Worlds of Design: Colonies

If you’ve developed nations in your campaign, you will probably have a world that involves colonies.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

World-building offers an opportunity to explore a variety of social, political, and historical concepts, including colonization. While the real-world history of colonization is fraught with imperialism and exploitation, it's important for world-builders to understand its different aspects and the potential implications of including colonies in their fictional worlds. This article is not meant to justify colonization, but rather to provide a framework for world-builders to make informed choices about the structure of their worlds.

Why Colonies Happen​

There are several reasons nations establish colonies:

• Commercial Expansion (Greeks and Phoenicians/Carthaginians, Portuguese, etc.). Finding more “hinterland” to trade with. E.g. Greek Massalia (now Marseilles) was established in part to trade with the people of Gaul (now France). The Greeks, especially, had no interest in controlling the native populace. The Carthaginians did come to control some of southeastern Iberia. Keep in mind that these trading places involved many permanent residents, they were not merely small establishments like trade depots.
• Population Reduction (Greeks and Phoenicians/Carthaginians). City-states can quickly become overcrowded/unable to feed their population, colonies provided an outlet.
• Military Control (Roman “colonies”). This is unusual. Retired Roman legionnaires took land in colonies located in newly-conquered territory in Italy, to help control the inhabitants. So they were “colonizing” land already inhabited by people not so different from themselves. Related to this are towns established in a newly-conquered area (Ireland, by the Normans?) to help control the populace. The “home country” must have a pretty strong government in these cases.
• Commercial Exploitation (European 16th 17th century). The Mercantile Theory of the time said a country should only trade with its own colonies to maximize earnings. It should not allow other countries to trade with those colonies. To have lucrative trade you had to have colonies.
• Specialized Settlement (European 16th 17th century). This is different from population reduction, perhaps seen more as a way of getting rid of misfits. The Puritans, for example, for England, the Huguenots for France, the prisoners sent to Australia. This markedly affected the colony.
• Population reduction to avoid disaster (18th 19th c). There were times, for example during the mid-19th century potato famine, when emigration helped people such as the Irish who would otherwise starve.
• Pure imperialist colonialism (19th c. imperialism). This is a land and people grab, pure and simple, for prestige, to help nations claim to be “Great Powers,” to “find a place in the sun.” This is the evil face of colonization. And in most cases, it involved few people actually leaving their home country, it’s about controlling populations of distant places.
• Missionary/Religious Proselytization motives rarely cause colonization, but can certainly follow it, especially in the 19th century.

Why do People Move to Colonies?​

There are a lot of reasons why: economic advantage, fleeing social stigma of some kind, hired to do it, free land, food shortages, religious persecution, better climate, you can think of many more motives.

If a colony is motivated by economic advantage, it's essentially a trade depot and likely to be a seaport or on a river farther inland. Transportation becomes paramount. If the colony is established to accommodate big populations, it’ll start on water but others will move inland for fertile (free) farmland, most likely along rivers.

In a fantasy world filled with monsters, escape from invading hordes of monsters is also a likely reason. Humans sometimes migrate to escape other humans, in the real world (such as the migrations of the Goths in Roman times, fleeing from the Huns). Running from the old country that’s about to be overrun, to existing colonies, may not be a motive to create such colonies, but it may be enough incentive to create one nonetheless.

If you like to make a series of campaigns with differing themes, rather than a years-long single campaign, colonies may show up sooner or later. Player characters could be colonists arriving in a new place, or might be pathfinders who explore an area to allow colonization from the mother country, or they could be locals who find that the colonists are monstrous (think goblinoids or giants) and have to defend their territory before the new neighbors move in.

YOUR TURN: What part do colonies play in your games?

 

[Tonguez]

Is this actually unusual? I know that Canada was colonized by the British largely this way. Your retirement package from the British Navy was often a land grant. I was under the understanding that this was done fairly commonly.

Yeah, the whole of Han history has pretty much been military invasion followed by colonial expansion and assimilationist policy.

My Polynesia campaign was posited on first human settlement of islands occupied by native gnomes, giants, goblins and spirits. The first set of PCs were first explorers who had to settle the local spirits, then new settlement leaders surviving in a new land and then dealing with other settlements or expansive cults or demands for tribute. Fun times

 

[Hussar]

There are no peoples on Earth that are not, at some distance removed, the descendents of the victims of colonialism. Asa long as there has been human civilization, there have been empires pushing into areas they did not previously control.

It is definitely a "talk to your players" subject. if your player group is not on board, don't highlight it. But we can't just accept that some subjects are verboten.

