Colonialism

Colonialism is the attempt to establish control over an area through settlement. If the area has an indigenous population, then logically, control of these people must also be established. The authority that initiates the attempted control may be one of politics, economics, culture, ideology, race, species*, religion, or a combination of these. It is very likely that the settlers have things in common with the authority that arranged the settlement attempt. But history shows this is not always the case. The early colonization of the British isles is a notable example of the authorities often having very little in common with the settlers. Colonies are expected to extract resources to the benefit of the authority. Resources can be natural resources, human resources (labor, including slavery), intellectual resources, spiritual resources, and in rare cases even cultural resources.

An necessary factor for Colonialism is that the settlers, in some way, must consider themselves, or at least an aspect of their way of life, to be superior. In addition to the above mentioned, technology, gender, law, education, philosophy, health, morals, majority, persistence, or ordinary exertion of power (might makes right) can be among the 'superiority' considered. This concept can be abbreviated in the single word of othering

Consider, one business can colonize another to gain access to shareholder votes, technology, customers, real estate. Or perhaps, 'whatever it is' that make the other business more successful, such as employee culture. But in business, it is more likely the one will just buy the other.

*The inclusion of "species" is not intended to exclusively indicate science fiction nor the fantastic, as in, extraterrestrial species vs human species or dragon species vs human species. The humans have always colonized their own species into areas not yet inhabited by their own species. Colonialism via species is historical and factual.