Colony: This word refers to the movement of a people, or a portion of a people, from one country to another.

These migrations have been frequent across the earth but they have often had different causes and effects. In order to distinguish them, we have organized them into six kinds of colonies each of which we will characterize.

I. About 350 years after the flood, the human race formed but a single family. After Noah's death, his descendants, having grown too numerous to live together, separated from each other. The offspring of each of Noah's sons, Japheth, Shem and Ham, divided into different tribes, left the Shinar plain to look for new homes; each tribe became a different nation. In this way, the different regions of the world were populated little by little, as each came to the point when it could no longer feed its inhabitants.

This was the first sort of colony : need brought it about, and its consequence was the subdivision of tribes or nations.

II. Even when men were spread across the entire surface of the earth, each region was not populated so much that new residents could not find space to share with existing inhabitants.

As populations grew distant from the common center where all the nations had originated, each separate family wandered according to its own whim, without having a fixed residence. However, in the regions where a larger number of men had remained, they ultimately created societies, as a result of the natural sentiment which prompts men to come together and their awareness of their reciprocal needs. Ambition, violence, war and even natural population increase then led members of these societies to look for new places to live.

It was thus that Inachus, originally from Phoenicia, came to found the kingdom of Argos in Greece. His descendants there were later stripped of this inheritance by Danaus, another adventurer who had come from Egypt. Cadmus, not daring to reappear in front of his father Agenor, king of Tyre, journeyed to the borders of Phocida, and there erected the foundations of the city of Thebes. Cecrops, the leader of an Egyptian colony , built that city which, under the name of Athens , became the temple of the Arts and Sciences. Africa was not alarmed at seeing rise the walls of Carthage, that would soon turn it into a tributary state. Italy welcomed the Trojans who escaped from the destruction of their homeland. These new inhabitants brought their laws and their artisanal skills into the regions where fortune brought them. But they formed only small societies, which almost always became republics.

The increased population of citizens in a bounded or mostly unfertile territory endangered liberty: politics remedied this by establishing colonies . The very loss of liberty, revolutions, and factions sometimes spurred a portion of the people to leave their native land to form a new society more compatible with their own spirit.

This was among other reasons the origin of most of the colonies of the Greeks in Asia, Sicily, Rome, and the land of the Gauls. Conquest and expansion were not their goals at all; while normally each colony kept the laws, religion and language of the metropole, it was free, and depended on its founders only because of bonds of gratitude, or because it needed a common defense. On some occasions, though admittedly quite rare, a colony and a metropole could even be armed against each other.

This second type of colonies had diverse motives; but they shared a common effect: multiplying independent societies among the nations, increasing communication among them, and refining them.

III. From the time that the earth had so many inhabitants that it became necessary to institute private property, this property created disputes among them. Disputes between members of a society were adjudicated by laws, but they could not be between independent societies. In that case, force ruled; the weakness of the defeated was the basis of a second usurpation, and was the mark of the victors' success. Men became obsessed with the spirit of conquest.

The victor, to secure his borders, dispersed the vanquished among the lands he controlled, and distributed their properties to his own subjects. Alternatively, he was sometimes content with building and fortifying new cities, which he populated with soldiers and citizens from his own state.

This is the third kind of colonies , of which almost all ancient histories offer some examples, especially those of the great states. It is through such colonies that Alexander assumed control over the multitude of peoples he had conquered so rapidly. The Romans, from the beginning of their republic, also used this method to expand, and at the height of their empire, these were the barriers that protected the Romans from the Parthians and the Nordic peoples. This type of colony was the result of conquest, and also provided its security.

IV. The excursions of the Gauls into Italy, along with those of the Goths and Vandals throughout Europe and Africa, and the Tartars into China, constitute a fourth kind of colony. These peoples, forced from their lands by more powerful peoples or by destitution, or attracted by knowledge of a better climate and a more fertile terrain elsewhere, conquered in order to share the new lands with the peoples they conquered and join with them in a single nation. In this they were very different from other conquerors, such as the Scythians in Asia, who seemed only to be seeking new enemies; or from the founders of the four great empires, who wanted to extend their borders.

The effect of these colonies of barbarians in the regions where they settled was to scare away the Arts and spread ignorance. At the same time, however, they increased the population and established powerful monarchies.

