I understand being skeptical, I just don’t go to the opposite degree and just reject everything when the evidence for it is so very clear.
History What are some of your most contraversial takes on history?
- Thread starter Winston Bush
- Start date
Skallagrim
Well-known member
It has to be obsered that Lemkin's chapter on Tasmania was based on outdated information, and that Lemkin was inclined to take anti-colonial sources at face value (because his whole concept of genocide was largely motivated by an anti-colonial attitude he personally held).
I get your point, @Earl, but there has been quite a lot of scholarship on this issue since, and it's been heated. It's not called the "history wars"(!) for nothing. You're basically repeating the position taken by one side, and you speak as if their arguments are definitive -- but this matter is considered very much unresolved. The extent towards active ill intent and abuse were structural versus incidental is hotly contested.
@Simonbob has cited the other side of the debate (particularly Wildschuttle, the most prominent critic of the "genocide" model). Those arguments aren't without merit, and one issue with the (broadly) left-wing position is that they consistently take evidence of incidental abuse (which nobody denies), and then extrapolate that into a supposed "systemic pattern", i.e. genocide. But this is in fact much akin to how SJWs shriek about supposed "systemic racism", often on the basis of severely lacking evidence.
Bad stuff happened; evil stuff. But the evidence for genocide, at the end of the day, isn't as cohesive as you've been led to believe it is. (Let me phase it another way: there's a far stronger case to describe, say, the French Revolution as genocidal.)
I get your point, @Earl, but there has been quite a lot of scholarship on this issue since, and it's been heated. It's not called the "history wars"(!) for nothing. You're basically repeating the position taken by one side, and you speak as if their arguments are definitive -- but this matter is considered very much unresolved. The extent towards active ill intent and abuse were structural versus incidental is hotly contested.
@Simonbob has cited the other side of the debate (particularly Wildschuttle, the most prominent critic of the "genocide" model). Those arguments aren't without merit, and one issue with the (broadly) left-wing position is that they consistently take evidence of incidental abuse (which nobody denies), and then extrapolate that into a supposed "systemic pattern", i.e. genocide. But this is in fact much akin to how SJWs shriek about supposed "systemic racism", often on the basis of severely lacking evidence.
Bad stuff happened; evil stuff. But the evidence for genocide, at the end of the day, isn't as cohesive as you've been led to believe it is. (Let me phase it another way: there's a far stronger case to describe, say, the French Revolution as genocidal.)
Perhaps I reacted with haste, mainly due to the very bad form involved with “Actually they sold their woman”, which might of happened but just cleaning it off and saying a okay, done deal, very much feels like denialism to me. I personally lean more into the e genocide argument because I one, see the results and two, feel the evidence I see is actually quite clear. I actually think the French Revolution (Pecifically the Vendee) is very apt here. They both evolved from armed conflicts which lead to a general attitude of “Exterminate them” from the Goverment forces/settler, and translated down the ladder to every day actions. Now, there can be some debate but part of said debate must not involve blaming the party which got anihlated for there own death, particularly when it’s undeniable that conflict did play a large role in it, even if it wasn’t the plan.
That has as much to do with the nature of the tribes in the region and their population numbers compared to the Meso-American tribes. The East Coast Tribes were much lower in population, most were nomadic to semi-nomadic, with their largest settlements being effectively small towns. There were no grand Indian cities on the east coast like there were in Meso-America. And while there were alliance and ruler who commanded large swaths of land, none were really on par organizationally or structurally like the Aztecs and the other Mexican Indian tribes.
What this means is that when European settlers came into the region rather than conquering an established settled people, they tended to displace them. And the Indians reacted in the logical way nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples did... they just... moved out. Some tribes did survive on reservations in the east, but it has been rare that those reservations have managed to survive to modern times.
Eastern tribe survival was not helped by the major wars the tribes fought against each other. The impact of the Beaver Wars on the survival of many east coast tribes is often completely overlooked by most people and the chain reaction of invasions and displacements within the Indians it caused. Add in the disease as other mentioned and the East Coast was ripe for takeover by more organized and settled peoples.
Also the French more often than not worked with the natives, as fur trappers and setting up missionaries, even partaking in tribal customs (a noteable time when the noble governor of Quebec from Paris got into a war dance at a big gathering of Allies). The English on the other hand were far more assertive in there control and far more eager to come to war than the French, which evolved in a Genocidal direction in New England.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
It should be noted that there's a fuck-ton of Métis. It's the Anglos in particular who went "let's replace these savages". The factors @S'task brings up certainly played a role (and explain why there's way more Mestizos than Métis), but there's an additional major factor here.
Protestantism.
There's a reason why there's such a concept as the "WASP", whereas Spanish conquistadors just started marrying native women within like five minutes of the first conversions to Catholicism, I'd say.
Protestantism.
There's a reason why there's such a concept as the "WASP", whereas Spanish conquistadors just started marrying native women within like five minutes of the first conversions to Catholicism, I'd say.
AnimalNoodles
Well-known member
The real reason there are more mestizos is that there really werent very many indians in Canada
Indeed.Protestant considered themselves "new Izrael" and belived in old testament bloody fairy tale about genociding all caananitees./in reality the same polulation lived there from bronze age till 1948/
So,when they saw indian and considered them "new caananitees" they genocided them for real.
P.S Vandea was failure of genocide,they killed "only" about 20% of population during year,when mongols genocided entire nations ni months.
