4 ms·
Yes, Egypt and Rome and Byzantium were empires. “Colonial power” in common parlance almost always means a European nation using naval superiority and tech imbal
by thebooktocome 4y ago
Yes, Egypt and Rome and Byzantium were empires. “Colonial power” in common parlance almost always means a European nation using naval superiority and tech imbalance to extract wealth from distant colonies.
By your definition, almost every native civilization of the Americas is a colonial power. Something has gone awry. (I’m not certain what “lands that were not ethnically theirs” means absent the doctrine of terra nullius, which also postdates any ancient empire.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_colonialism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_colonialism
“Colonialism in the modern sense began with the "Age of Discovery", led by Portuguese, who became increasingly adventuresome following the conquest of Ceuta in 1415. . .”
- shakow 4y agoAt some point, if one needs to twist and turn and restrict a definition until it fits an arbitrary target, it is at best useless by overfitting, at worst driven by ideology more than anything else. Such a manipulation only leads to absurd situations, such as the famous Greek or Phenician colonies, from Marseille to Carthage through Odessa, not being classifiable as colonies anymore. Or the Russian colonization of Siberia not being a colonization anymore. Talk about ‶European overseas invasions″, ‶European transcontinental settlements″ or whatever, but please don't hijack a word that has been used with a much wider meaning for centuries.