So I saw today that a Christopher Columbus monument was destroyed with a sledgehammer. All the replies were people praising the sledgehammer.
Obviously I assume the history of European-Native American conflict is complicated. But I haven't read that much about it myself. Can someone here sort out to what degree the conflicts were a deliberate genocide, rather than a combination of natural conflicts and disease spreading?
Were the Europeans actually villainous by the standards of the era?
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I suggest you read Bartolomeo de Las Casas. The shit that was going on in the Caribbean was absolutely horrific, even by the "standards" of the time.
>All the replies were people praising the sledgehammer
Certainly, a sledgehammer that can break up a statue is a well built sledgehammer.
First of all nobody gives a shit about statues other than those assblasted by them.
Secondly, on the indian issue: America exists as a sovereign country because of the injun problem. Specifically, the British King wouldn't allow white settlers to remove indians or squat on their lands if those tribes recognized the Crown. Many obviously did, and this effectively halted American expansion at Indiana. Following the American Revolution, Indians were marched at gunpoint to the vast desert wasteland that is Oklahoma which nobody wanted. Many died during this "Trail of Tears" and as a result of the relocation to a literal wasteland many died and remained poor. A similar fate almost befell Mormons (who worship indians as lost jews) but with Utah, but they were white and therefore able to create a civilized society. Today most injuns are hated by both Mexicans and Americans alike for being drunk thieves who spend all their money on alcohol.
For comparison, ones in Canada fared much better as they weren't relocated and are just general lower class people instead. Down in Mexico all natives were enslaved and put into labor camps, and now Mexico has constant civil unrest due to those groups organizing groups (the catholic church, cartels, communist secessionist forces, etc) opposed to the Mexican government.
Thirdly, to answer your question: no not really since each European country had a different policy. Spain/Mexico was borderline genocidal (comply or die), America's was relocation, and England's was full civil rights as Commonwealth citizens. France was irrelevant because their colonial adventures ended with the Louisiana Purchase.
Look up the treatment of Indians by California missionaries and settlers as well as info on Lincoln as it relates to the Minnesota territory
What people don't understand is that Columbus WAS a shit, to the point Isabella of Castille herself denounced him
Really? I thought at this point nobody except some Italian-Americans cared about Columbus anymore. Plus its common knowledge that Viking explorers reached America first, that kinda steels Columbus's thunder IMO.
This has been going on throughout the Americas for decades.
Many if his own crew hated him. They even hauled him back to Castile in chains on charges if brutality and negligence.
What this guy said is important:
Each Euro country had major differences in racial and colonial policy and shouldn't be painted with broad strokes.
He decimated and enslaved whatever natives he found, outright got information concerning those lands and more importantly gold deposits through deceit and torture, allowed his crewmen to keep young women openly as rapeslaves, besides being an incompetent administrator that lost as many footholds as he founded, and whose greed of becoming admiral and recieving governorship of the lands he ravaged was greatly outgrew by the Crown's interests of actual viable investments, all of this he outright states in his letters, along with those of his crewmen, which you can easily google, I figure
The moment he returned from his first contact with slaves to present at court, queen Isabella immediatly ordered them to be made free, and eventually had Columbus arrested an on trial