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Theft, colonialism, an international legal system that supports this and never made them pay back the nations they stole resources and labor from for hundreds o

Theft, colonialism, an international legal system that supports this and never made them pay back the nations they stole resources and labor from for hundreds of years.

daneel_w 5y ago
Some of the richest countries in Europe never engaged in colonialism or slavery.
- yunohn 5y ago
  They traded with, were allied and supported by, and now mutually benefitted by the economic and military union of Europe.
  - daneel_w 5y ago
    Ah, right, the proxy spoils of colonialism... I presume these nations' scientific, industrial and engineering prowess - of which none was built with slavery - had no bearing on anything. I don't understand how you can attribute so much guilt to not just the conquerors themselves but also to their neighbours, while at the same time discounting the creations and driving force of the great European minds of the past. It's a tiresome dichotomy and a sad, narrow perspective to view the world as nothing but oppressors and victims, and to always insist that the rich are rich only because they stole from the poor, and that all poor nations had been rich "if only history had been a tiny bit different".
    - yunohn 5y ago
      I see that you’re taking personal offence, while disregarding simple research and common sense. > the proxy spoils of colonialism Yes, that’s a thing. Here’s an essay that I found with one Google search. It clearly illustrates exactly the kind of disillusionment in your stance. > The Swedish Crown, merchants, and political leadership shared a Eurocentric worldview and supported the right to conquer, dominate, and civilize in the name of superiority and technological advancement. But there was also a specifically Swedish twist to colonial ideology: Swedish neutrality turned out to be a strategic position and to offer competitive advantages in relation to colonial superpowers at war. When Britain and the Netherlands were fighting, Sweden exported cannons to the Dutch and iron for weaponry to the Brits. France could, when fighting Britain, rely on Swedish shipping of smuggled slaves, weaponry and other goods in the Caribbean. Also, hundreds of US trade ships managed to avoid customs by sailing under Swedish flag—and thus Sweden could maintain the lucrative Saint Barthélemy trade traffic. (https://unevenearth.org/2020/01/swedish-colonialist-neutrality/ https://unevenearth.org/2020/01/swedish-colonialist-neutrali...)
      - Jensson 5y ago
        Why was Sweden able to make advanced cannons that were useful in modern warfare (modern at the time)? If India or China could make such cannons they wouldn't have been defeated by a handful of European ships. They didn't use colonies or trade to do it, as the iron was mined in their own mines, they made the entire thing themselves.
        yunohn 5y ago
        All of these questions are tangential to the unspoken racism in this thread. So what if Swedes mined their own iron? Did you read the rest of the essay? My point was about overall mutual enrichment in Europe, on the back of colonialism. There is ample material outside of my link that detail it further. Arguing that the victims could’ve armed themselves better, still doesn’t prove Sweden’s “innocence”. They mined their “own” iron to make “advanced” cannons to help the colonising kingdoms kill natives and enslave them.
        Jensson 5y ago
        This isn't about innocence but about why Europe became rich. A large part of what made Europe rich was that they had much more advanced military technology and used said technology to take over the rest of the world. So then, how did they get so superior military technology? It wasn't colonialism, they didn't import guns from their colonies and the colonial powers weren't ahead of the rest of Europe in military technology.
        yunohn 5y ago
        Most of the framing in this HN post have been thinly-veiled racism attributing Europe’s success to things like survival in colder climates, working together unlike developing countries, having higher avg IQ - all of these reasons are easily debatable and most importantly without sources. If we focus on your post now, your core point is that Europe was better at military technology and hence could colonise better. Saying you could build weaponry doesn’t prove pre-wealth - it just means you could allocate Human Resources to weapon building whereas developing countries chose not to. And, if you research enough, you’ll see that the riches (that this post is talking about) came from a lot of colonialism and stealing. You don’t seem to address that from my post at all? I don’t understand the wealth or GDP argument at all tbh. We’re talking about a colonial pre-globalised economy world - wealth did not have an international standard, countries created money as they needed and then our modern society adopted a worldview wherein developed countries are valued less to keep them in eternal poverty. There is no basis for an Indian vs European GDP, when neither existed in that age and all trade was through colonial exploitation.
komuher 5y ago
Damn you Swiss, Poland, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia for colonialism.
- Gwypaas 5y ago
  Sweden did try some colonialism, when it was in vogue. Not on a large scale though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_overseas_colonies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_overseas_colonies You also kind of have to count Norway as part of the larger Dano-Norwegian colonization effort with a sprinkle of the Swedish one. - Kalmar Union (1397 - 1523) - Dano-Norwegian Realm (1524-1814) - United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway (1814 - 1905) - Independent Norway (1905 - ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_overseas_colonies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_overseas_colonies
- butterknife 5y ago
  Sweden? Their cruelty towards local populations during their "intervention" in Thirty Year's War is a stuff of legends.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    That wasn't colonialism though.
    - butterknife 5y ago
      What defines colonialism in your view? That it happens outside of Europe?
      - panick21_ 5y ago
        That's the whole problem with all this 'colonialism' talk. Colonialism is an invention of European scholars and today we somehow want to make it uniquely European. Taking over other places around you and politically dominating it is as old as history. You can't use colonialism as an explanation for anything because in the whole world there were wars and people taking over their neighbors. Its a matter of linguistics and historiography when we use the term 'colony'.
moltke 5y ago
The West has more than paid back the people of those nations with the amount we've given them via social programs (immigrants and the races that were formerly slaves are the largest consumers of these by quite a margin) and foreign aid (without which many of those nations would probably cease to exist.)
- taquacin 5y ago
  Presupposing the "west" has already made reparations with money to the affected peoples via social programs and foreign is a very elitist point of view. No money could replace all the gold and silver stolen from the America's under Spanish rule. The gold was used as religious decoration. It culturally meant something; you can't just presume you can pay it off; it's non-fungible. Can money account for all the indigenous languages and cultures that have been lost because of colonialism? In the 70s, the Ford administration and Henry Kissinger cobbled together $50,000,000.00 to go to Argentina. This "foreign aid" was given to dictator Jorge Rafael Videla to disappear communists and dissidents all over the country on the behest of the U.S. Has "the West" truly paid their dues, or do they have even more blood on their hands?
panick21_ 5y ago
And how did they get all these colonies? How were they able to steal all these things? Were the other people not trying to prevent stealing? How did Portugal go to India and manage to steal everything? Why were the Ottoman not more successful, they had far more colonies. In fact, the countries that went from unsuccessful to successful were those that didn't have colonies. Colonies were the result of their success. This explains literally nothing.
throw0101a 5y ago
The Europeans were supplicants to the courts of Mughal Indian and Imperial China in the 1600s. By the late 1700s and 1800s the Europeans were stomping on everyone due to their advances in weapons. The question that is being asked is: what caused the change in those 150-200 years?

