Quotes About Colonization

One biologist told me that what probably saved many indigenous Indian cultures from complete extinction were the mass rapes of native women by European men; many of the babies from those rapes inherited European genetic resistance to disease.

A table of statistics for the island of Hispaniola tells the story: Date: 1492 Native Population: ~500,000 (disputed) Date: 1508 Native Population: 60,000 Date: 1510 Native Population: 33,523 Date: 1514 Native Population: 26,334 Date: 1518 [before smallpox] Native Population: 18,000 Date: 1519 [after smallpox] Native Population: 1,000 Date: 1542 Native Population: 0

The New World was like a vast, tinder-dry forest waiting to burn—and Columbus brought the fire.

It was disease, more than anything else, that allowed the Spanish to establish the world's first imperio en el que nunca se pone el sol, the "empire on which the sun never sets," so called because it occupied a swath of territory so extensive that some of it was always in daylight.

Europeans killed many native people directly without the assistance of disease. In some instances, they intentionally used disease as a biological weapon by, for example, giving Indians smallpox-infected blankets. And millions more Indians died of disease who might have survived, had European brutality not left them weakened and susceptible.

In his groundbreaking book Guns, Germs, and Steel, biologist Jared Diamond poses the question: Why did Old World diseases devastate the New World and not the other way around? Why did disease move in only one direction?* The answer lies in how the lives of Old World and New World people diverged after that cross-continental migration more than fifteen thousand years ago.

In 1680, the Indians rose up, killed four hundred settlers and dozens of padres, and drove the rest of the Spanish out of New Mexico. This was the Pueblo Revolt.

it is the colonized man who wants to move forward, and the colonizer who holds things back.

Colonization and civilization? In dealing with this subject, the commonest curse is to be the dupe in good faith of a collective hypocrisy that cleverly misrepresents problems, the better to legitimize the hateful solutions provided for them.

Où veux-je en venir ? A cette idée : que nul ne colonise innocemment, que nul non plus ne colonise impunément ; qu'une nation qui colonise, qu'une civilisation qui justifie la colonisation - donc la force - est une civilisation malade, une civilisation moralement atteinte, qui, irrésistiblement, de conséquence à conséquence, de reniement en reniement, appelle son Hitler, je veux dire son châtiment.

And I say that between colonization and civilization there is an infinite distance; that out of all the colonial expeditions that have been undertaken, out of all the colonial statutes that have been drawn up, out of all the memoranda that have been dispatched by all the ministries, there could not come a single human value.

What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization—and therefore force—is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased, which irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one denial to another, calls for its Hitler, I mean its punishment.

C]olonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism.

'Legality' is a mad phrase to use when it comes to the founding of nations. Australia was founded on illegality. For the Americans to go in and dispossess the American Indians was illegal.

Governor Isaac Stevens of the Washington Territory said there were a great many white people in our country, and many more would come; that he wanted the land marked out so that the Indians and the white man could be separated.

Marx observed that by organizing native regiments in their Indian Army the British had unwittingly created 'the first general centre of resistance which the Indian people was ever possessed of'.

Daily Tribune, 5 August 1853: England has to fulfil a double mission in India, one destructive, the other regenerating—the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia.

the Company 'had long cast covetous eyes on [Punjab]'108. Ranjit Singh did not miss this reality.

The poverty of 'the drama' as a literary genre goes hand in hand with the colonization of social space by theatrical attitudes. Enfeebled on the stage, theatre battens on everyday life and attempts to dramatize everyday behaviour.

The moon should be colonised, I thought. Mankind should seek a happier beginning, and humans should be free to stroll hand in hand regardless of their weight and orientation.

I beg your pardon, sir, said the Frenchman. I am not a coloniser. Well, let's talk Algeria then. Let's talk about your culture and your celebrated writers.

I think that most Americans feel that the Indians lost because of fair fights and superior odds and superior weaponry. That's because that's the only side of the story that's been told.

Eduardo Galeano notes that America was conquered, but not discovered, that the men who arrived with a religion to impose and dreams of gold never really knew where they were, and that this discovery is still taking place in our time.

Imperialism [...] also meant that the conquerors themselves regarded and instructed their imperial subjects to regard the colonized countries as the outskirts rather than the center of the world.