quote:Let's take a more modern example. There was an extremely vocal subsection of the population that objected to the war in Vietnam or Iraq too.
Due to your anger with Europeans, I would note that Canadians didn't join Vietnam and we didn't join Iraq despite considerable American pressure both times. Results do matter.
I think we have different ideas of what imperialism even is. Do you think US actions in WWII were imperialistic?
Don't get me wrong, I think Iraq was an awful idea, and is the biggest US blunder of the last 20 years at least. But I don't think it was imperialistic. Anyone who has any ideas about the American mindset would know that we'd have zero intention of staying there, regardless of what the outcome had been. I certainly respect Europe's stance on the issue. You seem to have ignored me earlier when I said I don't have as much of a problem with Europe's current stance. Now a days they tend to get things more right, though I think their timidity is taken too far in the other direction from time to time as well. It's when they scold us without recognition of their complicity that I get annoyed. Britain didn't do it, so I don't have a beef with them, but if they had I would have reminded them that they created part of the mess in Iraq to begin with (we supplied the other half, so maybe we'd call that one even). I don't for a second think that it was imperialistic. I don't think South Korea was either, or Vietnam, or our invasion and conquest of Germany (twice) or Japan. How do I know? Because we aren't in control of any of the countries I just mentioned, and the ones we were in control of were for extremely brief periods of time, and without that effort, millions more would have died, and for that matter, I think the progress of SK, Japan, and Germany in the world from the point of our intervention onward should say something for what we did.
I'm curious as to why you didn't include South Korea in with that list.
quote:See, this is a good example of what I'm taking about. By this time we're already on the brink of the 1900s. If you accept that American history up to this point is correctly deemed as imperialistic as Europe, my case is already roughly three quarters complete.
Woah, hold up there. I don't for a second agree that American history up to that point was as imperialistic as Europe. I don't even come close to agreeing. In fact I disagree rather loudly.
quote:Remember, the original point of conflict is whether the US should have gotten as you put it "the benefit of the doubt" from the Chinese of 1950.
I thought we were talking about the Chinese of the late 19th century, originally, but I guess in the end it doesn't really matter.
quote:So, no, not the same. But I think its telling of a lack of perspective to simply declare and expect the rest of us accept by fiat that you're Americans and that means a clean break from Europe. From the Asian perspective there's less difference between you and the Europeans and say ... Chinese and Japanese people with more than a thousand years of divergence, a different language, etc
Well, I don't really have time to write a whole essay on the subject, but I think there was a cultural difference from Europe by the late 19th century at the very least, and much earlier in reality. America might have been formed by Europeans and with European ideas, but we were still colonial, and colonial life in America bred a new culture that changed even more rapidly after independence. Don't forget that a great many people first came to America to get AWAY from Europe, not to build a proto-Europe overseas, and the people who build the political structure of the country were specifically building an antithesis to the governments that constituted Europe.
To you it might look like the difference between a Golden Delicious and a Red Delicious apple, and I don't necessarily think there are racial reasons for thinking that, I think it comes as a consequence of not being European or American, and the education you got growing up. But, if I had the time, I could make I think a very strong case that Americans were culturally different, but with cultural bridges to Europe. Certainly that'd be an easy case to make today wouldn't you agree? Europeans most decidedly are not interchangeable with Americans, despite the fact that "Westerner" lumps them all together (with Canadians too). If you can recognize the difference there, it shouldn't be too hard to backtrack it a century or two.
quote:I don't really. If was talking to Japanese people that were proclaiming a lack of responsibility, I'd have even more choice words. Following the crowd isn't really an "excuse" that deflects moral responsibility. Its a statement about historical causality.
Heh. I still think you're missing something there. Like I said before, Japan didn't learn that from us. Learning new warfare techniques isn't the same thing as learning all the things that they ended up doing. What we did might have enabled them to do what they did, but it certainly didn't cause it. That's an important difference.
Also, I'm not particularly upset. Puzzled, is probably closer to where I'm at emotionally.
(And thanks, I actually think both my exams yesterday went surprisingly well!)
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
I think Iraq was in fact Imperialistic with the aim of setting up a puppet or at least US dependent Government to give preferential oil contracts, aimed primarily to do it before the Chinese and Russians could in a post saddam Iraq get the oil development contracts first.
