Colonization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Colonization - Essay Example Though this process may or may not victimize indigenous populations, history often times demonstrates otherwise, as we shall see later in this essay. In ancient times, during the bonze age, maritime nations, such as the city-states of Greece, often established colonies. "Eventually Hellas spread over an enormous area, including the Black Sea littoral to the east, the coastal areas of Asia Minor, the Aegean Islands, Greece proper, southern Italy and most of Sicily, and continuing west on both shores of the Mediterranean to Cyrene in Libya and to Marseilles and a few Spanish coastal sites" (Finley 1963). These colonizations appear to have been an effort to acquire more living space emphasising the farming of uninhabited or sparsely habited land. Land suitable for farming during ancient and classical periods was often claimed by migratory barbarian tribes whose livlihood was met by hunting and gathering. "The Roman Empire was another great colonization of ancient times. The Roman Empire conquered a large part of Western Europe, North Afraica and West Asia. Though in North Africa and west Asia they were often conquering civilized peoples, as they moved north into Europe they often encountered little more than rural tribes with very little in the way of cities. In these areas, waves of Roman colonization often followed the conquest of the area. Roman Empire, political system established by Rome that lasted for nearly five centuries. Historians usually date the beginning of the Roman Empire from 27 BC when the Roman Senate gave Gaius Octavius the name Augustus and he became the undisputed emperor after years of bitter civil war. At it peak, the empire included lands throughout the Mediterranean world. Rome had first expanded into other parts of Italy and neighboring territories during the Roman Republic (509-27 BC), but made wider conquests and solidified political control of these lan ds during the empire. The empire lasted until Germanic invasions, economic decline, and internal unrest in the 4th and 5th centuries AD ended Rome's ability to dominate such a huge territory. The Romans and their empire gave cultural and political shape to the subsequent history of Europe from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the present day" (Encyclopedia Encarta). III. Dark and Middle Ages During the middle ages, current great cities of Europe in Spain, Germany, and France began as Roman colonies. Cities such as the German city of Cologne was one example and London was another which the Romans called Londinium. As the decline and collapse of the Roman Empire progressed, noting that it was not an overnight collapse, the movement of large-scale migration of people in Eastern Europe and Asia, often cealled barbarians, thrust their way into southern and western Europe causing the Roman Empire to slowly lose its entrenched holds of peoples in those areas. The Dark Ages also saw huge migrations of tribal peoples consolidating new colonies all over Western Europe, thus contributing to the development of many modern day nations of Europe. The Huns colonized Hungary, the Franks in France and Germany and the Anglo-Saxons in England. During this period, another great colonizing people were the Vikings of Scandinavia. The Vikings were fierce conquerors and set out to pillage and terriorize the coastlines of Northern Europe, especially the