Theft, colonialism, an international legal system that supports this and never made them pay back the nations they stole resources and labor from for hundreds of years.

daneel_w 5y ago

Some of the richest countries in Europe never engaged in colonialism or slavery.

yunohn 5y ago
They traded with, were allied and supported by, and now mutually benefitted by the economic and military union of Europe.
- daneel_w 5y ago
  Ah, right, the proxy spoils of colonialism... I presume these nations' scientific, industrial and engineering prowess - of which none was built with slavery - had no bearing on anything. I don't understand how you can attribute so much guilt to not just the conquerors themselves but also to their neighbours, while at the same time discounting the creations and driving force of the great European minds of the past. It's a tiresome dichotomy and a sad, narrow perspective to view the world as nothing but oppressors and victims, and to always insist that the rich are rich only because they stole from the poor, and that all poor nations had been rich "if only history had been a tiny bit different".
  - yunohn 5y ago
    I see that you’re taking personal offence, while disregarding simple research and common sense. > the proxy spoils of colonialism Yes, that’s a thing. Here’s an essay that I found with one Google search. It clearly illustrates exactly the kind of disillusionment in your stance. > The Swedish Crown, merchants, and political leadership shared a Eurocentric worldview and supported the right to conquer, dominate, and civilize in the name of superiority and technological advancement. But there was also a specifically Swedish twist to colonial ideology: Swedish neutrality turned out to be a strategic position and to offer competitive advantages in relation to colonial superpowers at war. When Britain and the Netherlands were fighting, Sweden exported cannons to the Dutch and iron for weaponry to the Brits. France could, when fighting Britain, rely on Swedish shipping of smuggled slaves, weaponry and other goods in the Caribbean. Also, hundreds of US trade ships managed to avoid customs by sailing under Swedish flag—and thus Sweden could maintain the lucrative Saint Barthélemy trade traffic. (https://unevenearth.org/2020/01/swedish-colonialist-neutrality/ https://unevenearth.org/2020/01/swedish-colonialist-neutrali...)
    - Jensson 5y ago
      Why was Sweden able to make advanced cannons that were useful in modern warfare (modern at the time)? If India or China could make such cannons they wouldn't have been defeated by a handful of European ships. They didn't use colonies or trade to do it, as the iron was mined in their own mines, they made the entire thing themselves.
      - yunohn 5y ago
        All of these questions are tangential to the unspoken racism in this thread. So what if Swedes mined their own iron? Did you read the rest of the essay? My point was about overall mutual enrichment in Europe, on the back of colonialism. There is ample material outside of my link that detail it further. Arguing that the victims could’ve armed themselves better, still doesn’t prove Sweden’s “innocence”. They mined their “own” iron to make “advanced” cannons to help the colonising kingdoms kill natives and enslave them.
        Jensson 5y ago
        This isn't about innocence but about why Europe became rich. A large part of what made Europe rich was that they had much more advanced military technology and used said technology to take over the rest of the world. So then, how did they get so superior military technology? It wasn't colonialism, they didn't import guns from their colonies and the colonial powers weren't ahead of the rest of Europe in military technology.
        yunohn 5y ago
        Most of the framing in this HN post have been thinly-veiled racism attributing Europe’s success to things like survival in colder climates, working together unlike developing countries, having higher avg IQ - all of these reasons are easily debatable and most importantly without sources. If we focus on your post now, your core point is that Europe was better at military technology and hence could colonise better. Saying you could build weaponry doesn’t prove pre-wealth - it just means you could allocate Human Resources to weapon building whereas developing countries chose not to. And, if you research enough, you’ll see that the riches (that this post is talking about) came from a lot of colonialism and stealing. You don’t seem to address that from my post at all? I don’t understand the wealth or GDP argument at all tbh. We’re talking about a colonial pre-globalised economy world - wealth did not have an international standard, countries created money as they needed and then our modern society adopted a worldview wherein developed countries are valued less to keep them in eternal poverty. There is no basis for an Indian vs European GDP, when neither existed in that age and all trade was through colonial exploitation.

