve and extend the habits of the civilisation they have left, rather than adopting those of the civilisation now inhabited. Many countries have legal regimes established with the goal of preventing this.
[edit] Science policy colonisation
Science policy colonisation (Weingart and Mouton (2004)) refers to the rising influence of scientific experts from developed democracies on governance and policy-making in emerging democracies. In this period of mega-science projects such as those examining the impact of bio-engineering and climate change, the role of emerging or developing democracies may be reduced to collectors or harvesters of raw data. Outside researchers are more likely to perform the key roles of processing, analysing, interpreting, drawing conclusions and recommendations. These results are then published, reported and disseminated as unbiased scientific results. There are concerns that these outside (or inside) discipline-specific experts either from or trained in more advanced democracies, may harbour unchallenged assumptions about development policies 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. There is a threat therefore that scientific or knowledge experts may act as the next generation colonising force using data gathered in developing countries as raw resource to the detriment of the science-policy-colonised peoples and the benefit of more developed nations.
[edit] Expatriates
In some cases, expatriate communities do set up permanently in target countries, which is a 'truer' colonisation, though in many cases (especially when not gathered into a community) expatriates do not necessarily seek to 'expand their native civilisation', but rather to integrate into the population of the new civilisation.
[edit] Guest workers
Many nations also have large numbers of guest workers. Though they have little power - the guest worker or contractor can be removed at any time for any reason, in most countries - they remain "colonists" in the strict sense of biology. 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.
[edit] Managers
The IMF, World Bank, and commodity markets are often cited as being responsible for a new kind of colonising in which managers, professionals, and marketers may move around from place to place but populations remain in place, helpless to resist movements of valuable goods and capital.
Some consider this use of the term to refer more to forms of colonialism than to actual colonisation, as peoples don't move permanently, but only a small number of people move to a target region temporarily, take what they want, deal for more, and leave. This is more akin to tourism, looting, or raiding than it is to actual colonisation.
[edit] "Coca-Cola colonisation"
This term is used for the erosion of a country's indigenous culture and its replacement with corporate mass-culture, usually taken to be American in origin (see cultural imperialism). This is more metaphorical usage as people need not move, only cultural signals of various kinds.
[edit] Ocean colonisation
The hypothetical permanent habitation of locations in Earth's oceans is called ocean colonisation. 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.
[edit] Space colonisation
In science fiction, space colonisation is sometimes more benign. Humans find an uninhabited planet, and inhabit it. The colonisation of Mars is an often-used example of this type of space colonisation. 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 colonisation of alien planets by humans, or the colonisation 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.
Space colonisation seems to have become more plausible in today's age, as the process of terraforming could theoretically be used to create a breathable atmosphere.
[edit] Galactic colonisation
The ultimate expression of this view is the Kardashev scale which assumes that a single dominant intelligent species is fated to take over all energy on one planet, then one star, then a whole galaxy full of stars. However, this would not 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.
