self-colonise

Verb

self-colonise (third-person singular simple present self-colonises, present participle self-colonising, simple past and past participle self-colonised)

1. To regain power after being colonized.
   • Yet ironically, in the thirty five odd years of Bangladesh's existence, it has remained seized or self-colonised for a long 16 years' period (1975-1990) by military-autocratic and nearly autocratic regimes.2011, Ridwanul Hoque, Judicial Activism in Bangladesh: A Golden Mean Approach, →ISBN, page 95
   • And it is imposed on us by the same Ngarrindjeri who themselves were once the colonised. The processes of colonialism in the end become self-colonising.2014, Irene Watson, Aboriginal Peoples, Colonialism and International Law: Raw Law, →ISBN
2. To be introduced into an ecosystem via natural processes.
   • Elsewhere in the capital, new shoots are pushing up through the soil on a 460sq m (5,000sq ft) biodiverse green roof at Laban Dance Centre, in southeast London, where the roof has been left to self-colonise with a mixture of seed.2004, The Garden - Volume 129, page 670
   • The presence of suitable rodent prey introduced by people presumably at or near colonisation about 3000 years ago (Anderson and Clark, 1999; White et al. 2000) was probably the prerequisite that allowed barn owls, which are specialist predators of small mammals and specifically rodents, to...2009, Geoffrey Richard Clark, Atholl Anderson, The Early Prehistory of Fiji, →ISBN, page 43