coloniser

Everyday

A country or person that takes control of another land, settles there and rules the people who already live there. tree →

In the lessons

In history lessons it is used when studying empires, for example British, French, Spanish and Portuguese colonisers in Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas, and how this affected the Indigenous peoples. It is often used to show the side of the people who were colonised. Phrases: "European colonisers", "colonisers and colonised".

Examples

• The colonisers took land from the Aboriginal people. tree →
• Spanish colonisers came to South America in the 1500s. tree →
• Many colonisers forced local people to work for them. tree →
• The museum shows the story from the point of view of the colonised, not just the colonisers. tree →
• Some colonisers built railways, but mainly to take away goods. tree →
• Ireland had English colonisers in the plantation times. tree →

Note

British spelling: coloniser; American: colonizer. From "colony" and "colonise". History is complicated, and historians use evidence from both colonisers and colonised peoples.