Settler
Person who has migrated to an area and established permanent residence there

A depiction of the first medieval settlers arriving in Iceland, 1850

A settler or colonist is a person who establishes or joins a permanent presence that is separate to existing communities. The entity that settlers establish is a settlement. A settler is called a pioneer if they are among the first settling at a place that is new to the settler community.[1] While settlers can act independently, they may receive support from the government of their nation or its colonial empire, or from a non-governmental organization, as part of a larger campaign.

The process of settling land can be, and has often been, controversial; while human migration is itself a normal phenomenon, it has not been uncommon throughout human history for settlers to have arrived in already-inhabited lands without the intention of living alongside the native population. In these cases, the conflict that arises between the settlers and the natives, or Indigenous peoples, may result in warfare and possibly the dispossession of the latter within the contested territory desired, usually violently.[2]

The lifestyle of a native population is often disturbed or destroyed if they come into contact with a settler population, particularly when the settler population seeks to mostly replace them.[3] Settlers may also engender a change in culture, or alteration of the existing culture, among the natives.[4] New populations have also been created by the mixing of settlers and natives, including Cape Coloureds in South Africa and Anglo-Indians.[5][6]

Historical usage

Chilean settlers in Baker River, Patagonia, 1935.

Many times throughout history, settlers occupied land that was previously inhabited by long-established peoples, who are designated as native or Indigenous. The process by which Indigenous territories are settled by foreign peoples is usually called settler colonialism.[7] It relies upon a process of dispossession, often violent.[2]

In the figurative usage, a "person who goes first or does something first" also applies to the American English use of "pioneer" to refer to a settler – a person who has migrated to a less occupied area and established permanent residence there, often to colonize the area, as first recorded in English in 1605.[8] In United States history, it refers to the Europeans who were part of the process of settling lands which here new to them.

A family of Russian settlers in the Caucasus, c. 1910

The Russian Empire regularly invited Russian subjects and foreign nationals to settle in sparsely populated lands, mostly in North Asia, but also in Central Asia.[9] These projects resulted in the inception of Slavo-Serbia, Volga Germans, Volhynia, and Russians in Kazakhstan, among other phenomena.

Although settlers in the early modern era frequently made use of sea routes—significant waves of settlement could also use long overland routes, such as the Great Trek by the Boer-Afrikaners in South Africa, or the Oregon Trail in the United States.

Anthropological usage

Anthropologists record the tribal displacement of native settlers who drive another tribe from the lands it held, such as the settlement of lands in the area now called Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where the Ohlone people settled in areas that were previously inhabited by the Esselen people.[10]

Modern usage

Early European settlers in North America often built crude houses in the form of log cabins.

In Canada, the term "settler" is used by some to describe "the non-Indigenous peoples living in Canada who form the European-descended sociopolitical majority" and thereby asserting that settler colonialism is an ongoing phenomenon. The usage is controversial.[11][12][13]

In the Middle East and North Africa, there are more recent examples of settler communities being established:

Causes of emigration

The Costume of the Australasians by Edward Charles Close shows the co-existence of convicts, soldiers and free settlers in New South Wales c. 1817.

The reasons for the emigration of settlers vary, but often they include the following factors and incentives: the desire to start a new and better life in a foreign land, personal financial hardship, social, cultural, ethnic, or religious persecution (e.g., the Pilgrims and Mormons), penal deportation (e.g. of convicted criminals from England to Australia), political oppression, and governmental incentive-policies aimed at encouraging foreign settlement.[22][23][24]

Accounts of the "barbarian" Völkerwanderung of Late antiquity in Eurasia give the impression that whole tribes sometimes migrated en masse into new areas of settlement: warriors bringing their households ("women and children") with them.[25] Postulated causes of these mass-migrations include:

  • the defeat of the migrants by other migrants (such as the Huns) encroaching into their former territories[26][27]
  • climate change disrupting societies on and around the Eurasian steppe[28][29]
  • natural disasters such as the outbreak of disease or plague[30]

