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I'd want to be left alone - give one example of colonialism that worked out well for indigenous people, and I'll maybe change my mind.
by lwhi 16y ago
I'd want to be left alone - give one example of colonialism that worked out well for indigenous people, and I'll maybe change my mind.
- nitrogen 16y agoThere are much less invasive options for contact than colonialism. Nobody said we have to move ourselves into some indigenous peoples' lands in order to offer them the chance to accept or reject a modern life.
- lwhi 16y agoBut the effect is the same - their society would be absorbed, and probably forgotten. It's like time travel - you can't go back because you don't know what kind of effects you'll have on the future. In this case you don't know what kind of effects contact will have on their (the tribe's) future.
- kiiski 16y agoSo how about Japan for example? Do you think contact with the west was bad for them?
- soapdog 16y agoyou're comparing different things, or do you think that a highly advanced CIVILIZATION like the japanese encountering the west is similar to a TRIBE of HUNTERS-GATHERERS.... damn!
- kiiski 16y agoNo. I was referring to messages by lwhi and nitrogen. As nitrogen said, there are less invasive options to contact them than colonization and there are cases where it is beneficial to the (in some ways) less advanced civilization. It might not have been fun for the japanese when the westerners first came there, but in the long run it was a good thing. And while the japanese culture was certainly changed, it was not destroyed or forgotten.
- Helianthus16 16y agoOk. India is now an "important" country. Burgeoning technologically and culturally, what it received from Britain was access to the intellectual firestorm of the Enlightenment. Hindu thinkers were involved in the formation of Universalism, the idea that all religions were different aspects of the same thing and could be united. Of course, it cost them the pain of the Pakistan-India divide, the struggle of Gandhi, and a confusing cultural identity among a people that didn't necessarily have a singular cultural identity in the first place. But what price is too much? South Africa paid the price, and is now among the most advanced of African nations. Of course, most indigenous peoples just got royally fucked. Aboriginal Australians and the Maori. So I suppose your point in general holds.
- DufusM 16y agoIt is a bit presumptuous to assume that India or S.A. would not have made progress or exchanged "intellectual" information without a country sailing over and lording over it for a hundred years. Disclaimer: I am an Indian.
- Helianthus16 16y agoI'm not assuming anything, I'm making an assertion--an assertion that could be right or wrong. In particular I am not assuming/asserting that India or S.A. would not have made progress. I am saying that the effects of colonial rule are so unstable and so varied that it can be difficult to the point of meaninglessness to say a country would be "better" or "worse" without it. The Bengal Renaissance is a documented movement, founded and driven by people exposed to Western thought. That doesn't mean the movement wasn't theirs, that they weren't the ones producing "intellectual" information. But they were in a different place because of colonialism than they would have been without, one where Indians went to school in Britain and where people were writing letters to each other across the ocean.
- DufusM 16y agoTechnically, I agree, but using this same logic, the effects of _any_ major historical incident are so unstable and so varied that "it can be difficult to the point of meaninglessness to say a country would be "better" or "worse" without it."
- lionhearted 16y agoHong Kong.