Why? mongols ordered to kill all go and kill one after another without rapes or torture.
french patriots,when they catch man torture him to death,and womans raped to death.That is why most of population manage to run.
Interesting,why mongols was so efficient.They were nomads? another reason?
Tasmanians was interesting case of devolution - they must have boats/Tasmania never was part of Australia/ but forget about that till european come.Just like about clothes and stone weapons/they used wooden spears/.
But,english really hunt them.
Well,they hunted down tasmanian tiger,too.For the same reasons - both tasmanians and tigers killed english animals.
Last edited:
Simonbob
Well-known member
Having looked into it again,(I hadn't, not in years) It's not as simple as I remembered.
Some did sell their women. Some women ran away from their tribes, and stayed with the colonial workers. Some men rented out their women, and some women refused to have anything to do with the colonists.
I don't know proportions. I just know that all of the above happened to some degree. And, there was, and is, always two groups in this. There's no perfectly clean hands, and anybody who want's to pretend one side or the other is clean, they're missing the point. (Even when I'm saying it wrong.)
Have you met a spainard? I doubt they waited five minutes.
Stop claiming things like that unless you can prove it.
Which "Protestants" are you talking about? The Puritans? The Baptists? The Mennonites?
Because I think you are blowing bubbles here.
The sea level was lower at once stage, and Tasmania therefore accessible by land. Once isolated, yes, they seem to have gradually lost all sorts of cultural knowledge that their ancestors probably had.
As to the motives of the English? Well, I'm told that they were looking through the lenses of Darwinian evolution, and saw the Tasmanians (and the Aborginals generally) as literally subhuman.
Last edited:
Simonbob
Well-known member
Something I read somewhere many years ago... literally in a previous century. I couldn't dig up the specific source now.
But let me see if something can be googled up...
OK, this one seems to make the relation the other way around...
Simonbob
Well-known member
There's some horrible stuff back then, and even today.
There's still Australian Aborginals . There might be no pureblood Tasmainan Aborginals, but there are at least half bloods, and there are quite a few from the mainland. On a similar note, there's still quite a few North American Indians, amongst other native groups.
If there were any genocidal campains aimed at these groups, they didn't finish it, and it's pretty damn likely they could have. Only other colonists could have stopped them, if they had that kind of numbers and power.
Now that I'm thinking about such statements, I know of people, right now, who will openly say "Kill all white people!" and get cheers. Very few are seriously trying it. (Although, there's some terrible things happening.....)
Heh. The only similar thing I can think of is the old "White Man's Burden" where the more advanced people were supposed to show the less advanced a better way. I'm not sure this counts.......
AnimalNoodles
Well-known member
In The Spanish colonies the initial settlers were mostly men who often took native brides, whereas in North America entire familes moved in and settled.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
That is what S'task wrote, and what I was agreeing to, so... yeah.
Indeed, and that difference was to a meaningful extent motivated by the differing religious context. The Spaniards were Catholics, specifically men (often younger sons) looking to make their fortune. The Anglos, early on, were disproportianally often religious dissenters (particularly various types of Protestant), and that is why they moved across the ocean with their whole families.
1.Puritans.During 17th wars with indians they massacred entire fortified villages,becouse they considered it as war of God.
2.Sea level was lower,but people still need boats.Which was no used by Tasmanians when english come.But,you are right about their motives - when they meet naked people who do not even have stone tools or boats,they considered them as kind of missing link.
The religious dissenters mainly moved to New England. Which was, arguably, at MOST a third of the major efforts of North American colonization, though they are often given way more historical attention than the remaining two-thirds. In large part due to Whig History and the need to decrease the importance of the South in the early founding stories in order to make it less sympathetic in the 19th century.
Meanwhile you had second sons and fortune seekers moving to Virginia and the Southern colonies en mass. Georgia was a penal colony. The mid-Atlantic colonies from New England to Maryland saw all kinds move in, from families to second sons, to British Catholics seeking religious freedom.
The Indian Wars in Virginia and in many of the rest of these places was actually a complex mess of shifting alliances that doesn't lead itself to a good clean "Indians Good, Europeans Bad" narrative. Further, the chain migration/invasion/displacement set off by the Beaver Wars ended up wiping out or displacing many tribes along the Appalachians that were there when the colonists arrived and not there a generation or two later and they had nothing to do with them getting wiped out* but rather it was Native American in-fighting (which again, doesn't fit the narrative people like to tell about British colonization).
Also, at Scotty pointed out, pretty much everywhere save Maryland was colonized by "Protestants" and there were massive regional differences in how Indians were treated between New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the South.
-----------
* You can make the argument that European colonialism triggered the Beaver Wars, but not BRITISH Colonialism. It was triggered by some native tribes north of the Great Lakes seeking to monopolize the lucrative Beaver Fur and Pelt trade with the French, who, in order to secure that trade, drove out all competing tribes. The tribes then displaced south started a chain of invasion/displacements that echoed down the entire Appalachian mountains. The Beaver Wars are generally not talked about because they entirely EXPLODE the myth of "noble savage" as the wars were almost entirely motived by Native American greed and the Europeans had next to nothing to do with them aside from being the source of wealth being fought over.
Yeah GA was a penal colony as well as a major port
bintananth
behind a desk
Pizarro's wife was an Inca Princess, for example.