| "It's The White Guys Fault" - Part 3 Colonialism |
by Bill Zettler In the third article of a four part series, Bill Zettler describes how Eastern Europeans have been unfairly blamed for cultural genocide in colonial times. Zettler also gives examples of how cruelty and inhumanity were common practices in many lands--far before the arrival of Europeans. Though Zettler does not excuse the behavior of some European colonialists, he puts the issue into proper perspective and context. |
Guest Commentary
From the Desk of Bill Zettler *
In the first two columns of this four part series, "It's The White Guys Fault," I explored the origins of modern blame-the-white-guy politics and then I visited historical slavery, in order to get a balanced view of the white-guys part in it. In this column I explore "colonialism".
One of the more prevalent myths of the Left is white men are responsible for everything bad that happens or has happened and it is usually blamed on Imperial Colonialism. This assertion is based upon the false premise that since white Europeans expanded all over the globe from the 15th century on, then they must be responsible for all the bad that exists in the World today. I could summarize this way: before Europeans got there, India, Asia, Africa and the Western Hemisphere were Garden of Eden's where people lived peacefully and prosperously. You know, lands of milk and honey. The facts are, of course, completely different.
A good example is the Jamestown Historical Council deciding that the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown should be a "Commemoration" not a "Celebration". Apparently they felt you could not "celebrate" an "invasion" into a country of civilized people (American Indians) living in peace with each other and in harmony with the environment.
The Indians, of course, slaughtered and tortured each other with a regularity and tenacity that would have made the European Thirty Years War seem like a brief picnic. As for the environment, Indians were known to burn large swaths of old growth forests, in order to make paths between villages in New England, and to set prairie fires, burning 100's of 1000's of acres to kill their downwind enemies. Note both of the above "environmental" practices would result in untold numbers of wild animals being purposely incinerated. Another one of their favorite "environmental" practices was to drive hundreds of buffaloes over cliffs, in order to harvest just a few buffalo tongues--a delicacy favored by many tribesmen. They don't sound like the founding members of Green Peace or PETA, do they?
And let's not forget this fact: the first slave owners in North America were Indians, not Europeans. And some tribes, such as the Kuakiutl and Haida of the Pacific Northwest, had potlatches where they gave salmon, totem poles and the occasional murdered slave as gifts. Doesn't sound civilized or peace loving to me.
And then there is the Spanish invasion of Mexico and the destruction of the Aztecs. For those of you who may have forgotten, the Aztecs had this odd legal remedy of taking hostages to the top of their beautiful pyramids, before cutting the hostage's beating heart out of his chest with an obsidian knife. They also had this quaint religious ritual of throwing 1000's of young girls off of cliffs to placate their sun god. Yes sir, the world would certainly be better off today if the Aztec civilization had survived and ours had died off rather than vise-versa. And I would guess the Mayas considered the conquering Aztecs colonial invaders.
If England had not taken over India in the mid-18th century, would India have emerged as the world's largest democracy in the mid-20th century? I think not, for without the English establishment of infrastructure, a common language (English), education and administration, India most likely would have ended up more like it's neighbors Burma and Afghanistan--19th century political systems trying, unsuccessfully, to make it in the 21st century.
When Britain first came to India in the 1740's to establish a trading post, the Indian sub-continent was made up of over 50 warring, corrupt genocidal kingdoms, some ruled by Hindus, some ruled by Muslim Colonial Imperialists. In the 1760's, the British East India Company decided it needed better control of the sources of their raw materials. It was not because of any benevolent impulse, but just commercial need that drove them to it. I am not implying any good intent here. Nor were the British seldom anything other than a harsh and ofttimes racist overlord. But, of course, before the British arrived, the previous rulers were harsh and racist overlords, too. Remember, the Indians designed the caste system, and they practiced slavery for more than a 1,000 years before the British white-guys banned it in 1844.
The end result of British colonialism was an India that had for the first time in its history a consolidated national administration with common laws and a common language--the language of commerce, English. Two hundred years of this administration and they were ready to become the world's largest democracy. Without 200 years of British rule, it would never have happened.
The fact of the matter is European colonialism spread engineering and infrastructure, education, rules of law, property ownership, contract rights and legal remedy of disputes to areas of the world that had never had those things. Where those processes took hold, democratic, economically viable countries took shape. In the areas where they did not take hold, or were never made available, the people were condemned to a life of Hobbesian chaos.
Overall, in the long context of history, replacing smaller colonial empires with European colonialism was a significant plus for the World.
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