This is something I’ve been wondering for a while and have finally mustered the courage to ask.
On the leftist side of Lemmy there is a pervasive theme of calling Europeans (and by extension white people in general) evil and how the only thing they’ve done is make the rest of the world suffer. And while the latter is plainly observable basically everywhere in the world, does that imply the former is true? Basically, was European colonialism a thing because of forces and convergent processes greater than Europe or would Europeans have done all that regardless of circumstances, perhaps suggesting that they’re more predisposed to such actions than other ethnicities?
I’m not white, but I have definitely noticed that the normalized rhetoric around white people among leftist and especially socialist circles, sound pretty eerily like the racist rhetoric white people use for other ethnicities. Things like the “colonialism runs in their blood” or that “all white people are born colonizers regardless of status.” To me, there are two ways of interpreting such remarks: the most literal interpretation is that white people as a race are indeed intrinsically evil, and their actions throughout history directly reflect this; or the more symbolic interpretation that due to all that’s happened in history, white people today are, while not intrinsically or genetically evil, tainted by the colonialism that has already happened and are therefore more likely to be the exploiters than the exploited due to their historical advantage. The difference between the two interpretations being the question I’m asking, whether Europeans are the oppressors due to circumstance or whether there’s something about them that just makes them more likely to be oppressors regardless of circumstance.
I understand that most of the rhetoric towards white people that I believe could be interpreted as “racist” are made by the direct victims of white colonialism/racism, so I can in no way fault any of them for not considering the feelings of the people who didn’t consider their feelings when they did orders of magnitude worse things to them than insulting them. God knows I’ve made those remarks too. But at the same time, this makes it hard to determine whether those remarks are literal or figurative, and I just feel the need to ask this directly. Not because I feel the need to play tone police for a race I’m not even part of, but because I’m genuinely ignorant of anything about this and want other people’s unfiltered opinions so I can better form my own.
I studied ecology in university so I have a tendency to think of human events in an ecological context (which is probably wrong). In competition between species (or even within the same species), no one in their right mind would call one species evil because it dominated all the other species. Instead, we think of different species as being entirely driven by circumstance. Even when talking about invasive species, the closest analogue to colonialism, many Indigenous people themselves have routinely pushed back against equating invasive species to colonizers. Ecology considers all species to be purely products of circumstance, and rejects the popular depictions of one species harboring an actual hatred for another and actively seeking to wipe them out.
The common notions I hear for comparing European colonialism to ecology (which are almost always not made by ecologists) is that the conditions Europe just happened to give rise to societies that would eventually go on to colonize most of the world just as those same conditions gave rise to the European starling that would decimate native bird populations in North America. The sheltered seas of the Mediterranean meant that Europe developed naval technology capable of reaching far off lands much sooner than the rest of the world, for example. The notion that Europe just happened to be where the most powerful empires arose, and being the most powerful, it was inevitable that they would inflict the most harm on the rest of the world and would be hated because of it.
But human societies are not species and human-human interactions are not strictly ecological. For one, human societies have overarching coordination and collective will that species don’t have, and human societies as a whole often show more characteristics akin to a single organism than a species (though even that is apples to oranges).
Additionally, Europe was not where the most powerful empires were for the longest time. China for example was just as if not more powerful in the middle ages when Europe stagnated, just as if not more expansionist and obsessed with conquest, and its rule over the people just as tyrannical as any European king (I know Westerners tend to romanticize ancient China but I went to school in Mainland China for a bit before immigrating with my parents and my biggest takeaway was learning in history class what a shithole it was to actually live in) but China never had colonies in the European sense. The certainly conquered everyone around them, but never sought to establish their rule in far away lands like Europeans did, and certainly didn’t wipe out entire continents of people to replace them with Chinese. Does that imply that Imperial China was less evil than Imperial Europe? Or are they just as evil but in a different way (land-based conquest instead of sea based)? Or did they just not have the resources to do what Europe did but absolutely would have if they did? I don’t know hence why I’m asking.
All my rambling can basically be summed up as the question in the title, or, somewhat expanded: Did the world come to see white people as a symbol of colonialism and oppression as a result of forces beyond white people’s control? In a parallel universe with a different geography on this planet, would another ethnicity be the universally hated colonizers while white people are the victims of genocide? Do these questions even make sense and are they actually worth answering considering we only have this geography and history to work with?
There was a book a while back called Guns, Germs, and Steel that delves into this topic.
The root cause, as I understand it, is that Europe is on a continent oriented east-west instead of north-south. And Europe in particular is on the part of that continent that has a lot of easy access to the sea.
East-west orientation allows you to transplant plants and animals long distances and keep them at roughly the same latitudes, which means roughly the same climate. That is a big boon for spreading “civilized” agriculture, which is what creates surplus of labor, which creates non food jobs that advance technology.
