When reading about the Phoenicians and Carthgianians settling colonies, I am left wondering what this process actually looked like. We know they founded New Carthage in Spain, but what did this actually entail? Did waves of carthaginian men and women move there and breed to create a self sustaining population (e.g. British Australians and Americans), or would a carthaginian army simply conquer the area and rule over an exploited native population, kind of like British India or French Africa?
While you're waiting for a reply, this one by u/RainyResident is pretty thorough and details sort of what you're asking as well as the nature of Greek colonization, so you get some comparisons and contrasts.
Ah, what a fantastic question! The answer is rather complicated, but it's a fun one!
So, to start, let's clarify a few things. First, we don't have a lot of literary information on the Carthaginians, and what we do have is written from a Greek or Roman perspective. Second, modern scholarship on Carthage is somewhat lacking, especially when in comparison to scholarship done on other Mediterranean cultures like the Greeks and Romans. This fact means that what we think we know about Carthage is constantly evolving as new studies are published and more archaeology is done. To complicate things as well, a lot of the research out there is hotly debated and controversial. Third, we need to be careful when we think about questions like this one not to generalize too much. The Carthaginians were heavily active in the Mediterranean for some 700 years, and so there were different methods and ways over time that Carthage set up colonies and controlled its subjects. So let's dive in now.
Carthage began as a colony of Tyre, and was an important node in the network of Phoenician colonies which stretched across the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians had links in Sicily, Africa, Spain, and other areas, all for the purposes of furthering trade. A good deal of this trade was in silver, but also other metals and goods. Tyre was the principal power controlling this trade, but we also have colonies and outposts from other Phoenician cities, like Sidon. In about 586 BCE, Tyre was besieged by the Mesopotamian king Nebuchadnezzar for thirteen years, and suddenly the city found itself abruptly cut off from its outside contacts throughout the Mediterranean. The essential story is that, in the wake of this power vacuum, Carthage stepped in and seized power of the Phoenician trading areas. So, now that we have a basic historical background done, lets take a look at Carthaginian colonization and Imperialism, and how it differs from Phoenician and Greek types.
One of the earliest Carthaginian colonies that we have written reference to is in the Balearic islands. Diodorus Siculus tells us that the Carthaginians established a colony there around 654 BCE, which if you'll recall, predates the siege of Tyre by quite a bit. The character of this colony is telling; Diodorus gives it a distinctly multiethnic character, stating that while Phoenicians made up the majority of its population, it nevertheless contained peoples from "every nationality". Throughout Diodorus' narrative, a picture is painted of Phoenicians living more or less side by side with Balearic islanders, who have distinctly different cultural and character traits. We get the sense that the Carthaginians are less interested in who is living here, or what kind of culture is being practiced, and more in whether or not they can exploit the colony for both money and military service. In many ways, this is very similar to the Phoenician method of colonization, where small colonies of Phoenicians are set up not to control local populations, but to interact with them as a part of the trade network.
Things change with the siege of Tyre. The Carthage that arose out of the so called "crisis of the 6th century" was one far more imperialistic and militaristic than previously before. In 580 BCE the Greeks tried to push the Phoenicians out of Sicily in an attempt to take advantage of the absence of Tyre in the Mediterranean. One might say that we first see Carthage's imperial ambitions here, when the Carthaginians send an army under their own king to repel the Greek attack. The Carthaginians then established a host of fortifications in the Sicilian cities. With these fortifications we should probably assume garrisons being installed and contacts being set up, at least in the short term, with Carthage itself. And, it seems that the Phoenicians were entirely welcoming of a Carthaginian state inserting itself as the protector of the Sicilian Phoenicians.
But what about in other areas? I briefly mentioned the "crisis of the 6th century", and that becomes important here. The period is so called not just because there was an imperial crisis, characterized by the loss of access to the leading proponent of trade (Tyre), but also because of large scale abandonment. The break down of the trade network caused mines which had previously been the focal points of trade to fall into disuse; this in turn caused the abandonment of urban centers, and a reversion to spread out settlements. We know this happened in Spain, but also in places like Sardinia.
Here is where we come to the biggest theoretical differences between Carthaginian and Greek colonization. In the early period, Carthaginian ambitions were focused on reestablishing the previous trade networks of the Mediterranean, rather than creating entirely new ones. To this end, we see the Carthaginians operating in areas where the Phoenician cities had previously been. As a further departure from previous Phoenician colonization methods, Carthaginian methods were characterized by the use of military force to reassert dominance over these networks. In some ways therefore, Carthaginian colonization was a hybrid of Phoenician and Greek colonization; the goal was to assert dominance over trade networks through a combination of economic incentives and military force when needed.
Cont.