Colonialism: Good or Bad?

[Cyclops]

I must have missed the indefinite article. Yeah, they didn't recognize Palestinian Arabs as distinct from other Arabs. Naturally they saw Arabs as the people of Arabia. As it turns out, there was some dispute about this.

With the benefit of hindsight, it seems quite absurd that they imagined that Palestinian Arabs would be as happy to become Israeli Arabs as Palestinian Druze and Palestinian Circassians were to become Israeli Druze and Israeli Circassians. In that respect, the perspective certainly reflected the times. Despite the immigrants and the locals being long lost cousins, there was still an air of White Man's Burden about it.

I think the Zionist project (like the Templer movement that preceded and inspired it in many ways) was a "feel good", not so much crusading as pioneering movement to start off with. I think Hitler's evil regime gave it the "do or die" spirit that moves Israel to this day. Herzl just wanted "nest year in Jerusalem" to be true, and to live in the old country" that so many in Europe enjoyed or contemplated. There were gradual stages where got real, such as the Balfour declaration (essentially a bid by the British who thought there was a Jewish conspiracy in favour of the Kaiser to win the Elders of Zion over).

The "Arab" identity is a fascinating term. I read a fascinating book by a Swede called 'The Arabs in Antiquity" which looks at the use of the word pre- and post-Revelation (as in Mahmud's revelation of the Koran from Gibreel). It seems Arab was possibly a term for a caste within the desert nomad society, associated with camel raising and the care of certain oases and ritual behaviours, and conferred a high status. The author argues they were displaced by the Saraceni, a horse rearing tribe and later caste, but retained residual status down to the time of Mahmud, who may have been a member of that caste himself. The identity became an aspirational part of Islam, conferring a recognised status on the new religion.

"Arab" now gets applied to a bunch of people from Morocco to the Euphrates, and there are some clearly African looking people in Sudan identifying as Arab. I have Lebanese friends and relatives who have a distinct culture and outlook from my Egyptian friends and acquaintances, apparently they speak a different dialect of Arabic, no doubt the differences are as obvious between various Yemeni, Saudi, Iraqi etc groups. I think the Arab identity has mixed cultural and religious strands and has too many layers for simplistic understanding. Its more complex even than the Jewish identity, and that's saying something.

A mate of mine goes to Jerusalem for his holidays every couple of years. he says the "archaeology" practiced in Israel is patchy at best: most sites are designated as remains of ancient Israel, and other identities often not recognised at all. Its the usual nationalist nonsense. Its a cheap throwaway line to say 'they're Arabs, why don't they go back to Arabia?" or 'there are no Palestinians, only Arabs, they're nomads and they don't live in one place".

I think its possible to have multiple identities: religious, national, local, cultural, political and so on. I think Palestinian Muslim and Christian and Jewish people have a common identity from their place of residence as well as their cultural and religious even Imperial associations.

[sumskilz]

I read a fascinating book by a Swede called 'The Arabs in Antiquity" which looks at the use of the word pre- and post-Revelation (as in Mahmud's revelation of the Koran from Gibreel). It seems Arab was possibly a term for a caste within the desert nomad society, associated with camel raising and the care of certain oases and ritual behaviours, and conferred a high status. The author argues they were displaced by the Saraceni, a horse rearing tribe and later caste, but retained residual status down to the time of Mahmud, who may have been a member of that caste himself. The identity became an aspirational part of Islam, conferring a recognised status on the new religion.

The term in most ancient Semitic languages just means a semi-nomad or someone who lives in the wilderness and it's applied to pretty much anyone from the desert regardless of what language they spoke.

"Arab" now gets applied to a bunch of people from Morocco to the Euphrates, and there are some clearly African looking people in Sudan identifying as Arab. I have Lebanese friends and relatives who have a distinct culture and outlook from my Egyptian friends and acquaintances, apparently they speak a different dialect of Arabic, no doubt the differences are as obvious between various Yemeni, Saudi, Iraqi etc groups.

The Negev Bedouin sound different to me than Palestinians. I doubt Maghrebi Arabic is entirely mutually intelligible with Levantine Arabic.

A mate of mine goes to Jerusalem for his holidays every couple of years. he says the "archaeology" practiced in Israel is patchy at best: most sites are designated as remains of ancient Israel, and other identities often not recognised at all.

