I’ve seen it used all my life (I’m 48), but less and less since…I guess the early 90s…being displaced progressively by “developing countries”. But it’s the first time I see a mention of it being considered insulting. I find this strikingly interesting : witnessing language evolution in action.
Not surprising. Everything with a negative connotation ends up being considered as offensive. I have an issue with that, frankly. Changing the name of something doesn’t make the underlying issue go away. I assume that 40 years down the road, someone will post on the SD : BTW, “developing countries” is considered an insulting term, etc…even though people have used and are using both terms as mere technical descriptors, not as insults.
This cycle where we have to change the name of all not so nice things every generation or so is ludicrous, if you ask me.
What is weird is listening to people who are obviously of European descent (presumably Spanish) explaining how bad Spaniards treated “them”. :dubious: It would be like an average WASP American complaining about the “British who massacred and enslaved us” (identifying with natives and blacks alike).
(Educated) Brazilians have often told me they wished the Dutch had remained on top in Brazil, they have this bizarre idea that everything would’ve been better if they’d been colonised by the Dutch. I tell them to read up about Indonesia. They’re quite specific about this idea though, they think they would’ve had great infrastructure and things.
They also have this strange trauma about not fighting their way to independence, but just buying it. Again, I tell them to read up on the independence wars.
The relationships people have with, and the narratives they have crafted about “their experience” of colonial times are a strange thing. Interesting, though.
While – as posters on the thread have remarked – playing “who was nicer, who was nastier, as a colonial power” is a fairly pointless and profitless thing to do: especially in the New World, we British also, were until roughly the end of the 18th century, deeply involved in the slave trade and slaveholding, in a highly ugly way. Perceptions of what’s OK and what is beyond the pale, tend to change over the centuries.
That episode has always struck me as a dreadful one; but nobody behaves particularly well, when trying to hold on to a country from which the local people want them gone. We Brits, when in that position, have done some thoroughly shameful stuff.
I’ve always felt that to be a male Dutch citizen, born 1930-ish; and thus to go in late childhood / adolescence through the rigours of WW2 German occupation, and to know how it felt to be on the “victim” end of such a deal; and then after WW2 was over, to be conscripted for attempted putting-down of the Indonesian rebels – must have completely sucked. I’m glad that – if I have it rightly from the context – your father did not in fact have to go to fight “out east”.
One feels that the intermarrying (or as you say, “inter”-but-not-marrying) must have had benign aspects, whilst also making for problems. I gather – please, people correct me if I’m off-base here – that this happened to a great extent in the earlier days of Britain’s rule of India; but from roughly the mid-19th century – with progress in various fields, making it more feasible for British women to, “in quantity” travel out to India and live there; consorting sexually with Indians came to be seen as – and observed as – very much a “no-no” for the British. In the main, when it happened at all, it was casually, on the part of British “low-lifes”; whereas those few brave / reckless / lovelorn souls higher up the social “tree”, who went ahead and married across the racial divide, often had life made very difficult for them.
At first reading of this post, I confusedly misread: “green skin and pink eyes”. An alien from elsewhere in the universe, complaining about colonization – now that is weird !
I am an American man married to an Indonesian woman. My wife is half Indonesian, half Dutch, or ‘Indo’ and she would be described in Indonesia. We have travelled to Indonesia and Holland to spend time with both sides of her family.
One of her brothers in Indonesia told me “we would have been better off if we had been colonized by the British!” during a conversation about his take on Dutch colonization. When I asked him if the Indonesians he knows are resentful or have ill will towards Holland or the Dutch people, he said no, not at all.
In Holland we never spoke of Dutch history with Indonesia. But I did hear a few comments that can be described as a sense of shame or embarrassment of their family history over in Indonesia.
My wife’s father was captured by the Japanese and sent to Burma to work on the railroad. He was lucky to have survived. My wife’s Indonesian family told me he rabidly despised the Japanese for the way they treated Indonesians. Horribly cruel.
