Go to the homepage

Definition of 'voyage'

IPA Pronunciation Guide

Video: pronunciation of voyage

Youtube video

voyage in American English

Voyage in british english, examples of 'voyage' in a sentence voyage, trends of voyage.

View usage over: Since Exist Last 10 years Last 50 years Last 100 years Last 300 years

In other languages voyage

  • American English : voyage / ˈvɔɪɪdʒ /
  • Brazilian Portuguese : viagem
  • Chinese : 航程
  • European Spanish : travesía
  • French : voyage
  • German : Reise
  • Italian : viaggio in nave, nello spazio
  • Japanese : 旅
  • Korean : 긴 여행
  • European Portuguese : viagem
  • Spanish : travesía
  • Thai : การเดินทาง

Browse alphabetically voyage

  • voyage charter
  • All ENGLISH words that begin with 'V'

Related terms of voyage

  • maiden voyage
  • ocean voyage
  • View more related words

Quick word challenge

Quiz Review

Score: 0 / 5

Image

Wordle Helper

Tile

Scrabble Tools

Image

AT THE SMITHSONIAN

How the voyage of the kon-tiki misled the world about navigating the pacific.

Smithsonian geographer Doug Herman explains the traditional science of traversing the ocean seas

Doug Herman

Doug Herman

Mau Piailug

As part of its three-year circumnavigation of the globe, the Hawaiian voyaging canoe Hōkūleʻa arrived in Tahiti this summer on the first leg of its worldwide voyage. When the Hōkūleʻa visits, Tahitians say, Maeva, a hoi mai , meaning “Welcome home.” There is a well-documented tradition of voyaging between the two island groups, and it is clear that in the 13th century, Tahitians used sophisticated navigational skills to travel the 2,500-mile distance and settle the Hawaiian Islands. Archaeological and linguistic evidence shows that navigators from Tahiti’s neighbor islands the Marquesas had settled the islands even earlier. Skepticism over the validity of those navigational methods has long muddied the waters. A most notable naysayer was ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl whose 1947 Kon Tiki raft expedition advanced the drift idea that colonization occurred only as vessels simply traveled on the tides. But the 1976 voyage of the Hōkūleʻa—guided by Micronesian navigator Pius “Mau” Piailug —resolved the debate. Piailug demonstrated his profound skill for reading the night sky and the ocean swells and safely guided the massive ocean-going canoe from Hawaii to Tahiti.

Navigation is as much an art—and a spiritual practice—as it is a science. It requires enormous knowledge of the night sky and how it changes both with latitude and throughout the year. With that knowledge, the rising and setting of stars form a compass, a clock, and a means to calibrate latitude. The story of how these skills have been lost, and then rediscovered, and practiced once again, has been made fraught by European notions of racial superiority. My guess is that many more know of the Kon Tiki—documented in an Academy-Award-winning film , than of the far more significant Hōkūleʻa that Piailug piloted. Here’s why it should be the other way around.

Captain James Cook had spent a lot of time in the South Pacific before he crossed the equator and came across the hitherto unknown Hawaiian Islands in 1778. Cook had brought with him Tupaia , a high priest from Tahiti and Ra‘iatea 2,500 miles to the South. Surprisingly, Tupaia was able to converse with these new islanders in their mutually intelligible languages. Amazed, Cook posed the now-famous question , “How shall we account for this Nation spreading it self so far over this Vast ocean?” With that, Cook created “The Polynesian”: the people of “many islands” who inhabit the Pacific from Easter Island in the East to New Zealand (Aotearoa) in the Southwest, to Hawaii in the North. These three points define what is called the “Polynesian Triangle.” Geographically, it is the largest nation on Earth, more than 1,000 islands spread over some 16 million square miles of ocean—larger than Russia, Canada and the United States combined. The linguistic connection proved beyond a doubt that the peoples of this region were all connected. Cook’s question, however, haunted scholars for the next 200 years.

Westerners were hard-pressed to explain how “stone-age” peoples with “no math” or writing could cross thousands of miles of ocean in open boats—long before Columbus even thought of sailing the ocean blue—and probably against the wind and currents, to locate tiny dots of land in a vast ocean. The initial and obvious correct conclusion was that the Polynesians had once been great navigators, but that posed a problem for the European colonizers of the 19th century, who saw themselves as superior.

