Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site bbncca.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!bbncca!rrizzo 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