{ "model": { "rank": 4925, "code": "thing-q184716", "model_id": "vr.tr.european-colonization-of-the-americas", "name": "European colonization of the Americas", "purpose": "Enable an agent to identify, compare and assess episodes of European colonization of the Americas while distinguishing asserted authority, exercised control, affected peoples and contested interpretations.", "family": "Thing Registry", "category": "Activities and processes", "status": "research-draft", "kind": "thing", "plane": "ACT", "domain": "ACT.ACT", "industry": "", "version": "", "url": "/models/thing/q184716/", "tier": 2, "score": 71, "payload": { "layer": "wikidata", "aliases": [ "Swedish colonization of the Americas" ], "aliasCount": 1, "merged": 1, "knownIn": 71, "facets": null, "markers": [], "lexicalClass": "", "senseRank": null, "alsoRegisteredAs": null, "source": { "dataset": "wikidata", "item": "Q184716", "url": "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q184716", "license": "CC0 1.0" } }, "research": { "vercy": "1.0-draft", "publication": { "status": "research-draft", "adjudicationStatus": "unreviewed", "publishableCanonical": false, "generatedAt": "2026-09-09T21:17:30Z", "providers": [ "Codex" ], "breadth": "recalled by Codex without web access - no source was read", "missingProviders": [], "pass": 2, "cost": { "grok": { "seconds": 22.8, "error": "Reading additional input from stdin...\nOpenAI Codex v0.153.4\n--------\nworkdir: R:\\02_PROJECTS\\02_Meta_Models_Platforms\\Ver.cy\\current\\thing-registry-backlog\nmodel: gpt-6-astra\nprovider: openai\napproval: never\nsandbox: read-only\nreasoning effort: none\nreasoning summaries: none\nsession id: 01a08807-4f99-72b3-90ae-be97637cc5b2\n--------\nuser\nDescribe what is already known about one registered thing. Answer as JSON only, no prose around it.\n\nThing: European colonization of the Americas\nSense to describe: (none recorded)\nDomain code: ACT.ACT\nAlso known as: (none)\n\n\nContext for this batch of 1001 thi", "usd": 0, "recall": true }, "codex": { "seconds": 75, "error": "Reading additional input from stdin...\nOpenAI Codex v0.153.4\n--------\nworkdir: R:\\02_PROJECTS\\02_Meta_Models_Platforms\\Ver.cy\\current\\thing-registry-backlog\nmodel: gpt-6-astra\nprovider: openai\napproval: never\nsandbox: read-only\nreasoning effort: none\nreasoning summaries: none\nsession id: 01a08807-4fa7-7ef2-b4af-5b4b173843af\n--------\nuser\nYou are drafting a Vercy meta-model for one registered thing. Answer as JSON only, no prose around it.\n\nThing: European colonization of the Americas\nRegistry id: vr.tr.european-colonization-of-the-americas\nPlane / domain: ACT / ACT.ACT\nRegistry definition: (no" } } }, "metaModel": { "id": "THING-Q184716", "registryId": "vr.tr.european-colonization-of-the-americas", "name": "European colonization of the Americas", "version": "0.1.0-research.1", "entryKind": "thing", "family": "Thing Registry", "domain": [ "ACT.ACT" ], "status": "research-draft" }, "canonicalUrl": "https://ver.cy/models/thing/q184716/", "model": { "registry_id": "vr.tr.european-colonization-of-the-americas", "name": "European colonization of the Americas", "purpose": "Enable an agent to identify, compare and assess episodes of European colonization of the Americas while distinguishing asserted authority, exercised control, affected peoples and contested interpretations.", "definition": "European colonization of the Americas was the uneven process through which European powers and settlers established and expanded control over American territories and Indigenous peoples, principally from the late fifteenth century onward, through conquest, settlement, dispossession, labor exploitation, and institution-building.", "scope_statement": "This model owns European colonization of the Americas as a geographically uneven historical process of attempted and established colonial domination, including its mechanisms, Indigenous responses and transformations; individual colonies, empires and successor states remain linked entities.", "in_scope": [ "Regional episodes of European territorial claims, conquest, settlement and colonial administration.", "Indigenous sovereignty, diplomacy, resistance, accommodation and continued presence.", "Land appropriation, resource extraction and systems of coerced and voluntary labor.", "Enslavement, forced migration and the roles and responses of African and African-descended populations.", "Religious, legal, ecological and demographic transformations associated with colonial activity.", "Competing periodizations, interpretations and evidence for colonial continuity or termination." ], "out_of_scope": [ "Complete histories of individual European empires or American countries.", "Indigenous societies considered independently of their relationships with colonization.", "The global history of slavery and slave trading beyond connections to colonization of the Americas.", "European exploration or trade lacking evidence of attempted colonial domination.", "The Columbian exchange as a complete intercontinental biological and economic system.", "Present-day policy disputes except where needed to identify a specifically evidenced colonial relationship or legacy." ], "distinguishing_features": [ "An included episode must identify an attempted or established relationship of colonial domination; European arrival, travel or exchange alone does not establish inclusion.", "The setting must be in the Americas and the colonizing project must have an identifiable relationship to European imperial, settler, commercial or religious expansion.", "Territorial claims must be distinguished from occupation, settlement and effective control over particular places and populations.", "The process must permit multiple overlapping regional trajectories rather than require one continental start date, institutional form or endpoint.", "Colonization must be