Editing Colonialism (section)

== Definitions ==
[[File:The East offering its riches to Britannia - Roma Spiridone, 1778 - BL Foster 245.jpg|thumb|''[[The East Offering its Riches to Britannia]]'', painted by [[Spiridione Roma]] for the boardroom of the [[British East India Company]] ]]

The earliest uses of colonialism referred to plantations that men emigrated to and settled.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Sultan |first=Nazmul |date=2024 |title=What Is Colonialism? The Dual Claims of a Twentieth-Century Political Category |journal=American Political Science Review |volume=119 |pages=435–448 |language=en |doi=10.1017/S0003055424000388 |issn=0003-0554|doi-access=free }}</ref> The term expanded its meaning in the early 20th century to primarily refer to European imperial expansion and the [[Imperialism|imperial subjection]] of Asian and African peoples.<ref name=":1" />

''[[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".<ref name="Collins">{{Cite web |url=http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/colonialism |title=Colonialism |year=2011 |website=[[Collins English Dictionary]] |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |access-date=8 January 2012}}</ref> ''Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary'' defines colonialism as "the system or policy of a nation seeking to extend or retain its authority over other people or territories".<ref name="Webster">''Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language'', 1989, p. 291.</ref> The ''[[Merriam-Webster]] Dictionary'' offers four definitions, including "something characteristic of a colony" and "control by one power over a dependent area or people".<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colonialism |title=Colonialism |year=2010 |website=Merriam-Webster |access-date=5 April 2010}}</ref>

The ''[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]'' 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," and continues "given the difficulty of consistently distinguishing between the two terms, this entry will use ''colonialism'' broadly to refer to the project of European political domination from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries that ended with the national liberation movements of the 1960s".<ref name="Stanford">{{Cite web |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/colonialism/ |title=Colonialism |last=Margaret Kohn |date=29 August 2017 |website=[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] |publisher=[[Stanford University]] |access-date=5 May 2018}}</ref>

In his preface to [[Jürgen Osterhammel]]'s ''Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview'', Roger Tignor says "For Osterhammel, the essence of colonialism is the existence of colonies, which are by definition governed differently from other territories such as protectorates or informal spheres of influence."<ref name="Oster">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CMfksrnWaUkC&pg=PR10 |title=Preface to Colonialism: a theoretical overview |last=Tignor |first=Roger |publisher=Markus Weiner Publishers |year=2005 |isbn=978-1-55876-340-1 |page=x |access-date=5 April 2010}}</ref> In the book, Osterhammel asks, "How can 'colonialism' be defined independently from 'colony?{{'"}}<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CMfksrnWaUkC&pg=PA15 |title=Colonialism: a theoretical overview |last=Osterhammel |first=Jürgen |publisher=Markus Weiner Publishers |others=trans. Shelley Frisch |year=2005 |isbn=978-1-55876-340-1 |page=15 |author-link=Jürgen Osterhammel |access-date=5 April 2010}}</ref> He settles on a three-sentence definition:

{{blockquote|Colonialism is a relationship between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonised people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonised population, the colonisers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CMfksrnWaUkC&pg=PA16 |title=Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview |last=Osterhammel |first=Jürgen |publisher=Markus Weiner Publishers |others=trans. Shelley Frisch |year=2005 |isbn=978-1-55876-340-1 |page=16 |author-link=Jürgen Osterhammel |access-date=5 April 2010}}</ref>
}}According to Julian Go, "Colonialism refers to the direct political control of a society and its people by a foreign ruling state... The ruling state monopolizes political power and keeps the subordinated society and its people in a legally inferior position."<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last=Go |first=Julian |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781405165518 |title=The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology |date=2007 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-4051-2433-1 |editor-last=Ritzer |editor-first=George |edition=1 |language=en |chapter=Colonialism (Neocolonialism) |doi=10.1002/9781405165518.wbeosc071}}</ref> He also writes, "colonialism depends first and foremost upon the declaration of sovereignty and/or territorial seizure by a core state over another territory and its inhabitants who are classified as inferior subjects rather than equal citizens."<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal |last=Go |first=Julian |date=2024 |title=Reverberations of Empire: How the Colonial Past Shapes the Present |journal=Social Science History |language=en |volume=48 |issue=1 |pages=1–18 |doi=10.1017/ssh.2023.37 |issn=0145-5532|doi-access=free }}</ref>

Australian historian [[Lorenzo Veracini]] defines colonialism as the establishment and maintenance of an unequal relationship between a colonial metropole and a colonized territory through violence and argues that colonialism is sustained as an unequal relationship through the essential forces of displacement and violence.<ref name=":6" />{{Rp|pages=1-4}} The imbalance of power that results from a colonial relationship allows a colonial metropole to exploit unequal trading terms between it and its colonies.

According to David Strang, decolonization is achieved through the attainment of sovereign statehood with ''de jure'' recognition by the international community or through full incorporation into an existing sovereign state.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Strang |first=David |date=1990 |title=From Dependency to Sovereignty: An Event History Analysis of Decolonization 1870–1987 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2095750 |journal=American Sociological Review |volume=55 |issue=6 |pages=846–860 |doi=10.2307/2095750 |jstor=2095750 |issn=0003-1224|url-access=subscription }}</ref>