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A colonial empire is a collective of territories (often called colonies), either contiguous with the imperial center or located overseas, settled by the population of a certain state and governed by that state.
Colonialism is etymologically rooted in the Latin word "Colonus", which was used to describe tenant farmers in the Roman Empire. [4] The coloni sharecroppers started as tenants of landlords, but as the system evolved they became permanently indebted to the landowner and trapped in servitude.
An autocratic empire can become a republic (e.g., the Central African Empire in 1979), or it can become a republic with its imperial dominions reduced to a core territory (e.g., Weimar Germany shorn of the German colonial empire (1918–1919), or the Ottoman Empire (1918–1923)).
The government spent much of its revenue on the Royal Navy, which protected the British colonies and also threatened the colonies of the other empires, sometimes even seizing them. Thus, the British Navy captured New Amsterdam (New York) in 1664. The colonies were captive markets for British industry, and the goal was to enrich the mother ...
The colonial map was redrawn following the defeat of the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire after the World War I (1914–18). Colonies from the defeated empires were transferred to the newly founded League of Nations , which itself redistributed it to the victorious powers as "mandates" .
The home and colonial areas of the world's empires in 1908, as given by The Harmsworth Atlas and Gazetteer. Empire size in this list is defined as the dry land area it controlled at the time, which may differ considerably from the area it claimed.
The French colonial empire in the Americas comprised New France (including Canada and Louisiana), French West Indies (including Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, St. Lucia, Grenada, Tobago and other islands) and French Guiana.
Colonization (British English: colonisation) is a process of establishing occupation of or control over foreign territories or peoples for the purpose of cultivation, trade, exploitation or settlement, setting up coloniality and often colonies, such as for agriculture, commonly pursued and maintained by, but distinct from, imperialism, mercantilism, or colonialism.