Decolonization is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. The meanings and applications of the term are disputed. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on independence movements in the colonies and the collapse of global colonial empires. Other scholars extend the meaning to include economic, cultural and psychological aspects of the colonial experience.

Colonialism is the pursuing, establishing and maintaining of control and exploitation of people and of resources by a foreign group of people. Implemented through the establishment of coloniality and possibly colonies, this colonization keeps colonized territory and people socio-economically othered and subaltern to colonizers and their metropole. While frequently advanced as an imperialist regime, colonialism can also take the form of settler colonialism, whereby colonial settlers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace an existing society with that of the colonizers, possibly towards a genocide of native populations.