Make sure you know the rules of engagement before reading on…
Anecdote from the Colonist:
“They… have brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawk’s bells. They willingly traded everything they owned…. They do not bear arms and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane…. They would make fine servants….With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
— Christopher Columbus quoted in A People’s History
Etymology of “Colony”
“Colony” comes from the Latin colonia meaning “settlement,” from the root colere meaning “cultivate.” A colonist settles a given place and acquires the resources there, regardless of whether or not other people live there. This includes thinking of land itself as a thing to be owned rather than tended.
Three famous people who adhered to Colonialism
- Alexander the Great
- Christopher Columbus
- Richard Yates (1852 Illinois congressman who coined the term “Manifest Destiny”)
List of terms: Who? Where? When? Why? How?
- Who colonizes? Anyone who finds a resource and values that resource above human life.
- Where colonizes? Anywhere that has a resource they want, including human souls.
- When colonizes? As soon as they find the means.
- Why colonize? Because it’s efficient, profitable, and affects their immediate family in no harmful way for the foreseeable future. That’s the key: colonists colonize because their wants are more important that the needs of others.
- How colonize? By any means necessary including nuclear war, tracking, slaying entire herds of buffalo from the windows of passing trains, enslaving modern africans to mine diamonds, sex trade, etc.
Three positive tendencies of Colonists
- They know how to crunch numbers and balance a budget, therefore they are quite frugal.
- They have contributed much to international travel
- Without them, we may never have achieved the globalization of the world and thinks like the global cities of New York, London, and Tokyo
Three negative tendencies of Colonists
- Human souls are dehumanized into resources or obstacles in the way of resources and progress
- They have no foresight for the worldwide implications of things like deep-see drilling, exporting trash, and dirty water
- They destroy what few unspoiled bits of nature we have left
Fantastic example
Zombies (the post-colonial monster) or Magneto.
Further Reading:
Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire (on Amazon)
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