One solution, dubbed the “ Aryan Polynesian ” bordered on the ridiculous, but it imparted a certain ingenuity with its intricate and convoluted reasoning. To show that Polynesians descended from Europeans, Abraham Fornander in Hawai‘i, and Edward Tregear and J. Macmillan Brown in New Zealand, built the case at the end of the 19th century using the emerging science of linguistics to trace Polynesian languages back to Sanskrit and to European languages. Professor A. H. Keane , in his 1896 Ethnology , described Polynesians as “one of the finest races of mankind, Caucasian in all essentials; distinguished by their symmetrical proportions, tall stature...and handsome features.” Ethnologist S. Percy Smith was one of several scholars who praised the Polynesians’ “intelligence, their charming personalities, and—one likes to think—their common source with ourselves from the Caucasian branch of humanity.”

voyage ki definition

This was a handy argument for British colonists in New Zealand, living side-by-side with the subjugated Maori (Polynesian) population. Enter the Maori scholar Te Rangi Hiroa, known better for his anglicised name Sir Peter Buck . Buck set about tracing oral traditions of voyaging throughout the Pacific, and presented his evidence in his 1938 work entitled Vikings of the Sunrise . He documented a step-by-step migration eastward from Southeast Asia, a theory that came very close to the truth.  

But skeptics remained, the most famous—but by no means the only—was Thor Heyerdahl . Not only did he reject the voyaging tradition, but he rejected the West-to-East migration as well. Heyerdahl argued that the Pacific had been settled by accidental drift voyaging from the Americas. His argument was based largely on the wind and current patterns in the Pacific, which flow predominantly from East to West. Where the oral tradition posed Polynesians voyaging against the wind, Heyerdahl argued it was far more likely that American Indians drifted with the wind. He made his bias particularly clear by designing his Kon Tiki raft to be unsteerable.

There is no doubt that the voyage of the Kon Tiki was a great adventure: three months on the open sea on a raft, drifting at the mercy of the winds and currents. That they did eventually reach Polynesia proved that such drift voyaging was possible. But all other evidence pointed to Southeast Asian origins: oral tradition, archaeological data, linguistic structures and the trail of human-introduced plants. Today we have strong evidence that Polynesians actually reached the Americas, not vice-versa. Nonetheless, Heyerdahl remains famous. His notion of “drift voyaging” was taken up by Andrew Sharp, whose 1963 book discredited step-by-step the possible means by which Pacific Islanders might have navigated and fixed their position at sea.

But a decade later, in 1973, a team of computer modelers showed that the settlement of the island Pacific by drift voyaging was “extremely unlikely,” and that Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island could not have been settled by a drift process. One way or another, there had to have been intentional navigation. About the same time, British sailor David Lewis went out to remote Pacific islands to find and study with traditional navigators. His book We, the Navigators: the Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific laid out for the first time the actual methods of traditional navigation. Lewis became a member of the Polynesian Voyaging Society and was aboard the Hōkūleʻa for its 1976 voyage to Tahiti.

It was on the 1976 voyage that a traditional navigator was engaged for the first time. By successfully navigating the 2,500 miles to Tahiti and making landfall, Mau Piailug demonstrated the efficacy of the various techniques of navigation and landfinding. He showed that the rising and setting of the sun can be used to set direction by day. For a navigator with detailed knowledge about the rising and setting of many stars, the night sky provides direction and latitude. But even more intriguing was the use of ocean swells for both direction and finding land. Mau was able to identify up to eight different directional swells in the open sea, and maintain the canoe’s course by the angle of a certain swell to the hull of the canoe. On one voyage where he was not the master navigator, Mau woke out of a dead sleep and told the steersman that the canoe was off course, just by the feel of the swells hitting the hulls of the canoe.

Since reflection and refraction of the swells off islands alters their patterns, a sensitive navigator can detect land below the horizon. Certain species of land-based birds indicate proximity to land, and for a trained navigator, the flight patterns of birds can indicate in which direction that land lies. A very careful reading of clouds on the horizon can also reveal the presence of land. Most importantly, the navigator keeps track of position by a form of dead reckoning—keeping a mental record of distance travelled, speed, drift and currents. For this reason it is said that one can identify the navigator on the canoe as the one with the bloodshot eyes, for the navigator sleeps rarely or never.

Today the Hōkūleʻa uses a star compass developed by Nainoa Thompson , who as a young crewmember on the first voyage became fascinated with traditional navigation, and set about to figure it out for himself. His own voyage of rediscovery is beautifully documented in Sam Low’s book Hawaiki Rising and also in Will Kyselka’s An Ocean in Mind . In more than 40 years of voyaging, the Hōkūleʻa has “rediscovered” all the island groups of the Pacific. What was left to do? Circumnavigate the globe. Not to prove anything this time, but to show that traditional knowledge teaches us how to live right on this planet.