I think I totally agree here. I think this is something that obviously is going to come up and probably should be discussed. I mean, not every campaign obviously deals with things like this. For example, my current Phandelver campaign doesn'T really have any colonialist themes, at least, none are intentional if they exist there at all. Phandalin isn't a colonial town. The Sword Coast isn't a colonized land.

 

[Reynard]

I think I totally agree here. I think this is something that obviously is going to come up and probably should be discussed. I mean, not every campaign obviously deals with things like this. For example, my current Phandelver campaign doesn'T really have any colonialist themes, at least, none are intentional if they exist there at all. Phandalin isn't a colonial town. The Sword Coast isn't a colonized land.

Well, somebody lived there before whoever lives there now.

 

[Von Ether]

And, just to add, shouldn't we address the elephant in the room here. Colonialism is something that's ... difficult to add into the game without it having some very uncomfortable resonances. It's pretty rare that establishing colonies was done for purely altruistic reasons and certainly rarely had purely positive results.

Everything is subjective. But the author did mention colonization has some issues.

While the real-world history of colonization is fraught with imperialism and exploitation, it's important for world-builders to understand its different aspects and the potential implications of including colonies in their fictional worlds. This article is not meant to justify colonization, but rather to provide a framework for world-builders to make informed choices about the structure of their worlds.

 

[Tonguez]

I think I totally agree here. I think this is something that obviously is going to come up and probably should be discussed. I mean, not every campaign obviously deals with things like this. For example, my current Phandelver campaign doesn'T really have any colonialist themes, at least, none are intentional if they exist there at all. Phandalin isn't a colonial town. The Sword Coast isn't a colonized land.

Yeah the Elfs of the Fallen Kingdom might want to dispute that ...

 

[ruemere]

While not your typical colonization, there is resettlement. This is an uprooting of large amount of people, usually of the same ethnicity, and forcibly moving them to a new locale, for political reasons. For European example, have a look at twentieth century Soviet regime operations after second world war.

From fantasy gameplay point of view, you get a culture that is fully out of sync with its locale: unknown infrastructure, ruins that no one knows anything about, and vicious treatment of natives. For a milder version, consider recultivating an area after a large scale calamity.

Another example from my area, would be forced gradual migration of skill. The powers decree that all people who have certain skills or committed certain acts, are to move to a remote region for long period of time. The purpose is to remove potentially riotous yet skilled element (like students) from their families, and provide highly educated cadre in areas who need engineers, doctors, clerks. A multi century example would be:

• earlier versions: katorga, a penal migration (Katorga - Wikipedia)
• modern version: Special settlements in the Soviet Union - Wikipedia

The end result is a largely native population with a small bureaucratic center powered by migrated people, who are controlled by a smaller military office.

 

[clearstream]

And, just to add, shouldn't we address the elephant in the room here. Colonialism is something that's ... difficult to add into the game without it having some very uncomfortable resonances. It's pretty rare that establishing colonies was done for purely altruistic reasons and certainly rarely had purely positive results.

Ethical treatment of colonisation in narrative, begins with and elevates the stories of the colonised. In that light, the OP falls short.

A take that genuinely avoided justifying or glorifying colonialism would at minimum forefront those experiences.

 

[The Soloist]

My Fantasy AGE 1e solo campaign was played from the point of view of four beastfolks (bearkin, aviankin, tigerkin and foxkin) who must defend their remote island from pirate slavers who want to capture them for profit. It also had invaders from the depths theme with serperfolk raiders emerging from the underworld to capture and eat the 'delicious' beastfolk. The last time I played the beastfolk scouts had found the location of the human pirate colony.

Writing this makes me want to convert the PCs to 2e and continue their story.

 

[MarkB]

While Commercial Expansion and Commercial Exploitation touch upon it, there's no direct mention of resource-exploitation as a motivation for colonisation - the "gold rush" phenomenon of setting up quick-and-dirty townships purely for the purpose of recovering a lucrative local resource, settlements that spring up and expand quickly while that resource is still plentiful and valued, and then as either the supply or demand falls away will end up either being abandoned or having to pivot and adapt to find new ways of being self-supporting.

That last phase can have a lot of story-telling potential, with some people just turning around and leaving, some trying to scrape out the last dregs of value regardless of the cost, and others trying to find a way to keep their community alive.

 

[Waller]

Ethical treatment of colonisation in narrative, begins with and elevates the stories of the colonised. In that light, the OP falls short.

A take that genuinely avoided justifying or glorifying colonialism would at minimum forefront those experiences.

It's important to separate the concept of a colony with that of exploitation of indignenous people. While historically the two did go hand in hand, it is possible to colonize empty land. A colony on moon or Mars, or one in Antarctica, for example, present no ethical issues (at least not in terms of indigenous populations... there are other things incuding environmental concerns of course). Not every colony has to displace people.