Thesis: anti Chinese
Antithesis: anti Spanish
Synthesis: anti Filipino
Antithesis: anti Spanish
Synthesis: anti Filipino
Sure. Genocide is probably as old as warfare.Obviously the Spanish weren't stupid, but these tactics have probably been around as long as there have been fortifications to siege.
Hey, sure. A broken clock is still right twice a day. For example I don't think most historians necessarily think the point about north-south vs east-west geography to be completely without merit. I guess there is also something to be said for getting millions of people to read and think (if not always critically) about something they otherwise would never have considered. I think though that attempting to construct a global narrative for the evolution of societies is more or less going to be wrapped up in some kind of determinism (in Diamond's case, environmental determinism).Again, not the best book out there on the specific subject of Mesoamerican history, but an interesting one in that I don't disagree with some of the conclusions he's drawing.
Certainly I am human and not completely without biases. I consider the Spaniards who participated in the conquest at the time to be the antagonists of the story, I didn't think that would be controversial. Now that being said, unlike some people who are interested in this stuff, I also am fascinated by colonial and modern Latin America (even if the countries are often assholes, with or without US backing of assholes) and the fusion of worlds that was created by colonialism. It is just as interesting and merits study as the Pre-Columbian setting which preceded it. I am anti-colonial, but obviously like every other person alive there are products of colonialism I like. The food I eat, music I listen to, languages I learn. Cross-fertilization between cultures is the coolest thing about history. It is a shame it often happens alongside abuse, violence, and extinction. If American societies survived better, they would have had a lot to teach us - just look at the work being done in pre-contact Amazonia. Their near-annihilation as a result of genocide is a loss for *all* humanity, both in the "less to study" sense and the "what could have been" sense, I don't see what's wrong lamenting that. This is part of the reason genocide is a bad thing: it is a theft from *all of us*. By extension, those who commit it are on the wrong side of history.just smacks of some misplaced moralism.
You haven't done a good job of letting me know that you think this, as up until now you were saying stuff like 300 years of peace and how Spain granted them human rights and other such things. Guess it took more of a sentimental argument.I fully agree with you that the native peoples suffered the violence of the imperialist expansionism of the Spanish crown; violence that inevitably goes hand in hand with this kind of confrontation
There were definitely some massacres, but there was also a lot of fatal forced labor, which I've mentioned several times. Genocide isn't just like, shooting people. While you're killing them off you might as well have them work for you, no? Nazis, among many others, evidently had the same idea.and I think that the direct consequence of that particular word, perhaps misused or not, originated from epidemiological causes and not from organized large-scale mass murders orchestrated by vile minds as a "spanish proto-final solution".
I consider the Spaniards who participated in the conquest at the time to be the antagonists of the story, I didn't think that would be controversial.
If American societies survived better, they would have had a lot to teach us - just look at the work being done in pre-contact Amazonia.
both in the "less to study" sense and the "what could have been"
Diego de Landa - by his own admission mind you - burned thousands or tens of thousands of Maya books. He had little good to say about those people, decrying them and their works as savage, heretical, and inferior - yet Diego de Landa remains, for better or worse, an extremely valuable resource for studying the Maya. In fact, without his documentation, decipherment of the Maya written script would probably have been utterly impossible. He is cited as a primary source frequently.What is the value in casting Spain as an "antagonist"? What makes the Indigenous societies of Mesoamerica worthy of being the protagonist (since we're making moralist judgments), beyond your own personal investment?
When I say there is something to learn, I actually meant "practical" things (although obviously there is also the kind of things you're talking about too). When settlers came, they did things Old World style - that much is exemplary in Paradox of Plows and Productivity which I suggested reading in an earlier post. Things that work great in the Old World, don't always pan out here. Just as indigenous land management (and they by no means left the land pristine as the myth goes) and exploitation is ill-suited to the Old World - it's not "special" or "magical" or "superior" (inherently) knowledge it is just different knowledge that is shaped to the specific circumstances of the place they have lived for thousands of years and which we are relative newcomers to. No more special than medieval European knowledge.Sure - if we're studying them as an interesting relic, like any other past civilization, the Spanish of the sixteenth century included. But what I've seen lately is this overcorrection which often manifests as the resurrection of a somewhat better-educated version of the "magical Indian" trope, the idea that there is some special knowledge inherent in these societies which makes them valuable as more than an object of study.
It is of a massive hypocrisy; mine are good, the others are bad. I wonder at what number of dead is considered genocide...the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan, their capital, in 1487, 80,400 victims were sacrificed during 4 days. Ritual or mass murder? Food of the gods or genocide?
Why is it your posts are usually very reasonable but the moment someone mentions Spain the nuance generator in your brain shuts down?