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Oh, I'm not talking about the "loosely populated" part. I'm referring to the way that they by and large didn't really consider the inhabitants to be "people".
by saalweachter 9y ago
Oh, I'm not talking about the "loosely populated" part. I'm referring to the way that they by and large didn't really consider the inhabitants to be "people". Into the 20th century they were largely denied agency by the colonists, and in the 21st century we still displace Native Americans with roughly the same sort of discussion we have about disturbing turtle populations.
I don't think 16th century Europeans considered the Americas any more inhabited than the Moon. Native populations were just another natural resource the New World was teeming with, not "people".
- kirghiz 9y agoAn oversimplification perhaps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valladolid_debate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valladolid_debate Not that practice matched theory but...
- InitialLastName 9y agoIf you look at it, that kind of humanism (where the distinction between "humans" and "not humans" is more important than the distinction between, say, "Christians" and "not Christians" wasn't in vogue in the 16th century. 16th century Europeans sent enormous numbers of missionaries to the Americas with the aim of converting the natives; they wouldn't have done that if orangutans were the prevailing primate on the continent.