This is sort of BS if you're talking about the last 30 years, since Israeli archeologists (predominately Jewish) are the only ones really working on anything other Israelite and Hellenistic/Roman sites in the region. There is disproportionate investment, but this is mostly due to the interests of foreign donors and their money which supports the vast majority of archeology in Israel. These donors are mostly from the US, Germany, and various English speaking countries (in that order) and what they are interested in is the Biblical, Roman, and Hellenistic periods (in that order). Of the currently 21 major excavations underway, 8 are almost completely funded by American institutions, 2 are almost completely funded by German institutions, and the excavations primarily organized by Israeli institutions still receive large donations from foreign sources and are each staffed by a hundred or more foreign archeologists and students who pay to participate (rather than get paid to participate). There is only one current Israeli excavation that receives no foreign support and has no foreign volunteers accept one Canadian Jewish archeologist and that is the only excavation that is at a site which is only relevant to the Islamic period, not a coincidence, and the one Canadian is dating an Arab Israeli guy whose ancestors owned one of the buildings being excavated.

This all is to a degree connected to the colonial period. The colonial archeologists likewise weren’t interested in excavating sites from the Islamic period. Then again, what major excavation was ever primarily run by an Arab institution? I honestly can’t think of any. The system in Egypt and Jordan is to assign a local archeologist as co-head to excavations that a primarily foreign operations. The co-head then publishes the findings in Arabic as if it was primarily his excavation. This is sort of win/win situation, but it says something about priorities and initiative.

[Cyclops]

The term in most ancient Semitic languages just means a semi-nomad or someone who lives in the wilderness and it's applied to pretty much anyone from the desert regardless of what language they spoke.

Yes that's quite right, however he was discussing the sense of the word in pre-Mahmud era and from scanty sources came up with his definition.

The Negev Bedouin sound different to me than Palestinians. I doubt Maghrebi Arabic is entirely mutually intelligible with Levantine Arabic.

Yes both Burton (I think) and Doughty discuss a few of the variations even within Arabia Deserta.

This is sort of BS if you're talking about the last 30 years, since Israeli archeologists (predominately Jewish) are the only ones really working on anything other Israelite and Hellenistic/Roman sites in the region. There is disproportionate investment, but this is mostly due to the interests of foreign donors and their money which supports the vast majority of archeology in Israel. These donors are mostly from the US, Germany, and various English speaking countries (in that order) and what they are interested in is the Biblical, Roman, and Hellenistic periods (in that order). Of the currently 21 major excavations underway, 8 are almost completely funded by American institutions, 2 are almost completely funded by German institutions, and the excavations primarily organized by Israeli institutions still receive large donations from foreign sources and are each staffed by a hundred or more foreign archeologists and students who pay to participate (rather than get paid to participate). There is only one current Israeli excavation that receives no foreign support and has no foreign volunteers accept one Canadian Jewish archeologist and that is the only excavation that is at a site which is only relevant to the Islamic period, not a coincidence, and the one Canadian is dating an Arab Israeli guy whose ancestors owned one of the buildings being excavated.

Sorry I was unclear, by "archaeology" I meant the designations of sites on things like signs, rather than the field work. I'm aware there are at least two favctios of people digging, peopoe who know the Bible is true and are digging until they find more proof ("look, a broken pot in Jericho! Must've been knocked over by one of Joshua's men") and actual archaeologists.

This all is to a degree connected to the colonial period. The colonial archeologists likewise weren’t interested in excavating sites from the Islamic period. Then again, what major excavation was ever primarily run by an Arab institution? I honestly can’t think of any. The system in Egypt and Jordan is to assign a local archeologist as co-head to excavations that a primarily foreign operations. The co-head then publishes the findings in Arabic as if it was primarily his excavation. This is sort of win/win situation, but it says something about priorities and initiative.

I imagine it would be hard to get a thesis past the religious authorities in say Saudi Arabia. "I'm proposing an excavation of the Kaaba to see if is built over a succession of polytheistic temples before Mahmud took it over"...

[Bethencourt]

Colonialism:Good or bad? A noble adventure to improve the living standards of other countries or a greedy attack to boost national interests at the expense of locals? Whats your opinion about this?

Just an excuse, like civilization, peace, faith, god, republic, king, homeland, nation, development, freedom, equality, democracy...

[classical_hero]

It depended on whom did the colonisation. But the main predictor of whether or a nation would flourish depended on whether there were Protestant Christian missionary who were separate from state, meaning those who went there with no other goal than to share the Gospel to the natives. IT is best to google this article to get the full thing. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/...ries-made.html Here is an example what the study was all about.

In search of answers, Woodberry traveled to West Africa in 2001. Setting out one morning on a dusty road in Lomé, the capital of Togo, Woodberry headed for the University of Togo's campus library. He found it sequestered in a 1960s-era building. The shelves held about half as many books as his personal collection. The most recent encyclopedia dated from 1977. Down the road, the campus bookstore sold primarily pens and paper, not books.

