| ▲ | BigTTYGothGF 3 days ago |
| > Was Spanish colonization “evil?” It's hard to look at the on-the-ground details and come to any other conclusion. |
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| ▲ | rayiner 3 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| How so? What would Latin America look like today in the counterfactual scenario where the Spanish didn’t colonize it? |
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| ▲ | Larrikin 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Before anyone wastes their time, this is the same start of the other bad faith argument that the enslavement of Africans was for their own good and they were better off being slaves than being in Africa. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 3 days ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | BigTTYGothGF 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Aren't the people who survived Spanish colonization better off than they would have been? "The ends justify the means" is certainly a valid metric by which to judge things, but an honest application of it leads one to conclusions such as "Mao Zedong was the greatest humanitarian to have ever lived" (as seen here: https://i.imgur.com/3QUXVi3.jpeg). | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Mao is bad because he delayed the growth that China was capable of achieving and did achieve after Deng Xiaoping. 40 years after the communist revolution in 1990, China was still as poor as India per capita. In the 35 years since then, China became five times richer per capita than India. If the Chinese republicans had maintained power continuously since 1912, there's a good chance that China would be as developed as South Korea or Japan today. It's valid to ask a similar question about the Americas. What would life be like for people today? It's probable that the Aztecs or their descendants would have taken over the Americans, since they were by far the most technologically superior. Would they have evolved into a prosperous industrialized society today? | | |
| ▲ | vacuity 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I find it reasonable to assume that any civilization will gradually adapt to meet demands, given whichever constraints burden it. Europe (and the US) had opportunities (partly due to colonialism) to become industrialized and prosperous, and it has taken those opportunities. So it is with China. Africa has opportunities, but colonialism has made progress difficult. In the long term, I think cultural/societal differences are not the deciding factor, so much as the geopolitical environment shapes society. The formation of mountains doesn't much care about the contemporary scale of human construction projects, either. You seem to be saying that colonialism advanced society even for the oppressed, but the causality of history is complicated. As far as we know, you may as well say that the extinction of the dinosaurs as it happened was essential for human proliferation. Maybe the dinosaurs would've gone extinct at some point, or diminished greatly, or maybe the dinosaurs and humans would coexist. Just because a somewhat plausible scenario presents itself does not mean it is compelling. You have brought up counterfactuals, so use your imagination seriously, instead of taking the easy way out. If you have a motivating belief on the matter, it is untoward to speak as if you are unbiased and objective. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > I find it reasonable to assume that any civilization will gradually adapt to meet demands, given whichever constraints burden it So your theory is that civilizations are the way they are because of exogenous rather than endogenous factors? That seems difficult to reconcile with the historical record. Your viewpoint just begs the question. For example, why was Europe in a position to colonize the Americas in the first place? Why weren’t the Spanish greeted by Aztecs with swords and guns? | | |
| ▲ | vacuity 2 days ago | parent [-] | | In the long term, I think civilizations grow along the lines of natural selection. They are neither optimal nor pessimal, but are likely to display a high degree of fitness. Environmental shocks in the short term will challenge fitness. Competition among civilizations also challenges fitness. Why indeed was Europe technologically advanced? Why were the Americas not so much? Resources are one factor, which is why obtaining resources from other lands is valuable. But the main impetus for advancement surely isn't based on one's "skill in advancing". Most people could be trained to fix cars, if desired. Also, Rome fell, but people now live where Rome was with far greater technology. I posit that, if the indigenous peoples of the Americas were given the desire to advance to the level of Europeans, the resources to do so, and time, similar advancement would arise. |
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| ▲ | extropic-engine 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | No, they are not better off. I have provided as many facts for my argument as you have for yours. | |
| ▲ | Larrikin 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Prove that without any colonization they would be worse off. | |
| ▲ | Throaway195 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Latin America is a horrifically corrupt and inequal place, so, no, probably not! | |
| ▲ | jacobolus 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Probably not, but this counterfactual depends on the circumstances, and depends on your values. For example: people might argue about the relative harms of various kinds of slavery vs. cultural genocide vs. land dispossession and forced displacement .... After contact there were waves of mass die-off of people throughout the Americas due to disease brought from Eurasia: are we positing that those deaths still occurred? Because they were extraordinarily destabilizing. For example, if we hypothetically imagine that the balance of disease severity was the other way around and 90% of the population of Eurasia was wiped out over a century in several waves of horrific pandemics, then history would look quite different indeed, and it's all but impossible to predict precisely how. European states other than Spain also did horrific atrocities in their conquests and colonial projects. Are we positing that we just replace Spanish kingdom(s) with some alternative European monarchies? Or are we imagining a situation in which peoples of the Americas retained some autonomy? | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 3 days ago | parent [-] | | The Black Death killed approximately 30–60% of Europe's population between 1347 and 1353. | | |
| ▲ | jacobolus 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Now imagine that happening once per generation for 3 or 4 generations in a row, followed by / contemporary with getting invaded by an alien army with significantly superior weapons and ships whose goal was total domination and enslavement / elimination. | |