Among the common 5-7 domesticated food animals people eat today, all but one or two were domesticated in Mesopotamia, but then spread all over Europe.
Access to the sea is the other component that turns tech advantage into colonialism, because it gives the transportation. Even today, China and Russia are great powers, but they are forced to be continental powers instead of maritime powers, because nearly all of their coast lines are hemmed in by narrow seas that are easy to blockade.
There are, of course, a bunch of other factors I’m not even thinking about and competing opinions. But I don’t for one second think that any of this has anything to do with European “innate intelligence” or skin color.
You might get some downvotes for mentioning that book. The author makes a few sloppy assumptions, and the anthropology/sociology/history communities love to hate him for it. His overall thesis is still generally good though, IIRC.
One thing I don’t think is in Diamond’s book: once Europe had realized they could sail far and wide to get things, the Dutch invented the idea of a stock market to fund voyages (the British took this idea and really ran with it). This system made long, risky trips easier to finance. Instead of a single monarch funding a single expedition, many people could pool their money to fund many expeditions.
I agree that none of this means Europeans have some special intelligence or attitude. Any other civilization that developed in similar conditions could have followed the same path.
I think that a lot of the arguments regarding why Europeans did better compared to near peers goes to variations in social differences between Europeans and other near peer civilizations.
It also includes the destruction of extended clan networks, independent universities, and higher wages for Europeans compared to others parts of the world.
Very interesting read, TIL. Thanks for that info, that blew my mind
Does most of that come from Rome? My producer, Neigsendoig, had been researching this for a while, and he thinks that most of the problems we see today come from the Roman Catholic Church, the Jesuit Order (who currently rules), and their Ashkenazi employees. That’s a potential both of us considered.
Before Rome, there was Greece, and prior to that the Persians. They all had their empires and did what they did.
Humans are greedy by instinct, and we just organise the religion to suit their needs.
The Ottomans also did their fair share in the Middle Ages.
Just look at how Christianity is twisted in the US for multiple popes having to condemn their actions.
Long story short, Europe was slightly ahead of Africa in terms of development when they began to really interact, around the time Europe found out about the Americas they had a bunch of new land from genocide of the natives and needed manpower Europeans could never hope to fulfill, so the slave trade started in earnest.
Europeans would only trade their goods for slaves, which started the slave industry in various African nations that wanted these goods, which stalled development in Africa while dramatically increasing development in Europe, widening the gap until the colonial era. Over time, this gap began to increasingly be seen as its own justification, and Europeans became increasingly racist towards Africans.
It isn’t about inherent evil. Europe was beginning to become capitalist while the most developed nations in Africa were developed feudal kingdoms, and the geography of Africa and Europe had more to do with that than any genetics could ever hope to cover. The narrow gap was exploited by Europeans and widened until the modern era of imperialism and neocolonialism.
I highy recommend How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney. We’re doing a readalong over in Hexbear.net if you want to join!
It’s worth noting India and China were wealthier than both until pretty far into the modern period. Maybe Japan too, I’m not sure.
Edit: And maybe SE Asia, they had their own maritime empires and interacted with Australians before the Europeans, which is neat.
Yep. The huge advancements in technology brought about by colonialism and capitalism in Europe compelled their naval supremacy, which allowed Europe to dominate trade routes, leapfrogging India and China who were still more of a developed feudal-sort of stage. This led to the Opium Wars, colonization of India and China, and eventually their independence movements that propelled China into socialism and India into its own capitalist system (which is a whole other discussion).
Yep. The huge advancements in technology brought about by colonialism and capitalism in Europe compelled their naval supremacy
I think you’ve got that backwards. After Rome, it was pretty much a cold, marginal peninsula off of Asia full of starving peasants, until they invented practical seafaring. The wealth that made them a player in the first place came from their ability to travel to the New World and take their stuff, land and freedom.
Europe had practical seafaring since antiquity. European naval technology during the discovery of the Americas was on par with other Eastern Hemisphere naval powers.
The naval technology empowered the discovery, but it isn’t like Europe was special at the time.
Also, it still took a while to bypass the Silk Road. Even when Europe did, it still ran into an issue that China wouldn’t trade for any European manufactured goods, just gold and silver.
Europe had practical seafaring since antiquity. European naval technology during the discovery of the Americas was on par with other Eastern Hemisphere naval powers.
No and no. In antiquity they followed the coasts most of the time, and followed really safe routes across mostly-closed seas the rest of the time. Trireme construction was good enough to take rough weather, while it existed, but for one thing they had trouble with navigation.
Chinese boats of the early modern era were leaky and unseaworthy by comparison, if sometimes extremely large for show, and their sails didn’t tack nearly as well.