The fact of the matter is not whether you can stay but whether any government left over is capable of letting "the spice flow" to the US rather then your emerging rivals.
IP: Logged |
posted
Blayne: And yet those oil contracts are not the exclusive peruse of US companies. The only thing I think can be reasonably extrapolated on this topic is that the US saw Iraq's oil a means to finance the expensive war it was considering at the time.
What evidence have you got that we would have setup a puppet government? Trying to get public fair elections created seems pretty counter intuitive to the objective you've given us.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Woah, hold up there. I don't for a second agree that American history up to that point was as imperialistic as Europe. I don't even come close to agreeing. In fact I disagree rather loudly.
It is true that the US didn't go much in for overseas expansion until ~1890 or so. But you were certainly building up your territory in an explicitly imperialistic way. Does the phrase 'Manifest Destiny' ring a bell? Indian tribes, Mexico, Louisiana. Forty-four forty or fight. Florida. Alaska. Are you really claiming that these are not imperialistic actions?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
Point of order, we followed up that whooping political slogan with a hefty pouch of money for Great Britain in exchange for Oregon. Also wasn't Alaska purchased from a willing Russian government? I'll give you everything else.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
Yeah, thats precisely what I'm going for. See, American expansion was so innately threatening and aggressive that fear of a unilateral and unprovoked American attack was the number one reason for Confederation of Canada in 1867.
(i.e. If Canadians couldn't even trust Americans up till at the bare minimum decades after 1867, you can certainly understand Chinese reluctance in at least say the turn of the century)
That isn't even an Asian perspective. That is from the perspective of (now) your closest ally.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
Point of order, we followed up that whooping political slogan with a hefty pouch of money for Great Britain in exchange for Oregon. Also wasn't Alaska purchased from a willing Russian government? I'll give you everything else.
The British would not have sold that territory if there were no credible threat of war. They didn't come to rule a quarter of the earth's surface by giving away land whenever there was a dispute, after all! Notice that several generations of British politicians followed the policy of giving in to the US - 'appeasing' them, if you like - whenever there was a conflict in the American continent, because they knew they could not win a war. They'd get whatever compensation was going, but they wouldn't fight. As for Russia, they had just lost the Crimean war and weren't in any position to defend Pacific possessions. And in both cases, aren't these rather excellent examples of expansion for its own sake? It's not as though Oregon is a major contributor to the US economy, and as for Alaska, Seward didn't know anything about the oil.
Edit: And have a look at the (from Wiki) motivations of the American government:
quote:The treaty was promoted by Secretary of State William H. Seward, who had long favored expansion, and by the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Charles Sumner. They argued that the nation's strategic interests favored the treaty. Russia had been a valuable ally of the Union position during the U.S. Civil War, while Britain had been a nearly open enemy. It seemed wise to help Russia while discomfiting the British.
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Blayne: And yet those oil contracts are not the exclusive peruse of US companies. The only thing I think can be reasonably extrapolated on this topic is that the US saw Iraq's oil a means to finance the expensive war it was considering at the time.
What evidence have you got that we would have setup a puppet government? Trying to get public fair elections created seems pretty counter intuitive to the objective you've given us.
Public and free elections for a leadership that is almost entirely dependent on American aid and military support? Riiiight.
IP: Logged |
posted
Come, Blayne, fair's fair. The Americans have been building up an Iraqi army. It won't be of any use for invading Saudi Arabia, but for keeping tribal militias under control? There's a limit to how much artillery you need for that. A government that can control its own territory and deliver oil to anyone who will pay is in the end not dependent on anyone.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't have a lot of time, I'm off on a trip for most of the weekend. But there is one thing that I'd like to cover before attempting a paragraph by paragraph response and its been tumbling around my head since last night.
I wonder how much our cultural perspectives are shaping this conversation.
As a Canadian I have a hard time relating to your desire to "divorce" yourselves from your European ancestors. We take "credit" for the 1812 defeat of the American invasion and the "guilt" for the slaughter of the native Americans before Confederation.* While I consider the US almost a misguided product of Europeans, we're a mixed bag of better and worse. We're *lackeys* to British imperialism through till at least WW1, not just products and while we've forged our own path past WW2, our institutions, names, and whatnot are still distinctively evolutionary products of British ones.
