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Concept
Settler
Summary
A settler is a person who has immigrated to an area and established a permanent residence there.
A settler who migrates to an area previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited may be described as a pioneer.
Settlers are generally from a sedentary culture, as opposed to nomadic peoples who may move settlements seasonally, within traditional territories. Settlement sometimes relies on dispossession of already established populations within the contested area, and can be a very violent process. Sometimes settlers are backed by governments or large countries. Settlements can prevent native people from continuing their work.
One can witness how settlers very often occupied land previously residents to long-established peoples, designated as Indigenous (also called "natives", "Aborigines" or, in the Americas, "Indians").
The process by which Indigenous territories are settled by foreign peoples is usually called settler colonialism. It relies upon a process of often violent dispossession.
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. In United States history it refers to Europeans who were part of settling new lands on Indigenous territories.
In this usage, pioneers are usually among the first to an area, whereas settlers can arrive after first settlement and join others in the process of human settlement. This correlates with the work of military pioneers who were tasked with construction of camps before the main body of troops would arrive at the designated campsite.
In Imperial Russia, the government invited Russians or foreign nationals to settle in sparsely populated lands. These settlers were called "colonists". See, e.g., articles Slavo-Serbia, Volga German, Volhynia, Russians in Kazakhstan.
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