"Where do you buy your books?" Woodberry stopped to ask a student.

"Oh, we don't buy books," he replied. "The professors read the texts out loud to us, and we transcribe."

Across the border, at the University of Ghana's bookstore, Woodberry had seen floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with hundreds of books, including locally printed texts by local scholars. Why the stark contrast?

The reason was clear: During the colonial era, British missionaries in Ghana had established a whole system of schools and printing presses. But France, the colonial power in Togo, severely restricted missionaries. The French authorities took interest in educating only a small intellectual elite. More than 100 years later, education was still limited in Togo. In Ghana, it was flourishing.

[spacial]

Colonialism:Good or bad? A noble adventure to improve the living standards of other countries or a greedy attack to boost national interests at the expense of locals? Whats your opinion about this?

Bad. A greedy attack to boost national interests at the expense of locals - combined with arrogance, racism, torture, murder and impertinent ignorance.

When former colonial powers are faced with their past and would have to acknowledge, that they were arrogant, racists, torturers, murders and ignoramuses. Invaders that, killed, raped and humiliated the local population... they please themselves with the fact...

We are "good", because they weren't as bad as Nazi/Hitler-Germany with it's over 6million murdered jews, roma, insurgents, gays, disabled etc. And we didn't start a war that killed multiple dozens of millions of civilians.

We are the good guys! We only subjugated africans, indians and arabs. We only killed locals that resisted our rule. We only exploited their resources. We only had soldiers there, that sometimes raped and killed locals etc. and most of the time the locals were really happy to have us as their foreign rulers!

It's astonishing, that so many former colonies had uprisings?! Uprisings against the good guys? These stupid colonial subjects!!

[Hazzard]

I think it's all too easy to forget that every society in history fought and invaded one another. Yes colonialism was bad, but the colonised could just as easily have been the colonizers if they had better resources for war.

Killing enemy combatants is not the same as civilians, so that's a moral high ground that you can argue England, France and Spain have over Belgium and Germany.

There is little to no one alive today from colonialism, those that are weren't even in a position to make decisions about it and the people who claim to be "victims" seem to have done fairly well out of it.

[bushranger]

You can point out so many evils of colonialism that it's hard to make any argument for it.but the number one question you have to ask at the end is...Is the world a better place now because of it.Really,with out it we would probably still using animals as transportation and dying off from basic infections. Colonialism shaped modern society to what it is today,including all the benefits.How many billions of people have lived and flourished because of the advances in science and technology of the modern era.

[Chromium]

You can point out so many evils of colonialism that it's hard to make any argument for it.but the number one question you have to ask at the end is...Is the world a better place now because of it.Really,with out it we would probably still using animals as transportation and dying off from basic infections. Colonialism shaped modern society to what it is today,including all the benefits.How many billions of people have lived and flourished because of the advances in science and technology of the modern era.

What a ridiculous argument! It's a clear case where Godwin's Law is actually justified here. Imagine telling a Jew that the Third Reich was justified in its actions because it lead to the establishment of Israel, loss of support for Fascism in Europe an stopped Stalin from rolling onward to the Atlantic.

Congo, India or China. See for yourself what sort of a horror Colonialism was. And as for the superfluous 'development' argument, it's completely baseless. The Swedes managed perfectly fine without raping half the World to death. So did the Germans for most part.

[The spartan]

You can point out so many evils of colonialism that it's hard to make any argument for it.but the number one question you have to ask at the end is...Is the world a better place now because of it.Really,with out it we would probably still using animals as transportation and dying off from basic infections. Colonialism shaped modern society to what it is today,including all the benefits.How many billions of people have lived and flourished because of the advances in science and technology of the modern era.

You are assuming that it was Colonialism itself that let to the advances in today's modern world rather than some other factor. I would say that advancement happened in spite of Colonialism, not because of it.

[Maiar93]

It can be argued that the stolen riches sped up technological development and competition between the states, resulting in even more improvements and progress.

I'm interested to hear your argument why advancement happened in spite of Colonialism.

[bushranger]

What a ridiculous argument! It's a clear case where Godwin's Law is actually justified here. Imagine telling a Jew that the Third Reich was justified in its actions because it lead to the establishment of Israel, loss of support for Fascism in Europe an stopped Stalin from rolling onward to the Atlantic.

Congo, India or China. See for yourself what sort of a horror Colonialism was. And as for the superfluous 'development' argument, it's completely baseless. The Swedes managed perfectly fine without raping half the World to death. So did the Germans for most part.

Resorting to Godwin's law is always lazy and ineffectual, your post is no different. The question in the OP was, is colonialism good or bad? It was answered in the third post, good for some not for others. But it was a opened ended question as well, a better one might have been was it justified?

