Indigenous people vs. Conquering (immigrated people)

Factual Questions
21

As Colibri says, New Zealand is probably one of the best cases in point- despite there being some tensions and issues over the subject, I think it’s widely regarded the Maori got an extraordinarily good deal (especially by the standards of the era) - basically full British Citizenship, same as the colonists, almost straight off the bat.

Obviously things aren’t perfect for the Maori even today, but IMO a lot of the issues relate to having their culture swamped by the European colonists and the lingering economic disadvantages that came with going from the stone age to the 19th Century pretty much overnight.

22

Scotland was not conquered by English invasion. A Scottish king inherited the English throne, couldn’t get both parliaments to agree to a union, but eventually they did in order to make sure one of his Protestant descendants got to be king of the united country, rather than one of his Catholic ones. Admittedly, there may well have been economic and fiscal pressure to get the Scottish parliament to take the final decision, but they had invested all their financial eggs into a very leaky basket.

23

The cultural aspect is the most interesting to me.

To the degree the natives & the invaders meld cultures things smooth over and a couple hundred years later all that’s left is some small fraction of ethnic natives who celebrate the Good Old Days and nurse their (justified) grudge.

To the degree the natives want to, or are forced to, live separately in enclaves as if the invasion never happened, well that’s simply a recipe for a frozen conflict and eternal resentment.

Ultimately, most human cultures progress over time socio-politically, technologically, and economically, albeit not all at the same rate or in the same exact directions.

A native population that chooses to say “Our culture in year X just before the invaders arrived defines us forever. We must hew to that standard with no progress forevermore” is choosing to step off the escalator of history and enter a vortex of permanent failure and despair.

IANA expert on the details, but when the Spaniards encountered the Maya, Inca, and Aztec cultures the sociopolitical differences were small (kings & priests in charge, a merchant class, and a mass of peasants), the technological ones represented just a few hundred years progress, and the economics weren’t that different. A pocket of mostly still purebred Incas choosing to live the old way now in the 21st Century have chosen to be left vastly behind.

The error in a cultural absorption is the natural tendency for the absorbed to fetishize their immediate pre-invasion culture without recognizing that it quit independently evolving at that time. Had the invasion never happened, it would still have continued evolving from that time forward to today and on into the future.

IOW, just as white NZ culture has changed since the 1800s, so would have undiscovered Maori culture.

To be sure, history is full of examples of cultures that got stuck; thinking “we’re as advanced as we want to be. Change is Evil.” And almost all of those have been eaten by more advanced cultures in classic Darwinian fashion. Russia’s current klepto-fascist political culture and gangster-centric economic culture is busy being destroyed from within even now. It may not go quietly, but it’ll be unrecognizable in 100 years.

Progress is not guaranteed. The world may become more of a dystopia than a utopia. Change however is guaranteed; entities that want to live in the Goode Olde Dayes according to the Goode Olde Wayes are doomed to marginalization and decay.

24

No, it wouldn’t. Same with the Aboriginal cultures in Australia. They were basically unchanged for literally tens of thousands of years (well, a thousand years or so in the case of the Maori) before the Europeans showed up. There’s absolutely no basis to think they would have advanced or changed in the 200 years or so since then if left to their own devices.

I’m not arguing for (here, at least) the benefits of Colonialism & Western Civilisation; I’m just saying it’s a matter of fact the Maori (and the Aborigines, for that matter) simply didn’t have the resources or the know-how to develop steel, or gunpowder, or electricity on their own.

What they did have was the adaptability to make full use of those things when they showed up with the Europeans - for example, the Maori loved guns and displayed a very real affinity towards them and ability to effectively use them, as the British found out the hard way during the Maori Wars.

25

Tell that to the Bretons and the Basques.

26

The Maori weren’t conquered though; I’m not sure if they meet the requirements of the OP. Invaded, yes, conquered no.

27

I’ve worked with a number of Native Americans, and they just went about their day like any other person. If they did hold grudges over 100 year old wars, they didn’t bother mentioning it.

I’m also not sure what OP means about the “constant news.” I lived in South Dakota for a long time and perceived no such thing. The vast majority of Native Americans just went about their lives like normal people. If there was conflict in the news it was usually the result of activists that represented the most extreme 1%.

