Why do many Westerners...

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...deny so many, if not most, of the adverse impacts of their cultures' colonialism on most of the world?

I am looking for a serious discussion here. I am truly curious why so many Westerners, particularly, at least from what I see personally, those who self-identify with the pseudoscientific concept of being of the "white race", are so determined to deny, minimize and attempt to refute the facts about the effects of their historical method of colonialism, which remained largely the same from the early 16th to late 19th centuries and was also effectively the same for all the Western colonial powers during this historical period?

For example, many Western scholars still argue that colonialism was good for Africa or something similar; any thoughtful person can see this is complete rubbish: How was the transatlantic slave genocide or the Punitive Expedition that destroyed Benin City good for anyone other than the Western elite? Furthermore, one of the most ridiculous claims I here from otherwise sensible people is that Bishop Diego De Landa's horribly flawed "alphabet" was essential for Western understanding of the Maya Script and the scant literature that survived the bishop's, and other colonial overlords', mass book burnings, despite the obvious fact that if there had been no book burnings by the colonial overlords, mass executions of Maya people who resisted the insane demands of said overlords, which of course included the demand that the Maya Script and all works in it be destroyed, then the De Landa "Alphabet" would never have been necessary in the first place, if it existed at all. How can so many educated people be so intent on being ignorant of historical realities such as these?

By the way, I am not trying to start a thread to bash individual Westerners, of which I am one, or accuse innocent individuals of the atrocities their ancestors happened to have committed. So please let us all, including myself, keep this discussion respectful and civil.

Thank you for your discussion!

1. They're likely not trained anthropologists, the discipline itself is vaguely known outside of college and high school (or at least, its french and french canadian equivalents) by the common of mortals because they don't bring in the money but are good for "culture".

2. They're probably post-modernist thinkers, which are usually subjective and not very rigorous. :p

3. They follow a political agenda or the like.

4. Plain old ignorance?

Any anthropologist worth its salt would at the very least not identify pro-actively as white unless he wants his fieldworks to be limited. I mean, I am a caucasian (the category itself is kinda bad, btw) but I don't go praising myself or others such as I just because I am such. <.<

5. Blame is irrelevant; solutions are not.

Maybe there's still the lingering sentiment of "well, at least we introduced them to more advanced technology and discouraged some morally abhorrent practices". I'm not sure, really.

Well, as you are not sure, perhaps you would be interested to know that Mughal India had more advanced steelmaking, better gun barrels, better artillery (especially rockets), ships of equal quality, though inferior armament and quantity, to the conquering British in the 18th century, not to mention infinitely superior medicine and sanitation in bathing, cleaning their teeth and washing their clothes regularly, in surgery and in basically everything else as the Indians did not bleed people for everything but actually treated them with effective medicine and surgery, and had a far larger economy than any European country, indeed, any country other than Qing China, in the 18th century. So the Desi Subcontinent is obviously out of the question.

As for the Andes, much the same could be said: The Spanish were clearly inferior in fabrics technology, economic size and organization, thanks to the Inka's superb system of labor taxes, the famed roads system, sanitation, thanks to organized nightsoil collection, high standards of cleanliness and abundant running water, and healthcare, not the least of which was shockingly advanced skull surgery, and even in many ways in agriculture, thanks to the highly productive Inka state-owned and collective farms, alongside state terracing projects that brought more land under cultivation in Peru alone in 1491 then even is today, and certainly in quality of life due to the above-mentioned factors.

And even in areas where the indigenous peoples were clearly technologically inferior, as in New Guinea, Australia and Southern Africa, the colonial powers did not give the locals their technology, even really trade with them to transmit it, so much as use it to enslave and subjugate them.

IMO,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationaliz ... excuses%29

Most of the "colonialists" died 40 years ago and there is hardly one alive today. You can't blame the current generation for the transgressions of the past.

ruveyn

good answer from apple.

I am not blaming contemporary Westerners for the problems their ancestors caused by I am accusing them of denying those problems with racism and pseudoscience.

I hate it if people are complaining with those "what if" arguments.
what do you want? Do you think those countries and their citzens don't earn enough of our sympathy for what people have done whose only relation to us is that we share some genetical information with them?
Do you want me to go to visit each jew and apologize for what people who lived in a country that has been totally different from the country I live in since it was 80 years ago have done to people who out of a matter of fortune share the religion with them?
History is history, guiltyness is not heritable. And people who think so are the real racists.
And much more history is totally irrelevant, what counts is the future. The future can be shaped, the past is no longer existent. History can be a hobby if you want so. But it can never be a reason for present acting or argumentations.
Of course the only intention for colonialism was might and money. But today it's still the same. And back then the indigene cultures did also have no other wish but might and money since that's evolutional.
"Moral" is nonsense. A person who believes in moral is not automatically a better human. And much more, if he punishes others for not believing in this strange idea of moral he is even worse.