See also

References

  1. ^ "pioneer". Bedeutung im Cambridge Englisch Wörterbuch (in German). 1 January 2025. Retrieved 8 January 2025.
  2. ^ a b Wolfe, Patrick (December 2006). "Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native". Journal of Genocide Research. 8 (4): 387–409. doi:10.1080/14623520601056240.
  3. ^ Olson, Pamela (2013). Fast Times in Palestine. Berkeley, California: Seal Press. p. 35. ISBN 978-1-580-05483-6.
  4. ^ Ninomiya, Melody E Morton; Burns, Nicole; Pollock, Nathaniel J; Green, Nadia T G; Martin, Jessica; Linton, Janice; Rand, Jenny R; Brubacher, Laura Jane; Keeling, Arn; Latta, Alex (June 2023). "Indigenous communities and the mental health impacts of land dispossession related to industrial resource development: a systematic review". The Lancet Planetary Health. 7 (6): e501 – e517. doi:10.1016/S2542-5196(23)00079-7. PMID 37286247. The impacts were consequences of colonial relations that threatened Indigenous identities, resources, languages, traditions, spirituality, and ways of life.
  5. ^ Khan, Razib (16 June 2011). "The Cape Coloureds are a mix of everything". Discover Magazine. Archived from the original on 28 January 2013. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
  6. ^ Mollan, Cherylann (20 February 2023). "The young Anglo-Indians retracing their European roots". BBC News. Retrieved 11 October 2025.
  7. ^ LeFevre, Tate Etc.. "Settler Colonialism". www.oxfordbibliographies.com. Tate A. LeFevre. Retrieved 19 October 2017.
  8. ^ [1] Online Etymological Dictionary
  9. ^ Greenall, Robert (23 November 2005). "Russians left behind in Central Asia". BBC News.
  10. ^ Prehistoric Sources Technical Study, prepared for the city of Monterey by Bainbridge Behrens Moore Inc., 23 May 1977[verification needed]
  11. ^ Denis, Jeffrey S. (February 2015). "Contact Theory in a Small-Town Settler-Colonial Context: The Reproduction of Laissez-Faire Racism in Indigenous-White Canadian Relations". American Sociological Review. 80 (1): 218–242. doi:10.1177/0003122414564998.
  12. ^ Robson, John (Spring–Summer 2018). "The 'Settler' Nonsense". The Dorchester Review. 7 (2): 1–2.
  13. ^ "Introducing yourself as a 'settler' creates division". CBC. Retrieved 5 April 2024.
  14. ^ Francis Kofi Abiew (1991). The Evolution of the Doctrine and Practice of Humanitarian Intervention. p. 146.
  15. ^ Schneider, Jan (June 2008). "Israel". Focus Migration. 13. Hamburg Institute of International Economics. Archived from the original on 14 May 2019. Retrieved 29 April 2013.
  16. ^ Ben-Rafael, Eliezer; Sharot, Stephen (1991). Ethnicity, Religion and Class in Israeli Society. pp. 26–27. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511520600. ISBN 978-0-521-39229-7.
  17. ^ Branovsky, Yael (6 May 2008). "400 olim arrive in Israel ahead of Independence Day". Ynetnews. Archived from the original on 30 June 2017. Retrieved 29 April 2013.
  18. ^ Beauchamp, Zack (20 November 2018). "What are settlements, and why are they such a big deal?". Vox. Retrieved 13 April 2021.
  19. ^ "Israeli Settlements". Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved 13 April 2021.
  20. ^ Stefanini, Sara (31 March 2016). "Best chance Cyprus has had for peace". Politico.
  21. ^ Shefte, Whitney (6 January 2015). "Western Sahara's stranded refugees consider renewal of Morocco conflict". the Guardian.
  22. ^ Olsen, Daniel H., and Brian J. Hill. "Pilgrimage and identity along the mormon trail." Religious pilgrimage routes and trails: sustainable development and management. Wallingford UK: CAB International, 2018. 234–246.
  23. ^ Lambright, Bri. "The Ainu, Meiji Era Politics, and Its Lasting Impacts: A Historical Analysis of Racialization, Colonization, and the Creation of State and Identity in Relation to Ainu-Japanese History." (2022).
