I disagree with my high school history teacher

> I'm tempted to stand up one day and ask "by white, do you mean..." and list five or six European ethnicities.
don't do that, it would be cringe

just ask him if the zulus had the right to conquer their neighbors and impale rebels and so forth and see what his reaction is

You have to go back, faggot. You got kicked out and you will never come back to Zambia.

>see what his reaction is
He's gonna go "are you gonna lower yourself at that level?" on him.
Granted he could call him racist at that point, but he's not gonna impress anybody who didn't already agree with him. Paternalism is more heavily ingrained in the mind of anticolonialists than it ever was in the mind of the staunchest imperialist.
Or if he's smart he'll go "two wrongs don't make a right" and shut user out.

>The reason colonialism is talked about is because it had a prominent racial component

Exactly. There is absolutely no reason why colonization of Africa is somehow magically worse than Caesar enslaving the Gauls. The ONLY reason that colonization of Africa is treated as being the worst thing that ever happened is because of the desperate need to frame Europeans as the bad guy.

>where most Europeans were on a relatively equal footing.

So when the English were starving the Irish to death and demolishing Irish homes and imprisoning Irishmen for the crime of singing Irish songs or speaking the Irish language, they were on a "relatively even footing"?

>implying they want to return to this shithole

The true country and only one who made actual money with Africa doesnt appear on your shit picture : its China.

Ok, Europe and USA made money outta slavery (more like single individuals made money, but I simplify for SJWs) but in the 1900-1960s period it cost way more money for France, for example, to maintain and modernize colonies than the French government got revenues for them.

So you won't come back? Then case closed.

Sorry for my english

>relativist
>universalist
explain these terms like you would to a ten year old, it seems like you know what you're talking about. Thanks.

German colonies in Africa were also pretty profitable. The astonishing loyalty that the Africans displayed during WW1 really says a lot about how people respond well to being treated with dignity.

The reason the racial component is so important is because living groups of people are still affected by it. No one today is affected by the conquest of the Gauls or the viking raids, but the aftershock of colonialism is still present. Even though segregation in America is outlawed, the ghettos and communities it formed are still present and are basically their own little pocket cultures. Post colonial countries are underdeveloped and still being exploited by western economic interests. The fact people question why people care more about that stuff is more confusing than anything.

>implying I am white

Sorry to disappoint you, but africa is still a shithole.

Why are you assblasted that your intentions showed up? pffft This land belongs to the africa race, you will never set foot on Zambia again.

>explain these terms like you would to a ten year old
Universalists (more properly, moral universalists) believe that morality is absolute. What is right here today was always right and is right everywhere. They believe morality is unchangeable.
Relativists (more properly, moral relativists) believe that morality is relative. What is right here today might have been wrong yesterday, could be wrong tomorrow, is maybe wrong elsewhere. They believe morality depends on a variety of changeable factors.
>inb4 it's more complez than that
He said explain to a ten year old, feel free to expand yourself you cunts. If user wants more:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_universalism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism

>it seems like you know what you're talking about
Eh. You're on Veeky Forums buddy, at best I know what I'm talking about relative to board average.

>No one today is affected by the conquest of the Gauls or the viking raids, but the aftershock of colonialism is still present

That's simply a matter of one thing happening more recently. The fact remains: Europeans enslaved and butchered each other for centuries. The African experience of being conquered is not any worse than the same experience which was felt by the innumerable European cultures which were conquered by other European cultures. The experience of Algeria being conquered by France is not so different than what the Lithuanians would have felt when they were invaded by Teutonic Knights.

Tbh Africa for Africans, Europe for Europeans, Asia for Asians, Americas as a giant wild life reservation free of any human inhabitants.

>Americas
America* for Americans* (no united statians)

>That's simply a matter of one thing happening more recently.
Then you completely grasp the extent of my argument. I have literally nothing else to say.

>europe for europeans
lol no
You have to get invaded now. It's your turn.

Not the guy you're responding to, but you'll never get anything worthwhile out of history if you only look at it as a way to buttress your own preexisting ideological leanings. Your argument is one facile false equivalence that pre-moderns forms of state violence are directly comparable to its modern forms.

There are no real Americans left, they're all 1/6212 something fakers.

>Exactly. There is absolutely no reason why colonization of Africa is somehow magically worse than Caesar enslaving the Gauls.
But it was worse, precisely because of that racial component. An enslaved Gaul would frequently be freed and become a Roman citizen with all the rights of one. A black slave in America could at best be a third rate citizen, but would probably die a slave.

More natives than cumskins, yes. America for the real Americans (no united statians allowed).

