The historical phenomenon of
colonisation is one that stretches around the globe and across time, including such disparate peoples as the
Hittites, the
Incas and the
British, although the term
colonialism is normally used with reference to European overseas empires rather than land-based empires, European or otherwise, which are better described by the term
imperialism. Examples of land-based empires include the
Mongol Empire, a large empire stretching from the Western
Pacific to
Eastern Europe, the Empire of
Alexander the Great, the
Umayyad Caliphate, the
Persian Empire, the
Roman Empire, the
Byzantine Empire. The
Ottoman Empire was created across
Mediterranean,
North Africa and into
Southern Europe and existed during the time of European colonization of the other parts of the world.
European colonialism began in the fifteenth century with the "Age of Discovery", led by Spanish and Portuguese exploration of the Americas, and the coasts of Africa, the Middle East, India, and East Asia. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, England, France and Holland established their own overseas empires, in direct competition with each other. The end of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw the first era of decolonization when most of the European colonies in the Americas gained their independence from their respective metropoles. Spain and Portugal were irreversibly weakened after the loss of their New World colonies, but Britain (after the union of England and Scotland), France and Holland turned their attention to the Old World, particularly South Africa, India and South East Asia, where coastal enclaves had already been established. The industrialization of the nineteenth century led to what has been termed the era of New Imperialism, when the pace of colonization rapidly accelerated, the height of which was the Scramble for Africa, in which Belgium was a major and Germany a lesser participant. During the twentieth century, the overseas colonies of the losers of World War I were distributed amongst the victors as mandates, but it was not until the end of World War II that the second phase of decolonization began in earnest. In 1999 Portugal returned the last of Europe's colonies in Asia, Macau, to China, ending an era that had lasted five hundred years.
European colonisation of both Eastern and Western Hemispheres has its roots in Portuguese exploration. There were financial and religious motives behind this exploration. By finding the source of the lucrative spice trade, the Portuguese could reap its profits for themselves. They would also be able to probe the existence of the fabled Christian kingdom of Prester John, with a view to encircling the Islamic Ottoman Empire. The first foothold outside of Europe was gained with the conquest of Ceuta in 1415. During the fifteenth century Portuguese sailors discovered the Atlantic islands of Madeira, Azores, and Cape Verde, which were duly populated, and pressed progressively further along the west African coast until Bartolomeu Dias demonstrated it was possible to sail around Africa by rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, paving the way for Vasco da Gama to reach India in 1498.
Portuguese successes led to Spanish financing of a mission by Christopher Columbus in 1492 to explore an alternative route to Asia, by sailing west. When Columbus eventually made landfall in what are now called the Bahamas he believed he had reached the coast of Japan, but had in fact "discovered" the peripheral islands of a new continent, the Americas.