YouTube Logo

Additional Reading

Preview thumbnail for video 'Hawaiki Rising

Hawaiki Rising

Preview thumbnail for video 'Sailing in the Wake of the Ancestors: Reviving Polynesian Voyaging (Legacy of Excellence)

Sailing in the Wake of the Ancestors: Reviving Polynesian Voyaging (Legacy of Excellence)

Preview thumbnail for video 'An Ocean in Mind

An Ocean in Mind

Get the latest on what's happening At the Smithsonian in your inbox.

Doug Herman

Doug Herman | | READ MORE

Doug Herman, formerly a senior geographer at the National Museum of the American Indian , specializes in the cultural knowledge of Hawaii and Pacific Islands. He is now the executive director of the Waioli Corporation in Kaua'i

  • Dictionaries home
  • American English
  • Collocations
  • German-English
  • Grammar home
  • Practical English Usage
  • Learn & Practise Grammar (Beta)
  • Word Lists home
  • My Word Lists
  • Recent additions
  • Resources home
  • Text Checker

Definition of voyage noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

  • an around-the-world voyage
  • a voyage in space
  • The Titanic sank on its maiden voyage (= first journey) .
  • (figurative) Going to college can be a voyage of self-discovery.
  • Darwin’s epic voyage of exploration
  • reconnaissance
  • Lady Franklin kept a journal during the voyage.
  • The ship completed her maiden voyage in May.
  • There were mainly scientists on the voyage.
  • Bering's voyage of discovery was one of many scientific expeditions in the 18th century.
  • The ship began its return voyage to Europe.
  • The ship was badly damaged during the voyage from Plymouth.
  • They set off on their voyage around the world.
  • Writing a biography can be an absorbing voyage of discovery.
  • during a/​the voyage
  • on a/​the voyage
  • voyage from
  • a voyage of discovery

Questions about grammar and vocabulary?

Find the answers with Practical English Usage online, your indispensable guide to problems in English.

Other results

Nearby words.

  • To save this word, you'll need to log in. Log In

Definition of bon voyage

  • congee
  • good-by

Examples of bon voyage in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bon voyage.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

French, literally, good journey!

15th century, in the meaning defined above

Dictionary Entries Near bon voyage

Cite this entry.

“Bon voyage.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bon%20voyage. Accessed 17 Apr. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of bon voyage.

French, literally, "good journey"

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries.  Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.

Can you solve 4 words at once?

Word of the day, circumlocution.

See Definitions and Examples »

Get Word of the Day daily email!

Popular in Grammar & Usage

Your vs. you're: how to use them correctly, every letter is silent, sometimes: a-z list of examples, more commonly mispronounced words, how to use em dashes (—), en dashes (–) , and hyphens (-), absent letters that are heard anyway, popular in wordplay, a great big list of bread words, the words of the week - apr. 12, 10 scrabble words without any vowels, 12 more bird names that sound like insults (and sometimes are), 9 superb owl words, games & quizzes.

Play Blossom: Solve today's spelling word game by finding as many words as you can using just 7 letters. Longer words score more points.

Cambridge Dictionary

  • Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Meaning of bon voyage in English

Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio

  • acciaccatura
  • pas de deux
  • the Internationale
  • vivacissimo

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

  • Flora's voice wished me " bon voyage " in a most friendly but tremulous tone.  
  • He wished us bon voyage, removed his hand, and we were off.  
  • It's best to say 'good-bye' and 'bon voyage' right here.  
  • Numerous devoted friends were on hand to say good bye and "bon voyage", but they were permitted only on the dock.  
  • There was a short drive to the river amid polite calls of "good-bye" and " bon voyage," and there lay the Mayflower, like a great white bird with comfortably folded wings.  

Translations of bon voyage

Get a quick, free translation!