The Vikings did manage seafaring, but they had a very specific design that was pushed pretty much to it’s limits. You can’t make a clinker-built longship any bigger or better really, and eventually economic conditions meant they stopped bothering with the big expeditions. Eventually some of the same techniques made their way into the caravel.
The Polynesians managed it much earlier, and did spread around, but they were otherwise in the literal stone age. It is still pretty curious they didn’t leave more impact on the Americas.
I like the the book “Caliban and the Witch” by Silvia Federici. Among other topics it discusses how European commoners fought the rise of privatization and capitalism. About the “colonization” of Europe if you will. I don’t think Europeans as a whole are uniquely evil, we just lost that initial struggle.
Of course. Just look at europeans : their squinty eyes ! their devious mouths ! always plotting, discussing their next colony !
don’t forget about our phrenology. our colonial center in the brain is much larger than that of normal humans!
yes hmmm, I can see the slavery neocortex is exacerbated and swollen !
Considering the Arab empire, the Ottoman empire, the Japanese Empire to name a few a European can name, I would believe that Empire, slavery and colonies are a common problem with humans and not something specific amon European
Don’t confuse empire with colonialism. The Ottoman Empire took prisoners of war as slaves, but they did not do industrialized capture and resale of black people in Africa they rounded up. Europe also had rules such as the child of a slave staying a slave. Essentially turning black people into cattle.
There is a good reason that black people literally invented religions in which only white people are painted as the devil.
I don’t subscribe to the notion that any particular race or (physical, not sociological) group can be evil.
People fight for resources. Sometimes with other people. History is littered with people doing the wrong things for the right causes.
Genghis Khan was from Mongolia and has killed so many people it actually affected climate at that time.
Even if you believe certain actions of certain people were evil, it’s difficult to generalize them to the whole population. Especially if they had no way to influence their decisions.
How could have a Dutch farmer change anything in the Kingdom of Netherlands? And how can a minimum wage brick-layer in England be responsible for what a UK king ordered 400 years ago?
Just as an example: look at the world today. America, Russia and Israel elected their presidents. Without getting to much into political discussion, at least some of their actions might be viewed (today) by majority of people as “evil”. Does that make all the residents of those countries evil? And their children? And grandchildren?
I really do believe that the reasoning is much simpler. And that, unfortunately, hasn’t changed even today: those who are in power and have wealth, will fight tooth and nail to keep it. By any means necessary.
You bring up the parallel with invasive species—I want to expand on that a bit. The enemy release hypothesis holds that species become invasive not because of any properties inherent to themselves, but because in their new environment they are no longer contained by the other species that co-evolved to regulate them in their original ecosystem. In the case of colonial-era Europeans, this meant the commercial institutions that had evolved under the moral authority of the church and the regulatory power of local legal systems were freed of those constraints when they left Europe’s institutional ecosystem.
In principle, this could have gone both ways (and possibly did, in the case of the ideas that sparked the Enlightenment), but by controlling the shipping, colonialists acted as a sort of cultural version of Maxwell’s demon—allowing the spread of invasive institutions in one direction but not the other.
I don’t think so necessarily, look at the Vikings. Sure, they would pillage towns to survive, but even though they discovered America way before Columbus, they didn’t go in and invaded and killed almost every native there like Columbus did. I think the colonization is more of an ideology that came upon some groups that happened to be led by sociopaths (i. e. The Romans, The Greek, and The Mongols).
Hell, look historically at the Incas, the Chinese empire, and the mongols under Ghengis Kahn, none of them weren’t white but they where all colonizers as well, just small fry to the Romans who then turned to the English, Spanish, and I think Dutch.
The other factor is religion, Christianity was a common factor in all these white colonizers who came to America. Buy the real reason was to find gold to fund their expansions. If Columbus wouldn’t have seen any gold jewelry on the chief of that first village and found no other precious metals, who knows what would have happened, maybe other Europeans might have visited later again, but it could have been with a much less colonizer mentality and more of simply exploration.
Vikings were colonizers, though. England was somewhat colonized under the Danelaw and Dublin was founded as a Viking colonizer’s stronghold. It just happened to be that Viking colonies in the New World were in Northern Canada, a place where large settlements still don’t exist.
The demonization of the Romans is silly.
One of the most interesting explanations I’ve seen is that Western Europe was politically fragmented just enough so that big enough entities were competing with each other for dominance. So there was no central authority strong enough to pacify it, and the individual states were powerful enough to mobilize resources, creating a competitive power race. It was in trying to beat each other that they reached out and colonized the rest of the world.
Edit: I’m thinking now how during the apex of pax Americana, space exploration really subsided for example. When the US and the USSR were competing it was on. Now that US hegemony is declining, it’s seems to be on again. Too strong of a political unification keeps the centrifugal forces in check.
