cross-posted from: https://thelemmy.club/post/49015592
Where I live, I have to have this conversation way too often with people.
I need more people to understand that the spaniards were genuinely shocked by the size and beauty of native american cities. It is not uncommon for one of them to recount that they were more beautiful and impressive in scale than anything they had ever seen in Spain.
Also like, even if they were, so what? Someone or a culture being ‘less’ developed is not a good excuse for colonising, genociding etc it. Offer help with no strings attached, sure. But anything more than that is wrong and unethical to the highest degree.
The Americas were mostly in the copper age though. They however unlike in Africa, Asia and Europe seem to not have used it as much for producing practical items, but more for art.
Also the late stone age did have fairly complex societies as well. Not just in the Americas.
I have never really heard excuses for it. Its just something that happened. Its similar to europe with the original peoples of places displace, diluted, or destroyed.
if you manage to defeat the entire us military, I would argue you earned the right to American soil
the native americans lost a war, and they were conquered because of it
Yes, well, I have the power to do a lot of things that I don’t have the right to do. Waging a war of conquest is immoral, you have no right to do it, and you have no right to any land you gained from it.
And yes, that ultimately implies that all land ownership is unrightful and illegitimate. I’m with Gerrard Winstanley: private land ownership was the original sin, and communities holding land in common is the first step to redemption.
Not one war, because not one people. Many nations and tribes. Only some of it was outright war, that’s not an accurate enough description of how colonialism works.
Mostly, the people of the Americas were defrauded. Massive population crash was due to disease but also famine and displacement and disenfranchisement, and not necessarily by force. Lies were much easier.
Your reproduction of the simple Law of the Jungle myth is part of the narrative of settlers.
not once did it occur to them “I am getting screwed over”?
Holy shit yes it did. Colonialism is a complex multifaceted process. But read some history from their point of view, no room here for that scope.