V. The fifth type of colonies includes those that are founded in the spirit of commerce and enrich the metropole.

Tyre, Carthage and Marseille, the only cities in antiquity that based their power on trade, were also the only ones who followed this plan in some of their colonies . Utica, built by the Tyrians nearly 200 years before the flight of Elissa (more commonly known as Dido ), never made claims to an empire on the shores of Africa; it served only as a place of retreat for Tyrian ships. The same was true for the colonies established in Malta and along the coasts by the Phoenicians. Cadiz, one of their oldest and most famous colonies , made a claim only for trade with Spain, without undertaking to give it new laws. The founding of Lilibeo in Sicily did not at all prompt the Tyrians to think about conquering this island.

Commerce was not the reason for the founding of Carthage, but it still sought to expand itself through trade. It was only in order to expand or maintain trade that the city went to war, and that we see it fighting with Rome over Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, Italy and even its own walls. Its colonies along the coasts of Africa, and on both seas as far as Cerne [Madagascar], added more to its wealth than did its power as an empire.

Marseille, a colony of the Phoceans chased from their country and then from Corsica by the Tyrians, occupied itself with nothing in this sterile territory but fishing, trade, and its own independence. Its colonies in Spain and on the southern coasts of the Gallic regions had no other motives.

These types of settlements were doubly necessary for peoples who devoted themselves to trade. Their navigation, done without the aid of a compass, was timid; they did not dare to go too far from the coasts, and the inevitable length of voyages made safe and numerous places of retreat necessary for navigators. Most peoples with whom these nations traded either refrained from city life, or, busy only with satisfying their needs, placed no value on superfluities. It was necessary to establish depots for internal commerce, and to provide a place where arriving vessels could exchange their wares.

The form of these colonies resembled those of the commercial nations of Europe in Africa and India: these have trading posts and fortresses there for the convenience and security of their trade. If they were to become conquerors, these colonies would depart from their original purpose, unless the colonizing country took charge of their expenses. they must be dependant on a wealthy charter company with monopoly rights and the ability to create and maintain diplomatic agreements. In India, among all the great nations of Europe who trade there, only the English are viewed as merchants — undoubtedly, because they have the least extensive land-holdings there.

VI. The discovery of America towards the end of the fifteenth century has multiplied European colonies , and offers us a sixth type.

All those on this continent were either founded with an eye towards both commerce and agriculture, or have eventually moved in this direction. On this basis, these colonies required the conquering of territory and the driving out of existing inhabitants, in order to import new ones.

Since these colonies have been established only for the needs of the metropole, it follows:

1. That they must be directly dependent upon it, and consequently under its protection.

2. That the founders of the colony must have a monopoly on trade there.

Such a colony best fulfills its purpose when it adds to what is grown in the metropole, when it supports a greater number of its men, and when it increases trade with other nations. These three advantages might not always coexist in each colony, but one of the three at least needs to be substantial enough to compensate for the others. If the compensation is not complete, or if the colony does not provide any of the above advantages, one might determine that it is ruinous for the mother country and is burdensome to it.

Thus, the profit derived from the trade and cultivation of our colonies is precisely: 1. the greatest income which their consumption provides to the owner of our lands, minus the costs of cultivation; 2. what our artisans and sailors earn from their work for them and through them; 3. everything we need which they provide; 4. the total surplus which they give us to export.

From this calculation, several things follow:

The first is that colonies would no longer be useful if they could do without the metropole. Thus, it is a law inherent in the nature of the system that one must limit the arts and cultivation in a colony to certain objects, according to the convenience of the colonizing country.

The second consequence is that if the colony undertakes trade with foreigners, or consumes foreign goods, the amount of this trade and these goods is like a theft against the metropole — a theft only too common, but punishable by the laws, and by means of which the real and relative power of a state is diminished by whatever foreigners gain.

It is thus not at all a violation of freedom of trade to restrict commerce in this case. Indeed, any regime that tolerates it by its indifference, or that allows certain ports to violate the first principle of the institution of colonies — is a regime destructive of commerce or of the wealth of a nation.

The third consequence is that a colony will be even more useful the more it is populated, and the more its land is under cultivation.

