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 owns the colony. In Ancient Greece, the city that owned a colony was called the metropolis within its political organization.
However, in some cases, settlers have come to outnumber indigenous people in overseas possessions, and it is possible for colonies to become overseas possessions against the wishes of indigenous peoples. This often results in ongoing and long-lasting independence struggles by the descendants of the original inhabitants.Culture is one of Colonists influences to the native people. Most of the countries that were part of Europes colonies still had a lot of different cultures. It was because after the colonists came to new lands, these races influenced the native people with their traditions. These cultural impacts sometimes caused a lot of struggles and these issues included different religions, languages and behaviors. Most of the colonists decided to recover these issues with battles. However, there were still some colonists who tried to solve the issues pacifically with the natives. Meyers said that, Some European settlers, particularly the French, established close, respectful relationships with the native tribes they encountered. For a number of reasons, however, the relationship between Native Americans and the English settlers was quite different.(Colonialism and the Revolutionary Period, p.5) The word colony may also be used for countries that, while independent or considering themselves independent of a former colonizing power, still have a political and social structure where the rulers are a minority originating from the colonizing power. Such was the case with Rhodesia after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence.
In this long period, the Spanish, the British, the French, the Dutch, the German, and other Colonial Empires were created. During these centuries European states, the United States and others took political control of much of the world's population and landmass. The term "colony" came to mean an overseas district with a majority indigenous population, administered by a distant colonial government. (Exceptions occurred: Russian colonies in Central Asia and Siberia, American settlements in the American West, and German colonies in Eastern Europe were not "overseas"; British colonies (or "overseas territories") like the Falkland Islands and Tristan da Cunha lacked a native population.). Most non-European countries were colonies of Europe at one time or another, or were handled in a quasi-colonial manner. The European colonies and former colonies in America made extensive use of slave labor, initially using the native population, then through the importation of slaves from black Africa.
Quasi-colonies were run through proxy or puppet governments, generally kingdoms or dictatorships. For instance, it may be argued that Cuba before the Revolution was a quasi-colony of the United States, with an enormous influence of US economic and political interests; see banana republic.
The United States, itself a former colony, expanded westwards. It also colonized Hawaii, waged various wars, and conducted armed expeditions so as to assert power over local governments (in Japan, with Commodore Matthew C. Perry and in Cuba, for example). European countries and the United States, exploiting the weakness of China's waning imperial regime, also maintained so-called international concessions in that country, a sort of colonial enclave; the coastal towns of Macau and Hong Kong were held on long-term leases by Portugal and the United Kingdom. During the first half of the 20th century, until its defeat the Second World War, Japan, once afraid of becoming a European or American colony, built itself a colonial empire in Korea, Taiwan, South Sakhalin, northeast part of China, and the Western Pacific, using brutal military force.
Source: Wikipedia > Colony
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