28

Eh… definitely a somewhat-too-strong take on the “la la la I can’t hear you” method of linguistic assimilation, but at the same time both groups are strong parts of the French mythos about themselves. Remove from French literature any character from the Pays Basque and you’ve basically gutted the Lit curriculum.

29

Umm… you can tell the Normans, they’re the ones in the House of Lords? (yeah, yeah, they sell the seats now, but why spoil a good joke?)

Certainly their hearts went out to the Mohawks, particularly at Ste Marie Among the Hurons.

The French in Canada, perhaps due to economic lethargy of their still feudal system. Rather than transplanting large quantities of eager farmers, they expanded very little (which probably helped keep the peace) and instead tried to establish a massive network of trading posts from Montreal around the backside of the British colonies down to Louisiana. No wonder the Indians loved them, they traded fancy beads and firearms for beaver pelts.

But whether it was Haiti or other Caribbean locations, apparently they could be as nasty as any other European slave-owning plantation economy.

The group I wonder about is the Metis of western Canada; they assert their rights as a founding nation, even though the white man was there 9 months before the Metis.

My observation of the Canadian situation is that there is an “Indian Industry”. The Canadian government pays for the running of quasi-governmental organizations for the native groups. The people in these groups straddle a careful divide - the criticize and complain enough to keep their needs and wants in the public forum, and hence money flowing; but not so strenuously as to bite the hand that feeds them strong enough to draw blood. meanwhile, nowhere near enough of this money flows to the people who actually need it. (Their biggest complaint in the last election was that the previous government had mandated they post band finance audits and chiefs’ large tax-free salaries on the internet.)

30

An interesting article in the NYT recently about the Jarawa tribe on South Andaman Island. India has taken extraordinary steps to prevent the outside world from intruding on this small tribe, whose people are still living much like they have always lived.

31

Right. Apartheid only officially ended in 1991, and its brutality and injustice are much too recent not to have left deep scars on the relationship.

While some Maori recognized British sovereignty peacefully in the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, there was significant resistance. The British and Maori fought a series of small but sometimes brutal wars between 1845 and 1872 in which Maori rebels were eventually defeated. You can’t really say they weren’t conquered.

32

Mongols/Chinese? Both groups invaded/conquered/were conquered by each other at different times over the centuries. Do they tolerate each other today, or are old grudges kept alive for future generations?

33

I was referring to colonization of the americas, not ancient stuff. If you said “tell that to the Vietnamese/Indochinese” it might be accurate.

Not talking about Africa either, though I think the French/British were the least malevolent there.

I don’t think the Breton independence movement is very popular, n’est-ce pas? And the Basques hold a bigger grudge against Spain than France, especially as the former took more concerted efforts to suppress Basque culture and language.

34

Or the Algerians or the Vietnamese.

35

“Ancient stuff”? I tend to think of “ancient” as “pre-medieval.” Brittany was only incorporated in 1532, and had a separate parliament until 1789.

My point wasn’t to win the “who suffered most” contest (I would lose putting the Bretons against the Algerians, that’s for sure!), but to point out that England, France, Spain, etc. have all built their nations on conquest and forced assimilation. New World conquest was on a different scale and at a different speed due to technology and disease, and the modern notions of race, but the fundamental principles aren’t that different.

36
37

What was the legal situation from 1991 to 1994?
I know in sports several non white teams toured RSA. Windies, Pakistan. India. Can’t say any of them would have done in apartheid.

38

Several apartheid-era laws were overturned, and post-unbanning of the ANC, the whole machinery of oppression was winding down, but we didn’t get to vote until '94, and that’s why '94 is the end of apartheid.

39

You are forgetting the Caribbean is part of the Americas, right? I’m guessing the local native population in the areas they conquered in the Caribbean had already been reduced thanks to previous contact with the Spanish and Portuguese. I am under no illusions that, if they had financed the first trips, they would have been any more benevolent towards the Taínos and other Arawak people in the Caribbean than the Spanish were.

Also, although not quite “native”, Haiti is a good example on how “benevolent” France was as a colonizer. :rolleyes:

40

Forgive me for asking so, but you are in an interracial relationship from what you have posted.

When did that become legal?