{{randomImageQuizHook.quizId}}

Word of the Day

balancing act

a difficult situation in which someone has to try to give equal amounts of importance, time, attention, etc. to two or more different things at the same time

Alike and analogous (Talking about similarities, Part 1)

Alike and analogous (Talking about similarities, Part 1)

voyage ki definition

Learn more with +Plus

  • Recent and Recommended {{#preferredDictionaries}} {{name}} {{/preferredDictionaries}}
  • Definitions Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English English Learner’s Dictionary Essential British English Essential American English
  • Grammar and thesaurus Usage explanations of natural written and spoken English Grammar Thesaurus
  • Pronunciation British and American pronunciations with audio English Pronunciation
  • English–Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Simplified)–English
  • English–Chinese (Traditional) Chinese (Traditional)–English
  • English–Dutch Dutch–English
  • English–French French–English
  • English–German German–English
  • English–Indonesian Indonesian–English
  • English–Italian Italian–English
  • English–Japanese Japanese–English
  • English–Norwegian Norwegian–English
  • English–Polish Polish–English
  • English–Portuguese Portuguese–English
  • English–Spanish Spanish–English
  • English–Swedish Swedish–English
  • Dictionary +Plus Word Lists
  • English    Exclamation
  • Translations
  • All translations

Add bon voyage to one of your lists below, or create a new one.

{{message}}

Something went wrong.

There was a problem sending your report.

What Is Colonialism? Definition and Examples

The Print Collector/Getty Images

  • The U. S. Government
  • U.S. Foreign Policy
  • U.S. Liberal Politics
  • U.S. Conservative Politics
  • Women's Issues
  • Civil Liberties
  • The Middle East
  • Race Relations
  • Immigration
  • Crime & Punishment
  • Canadian Government
  • Understanding Types of Government
  • B.S., Texas A&M University

Colonialism is the practice of one country taking full or partial political control of another country and occupying it with settlers for purposes of profiting from its resources and economy. Since both practices involve the political and economic control of a dominant country over a vulnerable territory, colonialism can be hard to distinguish from imperialism . From ancient times to the beginning of the 20th century, powerful countries openly scrambled to expand their influence through colonialism. By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, European powers had colonized countries on virtually every continent. While colonialism is no longer so aggressively practiced, there is evidence that it remains a force in today’s world.

Key Takeaways: Colonialism

  • Colonialism is the process of a country taking full or partial political control of a dependent country, territory, or people.
  • Colonialism occurs when people from one country settle in another country for the purpose of exploiting its people and natural resources.
  • Colonial powers typically attempt to impose their own languages and cultures on the indigenous peoples of the countries they colonize.
  • Colonialism is similar to imperialism, the process of using force and influence to control another country or people.
  • By 1914, a majority of the world’s countries had been colonized by Europeans. 

Colonialism Definition

In essence, colonialism is an act of political and economic domination involving the control of a country and its people by settlers from a foreign power. In most cases, the goal of the colonizing countries is to profit by exploiting the human and economic resources of the countries they colonized. In the process, the colonizers—sometimes forcibly—attempt to impose their religion, language, cultural, and political practices on the indigenous population.

While colonization is typically viewed negatively due to its often-disastrous history and similarity to imperialism, some countries have benefited from having been colonized. For example, leaders of modern Singapore—a British colony from 1826 to 1965—credit the “valuable aspects of colonial heritage” with the independent city-state’s impressive economic development . In many cases, being colonized gave underdeveloped or emerging countries immediate access to the burdening European trade market. As the major European nations’ need for natural resources grew ever greater during the industrial revolution , their colonized countries were able to sell them those materials for substantial profits.

Especially for many of the European, African, and Asian countries affected by British colonialism, the advantages were numerous. Besides lucrative trade contracts, English institutions, such as common law, private property rights, and formal banking and lending practices provided the colonies a positive basis for economic growth that would propel them to future independence.

In many cases, however, the negative effects of colonialism far outweighed the positive.

The governments of the occupying countries often imposed harsh new laws and taxes on the indigenous people. Confiscation and destruction of native lands and culture were common. Due to the combined effects of colonialism and imperialism, scores of indigenous people were enslaved, murdered, or died of disease and starvation. Countless others were driven from their homes and scattered across the globe.

For example, many members of the African diaspora in the United States trace their roots to the so-called “ Scramble for Africa ,” an unprecedented period of imperialism and colonialism from 1880 to 1900 that left most of the African continent colonized by European powers. Today, it is believed that only two African countries, Ethiopia and Liberia, escaped European colonialism .

Imperialism vs. Colonialism

While the two terms are often used interchangeably, colonialism and imperialism have slightly different meanings. While colonialism is the physical act of dominating another country, imperialism is the political ideology that drives that act. In other words, colonialism can be thought of as a tool of imperialism.

Imperialism and colonialism both imply the suppression of one country by another. Similarly, through both colonialism and imperialism, the aggressor countries look to profit economically and create a strategic military advantage in the region. However, unlike colonialism, which always involves the direct establishment of physical settlements in another country, imperialism refers to the direct or indirect political and monetary dominance of another country, either with or without the need for a physical presence.