| ▲ | rayiner 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Exactly. Your average European alive today likely is better off because half their ancestors died of the plague. | | |
| ▲ | Tor3 3 days ago | parent [-] | | So the general theory is that if you kill half of the population the descendants will be better off? What's the mechanism, and what happens if you follow that to its conclusion? | | |
| ▲ | 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | rayiner 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | There is a whole body of research on this: https://history.wustl.edu/news/how-black-death-made-life-bet... | | |
| ▲ | Tor3 a day ago | parent [-] | | That's only about the black death, and some specific reasons for why that helped, kind of, _some_ parts of Europe. First, it definitely didn't help everyone - Norway, for example, lost all economic power and went into the 400 year night, as it's called (it was under Denmark). And secondly, it's a single case. You can't create a general rule from that. It's vastly different to compare that case to when e.g. 95% of the population died out in certain places during the Spanish conquest. And, again, take that "rule" to its logical conclusion: How many people will inhabit the Earth after a while, and under what conditions will they live? |
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| ▲ | hitarpetar 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | no, they're not, this whole line of thought is explicitly white supremacist. shame on you |
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| ▲ | IncreasePosts 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is an alt history story idea I've had rattling around in my head for years. It starts off in 1492 with a dejected Columbus complaining about Isabella and Ferdinand not seeing his vision. Jump cut 300 years later to 1776, when Europeans first learn about the New World - when an Aztec galley lands in Cornwall. | |
| ▲ | BigTTYGothGF 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > How so? Just speaking personally I have a pretty dim view of genocide and slavery. |
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| ▲ | wang_li 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The Meso-American civilizations routinely engaged in human sacrifice. Tens of thousands of people per year were murdered. These weren't peaceful monks quietly engaging in scholarly pursuits. Even if you don't personally drag victims to the top of the pyramid and cut their heads off or hearts out, if you stand around and watch, you're part of the problem. I'd be interested in how you compare the details of what pre and post colonization looks like and why you weigh post colonization as evil. |
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| ▲ | vintermann 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, that's probably the excuse that got the guy off the hook for burning the entire written history of those civilizations. But it was not actually a good excuse. Burning those books was still wrong. Even people around him understood how wrong it was. We do not have to view colonialism from the stratosphere, we can judge the actions individually down at the ground. We know why he wanted to focus on other things than the things he was actually personally responsible for, but what's your motive? Got a project of your own to defend? | |
| ▲ | x3al 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Witch hunts in Europe and, to lesser extent, in colonized parts of America weren't that different. | | | |
| ▲ | throwaway665667 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Really crazy how we are taught from an early age the horrors of the holocaust and other genocides, and aboutour moral superiority compared to those that didn't intervene back then... "Never again. If this this happened today we know better to stop it"... And then look at tens of thousand of people being mass murdered by a genocidal civilization and complain that Spain intervened because... a priests burned books (something that I absolutely do not condone of course)? Were we wrong to destroy half of Europe to stop Germany too? Really trilled to know future generation will talk about us as the bad guys because we destroyed German art and books as we stopped a literal mass genocide. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway665667 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > We didn't "intervene" until the germans declare war on us. Yes, that was mistake and the lesson that should be learned. > The genocidal civilization was Spain, not the aztecs. This is complete revisionism, Spain laid war on the Aztecs supported even by other indians, it wasn't a voluntary biological warfare. The Aztecs killed tens of thousands of people per year. > Who is we? Who destroyed half of europe to stop germany? The allies. Are Allied bombings considered a contentious subject now? > Did we wipe out the germans? Did we wipe out the german language, culture, history, etc? Spaniards did not "wipe out" indian people, the Aztec civilization went the way of every conquered civilization. Did Arabs wipe out Egyptian language, culture, history, etc or did it dwindle in importance over the centuries as a new civilization took over the other? | |
| ▲ | hearsathought 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > and aboutour moral superiority compared to those that didn't intervene back then.. Didn't intervene? You act like it was an act of charity. We didn't "intervene" until the germans declare war on us. > And then look at tens of thousand of people being mass murdered by a genocidal civilization and complain that Spain intervened because... Spain "intervened"? The genocidal civilization was Spain, not the aztecs. The aztecs didn't wipe themselves out. The spanish did. > Were we wrong to destroy half of Europe to stop Germany too? Who is we? Who destroyed half of europe to stop germany? > Really trilled to know future generation will talk about us as the bad guys because we destroyed German art and books as we stopped a literal mass genocide. Did we wipe out the germans? Did we wipe out the german language, culture, history, etc? Are you really equating what we did to germany to what the spaniards did to the aztecs? |
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| ▲ | BurningFrog 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| The colonization of the new world was largely an immunological accident. When meeting Europeans, 90% of the Americans would catch some European disease and die. This was widely seen as the will of god(s) by both sides. Often the disease spread faster than the Europeans, so when they got to an area most people were already dead. The following conquest is seen as barbaric and unjust by us modern people. But for the people of the time, it was just how the world worked. The Aztecs would have been overjoyed to conquer Spain the same way. |
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| ▲ | vacuity 3 days ago | parent [-] | | You're right, but I think too that the Europeans happily took the deaths as an opportunity and justified it. |
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