distinguished from its consequences: a later inequality or cultural practice requires an evidenced connection before being classified as a colonial legacy." ], "characteristics": [ { "name": "Regional and temporal extent", "kind": "measurement", "unit_or_values": "Named locality or region; date or date interval; stated precision and uncertainty", "why_it_matters": "Prevents continent-wide dates and boundaries from obscuring local sequences." }, { "name": "Colonial mechanism", "kind": "category", "unit_or_values": "Conquest, settlement, commercial control, plantation development, missionization, administrative incorporation; multiple values permitted", "why_it_matters": "Separates mechanisms that produced different forms of domination and encounter." }, { "name": "Authority and control", "kind": "state", "unit_or_values": "Claimed, attempted, negotiated, intermittently exercised, consolidated, contested, relinquished; specified by place, population and date", "why_it_matters": "Prevents imperial assertions from being treated as descriptions of effective sovereignty." }, { "name": "Participants and political relationships", "kind": "relation", "unit_or_values": "Named Indigenous polities, imperial authorities, settlers, companies, religious institutions and African or African-descended communities linked through dated relationships", "why_it_matters": "Makes alliances, conflict, dependence and internal differences visible." }, { "name": "Land and labor arrangements", "kind": "category", "unit_or_values": "Source-specific tenure, tribute, enslavement, forced labor, indenture and wage-labor arrangements with jurisdiction and period", "why_it_matters": "Supports comparison without equating institutions with different legal and practical conditions." }, { "name": "Population change estimate", "kind": "measurement", "unit_or_values": "Persons, percentage change or estimated range for a specified population and interval; method and uncertainty required", "why_it_matters": "Allows demographic claims to be assessed without false precision or unsupported causal attribution." }, { "name": "Colonial transition", "kind": "state", "unit_or_values": "Imperial transfer, administrative reorganization, independence, continuing dependency or disputed continuation", "why_it_matters": "Distinguishes changes in formal government from changes in colonial relationships." }, { "name": "Interpretive and evidential status", "kind": "category", "unit_or_values": "Attributed interpretation; supporting evidence; competing explanation; unresolved claim", "why_it_matters": "Keeps analytical categories and contested conclusions attached to their evidential basis." } ], "affordances": [ "Determine whether a proposed episode belongs within the process and record the evidence supporting inclusion.", "Compare colonial mechanisms across regions and periods without assuming a uniform continental sequence.", "Trace changes in territorial control, labor arrangements and relationships among named participants.", "Evaluate demographic and causal claims against their methods, geographical limits and competing explanations.", "Identify whose accounts support an interpretation and whose perspectives remain absent or inaccessible.", "Produce a qualified account of colonial transitions and legacies with unresolved questions retained." ] }, "sources": [], "structure": { "bundles": [ { "id": "extent-and-periodization", "name": "Extent and periodization", "description": "Establishes which encounters and regional sequences constitute colonization and how they are bounded.", "rationale": "A continental label can conceal different beginnings, interruptions and endings.", "layers": [ { "id": "colonization-threshold", "name": "Colonization threshold", "description": "Distinguishes colonial projects from exploration, contact and exchange.", "findings": [ { "id": "evidence-of-colonial-project", "name": "Evidence of a colonial project", "description": "Record the actions and intentions that justify including an episode, distinguishing attempted domination from established control.", "questions": [ { "text": "What evidence distinguishes this encounter from a voyage, trading relationship or temporary presence?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "evidence-of-colonial-project-q01" }, { "text": "Whose definition of colonization supports inclusion, and does it require settlement, domination or another criterion?", "kind": "definition", "id": "evidence-of-colonial-project-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "regional-sequences", "name": "Regional sequences", "description": "Locates episodes within dated and geographically specific trajectories.", "findings": [ { "id": "local-starts-and-transitions", "name": "Local starts and transitions", "description": "Record regional starting points, interruptions and proposed endpoints without forcing them into a single continental chronology.", "questions": [ { "text": "Which event marks the beginning of colonization here, and what alternative starting points do sources use?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "local-starts-and-transitions-q01" }, { "text": "What dates and spatial boundaries can be established, and with what precision?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "local-starts-and-transitions-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "sovereignty-and-political-encounter", "name": "Sovereignty and political encounter", "description": "Tracks competing authority claims and relationships among colonial actors and Indigenous polities.", "rationale": "Imperial maps and official declarations cannot alone establish who governed a place or its inhabitants.", "layers": [ { "id": "claims-and-effective-control", "name": "Claims and effective control", "description": "Separates legal assertions, military presence and everyday governing capacity.", "findings": [ { "id": "territorial-authority", "name": "Territorial authority", "description": "Record the claimant, justification, geographical reach and evidence of exercised authority at a specified time.", "questions": [ { "text": "Who claimed authority over this territory, under which asserted legal or religious justification?