* I remember a chilling start to a documentary on Canada on CBC about how Hudson's Bay Company blankets were given to the native Americans laced with disease. Hudson's Bay is "ours" in national mythology but its factually British
Maybe French Canadian antipathy towards being conquered by the British and resulting opposition to every time we went along with the British (Boer, WWI, etc.) has kept us honest. They've been a strong influence on our politics and policies. There may be many reasons. But we don't have an equivalent to American rhetoric about "Old Europe" and "New Europe."
But in the end, we're not that different. You fought a war for independence, we dealt with it diplomatically. Our patterns of settlement aren't amazingly different with the exception of American slavery. Our religious patterns aren't all that different in proportion.
Its an interesting difference in cultural perspectives.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
KOM: Your point is well taken, but are you so certain America would have risked an armed conflict with Britain again for Oregon? I wasn't there obviously so the general disposition of the government is not something I could say with any certainty, but isn't it plausible that the government was making alot of noise for the citizens sake while discussing quite civilly diplomatically?
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: I think Iraq was in fact Imperialistic with the aim of setting up a puppet or at least US dependent Government to give preferential oil contracts, aimed primarily to do it before the Chinese and Russians could in a post saddam Iraq get the oil development contracts first.
The fact of the matter is not whether you can stay but whether any government left over is capable of letting "the spice flow" to the US rather then your emerging rivals.
Considering none of the charges you've leveled there actually ended up happening, one wonders what you used, other than personal conjecture, to produce them.
The idea that the war would pay for itself via oil isn't particularly shocking, at least not back when we were talking about a three month tiptoe through the tulips that could be done surgically with little cost.
If the fact of the matter is in fact what you say it is, then by your own definition it wasn't imperialist.
quote:From KoM: It is true that the US didn't go much in for overseas expansion until ~1890 or so. But you were certainly building up your territory in an explicitly imperialistic way. Does the phrase 'Manifest Destiny' ring a bell? Indian tribes, Mexico, Louisiana. Forty-four forty or fight. Florida. Alaska. Are you really claiming that these are not imperialistic actions?
Pretty sure it was fifty-four forty or fight, but that's a rather minor quibble, though I'll come back to this in a minute. Yes, I'm aware that a lot of our continental expansion was imperialistic, but not all of it. Expansionist and imperialistic aren't the same thing. Alaska wasn't imperialistic, we bought it. I think the oft leveled charge that Americans systematically committed genocide is off base too. The grand majority of American Indians died as a result of disease, and, stories of smallpox blankets aside, it wasn't a mass attempt at slaughter via germ warfare. Intra-indian warfare did a lot of the killing, as well as their own overhunting of the buffalo before we even got over there. Indian policy was a conflicted subject in American history, but in the end I'd agree with Mucus that actions speak louder than words in that regard, and we have a lot to be ashamed of when it comes to Indian policy, but I still don't think it's as black and white as people like to portray it at.
The original point however, was not that Americans to 1890 weren't imperialistic at all, but that we weren't nearly as bad, and I stand by that. I'm not going to do it today, I'm pretty academically burnt out, but there's a complex evolution that takes place in the 20th century in how Americans, as a people and through government policy, viewed American Indians, and there's a pretty big shift around the 1870s that has both negative and positive repercussions, and in both instances it's a radical departure from what Europeans practices abroad.
quote:From Mucus: See, American expansion was so innately threatening and aggressive that fear of a unilateral and unprovoked American attack was the number one reason for Confederation of Canada in 1867.
Ironic coming from the people who launched the only two foreign wars on American soil. It was British aggression that started 1812. You call it an invasion of American forces, but Canada was still Britain back then. At worst it was a counter-invasion, and that's using terminology more favorable to you. It absolutely wasn't unprovoked aggression. Impressment on the seas, British support and arming of Confederate rebels (a huge point on contention), trade policies, are you seriously trying to argue that Britain wasn't being provocative during this era? We still weren't going to invade Canada in the 1860s, but it's not like we didn't have legitimate beefs with Britain.
