That's the whole problem with all this 'colonialism' talk. Colonialism is an invention of European scholars and today we somehow want to make it uniquely European.
Taking over other places around you and politically dominating it is as old as history.
You can't use colonialism as an explanation for anything because in the whole world there were wars and people taking over their neighbors.
Its a matter of linguistics and historiography when we use the term 'colony'.
I believe it's important to acknowledge a distinction between, as you say, politically dominating a region with an intention of expanding the home country and depleting a region of its wealth, exporting it away while imposing an administration with no willingness to co-operate with local population other than for the purposes of wealth extraction.
Pretty much all invasions start with taking over resources and the longer they are part of your empire, it will become more integrated it becomes. And in a time of kingship and emperors most regions never got series political representation.
And its also a limited history of colonialism to claim its only wealth extraction above and beyond what other empires would do.
> while imposing an administration with no willingness to co-operate with local population
If anything Europeans because of their limited population had more intensive to do so.
The British take over of much of India was literally a vastly majority Indian affair. The war was fought by Indian troops, supplied by Indian merchants and farmers, it was financed by taking loans from Indian bankers. The amount of British people involved were almost vanishingly small given the size of India.
Did Indians have more control over involvement over India then Greeks did over Greece in the Ottoman empire?
I don't think you can make any generalization that European invasions of other countries were uniquely destructive or extractive compared to world history. There are certainty cases like Kind Leopold's regime in Congo but we can't reduce 600 years of European history to that.
That the colonial power aims to stay/settle/control in the lands conquered, and extract something from them/trade with or from them.
The Swedish in the Thirty years war didn't intend to settle or claim the lands they were fighting in - they just fought against a religious enemy and for power/influence/French money. ( Pomerania is somewhat of an exception).