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "territorial-authority-q01" }, { "text": "Where could that authority actually enforce decisions, and where was control absent, shared or contested?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "territorial-authority-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "indigenous-political-agency", "name": "Indigenous political agency", "description": "Records Indigenous polities as participants with distinct interests and changing strategies.", "findings": [ { "id": "diplomacy-resistance-and-alliance", "name": "Diplomacy, resistance and alliance", "description": "Represent treaties, alliances, resistance and accommodation through the positions of specific participants.", "questions": [ { "text": "Which Indigenous polities participated, and how do their accounts characterize the relationship?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "diplomacy-resistance-and-alliance-q01" }, { "text": "What evidence distinguishes an alliance or negotiated agreement from submission, coercion or a later colonial reinterpretation?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "diplomacy-resistance-and-alliance-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "land-labor-and-extraction", "name": "Land, labor and extraction", "description": "Examines how colonial projects acquired land, organized work and directed resources.", "rationale": "These arrangements make colonial domination observable beyond formal political claims.", "layers": [ { "id": "land-and-resource-control", "name": "Land and resource control", "description": "Tracks changes in access, tenure and control over productive environments.", "findings": [ { "id": "appropriation-and-beneficiaries", "name": "Appropriation and beneficiaries", "description": "Record how access to land and resources changed, who benefited and whose rights or practices were displaced.", "questions": [ { "text": "Through which grants, purchases, seizures, relocations or other mechanisms did control change?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "appropriation-and-beneficiaries-q01" }, { "text": "How did colonial property categories correspond to, or conflict with, existing Indigenous land relationships?", "kind": "definition", "id": "appropriation-and-beneficiaries-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "labor-and-forced-mobility", "name": "Labor and forced mobility", "description": "Differentiates labor institutions, coercion and movements of people.", "findings": [ { "id": "labor-regimes-and-human-agency", "name": "Labor regimes and human agency", "description": "Record source-specific labor arrangements, including enslavement, alongside the actions and experiences of subjected populations.", "questions": [ { "text": "What obligations, coercive powers, exit possibilities and hereditary conditions defined this labor arrangement in practice?", "kind": "definition", "id": "labor-regimes-and-human-agency-q01" }, { "text": "Which evidence documents forced movement, refusal, escape, negotiation or autonomous community formation among affected people?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "labor-regimes-and-human-agency-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "population-environment-and-causation", "name": "Population, environment and causation", "description": "Assesses demographic and ecological transformations and the explanations offered for them.", "rationale": "Claims about mortality and environmental change require explicit baselines, uncertainty and causal reasoning.", "layers": [ { "id": "demographic-reconstruction", "name": "Demographic reconstruction", "description": "Evaluates estimates of population size, mortality, migration and displacement.", "findings": [ { "id": "population-estimates", "name": "Population estimates", "description": "Keep estimates attached to their population boundaries, dates, methods and uncertainty.", "questions": [ { "text": "What population, territory and interval does each estimate cover, and how was it reconstructed?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "population-estimates-q01" }, { "text": "How do sources distinguish deaths from migration, displacement, undercounting or changes in classification?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "population-estimates-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "interacting-causes", "name": "Interacting causes", "description": "Examines proposed relationships among disease, violence, labor, food systems and environmental change.", "findings": [ { "id": "causal-attribution", "name": "Causal attribution", "description": "Record supported causal pathways and competing explanations without assigning a universal cause to regional outcomes.", "questions": [ { "text": "What evidence connects the observed change to disease exposure, warfare, forced labor, displacement or altered subsistence?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "causal-attribution-q01" }, { "text": "What evidence would distinguish a colonial mechanism from a coincident environmental process or an unsupported single-cause explanation?