quote:From KoM: The British would not have sold that territory if there were no credible threat of war. They didn't come to rule a quarter of the earth's surface by giving away land whenever there was a dispute, after all! Notice that several generations of British politicians followed the policy of giving in to the US - 'appeasing' them, if you like - whenever there was a conflict in the American continent, because they knew they could not win a war. They'd get whatever compensation was going, but they wouldn't fight
It was saber rattling, pure and simple. Polk (I think it was Polk) used 54'40 or fight as a campaign slogan to get the people all riled up specifically so Britain did think that the US was serious about war, but all Polk ever wanted was Puget Sound so he would have another deep water Pacific harbor. Using fifty four forty or fight as an example of American imperialism is also silly because look at the current boundary. It ain't the fifty four forty, it's the 49th.
quote:As for Russia, they had just lost the Crimean war and weren't in any position to defend Pacific possessions. And in both cases, aren't these rather excellent examples of expansion for its own sake?
Well we weren't going to TAKE it. They called it Seward's Folly for a reason.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: We still weren't going to invade Canada in the 1860s, but it's not like we didn't have legitimate beefs with Britain.
See, you're really missing the forest for the trees. The point is not that Canada was blameless, the point is that the imperialistic bickering of the two sides is of an intensity such that even fellow North Americans (not Asians, not Europeans) felt that it was threatening to share a border with the US in 1867. (And Canadians genuinely thought the US might invade in the 1860s, in fact concurrent with Confederation, the US was turning a blind eye to raids launched from US soil)
In fact, I've checked and Canadian defense plans against an American invasion date well into the 1920s.
And yes, you've put plenty of American spin on the events but you can easily see that the situation was messy enough to see that actual Canadians would have viewed things quite differently. For every piece of spin you place on an event, we have many counters that many perfectly rational people accept.
...
Or can you?
See, I'm starting to wonder if you have a fundamental inability to see things from anything *but* an American position no matter the time period.
You claim that Chinese people should have given the US the benefit of the doubt in 1950 (or worse, you thought we were talking about 1900!?) when it came to sharing a border with Americans.
Now you seem to be edging toward claiming a similar stance for Canadians in 1867, which seems to be a critical misunderstanding of the Canadian positions of the time.
If you can't even understand that Canadian position (I'm not asking necessarily asking for you to agree to it), I wonder if its even possible for you to understand a Chinese position after you layer on the many foreign invasions, systemic American racism, treaties by blackmail (and then secret treaties with the Japanese on top of those), and so forth. And you know ... a huuuuuge difference in culture.
There just seems to be a fundamental disconnect here.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Yes, I'm aware that a lot of our continental expansion was imperialistic, but not all of it. Expansionist and imperialistic aren't the same thing.
I disagree. What is the difference as you see it?
quote:The original point however, was not that Americans to 1890 weren't imperialistic at all, but that we weren't nearly as bad, and I stand by that.
How do you quantify this? Acres expanded per year? Wars fought? In terms of ideology, Manifest Destiny doesn't seem any less widespread or arrogant than Trade Follows the Flag, mission civilisatrice, or Lebensraum. (The last is a later development, to be sure.) Are you sure you're not just saying "It was us, so we couldn't have been as bad as the others"?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm afraid I don't see much difference between 'expansionism' and 'imperialism' either, Lyrhawn. To my mind the only difference is context.
When I say 'imperialism' I think of some country going far away, smacking down some locals, and taking over. When I think of first European and then American behavior in North America, I'm afraid the only substantial difference I can think of is that once we got here, we didn't have to go very far at all.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:See, you're really missing the forest for the trees. The point is not that Canada was blameless, the point is that the imperialistic bickering of the two sides is of an intensity such that even fellow North Americans (not Asians, not Europeans) felt that it was threatening to share a border with the US in 1867. (And Canadians genuinely thought the US might invade in the 1860s, in fact concurrent with Confederation, the US was turning a blind eye to raids launched from US soil)
Isn't that kind of a no brainer? When Canada's parent country, Britain, acts in an extremely provocative manner towards the United States, doesn't it sort of make sense that Canada, right next door, is going to naturally be threatened as a result of those actions? It feels like you're trying to make a much bigger deal out of that than it really is.
And if those "raids" are the ones I'm thinking of, then you've really stretched the term to apply it to what actually took place. I imagine they would have had some sort of defense plan in place partway into the 20th century until the US and Britain drew closer as allies. Canada as a lone country however would have been just fine if it hadn't been for their connection to Britain.
