I tend to rankle when people compare the colonialism of the last few centuries with the pre-capitalist expansion and settlement of ancient societies. It seems like there's a lot of daylight between the English founding Jamestown and ancient Ionians founding Massalia or w/e.
But what do Hexbear's historians think? Is it fundamentally the same social phenomenon across time or is capitalist settler-colonialism its own unique thing?
actually i think this is probably a necessary discussion if slightly outside the purview of the question. roman colonia look an awful lot more like settler-colonialism, and were not limited to soldiers.
but without writing a book it probably suffices to say kinds of ancient colony (with particular emphasis on those sponsored by imperial states) have parrallels to more modern forms. recognizing in those modern forms the possibility of assimilation existed alongside extermination and that assimilation & synthesization were dominant under hellenistic states.
you make a good point, i should probably think about writing an actual effortpost comparing historical colony-like forms with modern colonies, including not only greek city-state colonies, roman coloneia, but also, for example, the andean "archipelago model", historic migration (like the bulgars, the Magyars, every goth ever), viking shit like the danelaw and probably some other stuff i'm missing, surface level, of course, i don't have the time to write a damn book about it
I'd love to read it personally, thought this was post was really interesting