There is some very clear evidence to suggest that the Phoenicians (thriving in the Mediterranean, traditionally, from the 12th century BCE to the conquest of Alexander) had very good relations with the native peoples of the areas they settled in. For context, the Phoenicians are kind of “shadow people” as far as the eastern Mediterranean goes; we have very little primary textual evidence for them, and today many of their cities are located both underneath modern settlement and within areas of conflict, so they are difficult to study. We don’t know nothing about them, but we certainly know less about them than other Mediterranean societies and have to translate all we know through Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian, Israelite, Greek, and Latin references. Lately there has been fierce debate on how to even approach the Phoenicians as a category of study; occupying (eventually) cities from the Levant to Iberia, and clearly never once identifying themselves as “Phoenician” throughout the Iron Age and later, there is little to suggest that they saw themselves as a cohesive group, but rather identified themselves by their city. Moreover, by being so widespread, the study of the Phoenicians falls into the cracks of many disciplines, including classics, Assyriology, Hebrew and Judaic studies, Egyptology, Archaeology…synthesis of all the data is so far very rare indeed and often done unsatisfactorily. So when i say “Phoenicians,” I say it with all these caveats.

That being said, Bellard in their chapter on Agriculture (frustratingly, they only treat agriculture in the Western and Central Mediterranean) in the Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean (2019, pg. 453-457). Argues that, based on the archaeological evidence in the west, particularly on Mediterranean Islands and in North Africa and Iberia, the Phoenicians worked very peacefully with the native populations, introducing arboriculture to these regions and, almost immediately after landing and establishing a settlement, exchanging agricultural products and materials, as well as finished, manufactured products. There is not much evidence for conquest, and it seems that the Phoenicians simply latched on to these communities and their agricultural systems; by virtue of their wealth, over time they eventually would come to rule these areas efficiently.

It has to be said, we know basically very little about this relationship other than what we can see from the archaeology. There is very little to suggest, in these regions, that the Phoenicians just waltzed in, killed everyone, and took over; consistently, in the early stages of settlement, Phoenician material is very concentrated in the region on the Phoenician site itself, the local material culture does not change significantly besides representing things the Phoenicians no doubt offered peacefully in exchange for needed assistance. I do not know how, and I don’t think any scholar currently does, and to what extent these populations were integrated into the Phoenician kingdoms and cities as time went on; by the 4th century BCE Carthage had a densely settled and organized agricultural hinterland which looked perfectly Phoenician as described by Diodorus Siculus (BH, 20.8.3), but as this is centuries after Carthage was founded we have no way of knowing where the agricultural peasantry came from in terms of origins.

This is all just to say that Phoenician expansion and “colonization” was not, seemingly, violent nor oppressive, but mutually beneficial for most parties involved; the only people who ended up taking major issue with it, it seems, were those who stranded to hijack the trade networks the Phoenicians had built, namely the Greeks and the Romans. As the eventual victors, we know so much about the Phoenicians largely through them.