In order for this to happen, the first settlement must be financed by the state that founds it; estates must be divided equally among the children, so that the distribution of family fortunes can support a greater number of inhabitants; and commercial competition must be firmly established, because the ambitions of merchants will lead them to offer more loans to farmers against their crops than the companies would, being monopolistic and consequently in a position to dictate the price of goods as well as the term of payments. The lot of the colonists must also be very easy, to compensate for their labors and their loyalty. This is the reason why clever nations draw no more from their colonies than they need for the maintenance of fortresses and garrisons. Sometimes they are even satisfied with the general profits generated from trade.

A state's expenses on its colonies are not limited to the first costs of setting them up. These types of ventures require steadfastness, stubbornness even, unless the nation's ambition is supplemented by extraordinary efforts. But steadfastness produces more certain results and more solid principles. Therefore, until commerce has increased enough to provide stability for the colonies , they need continual encouragement, according to their location and the quality of their soil. If they are neglected, beyond losing the benefits of all the work and money that has gone into them already, they also risk becoming the prey of more ambitious or more active peoples.

It would however go against the very purpose of colonies if establishing them meant depopulating the colonizing country. Intelligent nations only send little by little their surplus population, or those who are a burden on society. Thus, optimum size of the initial population is the number of settlers necessary to defend the canton against enemies who might attack it. Subsequent groups serve to increase trade. The excess of population would be the quantity of useless men found there, or the number of men the colonizing country has need of. Circumstances may thus arise in which it would be useful to prevent citizens from the metropole from deciding on their own to emigrate, either to all the colonies in general, or to one colony in particular.

Because the colonies in America established a new kind of dependency and trade, it was necessary to make new laws for them. Clever legislators have aimed primarily to promote settlement and farming there. But as both reach a certain level of success, these laws may end up working against their original purpose, which is trade. In this case, these laws are in fact unjust, because it is trade that makes colonies flourish. It would thus seem appropriate to change or modify them as they depart from their original intention. If agriculture was once favored more than trade, that was only to help trade itself. Once the reasons for this preferential treatment have ended, the balance must be reestablished.

When a state has multiple colonies that can communicate amongst themselves, the true secret to increasing the power and wealth of each one is establishing regular navigation and communication routes between them. This private trade has the same power and benefits as the domestic commerce within a state, provided that colonial commodities are never of the sort which will compete with those of the metropole. Wealth will actually increase by this means, since the ease and comfort of the colonies will be returned to it as a benefit as a result of the consumption that it makes possible. For the same reason, trade that they pursue with the colonies of foreign countries in commodities needed for their own consumption is also advantageous, if it is contained within appropriate limits.

Commerce within and between colonies is subject to general principles that make it flourish everywhere. However, there are particular circumstances that can require deviation from these principles. Everything must change over time, and supreme skill consists of taking advantage of these forced adjustments.

We have seen that, in general, liberty must be restricted in favor of the metropole. Another constant principle is that every monopoly granted, and everything that deprives merchants and residents of profits and competition, and of tolls and easements, has even more pernicious effects in a colony than anywhere else. This is because commerce is so restrained there, that the effect of these is more pronounced; discouragement there is followed by complete abandonment. Even when these effects are not immediate, it is certain that the harm they cause will only be more dangerous.

Anything which helps to decrease the quantity of a colonial product or to increase its price necessarily decreases the profit to the metropole, and allows other nations a chance to gain control of the market, or to compete with it.

We will not go into detail here on the various European colonies in America, in Africa, and in the East Indies, so as not to make this article too long; besides, the natural place for these subjects is as part of the discussion of the trade of each state. See the entries for France, London, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Denmark.

On ancient colonies , see also Genesis, Ch. 10 ; Herodotus; Thucydides; Diodore of Sicily; Strabon; Justin; the Geographia sacra of Sam. Bochart; the Histoire du commerce & de la navigation des anciens [by P.-D. Huet]; and the dissertation by M. de Bougainville on the reciprocal duties between metropoles and their colonies [trans. note: author is referring to Bougainville's Quels étaient les droits des métropoles grecques sur les colonies, les devoirs des colonies envers les métropoles, et les engagements réciproques des unes et des autres ? (Paris, 1745)]. On modern colonies , there is an excellent treatment of their political aspects in M. Melon's Essai politique sur le commerce and in [Montesquieu’s] Spirit of the Laws . For more detail, see also the Voyages of P. Labat, Don Antonio de Ulloa, and M. Fraizier, and the book titled Commerce de la Hollande . This article was written by M. V. D. F.