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From: rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Re: 3rd world savages
Message-ID: <1175@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 29-Nov-84 00:00:00 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncca.1175
Posted: Thu Nov 29 00:00:00 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Nov-84 05:55:06 EST
References: <566@asgb.UUCP>, <234@rlgvax.UUCP> <12@mit-athena.ARPA> <240@rlgvax.UUCP> <2231@mit-hermes.ARPA> <24Re: Re: Re: 3rd world savages
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 51


John Purbrick writes:

> imperialists do give their former 
> subjects something worth having; the concept of individual rights 

Whoa!  Hasty generalization!  German (in Africa), Belgian (Congo), Dutch
(East Indies) imperialism notably gave their colonies NOTHING in the way 
of ethical ideas or political institutions.  In the wake of the genocidal
result of the Spanish conquest & its colonial system (which virtually en-
slaved Indians), not much can be credited to Spanish rule, either.

The French "mission civilistrice" was more savage than British imperial-
ism, & any "good effects" it may have had are certainly moot, to say the
least.  I'm not sure how Portugese colonies fared (Brazil was one of the
last countries to abolish slavery) but Mozambique & Angola weren't left
with much of a legacy, as far as I can see.

What about the British empire?  A lot of the details of conquest & colonial
rule are not widely known.  One particularly obscure horror story is the
British destruction of the city-state of Benin in West Africa: it had over
a million inhabitants, & was one of the largest urban centers in the world
at the time.  I believe the British slaughtered all adult males, sold
everyone else into slavery, & razed the city.  Most of the historical
records describing the holocaust are in Spanish; & until the late 60s,
scholars apparently didn't see fit to make them available in English, if
they knew about the event at all.  In Tasmania, aboriginal inhabitants
were hunted like animals to extinction by early settlers.

For a fictional view of the annihilatory war that Germans waged against
natives in Southwest Africa at the turn of century, see Thomas Pynchon's
novel V.

After destruction & slaughter on such a scale, does it make much sense
to "weigh" possibly beneficial effects of imperialism?


A second point I'd like to rebut concerns JP's remarks on "divide & rule":

"Divide & rule" was a policy EXPLICITLY used by British conquerors (Clive
in India) and the succeeding colonial rulers, both to initially conquer &
to later assure colonial rule.  I believe it was fairly common for admini-
strators to publically cite "divide & rule" as a technique for ruling.

Some of the later conflicts between ethnic groups were created in fact
by the artificial unions & boundaries created by British conquest: Ni-
geria is probably the most famous example.  How about "divide & conquer,
then rule & divide & rule" ?


					Ron Rizzo