>I have literally nothing else to say

Honestly, that's a good thing. I already debunked your entire argument, but I'll do it again. The African experience of being conquered is not any worse than what the Irish suffered at the hands of Cromwell and his minions, nor do they exceed the atrocities that the Gauls experienced from Caesar and his legions. The only difference is that the African experience of being conquered is more recent in memory. It's not some special form of victimhood that God chose to inflict upon Africans and nobody else. Get over it.

I dont care about your shithole, like I said I not even american or european, also this is the best opportunity to show to the world the african people not need those racist hateful colonialist to help them.

>african race

There exist an asian race too?

So you won't ever set foot on Zambia again? Then case closed.

>A black slave in America could at best be a third rate citizen, but would probably die a slave.

Compare that to what happened to the Africans who were taken by the Arabs. They were castrated. And the Arabic slave trade lasted FAR longer than American slavery did. In fact, the only reason why the Arabic slave trade stopped is because Europeans ended it.

Irrelevant. This land doesn't belong to the cumskin race. Go back and never return.

Are you refering to african americans or the people who stayed on Africa?

>The African experience of being conquered is not any worse than what the Irish suffered at the hands of Cromwell and his minions, nor do they exceed the atrocities that the Gauls experienced from Caesar and his legions. The only difference is that the African experience of being conquered is more recent in memory.
I'm not disagreeing with you though. That's exactly what I'm trying to say, that other atrocities are being downplayed because they aren't relevant to the lives of modern people. I'm sure the atrocities of Roman imperialism were being downplayed by Europeans when Vikings started roaming the seas.

no you didn't lol

Most people who are anti-colonialism don't think it's fine that Europeans conquered each other for centuries.

Australia for australians?
>Americas as a giant wild life reservation free of any human inhabitants.
lol

even you don't know when to start the clock exactly

Return to what I don't even white.

Yet somehow it's either fine that non-europeans did the exact same shit, or they just don't bother criticizing everybody equally, showing an agenda in their complaints.
Let's face it, anticolonialists aren't intellectually honest.

I bet your teacher isn't even aware of the Arab slave trade which lasted longer and took more humans out of Africa (estimates that I trust are about 18 million, versus 13 million for the European).

Anyway, you simply have to point out that your teacher is moralizing and not being objective, and missing the point that in the 1800s, modern concepts of human rights didn't exist. Of course we realize it's ethically wrong today, duh. Judging the past by modern standards is always shooting fish in a barrel, and it'll surely happen to us someday too.

As for the other part of your question, well... for example, European buyers DID buy sugar, cotton, tobacco and other products made with slave labour. It's not like they had a choice to buy fair trade instead, that's not how the world was. Should they blamed for it? No. Ask your teacher if he always buys fair trade coffee, chocolate, cotton, and if (predictably not) why he tacitly supports modern-day indentured servitude and so on.

Yes because that's not relevant in todays political climate

That's basically an admission that anticolonialism is not in any way legitimate and only political tool to further certain agendas.
You're supposed to deny it user, else you're just agreeing with me.

A class teaching world history shouldn't be focusing on "today's political climate." Look, I'm not saying that people shouldn't be taught about all the screwed up shit that happened when Europeans colonized Africa. What I am saying, is that it should be put in proper context. The Arabs also practiced slavery against Africans, and they have never apologized for doing so. Yes, Europeans conquered and exploited Africans, just as Europeans had already been doing to each other for centuries.

>just as EVERYONE had already been doing to each other for MILLENNIA
ftfy

Anyone have that screencap about missionaries->soldiers->civilizations that explains the colonization of Africa. It wasn't some overt scheming, it's just kind of a thing that happened, where one tribe asks to be the lackey or more power, and need for the Europeans caused the competition and race for Africa.

Africa is not one unified place and people, so it's an oversimplification along the lines of saying that the white man killed the native american.

>You're supposed to deny it user, else you're just agreeing with me.
But I am agreeing with you.

I agree.

I'm merely explaining WHY it's happening, I care little about whether it's right or not.

Well, apart from all those Herero and Namaqua stuffed in concentration camps and/or genocided...

Tanganyika was already a trade hub for several centuries when the Germans became the corporate owners. You'd have to be a real dummy not to wring money out... I think there was also some "enemy of my enemy is my friend" stuff going on, RE: the British.

>you'll never get anything worthwhile out of history if you only look at it as a way to buttress your own preexisting ideological leanings

So the teacher is also wrong

Yes. Congratulations. You can be wrong together.

I have a (surprising) number of Africa African classmates at Uni. Studying geography and environmental engineering... A bunch from Malawi (total bros), Zambia (including a third-gen guy of Portuguese ancestry), a couple from Zim, Mozambique, Namibia. One thing they all have in common is that they hate Chinese.

