Settler colonialism
Settler colonialism is a form of colonial formation whereby foreign people move into a region. An imperial power oversees the immigration of these settlers who consent, often only temporarily, to government by that authority. This colonization sometimes leads, by a variety of means, to depopulation of the previous inhabitants, and the settlers take over the land left vacant by the previous residents. Unlike other forms of colonialism, the "colonizing authority" (the imperial power) is not always the same nationality as the "colonizing workforce" (the settlers) in cases of settler colonialism. The settlers are, however, generally viewed by the colonizing authority as racially superior to the previous inhabitants, giving their social movements and political demands greater legitimacy than those of colonized peoples in the eyes of the home government.
The land is the key resource in settler colonies, whereas natural (e.g. gold, cotton, oil) and human (e.g. labor, existing trade networks, convertible souls) resources are the main motivation behind other forms of colonialism. Normal colonialism typically ends, whereas settler colonialism lasts indefinitely, except in the rare event of complete evacuation (e.g., the Lost Colony of Roanoke) or settler decolonization. The historian of race and settler colonialism Patrick Wolfe writes that "settler colonialism destroys to replace" and insists that "invasion", in settler colonial contexts, is "a structure, not an event".