topic by
John Calvin
7/28/2002 (15:20) |
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No one nows who's posting what but there is a message under the rubric of Lynette proposing to deal with the colonization of Australia and the fate of the Aboriginal people.
Alot of moralizing crap tends to get spread around on this and similiar issues. Some sentimentalists like to come to the defense of the palestinians as a sort of 'primitive','aboriginal' people being ruthlessly thrust aside by 'modern' Europeanized Jews etc. And the fate of the American 'Indians' is also used as a kind of barometer of the 'moral corruption' of the U.S. regime past and present.
There is alot of insight on the present tragedy to be gained through the study of history. Unfortunately, studying history is something 'the critics'- on the right- AND- on the left ( especially as represented by Indy-media and the likes of John Pilger) rarely do. They USE selected excerpts from history to give a kind of sham-sheen to their pre-formed polemics.
In regards to the settlement of Australian, Hughes book 'The Fatal Shore' is a good place to start. Even better, E.P. Thompson's 'Whigs and Hunters, The Origin of the Black Acts' or anything by that distinguished British Historian. Bernard Bailyn has written some excellent works documenting emigration to America from the british Isles in the 18th century. Another good approach would be to investigate English-Irish relations from about 1200AD on. For example, Richard Berleth's 'The Twilight Lords' ( The fierce doomed struggle of the last great feudal Lords of Ireland).
Many of the first settlers on the American frontier were driven there by necessity as a consequence of the enclosures of common lands back home and the integration of backward regions in Ireland into the global economy. Many of them were not all that different socially from the natives who they faced. Those natives picked up the iron age technology very quickly. In many ways it was a contest of equals with the Scot-Irish retaining the advantage as a consequence of their long experience with the border, guerilla type wars in Scotland and Ireland for several hundred years before removing themselves to North America. By the time the main battles were fought, many of the 'Indian' tribes had been in contact with and intermarried with 'the newcomers' for at least a century, sometimes more.
I'm not trying to arrange to excuse what was done to the natives of North America but one should place what happened in its broadest possible context and understand that it was a tragedy with innocence and fault on both sides. Certainly the main so-called 'genocide' wherein the bulk of American 'Indians' were wiped out by disease occurred long before any 'white settlement' established itself on this continent as a result of natural, unforseen and misunderstood circumstances. And those massacres and removals that did occur in the 17th and 18th centuries follwed the patterns established in the age old conflict between settled agricultural feudalism brought to England by the norman conquers and the previous, semi-nomadic hunting, gathering and herding society of the early saxon invaders. People on both sides of the question were doing what they habitually did. Only a very few individuals had any idea that things could be done differently. All were acting on the assumption that they were 'progressive', 'modern' and humane. It's absurd to argue that they 'should have known better'.
History is only useful in an argument if it is honest and relatively complete. That is, if it is respectful enough to consider human beings in their entirety, with all their complexities and varied circumstances, not just as moveable plastic counters in an abstract argument.
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