<Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This article needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (August 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This article needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (August 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> The historical phenomenon of colonization is one that stretches around the globe and across time . Modern state global colonialism, or imperialism, began in the 15th century with the "Age of Discovery", led by Portuguese and Spanish exploration of the Americas, the coasts of Africa, the Middle East, India and East Asia . The Spanish and Portuguese empires were the first global empires because they were the first to stretch across different continents, covering vast territories around the globe . In 1492, notable explorer Christopher Columbus "discovered" America . The phrase "the empire on which the sun never sets" was first used for the Spanish Empire in the 16th century . During the late 16th and 17th centuries, England, France and the Dutch Republic also established their own overseas empires, in direct competition with each other . The end of the 18th and early 19th century saw the first era of decolonization, when most of the European colonies in the Americas gained their independence from their respective metropoles . Spain was irreversibly weakened after the loss of their New World colonies, but the Kingdom of Great Britain (uniting Scotland with England and Wales), France, Portugal, and the Dutch turned their attention to the Old World, particularly South Africa, India and South East Asia, where coastal enclaves had already been established . The second industrial revolution, in the 19th century, led to what has been termed the era of New Imperialism, when the pace of colonization rapidly accelerated, the height of which was the Scramble for Africa, in which Belgium, Germany and Italy were also participants . </P> <P> During the 20th century, the colonies of the defeated central powers in World War I were distributed amongst the victors as mandates, but it was not until the end of World War II that the second phase of decolonization began in earnest . In 1999, Portugal gave up the last of Europe's colonies in Asia, Macau, to China, ending an era that had lasted six hundred years . </P>

Who began the active colonization in the new land