colonialism
Sign in to savethumb|A 1665 illustration of a Dutch East India Company factory in [[Hugli-Chuchura, depicting various elements of colonialism, including its hierarchies and impact on the colonized and their lands]]
AI overview
Colonialism was the practice of establishing control over distant territories and their peoples, as illustrated by European companies like the Dutch East India Company that built factories and trading posts in places such as India. It matters because it created hierarchies of power that had lasting impacts on colonized lands and peoples, shaping global inequalities that persist today.
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Article
38 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- Definitions
- Types of colonialism
- Versus imperialism
- Socio-cultural evolution
- History
- Antiquity
- Medieval
- Modern
- 20th century
- World War I
- Interwar years
- World War II
- Post-WWII decolonization
- Contemporary
- Impact
- Economy, trade and commerce
- Slavery and indentured servitude
- Military innovation
- End of empire
- Post-independence population movement
- Introduced diseases
- Countering disease
- Botany
- Geography
- Ocean and space
- Marxism
- Liberalism and capitalism
- Race and gender
- Othering
- Post-colonialism
- Migrations
- See also
- References
- Sources
- Further reading
- Primary sources
- External links
thumb|A 1665 illustration of a Dutch East India Company factory in [[Hugli-Chuchura, depicting various elements of colonialism, including its hierarchies and impact on the colonized and their lands]]
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.