Colonization, (or
Colonisation in
British English), occurs whenever any one or more species populate an 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, 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, colonialism deals with this and the ruling of new territories' existing peoples.
Modern Colonization
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 do not 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.
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. (e.g. The
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.)
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
cocacolonization 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 colonized country.
Hypothetical or fictional types of Colonization
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 habitable 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 civilisation will 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.
See also