komuher 5y ago

Damn you Swiss, Poland, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia for colonialism.

Gwypaas 5y ago
Sweden did try some colonialism, when it was in vogue. Not on a large scale though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_overseas_colonies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_overseas_colonies You also kind of have to count Norway as part of the larger Dano-Norwegian colonization effort with a sprinkle of the Swedish one. - Kalmar Union (1397 - 1523) - Dano-Norwegian Realm (1524-1814) - United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway (1814 - 1905) - Independent Norway (1905 - ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_overseas_colonies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_overseas_colonies
butterknife 5y ago
Sweden? Their cruelty towards local populations during their "intervention" in Thirty Year's War is a stuff of legends.
- sofixa 5y ago
  That wasn't colonialism though.
  - butterknife 5y ago
    What defines colonialism in your view? That it happens outside of Europe?
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      That's the whole problem with all this 'colonialism' talk. Colonialism is an invention of European scholars and today we somehow want to make it uniquely European. Taking over other places around you and politically dominating it is as old as history. You can't use colonialism as an explanation for anything because in the whole world there were wars and people taking over their neighbors. Its a matter of linguistics and historiography when we use the term 'colony'.

moltke 5y ago

The West has more than paid back the people of those nations with the amount we've given them via social programs (immigrants and the races that were formerly slaves are the largest consumers of these by quite a margin) and foreign aid (without which many of those nations would probably cease to exist.)

taquacin 5y ago
Presupposing the "west" has already made reparations with money to the affected peoples via social programs and foreign is a very elitist point of view. No money could replace all the gold and silver stolen from the America's under Spanish rule. The gold was used as religious decoration. It culturally meant something; you can't just presume you can pay it off; it's non-fungible. Can money account for all the indigenous languages and cultures that have been lost because of colonialism? In the 70s, the Ford administration and Henry Kissinger cobbled together $50,000,000.00 to go to Argentina. This "foreign aid" was given to dictator Jorge Rafael Videla to disappear communists and dissidents all over the country on the behest of the U.S. Has "the West" truly paid their dues, or do they have even more blood on their hands?

panick21_ 5y ago

And how did they get all these colonies? How were they able to steal all these things? Were the other people not trying to prevent stealing? How did Portugal go to India and manage to steal everything? Why were the Ottoman not more successful, they had far more colonies. In fact, the countries that went from unsuccessful to successful were those that didn't have colonies. Colonies were the result of their success. This explains literally nothing.

throw0101a 5y ago

The Europeans were supplicants to the courts of Mughal Indian and Imperial China in the 1600s. By the late 1700s and 1800s the Europeans were stomping on everyone due to their advances in weapons. The question that is being asked is: what caused the change in those 150-200 years?