There is a excellent podcast by Dan carlin http://www.dancarlin.com/product/har...f-the-khans-i/ where he talks about the dilemma of judging history's achievements and remembering those that suffer as a cost of those achievements at the same time. It's not a easy question to answer.

There is always a hint of racism with people condemning things like colonialism, like your post for example, lots of photos of poor native nobles been taken advantage of by big mean white people, when those same people have no problem with warfare or a bit of colonization them selves when they feel up for it. You see, I find colonialism a inevitability no matter where someone is from or which color there skin is. It's like a force of nature, it was going to happen regardless, like a hurricane or bushfire, and you dont consider hurricanes evil. Just remember the British themselves were colonized half a dozen times in the thousand years before the new world was discovered. Do you cry for them also.

Also no, the Swiss love for overly complicated clocks and fine chocolate was not going to spark off a economic, industrial, and agricultural revolution that thrust us into the modern Era.

[Maiar93]

Well nobody is accusing the victims of colonization of being incapable of committing the same crimes that have been committed to them. But they were crimes nonetheless, and horrible crimes.

[The spartan]

Resorting to Godwin's law is always lazy and ineffectual, your post is no different. The question in the OP was, is colonialism good or bad? It was answered in the third post, good for some not for others. But it was a opened ended question as well, a better one might have been was it justified?

There is a excellent podcast by Dan carlin http://www.dancarlin.com/product/har...f-the-khans-i/ where he talks about the dilemma of judging history's achievements and remembering those that suffer as a cost of those achievements at the same time. It's not a easy question to answer.

There is always a hint of racism with people condemning things like colonialism, like your post for example, lots of photos of poor native nobles been taken advantage of by big mean white people, when those same people have no problem with warfare or a bit of colonization them selves when they feel up for it. You see, I find colonialism a inevitability no matter where someone is from or which color there skin is. It's like a force of nature, it was going to happen regardless, like a hurricane or bushfire, and you dont consider hurricanes evil. Just remember the British themselves were colonized half a dozen times in the thousand years before the new world was discovered. Do you cry for them also.

Also no, the Swiss love for overly complicated clocks and fine chocolate was not going to spark off a economic, industrial, and agricultural revolution that thrust us into the modern Era.

There is a lot going wrong going on here; let's see if we can sort it out.

1: It seems as if you are presenting an "ends justify the means" style argument by referencing that podcast, which is terrifying. Here is the wiki page on Nazi experimentation for your pleasure.
2: Implying that critiques of Colonialism is racist is a laughable argument, at best. The reason there are photos of natives being taken advantage of by "big mean white people" is because that is how events literally transpired. The whole point of colonization is to exploit the colony for resources, and the European powers were the ones doing the exploiting.
3: You are dismissing the agency of those who practiced colonialism. National policy can't be compared to natural disasters, no matter how inevitable you believe the situation to be. People have agency, natural events do not.
4: It is clear that the "Colonialism" that OP is referring to is the systematic form utilized by the European powers in 18th, 19th, and 20th century. The kind that was meant to bring "European awesomeness" to "savages", not the ancient style of conquest. If someone refers to Colonialism with a capital C, they are almost always referring to the European policy.

[DaVinci]

There is a lot going wrong going on here; let's see if we can sort it out.

1: It seems as if you are presenting an "ends justify the means" style argument by referencing that podcast, which is terrifying. Here is the wiki page on Nazi experimentation for your pleasure.
2: Implying that critiques of Colonialism is racist is a laughable argument, at best. The reason there are photos of natives being taken advantage of by "big mean white people" is because that is how events literally transpired. The whole point of colonization is to exploit the colony for resources, and the European powers were the ones doing the exploiting.
3: You are dismissing the agency of those who practiced colonialism. National policy can't be compared to natural disasters, no matter how inevitable you believe the situation to be. People have agency, natural events do not.
4: It is clear that the "Colonialism" that OP is referring to is the systematic form utilized by the European powers in 18th, 19th, and 20th century. The kind that was meant to bring "European awesomeness" to "savages", not the ancient style of conquest. If someone refers to Colonialism with a capital C, they are almost always referring to the European policy.

Wholly right.
Except, the Colonialism era started in the 16th century.

Some people in this thread don't get what the topic is about, it's the item that is a historical term, also an era or epoche: Colonialism (the different language wiki sources are good enough here for explanations, at least what can be read in the german and english version).

Good or bad? That's a question, that implements moral into the analysis of this era. By the modern western moral, which we carry today based on humanrights, on human dignity etc. base rights, the answer is very simple: Bad.