The Western Phoenicians: Colonisation and Assimilation

Abstract

It has long been canonical to deny the Phoenicians a place in the ranks of the true colonisers of the Western Mediterranean. ‘The expansion of the Phoenicians’, says Moscati, ‘and later of the Carthaginians was predominantly commercial with no intent of conquest, requiring no stable settlements or mass emigration of the population.’ And although Moscati goes on to qualify this statement by admitting that, of course, some stable settlements did ensue, they were, he says, ‘in no way dependent on the phenomenon of expansion’. Thus by this thesis the Phoenicians may set up ‘comptoirs’, ‘relais’, ‘escales maritimes’, ‘établissements’, ‘Erkundungsfahrten’, ‘Factorei’, ‘teste di ponti’ and ‘emporia’, but never anything which might qualify as a colony in Maunier's terms, as emigration plus government.