In later times the colonising instinct manifested itself in a variety of ways. Thus the Dutch colony in Japan never aimed at possessing Japan or in securing anything save a pied à terre for the convenience of trade: the 'imperial idea' was totally absent here though present elsewhere. Spain on the other hand colonised imperially only, the colony was a foreign possession out of which to extract wealth as tribute[1] and the spoils of war. Then came the English colonising era, which had a good deal of its birth in a desire to steal from Spain the good things which Spain had stolen from others.
Other colonies were founded in emulation with other nations. Speaking generally the British colony was imperial in the sense that it was always a piece of England set down on foreign soil (as in Virginia, where the squire with his country mansion was an early feature); but it was primarily a commercial undertaking. Then there were colonies taken from other nations by force of arms, like South Africa; huge colonies like Australia; colonies that came near to being independent allied nations, like India in the days of John Company; and colonies established purely as military posts, like St. Helena and many another island. Each colony, in fine, had something different in its inception and probably only one thing
- ↑ Cuba was so regarded by Spain up to the last. The Spaniard who went there invariably regarded the Cubans merely as something out of which he could make a fortune to take back to Spain.
