Colony
A colony is a territory under the immediate complete political control and occupied by settlers of a state, distinct from the home territory of the sovereign. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception.
The metropolitan state is the state that rules the colony. In Ancient Greece, the city that founded a colony was known as the metropolis. "Mother country" is a reference to the metropolitan state from the point of view of citizens who live in its colony. There is a United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories.
Unlike a puppet state or satellite state, a colony has no independent international representation, and its top-level administration is under direct control of the metropolitan state.
The term informal colony is used by some historians to refer to a country under the de facto control of another state, although this term is often contentious.
Definitions
The word "colony" comes from the Latin word colōnia. This in turn derives from the word Colonus, which means colonist but also implies a farmer. Cologne is an example of a settlement preserving this etymology. Other, less obvious settlements that began as Roman colonia include cities from Belgrade to York. A tell-tale sign of a settlement once being a Roman colony is a city centre with a grid pattern. The terminology is taken from architectural analogy, where a column pillar is beneath the head capital, which is also a biological analog of the body as subservient beneath the controlling head. So colonies are not independently self-controlled, but rather are controlled from a separate entity that serves the capital function..Roman colonies first appeared when the Romans conquered neighbouring Italic peoples. These were small farming settlements that appeared when the Romans had subdued an enemy in war. A colony could take many forms, as a trade outpost or a military base in enemy territory. Its original definition as a settlement created by people migrating from a central region to an outlying one became the modern definition.
Ancient examples
- Carthage formed as a Phoenician colony
- Cadiz formed as a Phoenician colony
- Cyrene was a colony of the Greeks of Thera
- Sicily was a Phoenician colony
- Durrës formed as a Greek colony
- Sardinia was a Phoenician colony
- Marseille formed as a Greek colony
- Malta was a Phoenician colony
- Cologne formed as a Roman colony, and its modern name refers to the Latin term "Colonia".
- Kandahar formed as a Greek colony during the Hellenistic era by Alexander the Great in 330 BC.
Modern historical examples
- ': a colony of Russia from the middle 18th century until sold to the United States in 1867. It became the 49th American state in 1959.
- ': a colony of Portugal since the 16th century. Independent since 1975.
- ' gained its independence from Spain in 1810.
- ' was formed as a British Dominion in 1901 from a federation of six distinct British colonies which were founded between 1788 and 1829.
- ': was a colony of Great Britain important in the Atlantic slave trade. It gained its independence in 1966.
- ': a colony of Portugal since the 16th century. Independent since 1822.
- ': was colonized first by France as New France and England then under British rule, before achieving Dominion status and losing "colony" designation.
- ': a colony of Belgium from 1908 to 1960; previously under private ownership of King Leopold.
- ' was formed in October 1887 from Annam, Tonkin, Cochinchina and the Kingdom of Cambodia; Laos was added after the Franco-Siamese War in 1893. The federation lasted until 1954. In the four protectorates, the French formally left the local rulers in power, who were the Emperors of Vietnam, Kings of Cambodia, and Kings of Luang Prabang, but in fact gathered all powers in their hands, the local rulers acting only as figureheads.
- ': Contact between Europe and Ghana began in the 15th century with the arrival of the Portuguese. This soon led to the establishment of several colonies by European powers: Portuguese Gold Coast, Dutch Gold Coast, Swedish Gold Coast, Danish Gold Coast, Brandenburger and Prussian Gold Coast and British Gold Coast. In 1957, Ghana was the first African colony south of the Sahara to become independent.
- ' was a colony of Denmark-Norway from 1721 and was a colony of Denmark from 1814 to 1953. In 1953 Greenland was made an equal part of the Danish Kingdom. Home rule was granted in 1979 and extended to self-rule in 2009. See also Danish colonization of the Americas.
- ': a colony of Portugal since the 15th century. Independent since 1974.
- ' was a British colony from 1841 to 1997. Is now a Special Administrative Region of China.
- India was an imperial political entity comprising present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and the United Arab Emirates with regions under the direct control of the Government of the United Kingdom from 1858 to 1947. From the 15th century until 1961, Portuguese India from 1620 to 1869 were known as Danish India.
- ' was a Dutch colony for 350 years, from 1602 to full independence in 1949.
- ' was part of the Spanish West Indies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It became an English colony in 1655; independence in 1962.
- ' a colony set up in 1821 by American private citizens for the migration of African American freedmen. Liberian Declaration of Independence from the American Colonization Society on July 26, 1847. It is the second oldest black republic in the world after Haiti.
- ' was a Portuguese colony from 1557 to 1999. In 1999, two years after Hong Kong, it became a Special Administrative Region of China.
- ' was a British protectorate and later a colony from the French Revolutionary Wars in 1800 to independence in 1964.
- ': a colony of Portugal since the 15th century. Independent since 1975.
- ', previously a colony of Spain from to 1898 as part of the Spanish East Indies, was a colony of the United States from 1898 to 1946. Achieved self-governing Commonwealth status in 1935; independent in 1946.
- ' has been a colony of Spain from 1493 to 1898 and of the United States from 1898 to the present.
- ' was a colony of Italy and Britain from the late 1800s to 1960. On July 6, 1960, the Trust Territory of Somaliland united as planned with the former British Somaliland to form the Somali Republic.
- ' consisted of territories and colonies by various different African and European powers, including the Dutch, the British, and the Nguni. The territory consisting the modern nation was ruled directly by the British from 1806-1910; became self-governing dominion of Union of South Africa in 1910.
- ': a British colony from 1815 to 1948. Known as Ceylon. Was a British Dominion until 1972. Also a Portuguese colony in the 16th-17th centuries, and a Dutch colony in the 17th-18th centuries.
- ' has a complex history of colonial rule under various powers, including the Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese. The precolonial inhabitants of Taiwan are the ethno-linguistically Austronesian Taiwanese indigenous peoples, rather than the vast majority of present-day Taiwanese people, who are mostly ethno-linguistically Han Chinese. Twice throughout history, Taiwan has served as a quasi rump state for Chinese governments in exile, the first instance being the Ming-loyalist Kingdom of Tungning and the second instance being the present-day Republic of China, which officially claims continuity or succession from the Republic of China, having retreated from mainland China to Taiwan in 1949 during the final years of the Chinese Civil War. The ROC, whose de facto territory consists almost entirely of the island of Taiwan and its minor satellite islands, continues to rule Taiwan as if it were a separate country from the People's Republic of China.
- The ' was formed from a union of thirteen British colonies. The Colony of Virginia was the first of the thirteen colonies. All thirteen declared independence in July 1776 and expelled the British governors.
Current colonies