Colony

When we think of the word 'colony' and its derivatives 'colonize' and 'colonial' we think of plucky folk from the British Isles upping sticks and making a healthy new life in great empty spaces in a sunny climate.
But if instead of using the word 'colonize' we use the words 'invade' and 'murder' and 'enslave' we would be nearer the truth.
Even when we admit that 'colonization' led to atrocities, we tell ourselves that this was the exception, not the rule. You see, even if God is not an Englishman, we can be sure that the English managerial class is the repository of all morality, the fit judge of human rights. The French, the Portuguese, the Belgians, and, of course, the Germans murdered the natives and stole their land, but surely not us.
Let us take the example of Kenya, a sunny place with some good farm land.
The British arrived in the 1890s. In 1901 they introduced a Hut Tax. In 1910 they introduced a Poll Tax. Africans were forced to become wage labourers to pay these taxes. The best land was expropriated and handed to British settlers, who became rich growing tea and coffee, using African labour.
More and more land was taken from the Africans. Those who, for whatever reason, did not work for a paltry wage faced the threat of forced labour or conscription.
Discipline was maintained by flogging. Sometimes the flogging was done at the magistrate's behest. Often 'justice' was meted out privately.
Africans who were 'squatting' on European farms were obliged to perform 270 days labour for the privilege.
By 1948 one and quarter million Kikuyo owned  2000 square miles of land, thirty thousand Europeans owned six times that amount. Africans fled to Niarobi in the hope of a better life. 
Kenya was conquered. Africans were robbed and enslaved. Even that great imperialist, Mr. Churchill, was concerned at the scale of the murder.
In 1908 he said of Kenya, 'It looks like butchery.. Surely it cannot be necessary to go on killing these defenceless people on such an enormous scale.'