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "causal-attribution-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "institutions-culture-and-evidence", "name": "Institutions, culture and evidence", "description": "Connects colonial institutions and cultural interventions to the records through which they are interpreted.", "rationale": "Colonial categories shaped both people's conditions and the surviving descriptions of those conditions.", "layers": [ { "id": "classification-and-cultural-intervention", "name": "Classification and cultural intervention", "description": "Examines religious intervention, legal status and cultural practices without assuming uniform implementation.", "findings": [ { "id": "institutional-prescription-and-lived-practice", "name": "Institutional prescription and lived practice", "description": "Distinguish prescribed conversion, status and conduct from enforcement, adaptation and resistance.", "questions": [ { "text": "Which institutions attempted to reshape religion, language, family life or legal status, and through what powers?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "institutional-prescription-and-lived-practice-q01" }, { "text": "What evidence shows how affected communities adopted, reworked, evaded or resisted these interventions?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "institutional-prescription-and-lived-practice-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "source-position-and-interpretation", "name": "Source position and interpretation", "description": "Makes authorship, preservation, translation and analytical framing explicit.", "findings": [ { "id": "evidence-and-contested-categories", "name": "Evidence and contested categories", "description": "Attach claims to identifiable evidence and attribute analytical terms such as conquest, settler colonialism and genocide to explicit definitions and arguments.", "questions": [ { "text": "Who produced or transmitted this account, for what purpose, and through which preservation or translation history?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "evidence-and-contested-categories-q01" }, { "text": "Which criteria support a contested analytical label for this episode, and what objections or alternative interpretations must accompany it?", "kind": "definition", "id": "evidence-and-contested-categories-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "transitions-continuities-and-use", "name": "Transitions, continuities and use", "description": "Assesses proposed endings, later continuities and responsible use of the model's conclusions.", "rationale": "Formal political transitions and claims of lasting colonial effects require different evidence.", "layers": [ { "id": "colonial-endpoints", "name": "Colonial endpoints", "description": "Separates imperial withdrawal or transfer from changes in relationships affecting particular populations.", "findings": [ { "id": "transition-specific-endings", "name": "Transition-specific endings", "description": "Record what ended, what persisted and whose position changed at a proposed endpoint.", "questions": [ { "text": "Did this transition end imperial administration, transfer authority or alter control over land and labor?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "transition-specific-endings-q01" }, { "text": "For which populations did the colonial relationship change, and what evidence supports treating it as ended or continuing?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "transition-specific-endings-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "legacy-claims-and-agent-decisions", "name": "Legacy claims and agent decisions", "description": "Defines how an agent evaluates later connections and communicates conclusions.", "findings": [ { "id": "qualified-comparison-and-attribution", "name": "Qualified comparison and attribution", "description": "Require a documented pathway for legacy claims and retain uncertainty when comparing episodes or producing summaries.", "questions": [ { "text": "Which documented institutional, material or social pathway links the later condition to a specific colonial arrangement?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "qualified-comparison-and-attribution-q01" }, { "text": "What qualifications, competing accounts or evidence gaps must the agent retain when presenting this comparison or legacy claim?", "kind": "action", "id": "qualified-comparison-and-attribution-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "evidence-and-external-alignment", "name": "Evidence and external alignment", "description": "What the world already says about this thing, gathered so the model can be checked against it.", "rationale": "A model that cannot be lined up against existing standards, identifiers and practice cannot be adopted by anyone who already uses them.", "layers": [ { "id": "reported-evidence", "name": "Reported evidence", "description": "Findings from the breadth pass, kept separate from the structural claims.", "findings": [ { "id": "evidence-confidence-notes", "name": "Check these first", "description": "Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.", "evidence": [ "This description covers a historical process, not a single event; starting points and endpoints depend on whether earlier Norse settlements, surviving dependencies, and continuing settler colonial relations are included.", "The listed kinds overlap and are analytical distinctions rather than a universally standardized classification.", "Population estimates, mortality attribution, territorial control, and the implementation of colonial laws require region-specific research; no sources were consulted for this recall-based description." ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-confidence-notes-q01", "text": "Which of these check these first hold for the sense of European colonization of the Americas this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-kinds", "name": "Kinds and varieties", "description": "Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.", "evidence": [ "Settler colonization", "Plantation colonies dependent on enslaved labor", "Extractive colonies centered on mining and coerced labor", "Trading-post and commercial colonization", "Mission-centered colonization" ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-kinds-q01", "text": "Which of these kinds and varieties hold for the sense of European colonization of the Americas this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-standards-and-regulation", "name": "Standards and regulation", "description": "Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.", "evidence": [ "Treaty of Tordesillas (1494): agreement between the Portuguese and Spanish crowns dividing their claimed spheres of overseas expansion without Indigenous consent.", "Laws of Burgos (1512): Spanish Crown rules governing Indigenous labor and treatment within the colonial system.", "New Laws (1542): Spanish Crown legislation seeking to restrict Indigenous enslavement and abuses associated with encomiendas; implementation faced resistance." ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-standards-and-regulation-q01", "text": "Which of these standards and regulation hold for the sense of European colonization of the Americas this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-real-world-use", "name": "Real-world use", "description": "Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.", "evidence": [ "Historical explanation of the formation of American colonial societies and successor states.", "Analysis of Indigenous dispossession, sovereignty, resistance, and cultural survival.", "Study of Atlantic slavery, coerced labor, and commodity production.", "Interpretation of demographic, ecological, linguistic, and religious transformations.", "Context for public history, museum interpretation, and debates about colonial legacies." ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-real-world-use-q01", "text": "Which of these real-world use hold for the sense of European colonization of the Americas this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-failure-modes-and-hazards", "name": "Failure modes and hazards", "description": "Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.", "evidence": [ "Conquest, displacement, massacres, and destruction of Indigenous political institutions.", "Catastrophic Indigenous population losses through introduced diseases interacting with warfare, forced labor, displacement, and deprivation.", "Enslavement of Indigenous people and mass transportation and exploitation of enslaved Africans.", "Suppression of Indigenous religions, languages, and social institutions.", "Historical accounts that treat Indigenous peoples as passive, equate European territorial claims with effective control, or impose one regional chronology on the entire hemisphere." ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-failure-modes-and-hazards-q01", "text": "Which of these failure modes and hazards hold for the sense of European colonization of the Americas this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-regional-variation", "name": "Regional variation", "description": "Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.", "evidence": [ "Spanish and Portuguese colonization included extensive territorial administrations, mining, missions, and plantation economies, with substantial differences across regions and periods.", "British, French, and Dutch projects combined settlement, trade, plantation slavery, and Indigenous alliances in different proportions; Caribbean colonies differed markedly from mainland colonies.", "Russian colonization in Alaska centered substantially on maritime fur extraction and coercive labor relations; Norse settlement around the year 1000 was an earlier, limited episode distinct from sustained post-1492 expansion." ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-regional-variation-q01", "text": "Which of these regional variation hold for the sense of European colonization of the Americas this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-neighbours", "name": "Neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart", "description": "Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.", "evidence": [ { "name": "European exploration of the Americas", "difference": "Exploration concerns voyages and geographic reconnaissance; colonization involves establishing durable settlements or structures of control." }, { "name": "Columbian exchange", "difference": "The Columbian exchange concerns transfers of organisms, diseases, and commodities between hemispheres; colonization concerns settlement, domination, and institutional transformation." }, { "name": "Atlantic slave trade", "difference": "The Atlantic slave trade concerns the forced transportation and sale of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic; it was integral to many colonial economies but does not encompass colonization as a whole." }, { "name": "Settler colonialism", "difference": "Settler colonialism is a broader analytical category emphasizing permanent settlement and Indigenous dispossession; European colonization of the Americas also included other colonial arrangements." }, { "name": "Decolonization of the Americas", "difference": "Decolonization concerns dismantling colonial rule or relationships; independence from European states did not necessarily end colonial relationships with Indigenous peoples." } ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-neighbours-q01", "text": "Which of these neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart hold for the sense of European colonization of the Americas this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] } ] } ] } ] }, "openQuestions": [ "Which inclusion criteria should govern early, short-lived or unsuccessful European settlements and projects that asserted authority without sustained occupation?", "How should regional endpoints account for independence, continuing European dependencies and arguments that settler colonial relationships persist under successor states?", "Which