Of course in US schools, the genocide of the indigenous inhabitants is usually whitewashed; the curriculum sort of leaves you with the impression that North America was some vast, sparsely-populated land the white folks were just looking for some "elbow room". But the European colonial period, here that's usually just colored blobs on the map. I'm curious as to how this is taught in European classrooms. Any sort of reflection at all on how evil this was?

  • Torenico [he/him]
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    2 years ago

    Thankfully, I don't have to carry the burden of being an european, so I don't know what is going on inside that wretched place. I live in the Global South and, if I may, I want to share my opinion on this.

    I don't think european nations that engaged in colonialism will ever become critical of said institution, let alone offering actual reparations, for a number of reasons. First is simple, since the rise of Nationalism countries have been "writing their official story" and in there, you're not critical of your actions. It happens everywhere, as you said, in the US the genocide of the native inhabitants is whitewashed, so the role of Portugal in the colonization and extraction of people to be sold into slavery will be absolutely whitewashed. Peoples from a country need to come to terms with the actions of their country, because your country is what it is thanks to colonialism (and this applies to both sides, colonizer and colonized), and nationalism must still be kept alive for states to function, so no, ain't gonna happen any time soon.

    There's the second reason I'd like to add: capitalism. To attack the colonial and slavery institutions is to attack capitalism as well. This is no secret: capitalism is what it is THANKS to colonialism and particularly slavery, trying to imagine capitalism without them is hard, if out outright impossible. Simple equations, europeans had control of rich soil with excellent climate in the Americas, local workforce was "unreliable" because they spoke the same language and had the same culture, so rebellions were bound to happen often, manpower shipped from europe was also unreliable. Thus, they looked upon Africa for slaves, from outright kidnapping to state-level transactions between european countries and african nations in which both elites regarded human beings as mere products, and exchanged them as such. Said people, taking from all over western and central africa, were sent to the plantations to work as slaves with minimal risk of rebellions due to them not sharing languages, culture, traditions, and so on. Of course, slavery produced MASSIVE returns for the europeans (Britain, in particular) and this helped kickstart capitalism BY A LOT. Cotton is industrial revolution, and cotton industries were almost exclusively owned by Britain.

    Of course, there are other elements. India was not directly subjected to mass slavery like in the Caribbean, but slowly but surely the East India Company (which was "yet another trader" when they initially arrived) took political and military control of the country, imposed tariffs, forbid Indian textile products to be shipped into England (free trade for me, not for you) and at the end of the day, the nation's industry was gone and it went back to being an agrarian nation, a receptive nation for British textiles and of course, opium production to wage economic war against China.

    And China, as we know, was devastated by the Opium Wars. Britain never had something to offer to China, while China had a lot to offer to Britain, so the British were desperate to get into the Chinese market at all costs. Somewhere there's a quote from a chinese emperor that says something along the lines of "We don't need anything else from Britain, we can produce everything we need here"... except for one or two things: silver and opium. Silver was extracted from the Americas with slave labour involved and opium was cultivated in India and forcefully pumped into China via Hong Kong. This also generated ridiculous amounts of returns for europeans, yet again, Britain in particular.

    Lastly, why attack colonialism when these countries are still doing it to this day? Sure they changed the way they do it, but it's still colonialism, add "neo" to it I don't mind, it's still the same shit.

    There are more things, of course, but the bottom line is: We live in a capitalist society, this society as we know it was built on the backs of millions of slaves who were sent to work on plantations owned by colonial powers. You can't make an honest critique of colonialism without being critical also of capitalism, you're attacking it's root.

    So no, they probably whitewash it like the cowards they are and have always been.

    • mazdak
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      1 year ago

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      • Teekeeus
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        24 days ago

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    • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
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      2 years ago

      The other key reason being that while Europe did steal loads from the rest of the world it was suprisingly unprofitable to do so as the cost of imperial wars isn't negligible and WW2 and neoliberalism have since wiped out the savings of most European powers so even if Europe wanted to give reparations they don't have the money

      • mazdak
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        1 year ago

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          • mazdak
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            1 year ago

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            • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
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              2 years ago

              There were fortunes made there undoubtably but attributing all or even most of their money to that would be inaccurate