h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So, here's an interesting opinion column: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/972FFE74-F7DE-44F0-AB5E-92B47BBDADE7.htm

'It's about time that Europeans also accept historic facts about their former occupation of the world' writes Dag Herbjornsrud.

My question is: have Europeans, both governments and individually, accepted historic facts about their occupation of the world as described by Herbjornsrud? What do you think?

Ultimately, any feelings about colonialism are utterly pointless. We are all descended from a race emerging from Africa. I don't think European governments should accept responsibility colonialship, but equally I don't think it should be an issue in the first place. But maybe I'm just an idealist.

B

So everything any government did when occupying another country should be excused? Perhaps Germany should be notified.

Obviously there is some statue of limitations here, there has to be a limit. In addition as a member of the *New World* I must admit I'm in a unique position but no country is without blame for past actions.

Bravo Anhaga for bringing up an extremely uncomfortable subject for the West.

The question, and the column I linked to, was about acknowledging and accepting the facts of history, not about trying to give it back or anything. It's about accepting that the world is the way it is because of the way it was, and that a big huge part of the way it was consisted of European Empires doing what European Empires did. It's about acknowledging the true context in which we all live.

(Not wishing to be blindered, blinkered, narrow of view or seeing things in monochrome.)

I didn't mention reparations. I agree that modern history should not be blind to the past. Those that ignore history are condemned...yadda, yadda, yadda.

Sorry, I wasn't meaning that you spoke of reparations; I was just trying to clarify the question. But then, you did mention a statute of limitations. If we're talking of acknowledgement and acceptance, neither of which has a price tag, why have a limit?

Frankly, not acknowledging and not accepting, no mater how ancient the history, have exorbitantly high price tags.

santayana, santayana, santayana

We must have a limit simply because I am not willing to accept guilt over Homo Erectus superceding Neanderthal or the Huns conquering the Roman Empire.

Theres a few misleading statements in that article, especially in the introduction.

>> Iraq, Kashmir, Palestine, Northern Ireland: The root causes of the world's hottest conflicts lie in the break-up of Europe's colonial empires. But who dares admit it? <<

Norther Ireland has it roots going back to the 15th century. The roots of the Palestine and Iraq problems go back to the break up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI. Kashmir has its roots in the partition of India and Pakistan where neither party could agree so it was fudged.

The assertion the Hitler had inspirations on the British Empire is not true. Hitler was quite happy to let Britain keeps its Empire. He was more interested in Eastern Europe and Russia. In fact before the outbreak of WWII Hitler was quite an Anglophile.

I stopped reading after that.

Donald

Donald,

May I suggest a dictionary? The statement made was the Hitler got his inspiration from (was inspired by) the British Empire, not that he had asperations on the British Empire.

I think that the original question can, and should, be applied to the United States. Most Americans realize, when they stop to think about it, that the United States was already populated when the Europeans arrived. Native Americans were hard done by as the white European culture gained dominance.

The very best answer I've ever seen to the issue of reparations, where the question was along the lines of "But *I* didn't do the harm! Why should I pay for damage done by my distant (or not so distant) ancestors?" came from RAF Wing, a Native American researcher whose U number here I'm too lazy to look up just now.

Her response to that question, was something like "No, you didn't do it. BUT you're reaping the rewards of what your ancestors did, aren't you? Yours is the dominant culture, so you get the goodies. That's why you still bear some of the responsibility for reparation."

Makes sense to me.

Maybe a statute of limitations applies when nobody has a disproportionate advantage over anybody else because of what happened in the distant past.


NBY

Yes, Analiese (RAF Wing) and I often had discussions on this very topic. Well, I'm not sure that they were discussions since she and I, despite our ancestral differences, were always on the same side. I miss her.

I'm going to get to bed now, but if someone reminds me, perhaps I'll dredge up my parable of the Japanese-Canadian grocer tomorrow.

"Her response to that question, was something like "No, you didn't do it. BUT you're reaping the rewards of what your ancestors did, aren't you? Yours is the dominant culture, so you get the goodies. That's why you still bear some of the responsibility for reparation."

I can't agree with that. It's generally regarded around these parts as being wrong to put someone down just because of an accident of birth. You don't blame someone for being black or for having some sort of birth defect or for not having a perfect hourglass shape, so why blame them for being born where their parents and grandparents and great grandparents live?

speaking of acknowledging the past...

