<P> Some reports characterize Chinese activities in Tibet as colonization . </P> <P> While many European colonization schemes focused on shorter - term exploitation of economic opportunities (Newfoundland, for example, or Siberia) or addressed specific goals (Massachusetts or New South Wales), a tradition developed of careful long - term social and economic planning for both parties, but more on the colonizing countries themselves, based on elaborate theory - building (note James Oglethorpe's Colony of Georgia in the 1730s and Edward Gibbon Wakefield's New Zealand in the 1840s). </P> <P> Colonization may be used as a method of absorbing and assimilating foreign people into the culture of the imperial country, and thus destroying any remnant of the cultures that might threaten the imperial territory over the long term by inspiring reform . </P> <P> During the Russian Empire, a policy of Russification was followed, in order to impose the Russian language and culture on conquered people in territory adjacent to Russia itself . In this way, the Russian Empire aimed to gradually, and permanently, expand its territory by erasing foreign cultures . Foreign languages within its territory were banned, as were foreign religions . </P>

What was the last country to be colonized