If any country values ignorance and religious domination in any form its their own fault. Any that were KEPT that way by other countries for their own benefit get a pass of sorts. Eventually they have to stop killing Ebola health teams and stop kissing elephant dung as thier gods and get with the program.
Are first world countries to blame for the bulk of third world squalor?
by tootired2care 52 Replies latest social current
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Qcmbr
Confused - the difference in my viewpoint is that countries are responsible for themselves - we can't keep excusing their failure to progress using victim language. I think people are more empowered than that.
We also shouldn't pretend that an alternate history that we make up would be better. I have no belief that the violent tribal cultures of the world would be or have been better off without colonialism (and I really have no way to run the clock back and check!) . I'm NOT saying that colonialism was moral or without terrible often genocidal cost ut I am saying that it was incredibaly effective in pushing cultures forward along the path of progress just as Britain benefited from the invasions in her past.
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trillaz
confusedandalone Great chart illustrating that colonialism is still a problem and its departure a pretty recent development in some countries.
Regarding wealth, most industrialized nations have fiat backed currency. The US used to have a gold standard. What was the real reason for the switchover?
Regarding natural resources, Gold has been mined more often in the last 2 decades than it had been when the US made it illegal for citizens to hold amounts of gold.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
If you owned gold in the US you were required to relinquish it and be paid $20 oz. The US government then rised the prise to $35os, instant profit. But a new standard was set. Western money is no longer dependent on a tangible backing. I'm sure any country would like to do the same to its citizens but doing that Today in a 3rd world country would be seen as a human rights violation.
Wonder what would have happened had the gold standard stayed in place...
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confusedandalone
"Confused - the difference in my viewpoint is that countries are responsible for themselves - we can't keep excusing their failure to progress using victim language. I think people are more empowered than that."
How are they responsible for themselves when other countries bomb them into the stone age or forcibly take their resources? I ask again you are telling me that Congo would have been better of having 50% of their poopulation murdered and another 10% rendered useless than if they had been left alone to continue they way the were???
PLEASE FOR THE LAST TIME ANSWER THIS QUESTION.
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trillaz - "Western money is no longer dependent on a tangible backing. I'm sure any country would like to do the same to its citizens but doing that Today in a 3rd world country would be seen as a human rights violation."
you see this type of post here shows an individual who has an understanding of history and how the world actually works and not revisionist historians who gloss over every aspect of history to make the powers that be look squeaky clean.
" the US made it illegal for citizens to hold amounts of gold."
it also amazes me how easy the government changes the rules whenever they like
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Qcmbr
So you want me to answer for all of the benefits or problems of colonialism with the Congo? No. It is a stupid extreme scenario of course no country does well after it has been bombed colonial or not. Are you able to open up at all and see ANY benefits or are you simply rehearsing an absolute?
..and this example of your inability to see what is being said and simply restating as a strawman:
who gloss over every aspect of history
NOBODY IS
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confusedandalone
Qcmbr - how about if I show you similar numbers for deaths for every single Latin American country or african country where 10 -30% of the populations were slaughterd or made into slaves? Please tell me what makes this example extreme?
Britian and France and Portugal carried out similar murderous sprees everywhere they went?
Look at the Native AMericans who were nearly wiped out. I would love for you to take your argument to them and explain hwo the decimation of their people had positive effects. This from someone who grew up in Rhodesia of all places.
Something tells me every nation that was invaded and had people enslaved would have prefered to have been left alone to see what they could have become on their own. What is worse they deserved that option.
Its like saying what it the natives of Zimbabwe would have come into your home and raped your mother and sisters and Aunts and killed your father then turned around and enslaved you all. Then later on saidm, "Hey there are some benefits to this so don't worry about it."
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Qcmbr
Do so - please also show alongside the wars, genocides, plagues, social customs, legal systems, educational attainment rates, infrastructure projects, slavery rates and death rates before and after colonisation over say a 100 year period. I'm interested in your information. Seriously.