While it's true that the western colonial powers had done a real number on indigenous populations, the notion that pre-colonial times represented some sort of golden age is a myth.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I have to agree with Kraichgauer, to still bear a grudge against Europe's colonial era or to blame Europeans for a countries current troubles is absurd.

You mention the Mughals, well this Mughal Empire did it come into existence peacefully and coexist in harmony with it's neighbours while treating all it's people equally or was it forged in bloodshed and war?

Were there not emperors and royal families who lived in stupendous luxury while the majority lived and died in appalling poverty?

Before the evil Europeans came along were the Mughals or were they not engaged in prolong drawn out conflicts with the Maratha Empire?

Was land peacefully bought and sold or was it won through conquest and domination in pre-colonial India, just as it was everywhere else in the world at the time?

What I want to happen is as follows: I insist that the US government, which I am a citizen of, stop sugarcoating the past in compulsory school, which I know occurs, because I have been through the entire US primary and secondary school system in two US states, treat Manifest Destiny like Lebensraum, criminalize racism like Brazil has, stop recognizing the dangerous pseudoscientific idea of race in its legal system and census, make Transatlantic Slave Genocide denial and minimization, as well as denial of the genocides that the US government did to the Indigenous Peoples throughout its territory, a crime much like Holocaust denial in formerly Nazi countries and I want all former colonial powers to pay annual tribute to all their former colonies' current governments if they are deemed competent by the UN, much like Aristide of Haiti demanded from France before he was kidnapped by US soldiers.

On your argument that I am trying to guilt-trip modern Westerners: I am not, as I said in my first post. I simply insist that all people, regardless of their culture, recognize the atrocities committed by all Western colonial states that continue to be highly influential to this day. So, it is not a matter of I hating any "race", which I reject on genetic grounds as pseudoscientific, or even that I hate the affluence that the contemporary descendants of colonial powers and their settler colonies', by which I mean the colonies where Westerners dominate by sheer numbers due to the almost complete extermination of their Indigenous Peoples, as in Australia and the USA, for example, contemporary states, due to the fact that I believe that all people should be able to have a quality of life more or less equivalent to this and the fact that virtue does not come from poverty nor from wealth but from character. Basically, I am just tired of so many of my fellow human beings denying and minimizing historical, and contemporary, truths that make them uncomfortable. And no, guilt is not inheritable.

I never said the Indigenous Peoples of the World were a Golden Age for humankind: I do not deny that Aztec human sacrifice, the Islamic Slave trade or New Guinean endemic warfare existed before, and, except in the case of the former, after, the colonial powers invaded nor do I deny that the Inka never put a person into space or that the Kanxi Emperor executed a man for believing the scientific truth that the brain is the center of intelligence instead of the heart. I also do not deny that, in many cases, the precolonial civilizations were, vastly superior to their European conquerors in most respects and if treated the same other European states, as potential allies or as trading partners, the world would certainly be far more advanced and the Inka, Chinese, Mughals and Asante, for example, could certainly have been the first to put a human being in space, perhaps working with other civilizations, including the West.

And finally, note that, from the Fall of Rome until well into the Age of European Exploration, Europe was a backwater and behind most major civilizations in most key respects. Chang'an, Timbuktu and Baghdad were all far more developed, educated, cultured and orderly at the dawn of the second millennium than any city in Europe at the time. Even in the 18th century, it Europe's domination of Eurasia was far from certain and only with Industrialization, fueled by Islamic Science, Chinese weaponry, American Agriculture and African slaves, did the West become clearly the most advanced civilization on Earth.

So please do not try to play the reverse-racism card on me for bringing up a very real and very important topic.

Thinking incorrectly is not a crime. People are entitled to their prejudices.

People are accountable only for their actions.

ruveyn

The answer to all those questions is obviously "of course." But note that the Mughals did not do repeated mass book burnings, commit genocide, let alone do it repeatedly and did not dehumanize their subjects; the European colonial powers did. Indeed, the Mughals, arguably the least benevolent Emperors of India before the British, much preferred to trade, including with all European colonial powers, for goods. Yet, the Europeans offered little the Mughals wanted: They had no use for British wool or Swedish iron inferior to their wootz steel, for example, while the Europeans greatly desired Mughal cotton cloth, diamonds and spices. This made the Europeans angry, much as in the Qing China-British trade, where the huge trade deficit in China's favor led the unscrupulous British to illegally trade Opium, anger the Qing authorities and finally use their superior military technology to crush China in the First, and Second, Opium Wars. There were similar causes for the Wars of Indian Conquest but, not yet quite militarily superior, the British were lucky enough to take advantage of the Mughal Empire's decline and wars with the Maratha Empire.