I say why not both,
it is ‘uniquely evil’, because of it both being material product of ‘geography and circumstance’, which encourages it, and what the perpetrators decided to do with it (whom it encouraged)
Any human, let alone group, in my opinion can be as uniquely good or evil to one another, but when they are enabled by giving them the material tools they need to reshape the world in their favor, they can show themselves to be that force of good or bad.
If a system that encourages dispossession and destruction of past modes of production and livelihoods, to make efficient exploitation of people’s labor for Capital, creates a group of people who uphold such designs, especially at the expense of others
Then I tell you, while those people may be uniquely evil than the average person, at the end of it, they’re not more evil than what the system does.
Some interesting tidbits from Wikipedia:
Activity that could be called colonialism has a long history, starting at least as early as the ancient Egyptians. Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans founded colonies in antiquity. Phoenicia had an enterprising maritime trading-culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550 BC to 300 BC; later the Persian Empire and various Greek city-states continued on this line of setting up colonies. The Romans would soon follow, setting up coloniae throughout the Mediterranean, in North Africa, and in Western Asia.
The Japanese colonial empire began in the mid-19th century with the settler colonization of Hokkaido and the destruction of the island’s indigenous Ainu people before moving onto the Ryukyu Islands (the indigenous Ryukyuan people survived colonization more intact). After the Meiji Restoration, Japan more formally developed its colonial policies with the help of European advisors. The stated purpose from the beginning was to compensate for the lack of resources on the main islands of Japan by securing control over natural resources in Asia for its own economic development and industrialization, not unlike its European counterparts. Japan defeated China in the First Sino-Japanese War to control Korea and the island of Formosa, now Taiwan, and later fought off the Russian Empire to control Port Arthur and South Sakhalin.
While colonies of contiguous empires have been historically excluded, they can be seen as colonies. Contemporary expansion of colonies is seen by some in case of Russian imperialism and Chinese imperialism. There is also ongoing debate in academia about Zionism as settler colonialism.
Of course, historical facts rarely matter when it comes to rhetoric like this.
Just a casual dumb-dumb here, but I think you could’ve put any people in Europe and things would’ve turned out the same.
I agree. People are people. The racist tone of the original question and the judging of history by modern standards just underlines that.
Most wouldn’t be Catholic, but Catholic-adjacent. Islam, for example, has Catholicism tied into it (because the Qur’an was allegedly written by a Catholic nun), and so does Judaism (these practitioners use the Kabbalah… so does the Catholic Church).
My atheist ass didn’t account for religion, but I think they would’ve found a way to excuse slavery and exploitation either way.
Geography and circumstance.
I’d recommend reading Why the West Rules - For Now by Ian Morris. The book is controversial and definitely not the last word, but is worthwhile for its grappling with the big picture.
Relevant to your question, Morris makes the case that there was economic pressure on Europeans to sail west. Everybody wanted silk and spices from India and China. For Europeans, this meant trading with Arab, Iranian, and Turkish merchants, and so spices were expensive. Finding direct routes to China and India meant people would be able to buy silk and spices more cheaply, which would make people rich. So lots of people were very interested in sailing all the way around Africa, or going west to get to the East.
Hence Columbus stumbling onto the Americas. And then colonialism happened.
But this isn’t a uniquely European thing. When Columbus arrived, the Quechua were already doing very European-style colonialism, and the Aztecs had a form on imperialism quite similar to the ancient Greeks. Carthage, Greece, Iran, and tge Arabs all engaged in imperialism and colonialism, but the European powers won.
Which, to be clear, doesn’t mean it’s right for anybody to do it.
Most human societies had been terrible and atrocious. Europeans just got the technology to be terrible and atrocious at a global level first.
IMHO, the answer is in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by Lenin
TLDR: Capitalism cannot survive without Colonialism, because it needs new markets to solve the recurring overproduction crises. An overproduction crisis is when the workers earn too little to buy what they produce.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism,_the_Highest_Stage_of_Capitalism
Europeans are not evil nor good. They are influenced by the material conditions they live in and by ideology.
Capitalism also occurred in China though, so that cannot be the reason by European colonisation occurred.
European capitalism, particularly from the 16th century onward, was not a simple market economy. It was mercantile capitalism, a system where the state and private capital became fused in a project of national economic expansion. The goal was to accumulate wealth by any means necessary for the benefit of the metropolitan power. This system was inherently expansionist, violent, and required external colonies to serve as sources of raw materials and captive markets.
China’s commercial developments, while advanced, largely served an internal, agrarian-based empire. The state’s Confucian ideology prioritized stability and internal harmony over aggressive external expansion and accumulation. There was no comparable fusion of state and commercial power for the explicit purpose of global domination.