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Qcmbr
Do you know what killed most of the Native Americans?
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fulltimestudent
Fulltimestudent:
There are multiple factors involved in poverty.
For example: Consider the role that a disciplined elite may play in a given society. As another poster has observed elites can play a negative role, and it may take time for an elite class to change from a negative role to a positive role. In English history, if we consider the change started with the Magna Carta, how long did it take to extend the rights of the elite to the wider population?
Hold that thought for a moment, and consider the impact of European Imperialism on the development of the elite groups in any given African society. The first stage of the impact is likely to have been the destruction of a wide section of the existing elite as they resisted the European invasion. The European invasion was different to other historical invasions, where the conquerors went on to form a new elite class. In the nineteenth century examples the European power sent out administrators, who typically served their time and went home along with any wealth they managed to accumulate, often large enough to give them some additional privileges in their home nation.
Although, we can imagine there would be some formation of a local, native elite it could not develop to maturity, but would remain subservient to the European conquerors.
Further factors that could be considered include the role of wealth accumulation. The whole goal of the European conquerors would be to strip the conquered area of accumulated wealth and apply it to their own home territories. Considering the poverty of the home working classes in the 19th century, a poverty so deep that the concept of socialism/communism became attractive to the working classes, the stripped wealth was the means for European nations to edge up the economic ladder.
You could also, as a factor, include consideration of the role of superstition. Just a general note on this point. Religious superstition must, in either a negative or positive role have been a factor in the European ascent. Is there a difference in the superstitious beliefs of Eastern Europe (including Russia) and Western Europe that could explain the differences between the two areas.
Those brief thoughts require a lot expansion before you could reach conclusions, but its my attempt to demonstrate the complexity of the problem of African poverty.
But one unassailable fact should be taken into consideration - for most of human history, the bulk (80-90%) of people were peasant farmers. Government taxation and agrarian landlords were factors to be ccnsidered in the well-being (or not) of peasant farmers.
The climb to prosperity is not well understood, perhaps because a large population of middle class people is a fairly recent phenomenon.
Clearly, industrialisation played a part in the prosperity attributable to western modernity. However, poverty was still a feature of working class life until the age of social revolution in the early 20th century. (Think of the labour unrest in the USA, in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th C).
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kaik
It is easy to blame white race for everything bad that happened in the humanity and Europeans do not have problem accepting the blame to the point that is bordering with ethno-masochism. Whites were not much different from other races. Do any of you have a clue what Genghis-Khan and his descendant did to world from Adriatic sea to China? Who leveled and uprooted civilizations from Syria to Baghdad to Iran to Samarkand to China to Kiev to Dehli? It was not European race. Europeans had one advantage over other region which was the geography. Europe cannot be ever conquered by land, only by navy. Napoleon to Attila to Hitler failed due exact problem, not having Navy. When Europeans arrived in the 16th century to Far East instead of prosperous cities they find civilization that was so devastated by Mongols and Timur that they have no problems to take it over. Other mentioned diseases. Do you know that plague of Antonious, Cyprian, or Justinian that destroyed Roman civilization, all of them had roots in Asia? Even Black Death originated there and was spread out by Mongols to Black Sea.
Poverty is relative. Europeans did live in deep poverty all the way till 1800's. French Revolution was one of the symptoms of widespread poverty. Read the journals and articles from that time how people starved in France and everywhere else. In huge famine of 1771-1774, about 1/6 of population in Europe especially in Germany, Austria, and Bohemia died from hunger. Thousands of citizens hiked woods to eat bark, mushrooms, and wild berries to survive. In Netherlands, which was the wealthiest state in the world at that time had widespread poverty. Poverty was only eliminated due industrial revolution. Nothing had to do with collonialism. Before the industrial age, every society lived barely on survival level, even such glorious civilization like Roman and Han empires.