I think the idea that we'd invade in the 60's, given the political climate of the US though, is questionable. The only thing that might have pushed us towards such an action would have been the blatant acts of aggression from the UK in arming and supporting the South, and at that point, you have to wonder if there isn't a legitimate cause to go to war, but even then I still don't think we would have, we had enough on our plate.
quote:And yes, you've put plenty of American spin on the events but you can easily see that the situation was messy enough to see that actual Canadians would have viewed things quite differently. For every piece of spin you place on an event, we have many counters that many perfectly rational people accept.
I think you're spinning in the opposite direction. I think the facts back up what I'm saying, and I don't think I'm saying anything particularly out there. I'm not saying that the United States is bathed in awesome and has a little halo that shines over the continent that makes us paragons of virtue and morality. We've made a lot of mistakes. We've made some whoppers. I've ceded that where I've felt it's fair to do so. But I think the extent to which America, pre-1960s or so, gets blamed for the world's problems, and the extent to which America is labeled imperialistic, is comparatively melodramatic most of the time. My automatic response is just to chalk it up to anti-American sentiment that most people seem to at some time absorb into their psyche, as an automatic assumption. But I think a careful analysis of events that took place show a departure from that view. I'm not convinced that such an automatic response is really fair though. Defending America's history seems to automatically come across as spin or whitewashing. It seems that anything other than total admission of fault to whatever charges are leveled against us is chalked up as some ultra-nationalistic American self-denial.
I don't buy that. I think the truth lies between. There are a lot of Americans who do in fact do that, and brush all our sins and crimes under the rug of American exceptionalism and virtue, and then there are those who have very, very few good things to say about America's past. I fall in between.
quote:You claim that Chinese people should have given the US the benefit of the doubt in 1950 (or worse, you thought we were talking about 1900!?) when it came to sharing a border with Americans.
What proof were they working with in 1900? Everyone has to have a reason to believe what they do, what were theirs?
quote:Now you seem to be edging toward claiming a similar stance for Canadians in 1867, which seems to be a critical misunderstanding of the Canadian positions of the time.
I can consider that such an event would be possible, but we're framing it in entirely different ways. You'd call it a land grab I think, and I'd call it cassus belli. And I think somewhere in there is where our disconnect is. I think a real look at America during that time period would show that invading Canada wasn't anywhere near a priority. We were far too self-involved, which really makes me wonder what Canadians were seeing if they seriously feared an invasion. Did they really not know what was going on? Were they listening to British propaganda? Or was it just unfounded skittishness?
I think that perhaps combining America's westward march (though seriously, westward, not northern) with increased British/American tensions in the 60s could have given them suspicion to fear some sort of reprisal. I just think that in the end, such fears were seriously misguided.
KoM -
quote:I disagree. What is the difference as you see it?
I think imperialism implies differing amounts of control, whether it's cultural, military, economic, whether the people are indoctrinated or live in thrall, etc. Expansion in the case of something like buying Alaska or the Gadsden Purchase wasn't imperialist. We didn't march into Alaska and start rounding up the Inuits into camps. In many ways it was just land for the sake of land that really, really ended up being good value for the money.
Setting up a colony, for example, in a place where there are no people, isn't imperialistic. Though it could become that I guess if it was used as a military launching point for conquest.
quote:How do you quantify this? Acres expanded per year? Wars fought? In terms of ideology, Manifest Destiny doesn't seem any less widespread or arrogant than Trade Follows the Flag, mission civilisatrice, or Lebensraum. (The last is a later development, to be sure.) Are you sure you're not just saying "It was us, so we couldn't have been as bad as the others"?
You can use numbers if you want. Look at what Europe controlled, between huge swaths of South America, the whole of Africa with maybe the exception of Ethiopia and a tiny piece of land called Liberia, the Indian subcontinent, and large parts of the Middle East as well. That's a billion people, millions upon millions of whom were killed, multiple continents and vast tracts of land that don't even compare to the size of America. There were less than three million American Indians in America when the first colonists arrived. Between then and 1900, the grand majority would die of disease, and many more from intratribal warfare. It makes the atrocities committed against them no less bad in their own right, but it also gives us a sense of scale, and that we weren't on the same scale.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote: quote:I disagree. What is the difference as you see it?