At least, they don't like what the Chinese government/resource extraction companies are doing in their countries. They aren't stupid, they understand exactly what's going on. Chinese build a road, sure, but only from the mine to the airport, and they ship in Chinese to do everything. Very little benefit to the locals, as any funds returned to the state are sure to slosh around only among the ruling elite.

I've seen that docu about the Chinese workers in Congo, but congo is a special kind of shithole. Southern Africa is not quite as bad...

Imperialism in Africa was worse than similar instances that came before it because the scale on which it took place was much larger and the intensity of the work was much worse than it was before.

Whites in Africa are only as bad as Muslims in Europe.

Do you honestly believe that colonialism was larger scale than countries getting enslaved and moved away wholesale during antiquity? Whole cities and regions in the middle ages?
Do you honestly believe that intensive agriculture and mining in Africa was any more intensive than ergastuli and roman salt/iron mines? Than being a galley rower? Outright sexual slavery?

No user. European colonialism at its worst was merely par for the course when considering what came before it.

muslim isn't a race
middle easterners are white however

Except European colonialism leaves land unusable and strips away natural resources at a much greater rate. Not only that but the death toll was much greater, millions of people uprooted from there homes in the course of 200 years, the effects of which are still felt today. Are you really going to say slavery in antiquity was worse? Do you really think that?

>Are you really going to say slavery in antiquity was worse? Do you really think that?
Yes. The intensity at worst is the same, and the scale is undeniably smaller proportionally to the size of populations involved. Millions of people over 200 years is peanuts compared to 20% of all gaul enslaved in ONE WAR. Or the turks enslaving sacked cities wholesale. Did european colonialism ever reach 20% to 100% losses of african regional population in 10 years or one war?
You might have a point about mineral resources, but that's just better tech, certainly no greater aggressivity towards the territory (the romans levelled fucking mountains in Spain, come on).

>Are you really going to say slavery in antiquity was worse?

That depends to a large extent on who captured you, and why. But yeah, slavery always sucked. It wasn't something that was reserved for Africans.

I don't think you understand the full extent of influence and damage wrought upon others by the likes of the Romans and Mongols.

>the likes of the Romans and Mongols
It's not like they were exceptional either. They only really shine through because by being stronger they could do more damage. But they were pretty much in line with most everyone in their timeframe.
Well the romans were anyway. I'm unsure whether the extreme fear mongols generated was due to force difference of particular brutality, I'm not well read on the subject.

Hell, do you even know what groups like the Bantu did to other African groups? Do you? Do you think there was no war and no exploitation in Africa until the evil white men appeared over the horizon and enslaved everybody? I once read in a book that described Shaka Zulu as "The African Hitler."

>morally right
Nonexistent thing

It's not Darwinism, it's general progressivism. This term is ignored because it means criticizing the notion of 'progress'.

>He claims that Europeans did not have the "right" to conquer Africa.
your teacher is indeed wrong and doesn't fully understand history. he is unable to put himself into the place of the Europeans at the time. when you are the powerhouse of the world and you see an opportunity to get money or more power you take it, by force if needed. the rule of the strong used to apply all around the globe untill the 90s, nowadays the rule of the strong still applies but it has kinda faided away since the strong have become weaker and it has been a while since real force and might were used as a tool to achieve things.

So one sort of colonialism is fine, but the source of it (Rome raping the Gauls) is perfectly fine?
Fucking progressives.
But that's wrong, there are only a handful of people able to see that they have been colonized. Every burgerfat adores Rome.

No, we are not fucking 'past it'. We will never be past it until we stop jacking eachother off over how our massahs had the greatest civilization ever.

This mindset lead to all other instances of colonization. What fucking empire wasn't trying to imitate Rome?

>it has kinda faided away
Only if you're dumb enough that you can't think "force" without adding "of arms" in your mind. The foremost modern school of thought in international relations states that power is the most important factor in international relations.
Nowadays economies are so intertwined that armies have to take a backseat and make space for soft power, but application of soft power is still fucking force.

>Veeky Forums is literally high schoolers
Not surprised desu

Don't paint me out as a strawman, I don't believe that whiteness is the sole evil of the world and I know that atrocities were comitted by Africans unto other Africans. I just believe that European imperialism is the worst there has been. All your doing here is making yourself look like an idiot.

>European imperialism directed towards Africans is arbitrarily worse than European imperialism directed towards other Europeans

>Also still ignoring the Arabic slave trade

Mamalukes, who were all slaves, had tons of political power to the point that they had their own nations.

In the Americas, specifically Brazil and the Caribbeans, slaves died at such a rate that the only way to maintain the population was to import.

And in Arabia, slaves were castrated so the only way to maintain the population was to import.