Countries that undertake colonialism do so mainly to benefit economically from the exploitation of the valuable natural and human resources of the colonized country. In contrast, countries pursue imperialism in hopes of creating sprawling empires by extending their political, economic, and military dominance over entire regions if not entire continents.  

A few examples of countries generally considered to have been affected by colonialism during their histories include America, Australia, New Zealand, Algeria, and Brazil—countries that came to be controlled by a large number of settlers from European powers. Typical examples of imperialism, cases in which foreign control is established without any significant settlement, include the European dominance of most African countries in the late 1800s and the domination of the Philippines and Puerto Rico by the United States.

The practice of colonialism dates to around 1550 BCE when Ancient Greece , Ancient Rome , Ancient Egypt , and Phoenicia began extending their control into adjacent and non-contiguous territories. Using their superior military power, these ancient civilizations established colonies that made use of the skills and resources of the people they conquered to further expand their empires.

The first phase of modern colonialism began in the 15th century during the Age of Exploration . Looking for new trading routes and civilizations beyond Europe, Portuguese explorers conquered the North African territory of Ceuta in 1419, creating an empire that would endure until 1999 as the longest-lived of the modern European colonial empires.

After Portugal further grew its empire by colonizing the populated central Atlantic islands of Madeira and Cape Verde, its arch-rival Spain decided to try its hand at exploration. In 1492, Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus sailed searching for a western sea route to China and India. Instead, he landed in the Bahamas, marking the beginning of Spanish colonialism. Now battling each other for new territories to exploit, Spain and Portugal went on to colonize and control indigenous lands in the Americas, India, Africa, and Asia.

Colonialism flourished during the 17th century with the establishment of the French and Dutch overseas empires, along with the English overseas possessions—including the colonial United States —which would later become the sprawling British Empire. Spanning the globe to cover nearly 25% of the Earth’s surface at the peak of its power in the early 1900s, the British Empire was justifiably known as “the empire on which the sun never sets.”

The end of the American Revolution in 1783 marked the beginning of the first era of decolonization during which most of the European colonies in the Americas gained their independence. Spain and Portugal were permanently weakened by the loss of their New World colonies. Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Germany made the Old World countries of South Africa, India, and Southeast Asia the targets of their colonial efforts.

Between the opening of the Suez Canal and the Second Industrial Revolution in the late 1870s and the start of World War I in 1914, European colonialism became known as “New Imperialism.” In the name of what was termed “empire for empire’s sake,” the Western European powers, the United States, Russia, and Japan competed in acquiring vast areas of overseas territory. In many cases, this new hyper-aggressive brand of imperialism resulted in the colonization of countries in which the subjugated majority indigenous populations were denied basic human rights through the enforcement of doctrines of racial superiority such as the White minority-ruled system of apartheid in British-controlled South Africa .

A final period of decolonization began after World War I, when the League of Nations divided the German colonial empire among the victorious allied powers of Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan, and the United States. Influenced by the famous 1918 Fourteen Points speech by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson , the League mandated that the former German possessions be made independent as soon as possible. During this period, the Russian and Austrian colonial empires also collapsed.

Decolonization sped ahead after the end of World War II in 1945. The defeat of Japan spelled the end of the Japanese colonial empire in the Western Pacific and East Asian countries. It also showed still subjugated indigenous people around the world that colonial powers were not invincible. As a result, all remaining colonial empires were greatly weakened.  

During the Cold War , global independence movements such as the United Nations ’ 1961 Non-Aligned Movement led to successful wars for independence from colonial rule in Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, and Kenya. Pressured by the United States and the then Soviet Union, the European powers accepted the inevitability of decolonization.   

Types of Colonialism

Colonialism is generally classified by one of five overlapping types according to the practice’s particular goals and consequences on the subjugated territory and its indigenous peoples. These are settler colonialism; exploitation colonialism; plantation colonialism; surrogate colonialism; and internal colonialism.

The most common form of colonial conquest, settler colonialism describes the migration of large groups of people from one country to another country to build permanent, self-supporting settlements. Remaining legal subjects of their native country, the colonists harvested natural resources and attempted to either drive the indigenous peoples away or force them to assimilate peacefully into colonial life. Typically supported by wealthy imperialistic governments, settlements created by settler colonialism tended to last indefinitely, except in rare cases of total depopulation caused by famine or disease.

The mass migration of Dutch, German, and French settlers— the Afrikaners —to South Africa and the British colonialism of America are classic examples of settler colonialism.