demographic reconstructions are sufficiently comparable across regions, and where do uncertain baselines prevent reliable aggregation?", "How should oral histories, archaeology and Indigenous-language records be brought into dialogue with colonial archives when their accounts or categories conflict?", "Which episode-specific definitions and evidence justify contested classifications such as genocide, and how should unresolved scholarly and community disagreements be represented?" ], "statistics": { "bundles": 7, "layers": 13, "findings": 19, "questions": 31 } }, "draft": { "generator": "vr.draft.v3", "status": "draft-generated", "researched": false, "archetype": "abstract concept", "method": "Written from the archetype playbook - what this kind of thing needs beyond identity and provenance - and from the structure that recurred across 6,333 models already researched by two engines. Applied to this entry by rule. No source was read for this thing and no claim here is researched. This entry carries no facets of its own, so they were inferred from its domain - a guess about a whole domain applied to one thing.", "facetsInferred": true, "nextPass": "A researcher replaces this draft with a sourced specification. Treat every sentence below as a proposal to argue with.", "purpose": "Give an agent a durable, checkable way to recognise a European colonization of the Americas, record what state it is in, and decide what may be done with it.", "whatItIs": "Enable an agent to identify, compare and assess episodes of European colonization of the Americas while distinguishing asserted authority, exercised control, affected peoples and contested interpretations.", "characteristics": { "substance": "activity", "origin": "conceptual", "agency": "inert" }, "whatYouCanDoWithIt": [ "observed and measured" ], "distinguishingFeatures": [ "Names folded into this entry, which a task may need to split apart again: Swedish colonization of the Americas.", "1 finer distinctions are held as aliases rather than separate entries, because telling them apart needs a task that asks for it.", "Described in 71 Wikipedia languages, which is a measure of how widely the thing is known, not of how important it is." ], "openQuestionsForResearch": [ "Which of the bundles below does a real task actually need, and which are ceremony?", "What does this thing have that the facets do not capture at all?", "Which neighbouring kind is most often confused with a European colonization of the Americas, and on what evidence are they told apart?" ], "whatItIsMadeOf": "something that happens over time", "physicalCharacter": [ "Does nothing on its own; everything it does, something else did to it.", "These come from the domain this entry sits in rather than from the entry itself, so treat them as a first guess about the whole domain applied to one thing." ], "whatCanBeDoneWithIt": [ "observe it, measure it, record its state" ], "howItIsRecognised": [ "Nothing to see. What is recognised is an instance of it, and which instances count is exactly what is argued about." ], "relatedModels": [ { "relation": "covers", "note": "Finer kinds folded into this entry because telling them apart needs a task that asks for it. Each is a model waiting to be split out when one does.", "targets": [ "Swedish colonization of the Americas" ] } ], "standing": "Described in 71 Wikipedia languages, which measures how widely it is written about rather than how important or how common it is. 1 finer distinctions are held inside this entry as names rather than as separate models.", "structure": { "bundles": [ { "id": "identity-and-classification", "name": "Identity, naming and classification", "description": "How an agent tells one European colonization of the Americas from another, and a European colonization of the Americas from things that resemble it.", "rationale": "Recognition comes before every other claim. Without stable identity nothing else in the model can be trusted to be about the same thing twice.", "layers": [ { "id": "naming-and-identifiers", "name": "Names and identifiers", "description": "The names this thing goes by and the identifiers that survive translation and time.", "findings": [ { "id": "preferred-name-and-aliases", "name": "Preferred name, aliases and local names", "description": "Which name to use, which names mean the same thing, and which merely sound similar.", "questions": [ { "id": "preferred-name-and-aliases-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the name of a European colonization of the Americas, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "preferred-name-and-aliases-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the name of a European colonization of the Americas, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "preferred-name-and-aliases-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the name of a European colonization of the Americas is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] }, { "id": "stable-identifiers", "name": "Stable identifiers and external keys", "description": "Identifiers that keep pointing at this kind of thing across systems and languages.", "questions": [ { "id": "stable-identifiers-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes an identifier for a European colonization of the Americas, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "stable-identifiers-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about an identifier for a European colonization of the Americas, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "stable-identifiers-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once an identifier for a European colonization of the Americas is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "classification-and-granularity", "name": "Classification and granularity", "description": "Where a European colonization of the Americas sits among kinds, and