Except not every slave was castrated, mostly the ones used to guard over women

I'll admit I'm not as familiar, if you could explain why these examples are as bad or worse it would help me understand

As a history teacher he should know that you cant judge historical people through modern social views.

Life expectancy for caribbean plantation slaves was 7-9 years.
Life expectancy for roman quarry slaves was 7 years.
Roman quarries were considered far more lenient on a slave's health than mines too.
Let it go user, there was nothing exceptional about colonization. Human brutality is the same the world over, since the beginning of times.

It's ironic because he literally started out the year with us making am "identity chart" where we had to put stuff down like our socioeconomic status, gender, race, friends/family etc and he used that as an explanation as to where our political biases stem from.

Guess he talks the talk but won't walk the walk. Either that or if he gets called on his shit he can always say "we all have biases and we even covered that"

One other student said something about how we can't judge both sides from a 21st century lense in a discussion, I think he didn't dig deeper though and don't remember exactly

That's wrong though. It's pretty obvious that the demographic changes such as the 90% death of diseases for 2 centuries+, the murdering of priviledged class to nobles, the assimilation of the remnants of the noble classes, and the constant toxic exposure of all natives from mines for 4 centuries until they drop dead.

It's pretty obvious the same demographic changes should occur to the europeans, don't you think?

>That image
I can understand you having that opinion about imperialism, but how come only Africa got explored? What about South America? India?
Consistency is good.

I don't think the artist is trying to say it was just Africa, that's just what they're focusing on

At some point you just have to accept that public education is almost always shit and you have to read history books on your spare time if you want to escape it. Read African Kaiser if you want an example of a book that handles the colonization issue very well. It's mostly about WW1, but the background information about German colonies in Africa is very good and I would recommend it just for that.

The difference between the Mongols and 19th European empires is that the European successor states still exist today. Britain and France still have overseas territories and Spain and Portugal only gave up theirs 40 years ago.

>I don't understand how his 21st century American point of view system of "rights" could have existed in the late 1800s without rule of law
Read the Declaration of Independence.

>public education
My tuition is over $20,000 a year, I've never had a teacher that makes their political biases apparent besides an English teacher around November 2016 (hmm) who quickly shut up
I enjoy heated discussions and I sort of like the guy but I don't wanna get a bad grade by exposing him. Not that I could even articulate myself well enough anyways. So yeah, you're right, it just is.

That's not what relativism means
Greeks had democracy thousands of years ago, yet a lot of the world is still not very democratic

Your post is written so badly I can hardly understand what you're saying, but I think you're telling me that there haven't been plagues, widespread aristocracy resets and pollution damage in Europe, or at least not due to warfare and conquest.
Do I even need to write how retarded such a concept is?

>But that's wrong, there are only a handful of people able to see that they have been colonized.
Except the places that were colonised recently. That's the point. No modern European looks at a Italian and think of an oppressive advanced society but there are plenty of Africans who Westerners that way.

The consequences of the demographic changes such as the 90% death of diseases for 2 centuries+, the murdering of priviledged class to nobles, the assimilation of the remnants of the noble classes, and the constant toxic exposure of all natives from mines for 4 centuries until they drop dead, all of these events morphed the native population to what is today.

You have to suffer what you did to the amerindian race.

>they dont think of it so it clearly isn't that way
The most severe oppression is that which is hidden in plain sight.

Read about the Ottoman slave raids into Ukraine. They employed Mongols to raid villages and kidnap slavs and bring 'em to the Black Sea coast. But first, anyone over 60 would be killed. Any who couldn't keep up, sick or injured, were killed. Older women had some value as household help or farm serfs, but younger women as sex slaves (no doubt raped at will by the Mongol traders first) was the bigger deal. Younger men were often castrated, sometimes conscripted as sword fodder, or used as farm/construction labour. Mutilation and branding and such was common to mark slaves and make runaways obvious.

This went on for centuries, and helped empower the Cossacks. The Sultans also blanda upp like mad.

...

every time hahahhaha

This has been the basis of human civilization since time immemorial. Both the Africans and the Native Americans were killing each other way in the most cruel ways imaginable way before the whitey came to "their" lands. The Aztecs, the Malis, the Zulus and many more were all conquering the weaker tribes/nations before they were even discovered.

At the end of the day even though Native Americans got massively fucked by colonziation (mainly from the unpredictable diseases that the Europeans brought with them), Africa was better off being colonized. Africa was a no-man's land before being discovered and now even though it's an absolute shithole it's still something - they have access to medication, to food, to European technology, they just don't know how to use it. Unfortunately Europe are the final losers in the end as fixing the African problems to such a degree has made Africa the fastest growing continent in the world which means nothing good will come out of it in the future.

The basis of civilization dictates that europeans are getting invaded and soonly mongrelized. Do you agree?

yes.