[PaulDavisThe1st]

> the diverse peoples that inhabited a land prior to European colonization

maybe we can just rewrite that subtly, to get

"the diverse peoples that inhabited a land prior to one of the most cataclysmic mass death events in the history of humankind, in which roughly 10% of the total human population of the planet died"

any better?

[throwaway894345]

What’s the point? That Europeans are uniquely, intrinsically evil and Native Americans are noble savages? Or is it more likely that Europeans and Native Americans are both human groups (with all of the entailed capacity for creativity and destruction) who occupied different positions on a power spectrum (including asymmetrical immunity) when they came into contact?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

The point, despite your defensive posturing about Europeans, is that the largely unintentional introduction of disease by Spanish explorers and missionaries was a cataclysm for the Americas unlike anything seen on any other continent.

Sure, not long after, they sent armies to conquer the land, but that's not part of the die off that took place before most of those armies got off the boats.

I'm not pretending there was anything more or less noble about the residents of the Americas vs. those of Europe (although the latter do have a spectacularly bad record).

[throwaway894345]

> The point, despite your defensive posturing about Europeans

I’m not defensively posturing? I’m not even European. Sometimes people are just interested in the truth—no need to suppose some nefarious motive.

> I'm not pretending there was anything more or less noble about the residents of the Americas vs. those of Europe (although the latter do have a spectacularly bad record).

Terrific, I’m glad we agree here (although again Europeans have a bad record because they kept a written record, not because they were uniquely barbarous).

[iammisc]

> I'm not pretending there was anything more or less noble about the residents of the Americas vs. those of Europe (although the latter do have a spectacularly bad record).

The amount of brainwashing in this sentence is absolutely insane. You state a thing about no group being more or less noble and then immediately contradict it with European exceptionalism. When will the gaslighting end?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

While conquest and control have been the hallmark of powerful human civilizations everywhere on the planet, it seems that the European versions post (roughly) 1600 have taken a different approach than their American, African and Indo-Asian equivalents. While the latter have all engaged in something roughly approximating colonialism, it seems the it is mostly the European powers that have repeatedly engaged in attempts at complete extermination of those they manage to subjugate.

I don't see this as a European trait so much as an extension of the religious and political doctrine of the period. The combination of Abrahamic ("personal relationship with god") religion powering a divine right of kings and technological war superiority seems to be a particularly vicious combination. Other cultures and civilizations have engaged in some brutal oppression too, but for the most part they seem to have understood that other humans were (1) humans (2) potential assets and subsequently engaged in a more complex aspirational relationship with the conquered than most European cultures have tended to do.

[throwaway894345]

> European powers that have repeatedly engaged in attempts at complete extermination of those they manage to subjugate.

Did Europeans attempt to exterminate peoples in Asia and Africa?

> I don't see this as a European trait so much as an extension of the religious and political doctrine of the period. The combination of Abrahamic ("personal relationship with god") religion

“personal relationship with God” is solely a trait of Christianity. Anyway Christianity and other Abrahemic faiths are widespread across many civilizations which are peaceful so I doubt this factor.

> divine right of kings

This has been a feature of many civilizations going back at least to the Egyptians but probably much earlier. Nothing particular to Europe or Christianity (or Abrahamic faiths more generally) here either.

> technological war superiority

Here I agree, but I actually think this was probably a relatively minor advantage compared with the disease factor which meant the Europeans were fighting peoples whose civilizations were positively collapsing.

> Other cultures and civilizations have engaged in some brutal oppression too, but for the most part they seem to have understood that other humans were (1) humans (2) potential assets and subsequently engaged in a more complex aspirational relationship with the conquered than most European cultures have tended to do.

I don’t think there’s any truth to this. Many other peoples enslaved, exterminated, sacrificed, and even ate their vanquished. Europeans stand out merely in their efficiency.

[iammisc]

> potential assets and subsequently engaged in a more complex aspirational relationship with the conquered than most European cultures have tended to do.

What utter nonsense. The british colonials were epic in their attempts to integrate their colonized into their societies. Gandhi himself trained to be a lawyer at a prestigious law school (the Inner Temple) in England. See the plethora of ex-colonials in England itself. Same with the spanish (whose colonized peoples have literally adopted the moniker latino/a to describe themselves) and the portuguese (who -- as the descendants of portuguese colonization -- are pretty popular overall in the areas they colonized).

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> “personal relationship with God” is solely a trait of Christianity.

I don't think this is true. Judaism and Islam both feature the same fundamental concept: there is a single god who cares about you personally and that your behavior and belief will shape that relationship in terms of direct, personal consequence. This is not true of the pre-Abrahamic faiths, it's not true of the religions of Asia or Africa.

> Many other peoples [ ... ]

Can you name any other conquerors in history who had a clearly and repeatedly stated goal of the complete elimination of the conquered? I'm not saying there are none, but I'm not aware of them.

[iammisc]

> "the diverse peoples that inhabited a land prior to one of the most cataclysmic mass death events in the history of humankind, in which roughly 10% of the total human population of the planet died"

That one's ancestors suffered in some way does not give you any more authority or importance today.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

"in some way" makes it all sound a bit abstract.

The impact of disease on the Americas was arguably numerically larger than actual colonization, and the initial wave (say, 1492-1520) probably wasn't very intentional. So yeah, that particular experience doesn't give anyone "more authority or importance today".

But colonization, first by the Spanish and later by northern Europeans, was literally a war whose goal was frequently the complete annihilation of the population already in the Americas. It was a brutal, vicious war (that in a number of senses continues to the present day), and suffering through that does, under most western-ish moral philosophies, give you some status that you otherwise would not have.

[throwaway894345]

Welcome to history and prehistory. Brutality was common and limited only by power imbalances between the conqueror and the conquered. The remarkable thing about the European conquests was that the power difference had become tremendous after tens of millennia of isolation, which allowed the Europeans to visit unprecedented brutality on the native peoples. It wasn’t that the Europeans were uniquely evil, but uniquely powerful relative to those they conquered.

> suffering through that does, under most western-ish moral philosophies, give you some status that you otherwise would not have.

This is an interesting point, but I don’t think the common belief is “indigenous have moral title to the land due to great suffering”, but rather due to “they were the first people in the land at recorded history” so in our collective psyche we errantly assume they must’ve been the first there ever. I deed, if it were merely “suffering” then surely their disease experience alone would suffice? These are at least the reasons I’ve commonly heard, including from people in this thread.

[iammisc]

And so what? Disease kills people. What exactly are we to do about it. Your ancestors being more susceptible to some disease doesn't make you special.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

What I wrote:

> The impact of disease [ ... ] So yeah, that particular experience doesn't give anyone "more authority or importance today".

What we could do is read a little more carefully, just for starters.