colonial territories
Overseas imperial holdings
Colonial territories are lands under the political control of a distant nation, administered as possessions rather than as integral parts of the governing state.
The term typically refers to overseas holdings acquired through conquest or settlement during European expansion: Britain's colonial territories once spanned every continent.
Residents of colonial territories historically had fewer rights than citizens of the colonial power.
The phrase carries the weight of that imperial history, even when used in contemporary contexts about remaining dependent territories.
- protectorateGuarded semi-autonomous territory
- imperialismExtending dominion over others
- plantation economyAgricultural system exploiting enslaved workers
- Scramble for AfricaRapid European colonization period
- cultural assimilationAdopting another group's norms
missionary activity · resource exploitation · independence movements · dominion · forced migration · viceroyalty · syncretism · mercantilism · white man's burden · civilizing mission · European empires · mother country · triangular trade · puppet state · cash crops · trading post · Bandung Conference · monopolies
- 19th century mapsrailway maps, westward expansion, Lewis and Clark, nautical charts, city plans
- U.S. TerritoriesGuam
- colonial lawslave codes, Navigation Acts, Stamp Act, Intolerable Acts, Mayflower Compact
- antique mapsworld map, atlas, cartographer, Mercator, mapmaker
- historical mapshistorical maps, atlas, ancient maps, atlases, antique maps
colonial territoriessovereign nations
Self-ruling states with autonomy
nation-states · free states · republics · sovereign states · democracies
colonial territoriescolonial powers
Nations that colonized others
mother countries · metropoles · colonial empires · home countries · colonial masters
colonial, territories, colony, colonies, colonize, colonized, colonizing, colonization, colonist