So are we giving back Australia?
The time has come.
A fact’s a fact.
It belongs to them.
Let’s give it back!
So, you are saying that your ancestors were too stupid to figure anything out for themselves? You are saying that they were too stupid to learn from others? Is that really your point?
The Europeans did not invent everything by themselves. They borrowed a lot of information from China and the Indian subcontinent through trade with the Arabs.
There were also non-white cultures that learned from Europeans and who were very possibly on their way to matching Europe in terms of education, (and, hence, technology), in Africa before the Europeans and Arabs undermined their societies in a quest for chattel slaves.
It is an accident of history that peoples in the Americas were invaded by Europeans bringing gunpowder and disease. Without those two agents, there is no reason to believe that American societies could not have met the Europeans on a more equal footing as trade partners and ascended the technological ladder in step with the Europeans.
Since no one here has made any such silly claim, your straw man “argument” is out of place and irrelevant.
Disagree. Spaniards for the most part (95%+) are NOT Mexicans or related to in any way – unless you count 4/5/6 generations. In fact, you are promoting a stereotype/ignorance which I fell victim of quite a few times.
“Funny you don’t look Mexican at all” – I am not. Which is not to say that Mexicans can’t comprise any ethnic group. And do. Look up Mitt Romney.
Why weren’t Eastern Europe and Asia enough for the barbarian hordes that overran the Roman Empire and the West? Why wasn’t Arabia enough for the followers of Mohammed? Why weren’t the Asian steppes enough for the tribes that crossed the landbridge to America and became the Native Americans? Why wasn’t Africa enough for the original humans?
It’s the migratory instinct which has been part of being human since we first issued from the caves.
No, but the whitey/european/some other stuff added culture was better for allowing “progress” of all sorts of forms. Which is kinda why they progressed.
Yeah, eventually the Indians, or the Africans or somebody might (probably) would have developed a socio/economic/scientific/religious/intellectual/something or other mindset that allowed them to make the progression from tribal life to the industrial revolution to walkin on the moon and computers and sharks with lasers on their heads and shit.
But whitey/european culture lead the way. Sure they did lots of bad shit. So did pretty much everyone else. Difference is, they got “us” up to where we are today and the future is so bright I am gonna need shades. Everybody else claiming theyd “could have done it too” rings rather weak to me. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Yeah, you probably COULD have. But you didn’t. I don’t hate “you” because you didn’t. Don’t hate “me” because “I” did.
I have never seen any evidence of that. There are a number of societies that were stopped by European encroachments before they could develop in the same way and, following WWII, those societies that have not had European interference or ongoing internal conflicts have “joined” industrial society.
The OP made no claims that Europeans were evil. She took explicit note of the fact that a certain subset of “white pride” idiots were willing to be dismissive of non-European peoples in the context of European suppression of those peoples.
There are a couple of posters who simply take the opposite tack and denigrate Europeans and their descendants for being nasty, but that is not the general view put forth in this thread and the appropriate response to such views is not to twist history or make absurd claims that some inherent quality meant that only Europeans could have accomplished what they did.
I’ll agree that it’s very likely that most of the Native American tribes of North America might have developed into advanced civilizations, but that had nothing to due with their “culture” or “stupidity” but other factors discussed by Jared Diamond and others.
However, it should be noted there were advanced societies in the Americas prior to the coming of “the Europeans”, most notably the Mayans and the Aztecs.
I know very little about pre-colonial history in the Americas but I’m sure people who do could go on at much greater length.
Beyond that Bill, just because you may be of Native American descent hardly means you’re an expert on your ancestors from centuries ago.
I am certainly quite interested in the modern Middle East and Iran, but I know very little about and frankly am not terribly interested in Ancient Persia.
Similarly, most Greeks I know couldn’t care less about the Ancient Greeks and with rare exceptions most Egyptians have similar attitudes towards Egypt prior to the coming of the Arabs.
Who said that? Heck, who even implied it?
Europeans did it first. And they just kept on going. IMO some other civilizations putzed around. Or came and went. And some others got kicked down by the Europeans or just got beaten to the punch by the Europeans. Thats pretty much how any competition goes.
Did I make that claim?
Like I said, you need to travel more.
You did:
Heck, ~20 years ago, it was Japan who was supposed to eat our economic lunch.
And, ironically, since the 80s, America seems to have really gained a huge soft-spot for sushi.
In all seriousness, isn’t it in everyone’s best interest that our respective economies find some equilibrium, now that Asia, et al, are becoming huge economic powers?
[Quote=An Gadaí]
I’d be genuinely curious whether there are significant examples of colonisers actually working primarily for the betterment of local populace and not as vampires. I know in Ireland that some plantation owners worked to create industry and education within their purviews but was any colonial project ever explicitly (and actually) for the betterment of the natives?
[/quote]
I don’t know that it was “primarily” for the betterment of the locals, but that attitude was certainly a part of British colonization in particular. See The White Man’s Burden:
In India, for example, Thomas Babington Macauley made education a priority, and opened thousands of schools, and some universities.
The British Raj also introduced a modern, secular legal code, introduced heavy industry, and rail travel.
George Curzon is a good place to start with your question, as Viceroy of India he was a vigorous social reformer.
Why wasn’t Rome enough for the Romans? Why did they have to slaughter, enslave, and impose cultural hegemony on all those millions of Teutons, Celts, and Slavs?
For that matter, why didn’t the Indo-Europeans stay in their homeland on the Ukrainian steppe? Why did they have to wipe out/absorb all those aboriginal Europeans and their cultures? Now only the Basques are left.
For those pointing out the programs to educate and develop infrastructure, do note that these good programs often went hand-in-glove with programs to eradicate the local culture, something the colonizers began practicing at home in the Middle Ages.
Yes, but this done out of the belief that the colonizer’s culture was markedly superior. To the colonizer, then, the instillation of the superior culture was altruistic and beneficial to the colonized.
It compares favorably with outright pillage, at any rate.
That’s as weak a defense of colonization as “slavery was good for the slaves”. It doesn’t really matter (morally speaking, anyway) that some of the colonizers might have thought they were doing good- any more then it matters that some (likely most) slave-owners thought they were doing good in owning, breeding, and selling slaves. I think that most people, in most periods of history, believed that whatever they were doing was the right thing to do- even in the darkest parts of human history, which include colonization and slavery (along with genocide).
It matters when the question is:
This can only be addressed through the motives of the colonizers, as it questions their intent, not the results.
I think that’s too general a statement to be very useful in this discussion. Not all colonization practices were equal, nor were the motives the same.