In 1652, the Dutch East India Company established an outpost in South Africa near the Cape of Good Hope. These early Dutch settlers were soon joined by French Protestants, German mercenaries, and other Europeans. Despite having been associated with the oppressive atrocities of White apartheid rule, millions of Afrikaners remain a vital presence in a multiethnic South Africa after four centuries.

The systematic European colonization of the Americas began in 1492, when Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus, sailing for the Far East inadvertently landed in the Bahamas, declaring he had discovered the “New World.” During the subsequent Spanish explorations, repeated efforts were made to either exterminate or enslave the indigenous population. The first permanent British colony in what is now the United States, Jamestown , Virginia, was established in 1607. By the 1680s, the promise of religious freedom and cheap farmland had brought scores of British, German, and Swiss colonists to New England.

The early European settlers shunned the indigenous people, viewing them as threatening savages incapable of being assimilated into colonial society. As more European colonial powers arrived, avoidance turned to outright subjugation and enslavement of the indigenous population. The Native Americans were also vulnerable to new diseases, like smallpox, brought by the Europeans. By some estimates, as much as 90% of the Native American population was killed by disease during the early colonial period.

Exploitation

Exploitation colonialism describes the use of force to control another country for purposes of exploiting its population as labor and its natural resources as raw material. In undertaking exploitation colonialism, the colonial power sought only to increase its wealth by using the indigenous people as low-cost labor. In contrast to settler colonialism, exploitation colonialism required fewer colonists to emigrate, since the indigenous people could be allowed to remain in place—especially if they were to be enslaved as laborers in service to the motherland.

Historically, countries settled through settler colonialism, such as the United States, experienced far better post-colonial outcomes than those that experienced exploitation colonialism, such as the Congo.

Potentially one of the richest countries in the world, years of exploitation colonialism have turned the Congo into one of the poorest and least stable. In the 1870s, Belgium’s infamous King Leopold II ordered the colonization of the Congo. The effects were and continue to be devastating. While Belgium, and Leopold personally, realized a vast fortune from exploiting the country’s ivory and rubber, millions of the Congo's indigenous people starved to death, died of disease or were executed for failing to meet work quotas. Despite gaining its independence from Belgium in 1960, the Congo remains largely impoverished and consumed by bloody internal ethnic wars.  

Plantation colonialism was an early method of colonization in which settlers undertake the mass production of a single crop, such as cotton, tobacco, coffee, or sugar. In many cases, an underlying purpose of the plantation colonies was to impose Western culture and religion on nearby indigenous peoples, as in the early East Coast American colonies like the lost colony of Roanoke . Established in 1620, the Plymouth Colony plantation in what is today Massachusetts served as a sanctuary for English religious dissenters known as the Puritans . Later North American plantation colonies, such as the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Dutch Connecticut Colony , were more openly entrepreneurial, as their European backers demanded better returns on their investments.

An example of a successful plantation colony, Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent British colony in North America, was shipping over 20 thousand tons of tobacco per year back to England by the end of the 17th century. The South Carolina and Georgia colonies enjoyed similar financial success from the production of cotton.

In surrogate colonialism, a foreign power encourages and supports, either openly or covertly, the settlement of a non-native group on territory occupied by an indigenous population. Support for surrogate colonialism projects might come in the form of any combination of diplomacy, financial aid, humanitarian materials, or arms.

Many anthropologists consider the Zionist Jewish settlement inside the Islamic Middle Eastern state of Palestine to be an example of surrogate colonialism because it was established with the urging and assistance of the ruling British Empire. The colonization was a key factor in negotiations that resulted in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which facilitated and legitimized the still-controversial Zionist settlement in Palestine. 

Internal colonialism describes the oppression or exploitation of one racial or ethnic group by another within the same country. In contrast to traditional types of colonialism, the source of the exploitation in internal colonialism comes from within the county rather than from a foreign power.

The term internal colonialism is often used to explain the discriminatory treatment of Mexicans in the United States after the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. As a result of the war, many Mexicans who had been living in what is now the southwestern United States became subjects of the U.S. government, but without the rights and freedoms associated with U.S. citizenship. Viewing these people as having been effectively “colonized” by the United States, many scholars and historians use the term internal colonialism to describe the ongoing unequal economic and social treatment of Chicanx peoples in the United States through a de-facto system of subordination.

Does Colonialism Exist Today?

Though the traditional practice of colonialism has ended, over 2 million people in 17 “ non-self-governing territories ,” scattered around the globe continue to live under virtual colonial rule, according to the United Nations . Rather than being self-governed, the indigenous populations of these 17 areas remain under the protection and authority of former colonial powers, such as the United Kingdom, France, and the United States.

