In political science, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the metropolitan state (or "mother country").
This administrative colonial separation makes colonies neither incorporated territories, nor client states. Some colonies have been organized either as dependent territories that are not sufficiently self-governed, or as self-governed colonies controlled by colonial settlers.
The concept of a colony is derived from the ancient Roman colonia, which in turn was based on the apoikia (Ancient Greek: ἀποικία, lit. 'home away from home'), referring originally to territories (usually relatively small urban areas) settled by ancient Greek city-states.
Another definition states that the fourteenth century term 'colonye' is derived from the Latin 'colon-us', meaning farmer, cultivator, planter, or settler in a new country, and was used to describe the Roman settlements in the fourteenth century. It carried with it the sense of 'farm' and 'landed estate'.The city that founded such a colony became known as its metropolis ("mother-city"). Since early-modern times historians, administrators and political scientists generally use the term "colony" to refer mainly to the many different overseas territories of particularly European states between the 15th and 20th century CE, with colonialism and decolonization as corresponding phenomena.
While colonies often developed from trading outposts or territorial claims, such areas do not need to be a product of colonization, nor become colonially organized territories.
Some historians use the term informal colony to refer to a country under the de facto control of another state, although this term is often contentious.