Other Countries

Outlying holdings of the United States are officially called possessions rather than colonies, although historically the distinction is largely a technical one. Only a few such holdings were obtained, most of them in the 1890's and early 1900's. Largest was the Philippines, which was a United States possession from the Spanish-American War (1898) until 1946, when it was granted independence. Present-day possessions include the Virgin Islands of the United States, Guam, American Samoa, and other islands in the Pacific and Caribbean. Puerto Rico, obtained from Spain in the Spanish-American War, and the Northern Marianas, formerly part of a trust territory administered by the United States, have a special status, that of commonwealth.

Belgium's one major colony—Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo)—became independent in 1960. Germany acquired colonies in Africa and in the Pacific shortly before 1900, but lost them as a result of World War I. Japan and Italy lost their colonial possessions in World War II.

Beginning in the late 1500's, Russian imperialism swept eastward across Siberia to the Pacific. The government settled large numbers of colonists in various places throughout this territory, but many areas are still inhabited only by non-Russians.