For example, the Turks and Caicos Islands is a British Overseas Territory in the Atlantic Ocean midway between the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic. In 2009, the British government suspended the Islands’ 1976 constitution in response to reports of widespread corruption in the territory. Parliament imposed direct rule over the democratically elected local governments and removed the constitutional right to trial by jury. The territorial government was disbanded and its elected premier was replaced by a British-appointed governor. 

While British authorities defended the action as essential to restoring honest government in the territory, the deposed former premier called it a coup d’etat that he said put Britain “on the wrong side of history.”

The years following World War II saw the rise of “neocolonialism,” a term describing the post-colonialism practice of using globalization , economics, and the promise of financial aid to gain political influence in less-developed countries instead of the traditional methods of colonialism. Also referred to as “nation building,” neocolonialism resulted in colonial-like exploitation in regions like Latin America, where direct foreign colonial rule had ended. For example, U.S. President Ronald Reagan was criticized for practicing neocolonialism in the 1986 Iran-Contra affair involving the illegal sale of U.S. arms to Iran in order to secretly fund the Contras, a group of rebels fighting to overthrow the Marxist government of Nicaragua.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said that the true eradication of colonialism remains an “unfinished process,” that has been with the global community for too long.

Sources and Reference

  • Veracini, Lorenzo. “Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview.” Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, ISBN 978-0-230-28490-6.
  • Hoffman, Philip T. “Why Did Europe Conquer the World?” Princeton University Press, 2015, ISBN 978-1-4008-6584-0.
  • Tignor, Roger. “Preface to Colonialism: a theoretical overview.” Markus Weiner Publishers, 2005, ISBN 978-1-55876-340-1.
  • Rodney, Walter. “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.” East African Publishers, 1972, ISBN 978-9966-25-113-8.
  • Vasagar, Jeevan. “Can colonialism have benefits? Look at Singapore.” The Guardian , January 4, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/04/colonialism-work-singapore-postcolonial-british-empire.
  • Libecap, Gary D. “The Bright Side of British Colonialism.” Hoover Institution , January 19, 2012, https://www.hoover.org/research/bright-side-british-colonialism.
  • Atran, Scott. “The Surrogate Colonization of Palestine 1917–1939.” American Ethnologist , 1989, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5090131_the_surrogate_colonization_of_Palestine_1917-1939.
  • Fincher, Christina. “Britain suspends Turks and Caicos government.” Reuters, August 14, 2009, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-turkscaicos/britain-suspends-turks-and-caicos-government-idUSTRE57D3TE20090814.
  • “International Decades for the Eradication of Colonialism.” The United Nations , https://www.un.org/dppa/decolonization/en/history/international-decades 
  • American Settler Colonialism 101
  • What Is Imperialism? Definition and Historical Perspective
  • The Berlin Conference to Divide Africa
  • Comparative Colonization in Asia
  • Which Asian Nations Were Never Colonized by Europe?
  • Countries in Africa Considered Never Colonized
  • Belgium Colonialism
  • A Brief History of Cameroon
  • The Dutch Empire: Three Centuries on Five Continents
  • The European Overseas Empires
  • What Is Balkanization?
  • What Motivated Japanese Aggression in World War II?
  • What Is Interventionism? Definition and Examples
  • The Portuguese Empire
  • A Chronology of Southern African Independence
  • What Is a Sphere of Influence?

IMAGES

  1. Voyage Meaning

    voyage ki definition

  2. voyage: Pronounce voyage with Meaning, Phonetic, Synonyms and Sentence Examples

    voyage ki definition

  3. Affiche Définition Voyage

    voyage ki definition

  4. Affiche Définition Voyage

    voyage ki definition

  5. Voyage vs Voyage

    voyage ki definition

  6. Affiche Définition Voyage

    voyage ki definition

VIDEO

  1. The First Human-made Object to Enter Interstellar Space _10 Incredible Discoveries Made by Voyager1

  2. TANO77

  3. Desingerica SKAKAVACC speed up

  4. Why Only A Few Develop Bhakti 🤔?- Ramakrishna Paramahamsa #shorts #spirituality #divine #god #belief

  5. ফ্রি ইমোট,Ump পেয়ে গেলাম আমি🤩dawn voyage 2024 event free fire bangladesh server_free fire new event

  6. Viareggio Port: A Cinematic Journey from Sky to Sea #viareggio #flylikeaseagull

COMMENTS

  1. Voyage Definition & Meaning

    How to use voyage in a sentence. an act or instance of traveling : journey; a course or period of traveling by other than land routes; an account of a journey especially by sea… See the full definition

  2. VOYAGE

    VOYAGE definition: a long journey, especially by ship, or in space: . Learn more.