"Historical revisionism, misinformation alive and well and living in Japan"

http://kevinswoodshed.blogspot.com/

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/index-e.htm

"It's generally regarded around these parts as being wrong to put someone down just because of an accident of birth."

"accidents of birth"? What does that have to do with the price of oranges?

Are you suggesting that, say, the Native people demanding what was taken illegally by the Crown (in the case of Canada) is somehow "racist".

At what point does one "wipe the slate clean", so to speak? Ten years, 100 years, 500 years? Wipe the slate clean of what? Racial slurs? Genocide? Stealing land and pushing a people (well, in reality, hundreds of individual groups of people) to the brink of extinction (or, as in the case of, say, the Beothuk, to extinction)? How convenient to fall back on the "I didn't do it, so why should I have to pay for land that my GGgrandfather stole?"

I deal every day with people who suffer the results of generations of genocide, marginalization, sexual abuse, and violence at the hands of the people who also stole their land. I suppose we should just say to them "Suck it up. That's all over and done with. Get on with your lives."

I think not.

I once had a discussion with someone who said "I don't see why we have to give "those people" their land back. What if I went back and demanded my ancestral land in Scotland?"

I said "What's to stop you?"

>>I once had a discussion with someone who said "I don't see why we have to give "those people" their land back. What if I went back and demanded my ancestral land in Scotland?"

I said "What's to stop you?"<<

It's an interesting point. Alot of the colonisation of New Zeland was by Scots who had been thrown off their own land and were looking for a better life. Unfortunately they did to Maori what had been done to them - actually it's not as simple as that because the powerholders involved were actually English, but I agree with the point that we have to be aware of and acknowledge the impact on the world of colonialist Europe.

The colonialist ethic is still alive and well - Bush in Iraq, globalisation, the man who is selling off plots of the moon, our disrespect for the environment etc are all based on the idea that the toughest person with the biggest gun can do what they like and that other people should submit to this for their own good.



I also agree totally that a huge part of the reparation issue is to do with who is benefiting *currently* from those earlier policies, and who is still being disadvantaged.

In some ways New Zealand was fortunate in that it was one of the last places that the British colonised, and by that stage the English were somewhat wiser about the whole thing. One consequence is the Treaty of Waitangi which gave Europeans the right to live in NZ and govern their own affairs, while allowing Maori to continue to do the same.

The Treaty claims here (reparation) are about how the Crown broke it's side of the bargain. Once those claims are settled they are settled (i.e. there is a limit). But the Treaty is in perpetuity, and there will never be an end to it. It's taking NZers along time to understand this.

Personally I don't think the English, or other Brits are responsible for what is happening in NZ, Australia, the US, Canada etc (although I do think the descendants of the Europeans in those countries are). But I think the British have their own issues to look at in terms of colonisation.

I assume that about other European countries too, but know less about the histiry. There was a news item last night about how the Congo is now the worst humanitarian crisis. Isn't this a consequence, at least in part, of colonisation?

I've just had a look at anhaga's link - a very sobering read.

>>Yet, we should forgive, we must move on. Maybe we should even forget about the past, so we can focus more on the future. But we should never let the European colonisers forget, nor let them be proud of their brutal suppression.

This is the main problem: They still don't know what they have done.<<


This reminded me of something Bishop Desmond Tutu said when asked about forgiveness in South Africa. He said something like we are willing to forgive when you are willing to acknowledge what you have done.



I'd be interested to know what gets taught in British High Schools about the British Empire?

Actually it might have been more like - we are willing to forgive when you are willing to redress the wrongs you have done.

One of the common misperceptions about Canada's Native peoples is that they "lost the war"....

No Native people lost their land (in Canada) as a result of war.

The Crown either "purchased" the land, often paying next to nothing from people who either didn't know they were selling their land (or who were told that what they were signing was an agreement to "share" the land) or when people who didn't actually have the right to sign away the land did so; outright stole the land by gradually pushing the people who traditionally used the land off it; or by having squatters settle on land and refusing to force the squatters off.

Many of the recent land-claims agreements have been to settle disputes over unceded territories for which the Crown never paid and no treaties had been signed.