  24. ^ King, Russell. Atlas of Human Migration
  25. ^ Heather, Peter (19 April 2018). "barbarian migrations". In Nicholson, Oliver (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. p. 209. ISBN 9780192562463. Retrieved 25 November 2025. [...] there is at least now a consensus that four major movements of migration involved really large military forces, namely the movements of Goths from 376, the invasion of Italy by Radagausius, the crossing of the Rhine in 406 and Theodoric's invasion of Italy. Also, there is every reason to suppose (as the sources report) that many women and children will have been caught up in these movements [...].
  26. ^ Kean, Roger Michael; Frey, Oliver (2005). The Complete Chronicle of the Emperors of Rome. Ludlow, Shropshire: Thalamus. p. 245. ISBN 9781902886053. Retrieved 25 November 2025. What misery the Huns inflicted on the other barbarians along the empire's edge was of little consequence , other than being the principal cause of the massed barbarian migrations of 407.
  27. ^ Russell, Cecil Henry St. Leger (1921). "3.3. Overthrow of the Roman Empire by the Barbarians". The Tradition of the Roman Empire: A Sketch of European History. London: Macmillan and Company, Limited. pp. 51–53. Retrieved 25 November 2025. The Huns [...] indirectly caused the final crash [of the Roman Empire] [...]. But the Huns began by supplying only a first motive power [...]. [...] The Visigoths, hard pressed by the Ostrogoths and Huns, had already, since about 300, been working their way over the Danube. [...] From here began the great movement, which was to be the pioneer of all movements of the Teuton hordes.
  28. ^ Lambshead, John (7 July 2023). "Crisis in the Third Century". The Fall of Roman Britain: and Why We Speak English. Barnsley, Yorkshire: Pen and Sword History. p. https://books.google.com/books?id=8wJ0EAAAQBAJ&pg=PT66. ISBN 9781399075572. Retrieved 25 November 2025. A perfect climatological storm hit [...] in the third century. Firstly, starting in around AD 200 precipitation levels in northern Europe fell, joined by a drop in temperature after AD 250, triggering barbarian migrations southward. Secondly, solar activity downturned notably in the mid third century impacting agriculture in all Eurasia [...]. [...] Agricultural downturn in an ancient agrarian society causes starvation, inevitably closely followed by disease and social friction.
  29. ^ Chew, Sing C. (27 June 2008). "The Transitions". Ecological Futures: What History Can Teach Us. Trilogy on world ecological degradation. Lanham, Maryland: AltaMira Press. p. 68. ISBN 9780759112230. Retrieved 27 November 2025. The changing climatological condition leading to drought conditions on the steppes has also been brought up as a possibility. [...] the environment seems to be one of the major factors that underlie the Hunnic migration/incursion in the fourth century.
  30. ^ Yanbo Guan (29 May 2025) [2011]. "The Great Migration of Eurasian Ethnic Groups: Territorial Differentiation and Spatial Changes of Ethnic Communities". Theoretical Study of Ethnogeography. Translated by Qin Li; Hong Wang; Yanqing Chen. Singapore: Springer Nature. pp. 155–156. doi:10.1007/978-981-97-3794-9. ISBN 9789819737949. Retrieved 27 November 2025. [...] in the northern nomadic regions of the Huns during the Han dynasty, serious natural disasters occurred several times [...] droughts, snowstorms, locust plagues, epidemics, and other natural disasters are also major enemies of the survival of nomadic peoples. When these serious natural disasters strike, nomadic peoples may consider migrating out of disaster-prone areas as a last resort.
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