  3. voyage

    a long journey by air, land, sea, or outer space. : to make or take a long trip or journey; travel.... See the full definition

  4. Voyage

    voyage: 1 n a journey to some distant place Types: crossing a voyage across a body of water (usually across the Atlantic Ocean) space travel , spacefaring , spaceflight a voyage outside the Earth's atmosphere Type of: journey , journeying the act of traveling from one place to another n an act of traveling by water Synonyms: ocean trip Types: ...

  5. voyage noun

    Definition of voyage noun in Oxford Advanced American Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more.

  6. VOYAGE Definition & Meaning

    Voyage definition: a course of travel or passage, especially a long journey by water to a distant place. See examples of VOYAGE used in a sentence.

  7. voyage

    The meaning of voyage. Definition of voyage. Best online English dictionaries for children, with kid-friendly definitions, integrated thesaurus for kids, images, and animations. ... The voyage to the moon and back took over a week. synonyms: journey, travels, trip similar words: cruise, expedition, flight, passage, pilgrimage, safari, trek:

  8. Vasco da Gama

    Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (/ ˌ v æ s k u d ə ˈ ɡ ɑː m ə, ˈ ɡ æ m ə /; European Portuguese: [ˈvaʃku ðɐ ˈɣɐ̃mɐ]; c. 1460s - 24 December 1524), was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea.. His initial voyage to India by way of Cape of Good Hope (1497-1499) was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the ...

  9. VOYAGE definition in American English

    voyage in American English. (ˈvɔiɪdʒ) (verb -aged, -aging) noun. 1. a course of travel or passage, esp. a long journey by water to a distant place. 2. a passage through air or space, as a flight in an airplane or space vehicle. 3. a journey or expedition from one place to another by land.

  10. voyage

    The meaning of voyage. Definition of voyage. English dictionary and integrated thesaurus for learners, writers, teachers, and students with advanced, intermediate, and beginner levels.

  11. Voyage Definition & Meaning

    plural voyages. Britannica Dictionary definition of VOYAGE. [count] : a long journey to a distant or unknown place especially over water or through outer space. The Titanic sank on her maiden voyage. He wrote about his many voyages into the South Seas. a manned voyage to Mars. — often used figuratively.

  12. voyage

    voyage - WordReference English dictionary, questions, discussion and forums. All Free.

  13. Kon-Tiki expedition

    The Kon-Tiki expedition was a 1947 journey by raft across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands, led by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl.The raft was named Kon-Tiki after the Inca god Viracocha, for whom "Kon-Tiki" was said to be an old name.Heyerdal's book on the expedition was entitled The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas.

  14. How the Voyage of the Kon-Tiki Misled the World About Navigating the

    On one voyage where he was not the master navigator, Mau woke out of a dead sleep and told the steersman that the canoe was off course, just by the feel of the swells hitting the hulls of the canoe.

  15. voyage noun

    Lady Franklin kept a journal during the voyage. The ship completed her maiden voyage in May. There were mainly scientists on the voyage. Bering's voyage of discovery was one of many scientific expeditions in the 18th century. The ship began its return voyage to Europe. The ship was badly damaged during the voyage from Plymouth.

  16. VOYAGE

    VOYAGE definition: a long journey, especially by ship or in space: . Learn more.

  17. VOYAGE

    VOYAGE definition: 1. a long journey, especially by ship: 2. to travel: 3. a long trip, especially by ship: . Learn more.

  18. VOYAGE Definition & Usage Examples

    Voyage definition: . See examples of VOYAGE used in a sentence.

  19. Bon voyage Definition & Meaning

    The meaning of BON VOYAGE is an expression of good wishes when someone leaves on a journey : goodbye —often used interjectionally. How to use bon voyage in a sentence.

  20. BON VOYAGE

    BON VOYAGE definition: 1. a phrase said to people who are going away, meaning "I hope you have a safe and enjoyable…. Learn more.

  21. What Is Colonialism? Definition and Examples

    Colonialism Definition . In essence, colonialism is an act of political and economic domination involving the control of a country and its people by settlers from a foreign power. In most cases, the goal of the colonizing countries is to profit by exploiting the human and economic resources of the countries they colonized.