Sorry to continue the hijackt, but: To those who claim that “third world” is not an insulting term, how many “third world” citizens do you interact with on a regular basis? Historical roots aside, the term came to denote poor countries in general. I have lived in developing countries almost all of my adult life, and know from first hand experience that citizens of so-called “third world” countries find the term to be an insult.
“Third world” was replaced by “less developed countries” for a while - I can recall when the term LDC was in vogue, and if you Google the term you get plenty of hits. Then it was decided that LDC was demeaning, so “developing countries” took its place. (Google also disambiguates LDC to “developing country”, I see.)
No doubt some new term will arise (North/South seems to be gaining traction as a substitute to “developed” and “developing” countries) and 10 years from now people will be discussing the offensiveness levels of a whole new set of terms that have come and gone. That’s just human nature. Meanwhile, my rule is: if I know that a large group of people will be offended by a particular term to refer to them, and an alternative term is available to me, I’ll choose the non-offensive (or at least less offensive!) term.
I agree completely with your last part, about knowing what might be offensive in a certain situation. I would add, however, that “third world” still has its place, as the effects related to the Cold War are still relevant today (eg talking about Angola as a third world country calls to mind its position during the Cold War and the effects of that today, the connotation is useful). “Developing” usually seems a lot less useful to me, because the context is unclear. We are all developing, and it isn’t clear when we would be developed. It also seems far more pejorative to me. North/South, for obvious reasons, does not say the same thing as the other terms, and is even less clear when trying to use it for the same thing. Australia should presumably end up north?
In academic circles, when discussing the issue, it’s usually just stated as a problem, and then the author says which term they are going to use. It’s good enough for me. There will be problems with any new concoction we might come up with anyway.
In Brazil (my go-to example, I lived there) people used to ask, when I said where I came from: “é primeiro mundo?” - “is it the first world?” Awkward question! But to them it seemed a perfectly normal thing to ask. It didn’t bother them, it was just a factoid about where I came from.
Bonus fun fact about the Dutch being nasty and the North-South divide: there is a very famous Dutch children’s choir, whose opening song “Kinderen voor kinderen” (also their name) says: “a child born south of the equator will often grow up to be a beggar” [“Een kind onder de evenaar wordt later vaak een bedelaar”]. Yup. Nice. (They may not sing this anymore, this was probably just in the '80s when I was a kid. Still doesn’t excuse it though…)
Most Mexicans are a mix of Spanish and Native American. Many of them idealize one culture, and despise the other. But you can never tell by appearances, which one they will idolize, and which one they will demonize.
My dad was born in 1932, and I think you nailed it in your description. I’ll ask him about it when I see him in a couple days.
From what I know, there was not much of a taboo for a Dutch man in marrying an Indonesian woman. For a Dutch woman marrying an Indonesian man, more so. The mixed kids from marriages, “Indo’s” as toofs said, pretty much had the status of their dad, both with the Dutch and the Indonesians. So after a while, many of the Dutch upper caste were ethnically mixed. But they were culturally Dutch, and most were expelled/chose to leave after the independence.
My old Indo neighbour used to tell me that when she was a kid in the 1930’s 1940’s, there were three ways in which you could have status in Indonesia:
To be a decendant of one of the old little courts (there were many rivalling courts with local “royalty” pre- and during the Dutch occupation, and many of those kings and princes had multiple wives, so if you threw a rock in Bali you had a fair chance of hitting a prince or princess).
To be Dutch or to have a Dutch (legally married) ancestor.
To be light skinned and beautiful (she was talking about girls).
In my opinion the global portrayal of liberal and tolerant Dutch is a bit wrong, because…
…to some degree this is still in existence [emphasis mine]. I would also say that the integration of other cultures isn’t as successful in the Netherlands as it is portrayed to be. Moreover, the Dutch are tolerant as long as you “play nice”. I’ve noticed Dutch behaving this way in the Netherlands and several other countries in Europe/Africa/North America. I don’t mean the rigid social caste, as there is practically no “power distance” in the Netherlands, but someone’s (supposed) racial / cultural background still matters.
