In this article I reconstruct the process by which the term colony became a socio-political concept towards the end of the eighteenth century, a process which took place in connection with the Bourbon reforms, the rise of absolutism, the Atlantic revolutions (including the North American and the Haitian), the emergence of a Republican imaginary and the strengthening of local elites. Contrary to widespread belief, the descriptive evaluative notion of colony was not alien to late 18th century American intellectual elites. Furthermore, such defi nitions of the colonial experience became central to the political culture of the period by designating an experience of political negativity from which it became necessary and urgent to think and refl ect upon the foundation of a new sovereignty.