Firstly, I’d like to see how a “european vs. everyone else” ethnocentrism isn’t inherently racist. Secondly, this thread addresses specifically those fuckers who suggest Africa needs a return to colonialism because Africans are incapable of ruling themselves. I don’t care how you slice it, that last is a racist statement, and has its roots in centuries of objectification and subhumanisation of the African. It’s a line from Sarah Baartman to *Tintin in the Congo *to “poor people can’t run a country” - all the while ignoring one of the main reasons why those people are so fucked-up in the first place.
Scissorjack, I would argue that just because they were not yet a Crown colony doesn’t make those Westerners not representative of Colonialism in general, any less than the various private companies who initially settled NE North America were (e.g Jamestown). The point is that Colonialism, as an ideology, kills people en masse (mostly because its main concern is the bottom line), not to quibble over which particular colonial regime did the killing. In other words, it was an indictment of Colonialism, not the British specifically. I thought it was the French-supplied Hurons who wiped out the Mohicans, for instance.
It never gets brought up for, say, Russia, which is a fucked-up country run by a strongman and his cronies. No-one suggested that Kosovo would be better off colonised. Hell, when the US clearly had a stolen election and a warmongering aggressive regime, no-one seriously suggested that maybe they’d be better under European rule.
It’s just us darkies who get the special treatment, and if that’s not racist, I don’t know what is.
My statement was that most of Africa was better off under ‘colonial’ government than they are now - note: not all, just most.
It is not particularly controversial.
I have never, and would never, advocate imposing ‘colonial’ administration on any state - simply because it would not work.
I’m not interested in the ‘moral’ reasons (I don’t do ‘morals’ - but do ethics). Nowadays it is technologically impossible to impose a regime on other people, so it is not worth considering whether it is desirable.
Your ancestors absorbed Europeans (mainly I think sailors not soldiers) and learnt tricks from them - especially how to defend themselves.
I’m not particularly interested in the genetics, but am interested in the cultural aspect - being able to pick up the more useful traits from other cultures is, in my view, something to be regarded with admiration.
For example, in Europe, Norsemen (called Vikings - which is incorrect) made life unpleasant for the French. They were invited to settle an area, rather than maraud, and picked up cultural traits - military skills, architectural skills, adminstrative skills that made them formidable.
Hmm… I get a bit sick of people coming out with stuff that learnt but not thought about - a bit like Animal Farm.
Tibet must be something of a powder keg, I gather they have settled huge numbers of Chinese there, which is probably not very pleasant for the Chinese or the Tibetans.
I wonder what they do all day, the place is not exactly brimming with natural resources - I gather that one of their exports is replica ceremonial drinking cups made from human skulls - but can’t think of much else.
My point was, though, that a New Zealand colonial regime didn’t kill the Moriori, and an official government would in fact probably have prevented the massacre: the indigenous Maori did the killing and enslaving. You could argue, I suppose, that whichever European captained the ship - and, assuming he was aware of Maori intentions, he was certainly an accessory to the act - was culpable in adding the means to the Maori motive and opportunity.
That, though, seems awfully and ironically close to the “dangerous children” argument often used by colonisers themselves to justify controlling native populations: the poor benighted heathen need European strictures for their own good, since they can’t be trusted with rum, firearms or sailing ships. The captain had his price, certainly, but the Maori seem to me to have had their own “bottom line” when they planned their little excursion.
There does seem to be a double standard at work here: if convict settlers massacre Tasmanian Aborigines, it’s colonialism that’s to blame; if Maori massacre Moriori, it’s also colonialism that’s to blame. Not that I’m excusing the genocide that was perpetrated on the Aborigines; it was an abominable episode in Australian history. What the Maori did to the Moriori, though, was equally abominable, or do they as an indigenous population simply get a free moral pass? At what point does culpabilty attach to non-European populations, or is it simply a case of Brown Good, White Wicked?
Can you come up with something by Amartya Sen that backs up your views
I have a great deal of respect for the guy
mainly from being in a small room in Nuffield where a bunch of eminent economists were talking nonsense - and he gently explained the blindingly obvious.
Read that carefully - it is utter crap - written by total bone heads like the ones Sen gently nudged.
Mercantilism is useless - you can’t eat silver or gold - it just leads to inflation
No native production = no useful exports - so Birmingham was producing steel for nothing ?
In 1800 India might have been providing 25% of world GDP, but I think that unlikely, by 1900 the USA was getting big on the scene - so the cake gets bigger. Realistically India was about 5% of world trade (and don’t dispute me because I know that the statistics are crap - in 1980 I walked away from researching them for a Prof of Economic History as even I can’t bake bricks with no clay and no straw)
Cake gets bigger - India looks smaller.
The famine stuff looks familiar, I’ve memories that some idiot stored grain in railway cuttings - spectacularly stupid.
Mr Dibble , I’m not about to apologize for something someone’s great grandad did. Africa for the most part is unstable and everyone knows it. The problem arose from the rapid advancement of technology; and new dependency on a european style infrastructure that they are unable or unwilling to maintain. While they seem to be unwilling to work hard at keeping this new system, they certainly don’t want to give it up either. At the time of Colonialism, many african countries had yet to undergo an agricultural revolution, much less anindustrial one. Most likely it was since they were already well adapted to their resources and society did not necessitate one.
Did Europeans mistakenly take that for inferiority? Absolutely. Did they institute broad policy based on race? They certainly did. Was that a wrong thing to do? Indeed it was.
However, the current conditions in many african countries are deplorable, and no amount of white apologetics are going to convinve me to excuse the africans for their hand in maintaining the new status quo. We know we can’t go back, and it seems that not enough of the population has the tools to go forward. I still fail to see how placing some of these problem countries under foreign rule would be inherently racist . It isn’t the nature of an african’s biology that is keeping them down, it’s the nature of the culture being unsuitable to meeting a global standard.
That’s a what-if game - there are instances of even official colonial powers standing by while one lot of “favoured natives” slaughtered another group. You’d like to think the Crown would have prevented the Maori from slaughtering the Moriori, I don’t see that that’s necessarily true.
Culpable as hell, IMO, which, if I believed in it, is where I would assign him.
Oh yes, I don’t stint on blaming the Maori - they definitely own the lion’s share of the blame for the attacks. I don’t think their share of culpability is any lessened just because I happen to think the ship charterers also need a little.
I mean, they kept people like pigs and slaughtered and ate them, I’m not letting them off lightly. I think the whole affair was possibly the worst recorded actions of human beings I’ve ever encountered, even more so than the Holocaust or Aztec sacrifices. Words failed me, and I’ve never looked on the supposedly-proud Maori native culture the same way since.
I’m not seeing the double-standard if both genocides are a direct result of Europe’s colonising efforts.
Not in the slightest. But just because it was the Maoris doing the killing, doesn’t mean they weren’t being the agents of Colonialism.
Of course, would’t think otherwise, was just pointing out the racism inherent in the way it’s always Africa that gets singled out for the New Colonial Effort. Didn’t mean to suggest White Africans aren’t African.
[aside]
Funny how the Boers, the (IMO) sufficiently Africanised descendants of colonists, were the amongst the biggest resisters of British colonial efforts. Not that it did them much good at the time.[/aside]
