What is Colonization?
Colonization is called the action and effect of colonizing. It involves the establishment of a colony by a country in a foreign territory or far from its borders.
It can also refer to the establishment of a group of people in a territory other than that of its origin in order to populate it, if it was not previously inhabited, or repopulate it, if it had been before.
Colonization is also a term used by biogeography to describe the relationship of population or occupation of a space by a group of living beings, which can be both animals and plants or microorganisms, which come to populate a place in which they had not previously they were.
Colonization in history
Colonization, in history, refers to all that historical fact or process in which a foreign state, generally an economic and military power that we will call metropolis, occupies a foreign territory, that we will call a colony, far from its borders in order to exploit its economic resources and dominate it politically, militarily and culturally.
As such, colonization can develop violently, when it involves the submission by force of the local population, or peacefully, when the inhabitants do not offer any resistance or when there are, in fact, no inhabitants in the area.
In the processes of colonization, characteristic social dynamics are created according to which the dominance of a colonial caste, from the metropolis, is established over the indigenous population of the colony, the former enjoying a series of political and social privileges above the second.
Colonization in America
The colonization of America by Europeans begins at the end of the 15th century, with the arrival of Christopher Columbus, under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs, in 1492, on the American continent.
American colonization by Europe involved the political and military domination of the subject territories, as well as the exploitation of economic resources and the establishment of a supposed cultural superiority, according to which Europeans claimed the right to subdue indigenous inhabitants of the continent.
The two European powers that would be at the beginning of the colonization process would be the Spanish Empire and the Portuguese Empire, which were followed, beginning in the 17th century, by the British Empire, France and the Netherlands. Currently, only Spain and Portugal do not maintain American colonial possessions, unlike other powers, such as the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands.
Spanish colonization
Colonization by the Spanish Crown over much of the territory that makes up America was a historical process that consisted of the implantation and establishment of the political, administrative, economic, military and cultural domain of the Spanish Empire in American lands.
As such, it was fundamentally a fact of force through which the Spanish subdued the indigenous inhabitants of each of the regions, from North America, passing through Central America and the Caribbean, to South America, with the excuse of evangelizing them.
Spanish colonization as a historical period begins on October 12, 1492, with the arrival of Christopher Columbus to America, and lasts until August 13, 1898, the day when Spain loses its last American possessions to the United States.