I think imperialism implies differing amounts of control, whether it's cultural, military, economic, whether the people are indoctrinated or live in thrall, etc. Expansion in the case of something like buying Alaska or the Gadsden Purchase wasn't imperialist. We didn't march into Alaska and start rounding up the Inuits into camps. In many ways it was just land for the sake of land that really, really ended up being good value for the money.
Setting up a colony, for example, in a place where there are no people, isn't imperialistic. Though it could become that I guess if it was used as a military launching point for conquest.
Lyrhawn, I very much doubt if KoM was talking about just Seward's Folly and Gadsden.
quote:That's a billion people, millions upon millions of whom were killed, multiple continents and vast tracts of land that don't even compare to the size of America. There were less than three million American Indians in America when the first colonists arrived. Between then and 1900, the grand majority would die of disease, and many more from intratribal warfare. It makes the atrocities committed against them no less bad in their own right, but it also gives us a sense of scale, and that we weren't on the same scale.
Why do you think things were different in South America? There, disease did most of the European work as well. Also, it seems you're collectively balancing all of Europe against the United States. I'm not sure how reasonable that is.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
No, I don't think he meant just Alaska and Gadsden, but he implied that all expansion was equal to imperialism. I'm trying to make a distinction, and those were perfect examples. I'm certainly not going to argue the point when it comes to something like Indian wars. Obviously I cede that.
Yeah, disease did a number on South Americans (though that doesn't excuse them on any other continents), but you also have to consider acquired immunity. Europeans colonizing South America by and large did so as individual men and intermarried with local women. Europeans colonizing North America did so in family units who all came with a large degree of immunity (though still suffered by the millions from things like malaria, hookworm, yellow fever, etc). It gave South Americans a better chance to defend against those diseases over time, whereas they continued to ravage native American populations centuries after colonization first began. The rest of the damage they did themselves, but that's still a valid point I suppose.
And another valid point as far as a collective Europeans go.
We can separate out individual European countries easily enough and I still think that, by and large, the individual damage wreaked by each one is much greater than America's individual sphere of responsibility. Germany conquered most of territorial Europe and proceeded to kill 12 million Jews, gypsies and other undesirables. I don't think I even have to go into their Pacific and African holdings to prove my point on that one. Great Britain enslaved India, bits of China, chunks of South America and the Caribbean, chunks of the Middle East where we can thank them for the mess in Palestine and the ethnic mess in Iraq, and then of course you get to Africa. France held southeast Asia in thrall for a century and change, and also had there own large bits of Africa where they radically reordered the politically and social landscape for millions to make everyone into proto-Frenchmen but without any of the basic rights that Frenchmen got, then used them for fodder in their wars (oh, count Britain in for that one too!). Belgium tried their hardest to join in the club with the messed up situation they created in the Congo, but in terms of scale rather than revulsion I guess they fall short.
And, as a precaution, I'm not saying that we didn't do anything wrong. I just don't think it's nearly on the same scale.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Not for lack of trying! I really don't think you get to claim a meaningful difference between killing 90% of a population of 10 million, or 5% of a population of 180 million. And really, the Europeans were not that big on genocide, outside of Europe. (I'm aware of examples like the Herero, but there's nothing like the systematic campaign over a whole continent.)
Further, it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that Britain 'enslaved' India. 'Conquered', certainly. Ruled for their own benefit, definitely. But there were no slaves. I had far rather be an Indian coolie under the Raj, than a plantation slave, or even a nominally-free black sharecropper, in the same period.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Not for lack of trying! I really don't think you get to claim a meaningful difference between killing 90% of a population of 10 million, or 5% of a population of 180 million. And really, the Europeans were not that big on genocide, outside of Europe. (I'm aware of examples like the Herero, but there's nothing like the systematic campaign over a whole continent.)
Disagree. Disagree. Wow, that's really a glowing endorsement, but there's more to it than that (and disagree on the systemic campaign bit too).
quote:Further, it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that Britain 'enslaved' India. 'Conquered', certainly. Ruled for their own benefit, definitely. But there were no slaves. I had far rather be an Indian coolie under the Raj, than a plantation slave, or even a nominally-free black sharecropper, in the same period.
