European settlement
Overseas territorial establishment
European settlement refers to the establishment of permanent communities by Europeans in territories outside Europe, particularly during colonial expansion from the 15th through 20th centuries.
The term often appears in discussions of colonialism's impact on indigenous peoples: European settlement displaced native populations across the Americas.
In Australian contexts especially, it serves as a temporal marker—before European settlement, since European settlement—though some consider it a euphemism that obscures violent dispossession.
- North AmericaWestern Hemisphere's northern continent
- cultural assimilationAdopting another group's norms
- colonizationForeign territorial takeover
- first contactHumanity's alien introduction
- resource extractionObtaining substances from nature
South America · New World · Old World · Australia · resistance movements · religious conversion · imperialism · colonial outpost · New Zealand · labor exploitation · missionary activity · Africa · trade networks · stolen land · governance systems · Caribbean islands · mercantilism · deforestation
- Van Diemen's Landconvicts, penal colony, Van Diemen's Land, transportation, colonial era
European settlementdecolonization
Ending imperial control
indigenous sovereignty · independence · liberation · repatriation · land back
European settlementEuropean exploration
Overseas expansion from Europe
abandoned settlement · exploration · trading post · reconnaissance mission · reconnaissance
Europe, European, Europeans, settle, settled, settler, settlers, settling, settlement