COLONY, a settlement formed in one country by the inhabitants of another. Colo nies may either be formed in dependence on the mother country or in independence. In the latter case the name of colony is retained only in a historical sense. The motives which lead to the formation of colonies and the manner of their formation are various. The lust of territory; the requirements of commerce; the desire of increasing wealth, combined with the love of adventure; the necessity of relieving the pressure of redundant population; political dissensions; the convenience of removing to a distance persons likely to disturb the peace of the state, and especially the apparent ease with which a numerous criminal class may be got rid of by expatriations, are among the chief motives which have influenced colonization. Colonization is only a more formal develop ment of the migratory tendency; and a colony may be considered as an organized and perma nent migration.
Colonies among the Among ancient nations the principal promoters of colo nization in the more formal sense were the Phoenicians, the Greeks and the Romans, and the greatest colonizers in modern times have been the English and the Spaniards, next to whom may be reckoned the Portuguese, the Dutch and the French. The Phoenician colo nies, extending along the shores and through out the islands of the Mediterranean, were mainly commercial. The most famous of them was Carthage, itself a great colonizing state. From the distance that divided the daughter communities from the mother states, and the slowness of communication, many of them must have been practically independent from a very early period; but this was not the case with the colonies of Carthage, which wielded power ful armies and maintained great fleets, both for commerce and for conquest. The Greek colo nies were widely spread, being numerous in Asia Minor, the Balkan Peninsula and the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean, in South Italy and Sicily. They were commonly independent and frequently soon surpassed the mother states in power and importance. Con stantinople, Naples, Palermo and Marseilles were all originally Greek colonies. Greek civ ilization was largely based upon and highly fa vorable to individual liberty, and the independ ence of spirit which it fostered made political dissension a frequent cause of colonization. A still more pressing one was the limited extent of the Greek territories and the inviting char acter of those by which they were surrounded. Rome was a state which left nothing to the in dividual. Its colonies were chiefly military and while the empire lasted were all in strict sub ordination. As the Roman power declined the remains of them amalgamated with the peoples among whom they were placed and contributed largely to the homogeneous growth of modern civilization.
Before America and the way by sea to the East Indies were discovered, the states of Europe in the Middle Ages, with the exception of the Genoese and the Venetians had no foreign colonies. The in tercourse and wars of the Portuguese with the Moors, then more advanced in civiliza tion than most of the European nations, served to incite their rivalry and stimulate them to maritime enterprise, and they became the pio neers of Europe in maritime discovery. One of the chief names in this connection is that of Henry the Navigator, son of John I of Portu gal. The Portuguese in 1419 discovered Ma deira• in 1431-60 the Azores; in 1487 Bartolo meo Diaz doubled the Cape of Good Hope; and on 20 May 1498, Vasco da Gama landed near Calicut on the Malabar coast, after a voyage round the south of Africa. The Moors had pre viously been in possession of the inland trade of India and it was not without a struggle that the Portuguese succeeded in establishing settlements on the coast of Malabar. The first Portuguese colonies were formed of garrisons placed along the coasts of the continents and islands they visited for the security of their commerce, as Mozambique, Sofala and Melinda on the east coast of Africa, Ormuz and Muscat, in the Persian Gulf ; Goa, Diu and Damao, on the Malabar coast of India. Goa became the capi tal of their Indian dominions. Colonies were established in Ceylon in 1505; in the Moluccas in 1510; Java, Sumatra, Celebes and Borneo were also colonized, though the settlements there did not attain so great importance. The direction taken by the Portuguese navigators made them miss the discovery of America; but Brazil was discovered by Cabral in May 1500, a few months after Pincon, and was colonized by the Portuguese about 1530. The splendid colonial empire of which the foundations were thus laid was not destined to last. As in the case of Spain, the energy of the Portuguese was trammeled by climatic and other condi tions, and this, together with a despotic colo nial policy, had weakened the power of Por tugal before she fell in 1580 under the dominion of Spain. The colonial possessions of Portugal were afterward assailed by the Dutch as ene mies of the Spaniards, and when she recovered her independence in 1640, many of them were irretrievably lost. Brazil declared its independ ence in 1822. The colonial possessions of Portugal are now mostly in Africa, the whole of her possessions in that continent embracing an area of 793,980 square miles. See PORTUGAL.