I once asked an AI chatbot why, when it is about Europeans who seized new lands, it’s called “colonization”, but when others did the same – for example Arabs and Muslims – it is called “conquests”. The first term is very condemning while the second is much more forgiving.
It basically answered something like “the reason is that colonization caused much harm to the people it happened to”. Um, sorry but so did conquests?! All problems associated with colonialism can also in one way or another be ascribed to conquests.
The difference in harm between colonization and conquests is relative. The chatbot said “conquests are seen more as spreading a civilization”, as if that makes it better than colonization. The same can be said about colonization!
This is another double standard that Europeans and the West is held to, who often are the scapegoat of everything.
It can even be argued that colonization sought to improve the seized land and respected it, in ways that conquests did not, and so it is better than conquests. So too as conquests involved military subjugation, making it harsher, while colonization involved subsequent settlement.
To me, the only meaningful difference between terming something “conquest” versus “colonization” is the land in between the old land and the new land. If it is foreign land between the old and new, it’s called “colonization”. If it is successive expansion of old land, “conquest”.
But really, ideally all nations should be viewed as either colonizers or conquerors. Otherwise it’s an unjust and failing morality.
The Searcher Who Wants to Give 