Editing Colonization (section)

== Colonial Era ==
{{main article|Colonialism}}
[[File:Colonisation 1550.png|thumb|right|World empires and colonies in 1550]]
[[File:Colonial empires in 1800.svg|thumb|World empires and colonies in 1800]]
In the Colonial Era, colonialism in this context refers mostly to Western European countries' colonization of lands mainly in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania. The main European countries active in this form of colonization included [[Spain]], [[Portugal]], [[France]], the [[Tsardom of Russia]] (later [[Russian Empire]]), the [[Kingdom of England]] (later [[Kingdom of Great Britain|Great Britain]]), the [[Netherlands]], the [[Kingdom of Italy]], the [[Kingdom of Prussia]] (now mostly [[Germany]]), [[Belgium]], [[Denmark]], and [[Union between Sweden and Norway|Sweden-Norway]], and, beginning in the 18th century, the [[United States]]. Most of these countries had a period of almost complete power in world trade at some stage in the period from roughly 1500 to 1900. Beginning in the late 19th century, the [[Empire of Japan]] also engaged in settler colonization, most notably in [[Hokkaido]] and [[Korea]].

While some European colonization focused on shorter-term exploitation of economic opportunities ([[Newfoundland Colony|Newfoundland]], for example, or [[Siberia]]) or addressed specific goals such as settlers seeking religious freedom ([[Massachusetts]]), at other times long-term social and economic planning was involved for both parties, but more on the colonizing countries themselves, based on elaborate theory-building (note [[James Oglethorpe]]'s [[Colony of Georgia]] in the 1730s and [[Edward Gibbon Wakefield]]'s [[New Zealand Company]] in the 1840s).<ref>{{cite book| last1                 = Morgan| first1= Philip D.| author-link1= Philip D. Morgan| editor1-last= Morgan| editor1-first= Philip D.| editor1-link= Philip D. Morgan| title= African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Atlantic World and the Gullah Geechee| url= https://books.google.com/books?id=y7X-sIs5sBQC| chapter= Lowcountry Georgia and the Early Modern Atlantic World, 1733-ca. 1820| access-date= 2013-08-04| series= Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900 Series| year                  = 2011| publisher= University of Georgia Press| isbn= 9780820343075| page= 16| quote= [...] Georgia represented a break from the past. As one scholar has noted. it was 'a preview of the later doctrines of "systematic colonization" advocated by Edward Gibbon Wakefield and others for the settlement of Australia and New Zealand.' In contrast to such places as Jamaica and South Carolina, the trustees intended Georgia as 'a regular colony', orderly, methodical, disciplined [...]}}</ref>

[[File: World 1936 empires colonies territory.png|thumb|right|World empires and colonies in 1936]]
Colonization may be used as a method of absorbing and assimilating foreign people into the culture of the imperial country. One instrument to this end is [[linguistic imperialism]], or the use of non-indigenous colonial languages to the exclusion of any indigenous languages from administrative (and often, any public) use.<ref>{{cite web| url = https://content.sciendo.com/downloadpdf/journals/jnmlp/14/2/article-p117.xml| title = Tomasz Kamusella. 2020. Global Language Politics: Eurasia versus the Rest (pp 118-151). ''Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics''. Vol 14, No 2.}}</ref>