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Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law [MPEPIL]

Colonialism

Jörn Axel Kämmerer

Content type:
Encyclopedia entries
Product:
Max Planck Encyclopedias of International Law [MPIL]

Module:
Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law [MPEPIL]
Article last updated:
January 2018

From: Oxford Public International Law (http://opil.ouplaw.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved.date: 23 August 2022

Subject(s):
1648-1815 — 1815 to World War I — World War I to World War II — Colonization / Decolonization — Act of state — Sovereignty

Published under the auspices of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law under the direction of Professor Anne Peters (2021–) and Professor Rüdiger Wolfrum (2004–2020). 

1Whereas colonization, a form of conquest usually involving alien dominance and subjugation, has been known to all historic eras, colonialism, at least in its narrower and frequently implied meaning, reaches beyond the mere taking of foreign land and peoples. Generally speaking, it refers to a concerted practice of, in most cases, European States dividing up other inhabited parts of the world amongst themselves. While Spain and Portugal, in the 15th century, took the lead by starting to partition much of the Americas and parts of East Asia, and other powers such...
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