how finely a task needs to cut it.", "findings": [ { "id": "kind-and-parents", "name": "Kind, parents and neighbouring kinds", "description": "The classes this thing belongs to and the ones it is next to.", "questions": [ { "id": "kind-and-parents-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the kind of a European colonization of the Americas, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "kind-and-parents-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the kind of a European colonization of the Americas, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "kind-and-parents-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the kind of a European colonization of the Americas is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] }, { "id": "distinguishing-features", "name": "Distinguishing features", "description": "What separates a European colonization of the Americas from the things most often confused with it.", "questions": [ { "id": "distinguishing-features-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes what distinguishes a European colonization of the Americas, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "distinguishing-features-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about what distinguishes a European colonization of the Americas, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "distinguishing-features-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once what distinguishes a European colonization of the Americas is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "state-and-lifecycle", "name": "State and lifecycle", "description": "The states a European colonization of the Americas passes through and the events that move it between them.", "rationale": "Most decisions about a thing depend on what state it is in now, which is a claim with a time on it, not a property.", "layers": [ { "id": "lifecycle-stages", "name": "Lifecycle stages", "description": "From coming into existence to ceasing to be one of these.", "findings": [ { "id": "stages-and-transitions", "name": "Stages and transitions", "description": "The stages worth naming and what moves a European colonization of the Americas between them.", "questions": [ { "id": "stages-and-transitions-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the lifecycle of a European colonization of the Americas, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "stages-and-transitions-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the lifecycle of a European colonization of the Americas, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "stages-and-transitions-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the lifecycle of a European colonization of the Americas is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "observations-and-status", "name": "Observations and current status", "description": "What is observed about a European colonization of the Americas, how often and by whom.", "findings": [ { "id": "observation-record", "name": "Observation record", "description": "How an observation of a European colonization of the Americas is recorded so that it can be superseded rather than overwritten.", "questions": [ { "id": "observation-record-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes an observation of a European colonization of the Americas, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "observation-record-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about an observation of a European colonization of the Americas, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "observation-record-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once an observation of a European colonization of the Americas is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "process-and-outcome", "name": "Process, inputs and outcome", "description": "How a European colonization of the Americas proceeds, what it needs and what it leaves behind.", "rationale": "An activity is known by its steps and its results, and both have to be recordable while it is still running.", "layers": [ { "id": "steps-and-sequence", "name": "Steps and sequence", "description": "The steps of a European colonization of the Americas, their order and what may run in parallel.", "findings": [ { "id": "steps-and-preconditions", "name": "Steps, preconditions and completion", "description": "What has to be true before each step of a European colonization of the Americas and what marks it done.", "questions": [ { "id": "steps-and-preconditions-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes a step of a European colonization of the Americas, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "steps-and-preconditions-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about a step of a European colonization of the Americas, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "steps-and-preconditions-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once a step of a European colonization of the Americas is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "inputs-and-results", "name": "Inputs, resources and results", "description": "What a European colonization of the Americas consumes and what it produces.", "findings": [ { "id": "inputs-and-outputs", "name": "Inputs, outputs and side effects", "description": "The resources a European colonization of the Americas takes and the results it leaves, wanted or not.", "questions": [ { "id": "inputs-and-outputs-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the inputs and results of a European colonization of the Americas, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "inputs-and-outputs-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the inputs and results of a European colonization of the Americas, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "inputs-and-outputs-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the