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If the "colonies" had kept their history recorded prior to being colonized it would not have been prettier than whatever was done in Europe or by Europe - the C
by seemslegit 6y ago
If the "colonies" had kept their history recorded prior to being colonized it would not have been prettier than whatever was done in Europe or by Europe - the Chinese, Persians and Mongol/Turkic occupied lands that did record history from pretty early on have documented every kind of mass, group and individual atrocities imaginable take place.
Same for everything that as far as we know took place in the Americas prior to colonizaton.
- knolax 6y agowhataboutism.
- seemslegit 6y agowhat about it ?
- thecleaner 6y agoColonies did keep their histories recorded. It was systematically destroyed. Dutch in Indonesia, British in India, Europeans in America. It is very common to find mass graves in Africa even now for which there doesnt seem to be any records about how they came to be.
- seemslegit 6y agoThe lack of recorded history is more about the west-central African, Caribean and American colonies. India has a decent historic record surviving today and it shows the usual story of class-stratified kingdoms waging wars, persecuting ethno-religious outgroups etc. Source for the systematic destruction of historic documents in India and America ?
- jan_Inkepa 6y agoNot an answer to your question, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2017.1294256?scroll=top&needAccess=true#_i4 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2017.1... doesn’t speak about India (which I fully accept might be a counter-example), but you can add Sri Lanka/Malaysia/Malta to the list of places with untrustworthy records, and it casts suspicion on others. (the article also makes clear at least sometimes it was done with the consent of the new regime).
- seemslegit 6y agoThis talks about the records of colonial regimes which I'm sure were subject to as much redaction and suppression as possible, but I was talking about the historical records of the colonized cultures pre-colonization - do we know about any systematic attempts to destroy those ? Things like having ancient Egyptian and Babylonian relics taken to Britain and Germany don't really qualify either here because even though they were used to glorify the colonizing empires they were extensively studied and preserved.
- jan_Inkepa 6y agoAh ok, gotcha. Yeah I misunderstood. Re: records of pre-colonial civilisations, I don’t know much about this area.