Comment on Native Americans?
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 21 hours agoIt is important to note that Spanish colonization and English colonization had very different strategies. Spanish colonization tended to replace the existing power structures with their own, which typically preserved the native population even if they were demoted to being second class citizens. In contrast, English colonization was a more a form of genocide combined with a settler colonization of free and enslaved persons. There are few tribes east of the Mississippi that are federally recognized and many tribes were forcibly relocated by English and later American government forces.
And I don’t know how it was in South America, but North America saw a collapse of civilization near first contact which shaped English colonization. There were several Native American civilizations with complex urban forms which collapsed by the time there was contact with English/American settlers. A few remained like the Iroquois and Cherokee, but there was seen to be an overall regression which settlers took as a sign from God that they should settle those lands instead.
obbeel@lemmy.eco.br 21 hours ago
That’s common culture/knowledge. But I don’t know, seems like rubbish to me. If English colonization has different methods, what can you say about Trinidad & Tobago? And the English Guyana? Let’s not go to Africa and Asia. It doesn’t seem to be their “modus operandi” to me.
I don’t think there is some big extermination plan for America and Australia. I think there’s just something different to those places, but that requires more study. Not of the common knowledge kind. Why would you want some kind of extermination colonization strategy for Australia? It’s weird. It’s more of a “counter-study”, but I believe there are people fighting the good fight out there. I’ll put it on my list and research it.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 20 hours ago
There wasn’t, but that doesn’t mean that an extermination policy didn’t exist.
The original American colonies were generally kept in a state of benign neglect with management of the colonies generally being a local affair. This generally meant that the colonists were the ones to make decisions on how to interact with the native population. Generally, this meant war between the natives and colonizers as a way to free up land for the next wave of colonizers to immigrate.
After a while, the British government tried to enact greater control over its colonies, including the Proclamation Line of 1763 which banned colonization beyond the Appalachian Mountains. This ban was routinely ignored be American colonists and was a reason cited for American independence.
As for why extermination over domination, there are two main reasons. For the northern colonies, the land did well in acting as a sink for European overpopulation. A lot of economic and political migration started at the time of American colonization and it was considered easier to move than try to create more liberal conditions at home. For the southern colonies, it was generally not seen as worth it to enslave the local population over importing slaves from Africa. It was easier to keep people in bondage in an unfamiliar land than it was to enslave the local populace.
By the time that the UK was starting to consider colonizing Australia, there were some laws on the books to protect indigenous populations. However, to expedite colonization, the colonizing government in Australia had the local aboriginals declared as non-civilized, which left the continent as terra nullus, or unclaimed territory.