Very few countries currently are based on native eviction, where settlers have nearly replaced the indigenous peoples. The US, canada, australia, new zealand, israel are the main ones.
I think it’s projecting western colonial guilt to claim that all countries are equally based on indigenous eviction. Even colonial projects like Spain’s in South America did not do to their indigenous peoples what the british did to north america.
Very few countries currently are based on native eviction, where settlers have nearly replaced the indigenous peoples.
As a founding point? Yes, I agree. I also agree that colonization scale done by British was greater than anything ever done before.
However, that wasn’t my point. My point was: almost everyone on Earth lives where they do because their ancestors killed or evicted the people that lived there previously. This is in particular is not unique to any western country. Hell, reading the history of Russia, my home country, makes it pretty clear that my own deep ancestry did plenty of killing and evicting too, mostly of themselves, to get to where they all ended up (not even talking about Siberia here). It wasn’t at the founding point of Russia though, and none of the peoples who lost their wars are culturally alive anymore. Does it matter if all the conquest led to the foundation of a modern country, or just different tribal lands (or later city states)? I don’t think it does.
I think what does matter is justice for those descendants of the colonized who are still alive, and if there’s noone left, at least understanding and recognition of the horribleness that lead up to the point of your birth.
Colonialist Spain formally recognized in 1542 Indigenous peoples as “free vassals of the Crown” as Spaniards themselves, not slaves. Of course, as in The Mission movie portrayed, many colonialists violated the Crown’s laws (Columbus himself was imprisoned for violating a Crown law from 1495 banning enslaving Taíno people). The Spanish crown wanted conversion + integration whereas British sought *erasure * of the Indigenous. But it was not just the Crown laws, individuals from Spain easily intermarried from early on, the English did not.
This distinction of the Spanish colonist vs all their norther neighbors that were far more repressive. I attribute this to the Spanish experience under Islamic rule for 8 centuries, where differences were highly tolerated and conversion was ‘only’ mandatory for those not considered as “peoples of the Book” mentioned on the Islamic scriptures.
To conclude, Spanish colonialism, from the Americas to the Philippines, was abusive, sometimes heavily, but the centuries later the ‘civilized’ British one was plainly genocidal from beginning to finish and the independent United States, continued with the legacy if not increasing it. In word of historian James Axtell: “The Spanish asked Native people to become something else [Christians]; the British demanded they vanish.”
Very few countries currently are based on native eviction, where settlers have nearly replaced the indigenous peoples. The US, canada, australia, new zealand, israel are the main ones.
I think it’s projecting western colonial guilt to claim that all countries are equally based on indigenous eviction. Even colonial projects like Spain’s in South America did not do to their indigenous peoples what the british did to north america.
As a founding point? Yes, I agree. I also agree that colonization scale done by British was greater than anything ever done before.
However, that wasn’t my point. My point was: almost everyone on Earth lives where they do because their ancestors killed or evicted the people that lived there previously. This is in particular is not unique to any western country. Hell, reading the history of Russia, my home country, makes it pretty clear that my own deep ancestry did plenty of killing and evicting too, mostly of themselves, to get to where they all ended up (not even talking about Siberia here). It wasn’t at the founding point of Russia though, and none of the peoples who lost their wars are culturally alive anymore. Does it matter if all the conquest led to the foundation of a modern country, or just different tribal lands (or later city states)? I don’t think it does.
I think what does matter is justice for those descendants of the colonized who are still alive, and if there’s noone left, at least understanding and recognition of the horribleness that lead up to the point of your birth.
Colonialist Spain formally recognized in 1542 Indigenous peoples as “free vassals of the Crown” as Spaniards themselves, not slaves. Of course, as in The Mission movie portrayed, many colonialists violated the Crown’s laws (Columbus himself was imprisoned for violating a Crown law from 1495 banning enslaving Taíno people). The Spanish crown wanted conversion + integration whereas British sought *erasure * of the Indigenous. But it was not just the Crown laws, individuals from Spain easily intermarried from early on, the English did not.
This distinction of the Spanish colonist vs all their norther neighbors that were far more repressive. I attribute this to the Spanish experience under Islamic rule for 8 centuries, where differences were highly tolerated and conversion was ‘only’ mandatory for those not considered as “peoples of the Book” mentioned on the Islamic scriptures.
To conclude, Spanish colonialism, from the Americas to the Philippines, was abusive, sometimes heavily, but the centuries later the ‘civilized’ British one was plainly genocidal from beginning to finish and the independent United States, continued with the legacy if not increasing it. In word of historian James Axtell: “The Spanish asked Native people to become something else [Christians]; the British demanded they vanish.”