inputs and results of a European colonization of the Americas is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "definitions-in-contest", "name": "Definitions and who holds them", "description": "What European colonization of the Americas is taken to mean, and by whom.", "rationale": "When a field disagrees about a concept, the disagreement is the content. A model that picks one definition silently destroys the information.", "layers": [ { "id": "competing-definitions", "name": "Competing definitions", "description": "The main readings and the traditions behind them.", "findings": [ { "id": "definition-map", "name": "Definitions and their holders", "description": "Each definition with the school or body that holds it.", "questions": [ { "id": "definition-map-q01", "text": "Which definitions of European colonization of the Americas are in use, and which tradition or body holds each?", "kind": "definition" }, { "id": "definition-map-q02", "text": "What turns on the difference between them in practice?", "kind": "boundary" } ] } ] }, { "id": "operationalisation", "name": "Operationalisation", "description": "How it is measured or applied when it has to be.", "findings": [ { "id": "operational-record", "name": "Measures and proxies", "description": "Instruments and indicators used to stand in for it.", "questions": [ { "id": "operational-record-q01", "text": "How is European colonization of the Americas operationalised or measured in practice, and by what instrument?", "kind": "measurement" }, { "id": "operational-record-q02", "text": "What does that operationalisation leave out, and when does that matter?", "kind": "boundary" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "instances-and-use", "name": "Instances, use and consequence", "description": "What counts as an instance of European colonization of the Americas and what follows from calling something that.", "rationale": "Applying a concept is an act with consequences, so a model must say what the label licenses and what it does not.", "layers": [ { "id": "instances", "name": "What counts as an instance", "description": "Clear cases, borderline cases and non-cases.", "findings": [ { "id": "instance-tests", "name": "Tests for an instance", "description": "What would settle whether something falls under it.", "questions": [ { "id": "instance-tests-q01", "text": "What would settle whether something is an instance of European colonization of the Americas?", "kind": "boundary" }, { "id": "instance-tests-q02", "text": "Which borderline cases are argued about, and on what grounds?", "kind": "definition" } ] } ] }, { "id": "consequence", "name": "Consequence of application", "description": "Rights, duties or decisions that follow from the label.", "findings": [ { "id": "consequence-record", "name": "What the label licenses", "description": "What an agent may do once something is classified this way.", "questions": [ { "id": "consequence-record-q01", "text": "What follows practically once something is treated as European colonization of the Americas?", "kind": "action" }, { "id": "consequence-record-q02", "text": "What must an agent not infer from the label alone?", "kind": "action" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "provenance-and-evidence", "name": "Provenance, evidence and time", "description": "Where every claim about a European colonization of the Americas came from and when it held.", "rationale": "A claim without a source and a time cannot be superseded, only overwritten, and an agent that overwrites loses the ability to explain itself.", "layers": [ { "id": "source-and-authority", "name": "Source and authority", "description": "Who said it, on what evidence, and how strongly.", "findings": [ { "id": "claim-provenance", "name": "Claim provenance and confidence", "description": "The authority behind each claim about a European colonization of the Americas and how confident it is.", "questions": [ { "id": "claim-provenance-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes a claim about a European colonization of the Americas, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "claim-provenance-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about a claim about a European colonization of the Americas, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "claim-provenance-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once a claim about a European colonization of the Americas is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "time-and-versions", "name": "Time, versions and supersession", "description": "When a claim was true, when it was learnt, and what replaced it.", "findings": [ { "id": "validity-and-supersession", "name": "Validity period and supersession", "description": "How an old claim about a European colonization of the Americas is retired without being erased.", "questions": [ { "id": "validity-and-supersession-q01", "text": "What identifies and describes the validity of a claim about a European colonization of the Americas, and in what units or vocabulary?", "kind": "definition", "answer_data": [ "identifiers", "types and classes", "values with units", "explicit unknowns" ] }, { "id": "validity-and-supersession-q02", "text": "Who or what asserted this about the validity of a claim about a European colonization of the Americas, by which method, and when was it true?", "kind": "provenance", "answer_data": [ "authority", "method", "evidence", "event time", "knowledge time" ] }, { "id": "validity-and-supersession-q03", "text": "What may an agent decide or do once the validity of a claim about a European colonization of the Americas is known, and what must it refuse?", "kind": "action", "answer_data": [ "permitted actions", "preconditions", "refusals", "escalation" ] } ] } ] } ] } ] }, "statistics": { "bundles": 6, "layers": 12, "findings": 14, "questions": 38 } } } }