Colonization (British English: colonisation) is a process of establishing control over areas or peoples for foreign people to advance their trade, cultivation, exploitation and possibly settlement. Colonization functions through establishing a differentiation between the area and people of the colonized and colonizers, establishing metropoles, coloniality and possibly outright colonies. Colonization is commonly pursued and maintained by, but distinct from, imperialism, mercantilism, or colonialism.[1][2][3][4] Conquest can take place without colonization,[a] but a conquering process may often result in or from migration and colonizing.[5][b] The term "colonization" is sometimes used synonymously with the word "settling", as with colonization in biology.
Settler colonialism is a type of colonization structured and enforced by the settlers directly, while their or their ancestors' metropolitan country (metropole) maintains a connection or control through the settler's activities. In settler colonization, a minority group rules either through the assimilation or oppression of the existing inhabitants,[6][7][need quotation to verify] or by establishing itself as the demographic majority through driving away, displacing or outright killing the existing people, as well as through immigration and births of metropolitan as well as other settlers.
The European colonization of Australia, New Zealand, and other places in Oceania was fueled by explorers, and colonists often regarding the encountered landmasses as terra nullius ("empty land", or literally "nobody's land" in Latin).[8] This resulted in laws and ideas such as Mexico's 1824 General Colonization Law and the United States' manifest destiny doctrine which furthered colonization