Alright, we can replace "enslaved" with "conquered and extracted wealth at the expense and labor of the locals."
quote:And where did you expand that had no people? Do the Inuit have no right of self-determination?
It was a general example in the argument for a difference between expansion and imperialism.
And so far as I know, Inuits were never put in reservations, and were treated very differently from the continental American Indians. And for that matter, there are like 15 people in Alaska, and the space is vast, there is something like one person per square mile. I don't know a huge amount about Alaska native history, but near as I can tell, almost no one went there for the first 20 years or so that we had it, then a few thousand people did for the gold rush, then most came back, then they rushed back out again decades later for oil, but even now it's one of the most sparsely populated states. I don't think it was the same issue as it was in the continental US.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Lythawn please explain how and why in gods name should the somewhat isolationist, paranoid, and slightely xenophobic leadership of a country that has been all of the above for 300 years ever give any of the round eyed devils the benefit of the doubt? Especially when there IS a history of secret and unequal treaties, foreign interventions, invasions, on top of other humiliations when they had just come out of the above and were finally in Mao's words "China stands up!" in his 1949 speech? Isn't the first rule of international relations in the realpolitik world of that era DONT TRUST the Great Powers to be your friends?
Now if Truman had publicly announced his intentions to not only renounce ties with Chiang Kai Shek (which he temporarily did) but also stated he wished to seek out relations with "Red China" and wished them friendship and a helping hand in development with maybe a few minor preferential trade concessions then maybe the Korean war would have been different, and this makes SENSE from a realpolitik view because A) There's always been a historical rivalry between russia and china, B) Russia was the BigBad at the time so getting an ally from China would've made sense Red or not Red (in the 80's the CIA with Chinese permission operated a communications spy station in Chinese territory) and would've fit their strategy of containment perfectly.
With China not so isolated.... heck you'ld probably have had the moderates like Deng or Zhou with more influence since most of Mao's power came from him pointing out how surrounded they were.
Since truman did none of this and seemed perfectly content to leave America's position on Red China ambigious to hostile after 49' can you blame the Politburo for reacting with the assumption that the Americans are probably hostile?
How the heck do you pronounce your name.
IP: Logged |
posted
Blayne talking about 'round eyed devils' is hysterical.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
And your pretty dense in your inability to determine that I am merely observing the common perception of the nationalistic segment of chinese activists and politicians of the era and not me as myself referring to them. If your unable to distinguish that then there's little point in you contributing to the discussion as virtually everything will be a personal attack on me based on the misinterpretetion or the misconstruction of what I am saying.
IP: Logged |
quote:Alright, we can replace "enslaved" with "conquered and extracted wealth at the expense and labor of the locals."
Yes, I will give you this. But I'd also suggest you consider the counterfactual, which is that the local aristocracy extracts wealth at the expense and labour of the locals. I'm unconvinced it matters whether the exploiter is from a far-off island, or right next door. And another point: The British did at least invest their loot; they build factories, railroads, eventually an entire industrial civilisation, and yes, some of that did come back to India. So compared to having the local princes grab the loot, I'd rather have the British. Note that this is not symmetric with the situation in the Americas, where there was no local aristocracy; not that a hunter-gatherer society is a dance on roses (with or without wolves) but it's fairly egalitarian.
I'll agree that Alaska is the weakest of the examples given, but what the heck, Australia wasn't very heavily populated either, without this detracting from the overall British imperialism. The point is that an outside observer, trying to determine whether Britain or the US was more imperialist, could likely make it come down either way by choosing his criteria right. More weight to acres expanded, or people subjugated? To the difference in exploitation levels, or to deaths? And so on. It's just a fact of life that pretty much everyone was an imperialist at the time, the colonised peoples not excepted. In fact if you study the history of British dominion in India, it's clear that at the start, the Company was only armed so it could keep from getting robbed blind, and the directors in London explicitly ordered their agents in India, multiple times, not to get involved in 'country wars'. (Which worked about as well as ordering colonists in America to stay east of the Appalaches.) And the Indians were pretty aggressive, too, around 1800; the Company had some pretty good excuses for getting into several of its wars, on the order of "They sent an army into our city and began raping and pillaging!"
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
