How different was Greek and British colonialism?

by daki721

We know that Greeks and Phoenicians had colonies in Europe and Africa. Did they colonized same way British, French, etc. did? If answer is no, what was the difference?

Iphikrates

It was completely different. Scholars have been urging people for decades to stop using the word 'colonization' to describe Greek (and Phoenician) settlement overseas in the Archaic period, since it leads people to assume this process was similar to Early Modern European colonization. It was not. Greek 'colonies' (a Latin word unknown to the Greeks) were autonomous communities. I wrote about this in more detail here.