Not to say that other nations/cultures aren’t far worse, because in general they are, but it doesn’t make the Dutch as “saintly” as some make them to be.
Right. You can see a rather schizophrenic pattern to Dutch colonialism in North America. On the one hand carefully kowtowing to the Iroquois, whom they were dependent on for the valuable fur trade and where there was no territorial conflict. On the other hand waging near-genocidal campaigns against more local to New Netherlands river Algonquians, who provided little in way of valuable trade goods and occupied land that the Dutch governors wished settled and farmed to feed both the local colony, but also potentially the West Indies sugar colonies.
I’m a rather naive and Pollyanna-ish type – “know with head” that in the main, humans are pretty nasty and domineering and xenophobic, but “feel with gut” that many individuals worldwide – nationality, irrespective – are mostly OK; and that alongside that, some nations tend to be nicer / kinder / more liberal overall, than others. (Can one get any vaguer?) Have always had a vague sorta-kinda feeling that my own compatriots on the whole, are kindly, tolerant souls; and that the Dutch seemed first-equal / second with us, in those stakes. Call me ludicrously naive; but my first hearing, a few years ago, about how badly the Dutch often behaved in their role as colonial masters – rather shook me. Hence my starting this thread. More understood via this thread, than I had before – thanks to all participants.
Will refrain from opining about "should colonisation by the Europeans, of ‘out there’, ever have happened at all? – don’t want to make too much of a jackass of myself.
I agree that the two (past and present) images don’t seem to match because of the progressive, liberal, tolerant atmosphere in the Netherlands. And for the most part the Netherlands is that place.
Therefore I think most Dutch people won’t agree with what I posted earlier (my Dutch brethren will chime in soon). I am curious to see what they think of it.
Oh, I agree with you that in the proper context, “third world” has a specific meaning and should be used. When academics who know what they are talking about have a discussion that involves the historical “third world”, they aren’t being offensive. Mostly when I hear the term, though, it’s being bandied about as a synonym for “countries with lots and lots of poverty.”
You are 200 years late - European colonisation started in the early 1700s.
As for the Dutch (whom I also have an affection for) do you not remember the Boer War? 1898-1901. There are war memorials throughout NZ and Australia commemorating the deaths of Commonwealth soldiers. The Boer War was still talked about and taught when I were a lad in the 1960s.
Hmm lemme think…
(I’m only a little bit Dutch, not very Dutch. But I used to own a pair of clogs a long time ago. So I hope I’m Dutch enough!)
I kinda agree. Of course the current tolerance is completely down the drain with our lovely brand of xenophobia, mainly since the noughties. Though I think I’m seeing some improvement since insano-peroxide-head (aka Wilders) is basically out. (Did you see on the news the guy in his party who converted to Islam? The bonkers levels of radicalism in that party are safely becoming a joke, rather than a threat, and it’s comforting.)
The general perception of tolerance and liberalism in the Netherlands is, IMHO, a myth. The attitude is just a completely different one. In the Netherlands, people don’t care what someone else does as long as they are not affected, and that’s where it differs with other countries. This seems tolerant at first, but isn’t really. When SSM was legalised, it was because people just shrugged and said “I don’t care what dirty gays do, as long as I don’t have to marry a dude”. Of course there are also communities that really are tolerant and open, but largely the difference, at that time, was not acceptance of homosexuality, it was just how much you care about what the people around you do. It’s a different story now, I think. Along with the law, tolerance and openness really has come.
The same thing sort of goes for immigrants. In that sense, I agree with what you said about “as long as you play nice”. The tolerance is only on the surface. Hopefully it will deepen, as it did with SSM. In many places it has, my urban area really is a melting pot and a very nice one at that. With Wilders on the way out, I have hope.