Another misconception about land-claims is that there is no legal claim to be made by Native peoples to the land. In fact, treaties signed by the Crown are international treaties no different than those signed between major world powers, today. If one ignores a treaty, one pays the price (usually.... I can think of one rather glaring example in the form ot NAFT). Where one gets into difficulties with some of the treaties between the Crown and some groups, is in the above-mentioned cases where those signing the agreements were lied to about the intention of the Crown, or where ther was clearly an unfair advantage being taken of the Native peoples who signed away land for, literally, a few dollars a year.

There is also the matter of tribal groups who lived on certain lands but were not recognized by the Crown either as present on the land or undestinguished from certain tribal groups who did sign a treaty. Those groups who were never recorded in the treaties and never received compensation for lost hunting, fishing, and trapping rights are only now being compensated.

Recently, a landmark case was decided in the Supreme Court of Canada, acknowledging the right of the Metis people to be recognized as aboriginal and that they had the right to claim traditional hunting, fishing and trapping rights.

Unfortunately, whereas the Native peoples of Canada are getting some redress, those in the US are not so lucky. The US does not acknowledge the treaty rights of Native Americans. Their stance is that the Native Americans treaty rights were extinguished.

In Northern Europe and Asia, many traditional peoples, such as the Sami (or Saami) of Russia, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, have faced discrimination, oppression, and inequities similar to those of the Native people of North America. Their cases differ in that, because they hold no treaties, and because encroachement by various nations on lands they formerly roamed in their nomadic lifestyles has gone on for so many generations, they have a more difficult time "proving" claims to land.

The Native peoples of North and South America, at least have historical records which date the various incursions into their territories.

in a sense everything that historians do is a process of revision. The problem you are talking about it bias.

Anyway, I wouldn't agree with the article's arguement that all modern conflict is the product of past colonialism. Ok maybe without colonialism we'd be fighting different wars now, and probably fewer wars.

Tony Blair's comment that the British Empire was a fantastic achievement is reasonable. Fantastic achievement is not a moral judgement.

I do agree with the article's gist in a limited sort of way. Empires, very much including the British one, were nasty. A lot of our people aren't really aware of this and they probably should be. But then I have to ask why does he focus on the west so much. Are those advocating pan-Islamism aware of the hideous crimes of the Turkish Empire? In my experience not a bit: they tend to hold it up as a shining example of benign Islamic rule. The recent Soviet Empire is equally unwestern and is a more recent cause of trouble (see: the Balkans ) than those of western Europe.

>>Tony Blair's comment that the British Empire was a fantastic achievement is reasonable. Fantastic achievement is not a moral judgement.<<

Fantastic in the same way that say the Holocaust was? Or the destruction of the World Trade Center?



>> in a sense everything that historians do is a process of revision.<<

Colonised peoples have been telling their experience of colonisation since it started happening, although I'm sure there are processes of revisioning by their historians too. I think what we are experiencing now is that finally more than one side of the story is being heard.

I'm not sure about the term revision - in some circles it has denigratory connotations.

It's a very tricky area.

Take the case of a hypothetical area of land which was occupied by the Alpha people for time out of mind. Then the Beta people arrive, kill off most of the Alphas, and adopt the land as their home. Some time later, the Gammas arrive, defeat the Betas, and start living on the land, alongside the renmaining Betas, but keeping economic control largely to themsleves.

If a Beta complained about the recent invasion, what governs whether their complaint is justified:
a) how long their people have been living on the land?
b) how long their people were previously living elsewhere *near* the land (and who defines 'near'?)
c) the relative skin colour of Alphas, Betas and Gammas?
d) the relative quality of military technology or traning of A, B, G (is it OK to take land by force in a fairly matched contest, but not in an uneven one?)
e) The current relative social status of Betas and Gammas?

It's possible to go for a simplistic European-bad, native-good argument, but I'm not sure how supportable it is. For a long-established tribe in Southern Africa, how much better is it to have your land invaded by Africans from hundreds or thousands of miles away than by Europeans?

Particularly in the Americas, there's the complication that simple non-hostile contact from Europeans was likely to end up with mass deaths due to numerous diseases that the Europeans carried. In some places, settlers may well have found surprisingly few native inhabitants around if the waves of measles and smallpox epidemics had preceded them.