ABSTRACT
The ancient world – if only through the words we use – informs all modern discussion of colonialism in one way or another. The cognates of colonialism itself and most related terms – empire, imperialism, province, hegemony, govern, etc. – have their ultimate origins in ancient discourse, even if the nineteenth century has shaped our understanding of many of these terms.2 A diachronic overview of the ancient world can provide case studies across a particularly large swath of time, revealing a long history to the ways in which two modes of domination, colonialism and settler colonialism, interpenetrate and overlap. This chapter offers a thematic analytical narrative spanning approximately 1,200 years of Near Eastern and Mediterranean history, highlighting major examples of colonialism, settler colonialism and other settler dynamics which should help sharpen distinctions and definitions of the basic framework of this collection. The extent to which various ancient settler communities exhibited specific characteristics of settler colonialism is a major analytical question driving the narrative. Conclusions are often preliminary and even tentative, and the goal is to provoke further study, analysis and discussion within the framework of settler colonial studies.
