• usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    yes they were colonised and France did brutal things there but the French don't live their now while Americans displaced the natives and now live where they used to. Which is a limitation of the term settlers as the French by and large didn't settle the lands they took beyond soldiers and administrators most of whom considered their true homes to be in France and returned there once they were done leaving another Frenchman behind to live where they used to

    • SoftBoiledYurdle [fae/faer,ey/em]
      ·
      2 years ago

      i misread this thread originally, you are bringing needed clarity to the distinction of settler colonization v colonialism as a form of imperialism, thank you comrade :heart-sickle:

      • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        but they did slightly different brutal things than the Americans and for different reasons and the description of what the Americans did therefore doesn't apply.

        • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          I get what you mean, but I don't think the difference is slight. Like, Algeria is fucked up by the French. Billions in wealth stolen, millions killed, culture destroyed, even today French is still a main language.

          But that's no where near the degree to what happened in NA. Indigenous language barely exist, indigenous "sovereignty" is completely controlled thru the colonizers, and (obviously) most of the people in NA aren't indigenous whereas most folks in Algeria are Algerian

          More importantly, it creates a different relationship to imperialism today (hence neocolonial versus settler colonial)