Why do many Westerners...

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I'm not against telling history the way it is, but excepting tribute? there has to be a better way, isn't there? What's in the past is in the past, and people (usually) that used to live then are no more (if they still are, then I have no objections about making THEM pay), so why should we burden ourselves for their mistakes? How are we responsible?

The most we can do, I think, is have favorable relationships with those countries and treat them with respect, as if they were our equal. Giving them money does not help them become independant, but instead supports the hierarchy, where WE have the money and the means, and they ask for it. Is this really the way to ensure that the "dominance" one has over another ends? =/

Reparations and thought crimes? No.

So what do you expect? Do you think people should feel guilty about what happened before they were born?

While I do not think it is wise to do so, people have a right to ignore the past.

ruveyn

The Mughal Empire came out about as an offshoot of the Timurids, some of the bloodiest people in history second only to the Mongols who would simply burn every standing structure and kill every living creature they could find. The apocalyptic scale of destruction wrought by the Mongols was so great it was the only time in human history where you could see the effect of war in the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Why? Because they so completely and utterly destroyed entire nations that vast swathes of farmland turned back into forest.

The Persian, Assyrian and Ottoman Empires were hardly 'nice' chaps either are you really trying to pretend that Islamic conquests came with a big respect for human rights and other cultures? In reality they set up systems of persecution, burned all 'non islamic' literature and buildings.

All expansionary empires dehumanise their enemies and 'the natives' of newly conquered territories, the elite have to do this to rile up their own young men enough so that they are willing to risk death fighting the enemy. Talking of dehumanising people, remind me again which nation gave the world the caste system and the classification of people as 'untouchable'?

Perhaps you could also explain 1984, the slaughter of thousands of Sikhs in the Golden temple and the burning to the ground of the Sikh library by the Indian Army, was that the fault of the British?

I've read the posts but I am not sure what this thread is about. Is it about the atrocities of the past? Is the west being blamed for something? Regarding ignorance - it seems to be the practice of most countries and regimes to keep the masses in the dark about most things. It is usually only an elite who are given a proper education.

One could say that is also a type of patronising colonial relationship, where they should look to wealthier countries.

Just free-trade with them and let the rest sort itself out.

As far as I can see it's another opportunity for the OP to have another go at the West. Frankly, if she likes the Chinese that much she should go and live there and not live in a civilisation she appears to dislike so much.

You have a good point; tribute would just be primitive vengeance and your solution makes much more sense.

Indeed, I say the Mongols, the Mexica, the Muslims and the Westerners were perhaps the four worst major civilizations in world history for the colossal damage they did in their realms. The Mongols and the Mexica gave far less than the other three civilizations on the one hand but also were defeated after a much shorter period of time, while the Islamic world and the West gave much to the world but lasted far longer. Yet far less people denying the horrors of Genghis Khan, the appalling mass human sacrifice performed under the rule of Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin or the Islamic Slave Genocide than those who deny or minimize the atrocities of the Scramble for Africa.

The alphabet made by Bishop Diego De Landa was in fact his attempt of redemption for the book burnings.

To me, progress in science justifies most things. Since it would keep on existing for the time humanity will be existing. It can improve the life of much more persons, future lifes included than the lifes that would have to suffer for a short time. The invention of electricity alone would already justify the existence of the western civilisation in spite of all their mistakes. And in fact electricity was just one little aspect of the western science. Science did definitely improve humans living standard much more than it did damage it. Consider warm homes, an average of only 40 hours of work a week, weekends, enough food for everybody who lives in a modern country that benefits from science (it's an overflow, people were not meant to become fat by nature, it's our living standard), cars, trains etc. which shorten our way to work, more than enough money (everybody who owns a TV is able to afford luxury, since everything that isn't necessarily needed to survive and work productively is luxury).
And then consider where we would be without that. Where the native American tribes were. Where many parts of the world still are but probably soon won't be anymore.
Such a great progress excuses some mistakes. But if it's not your philosophy, that's ok, in fact nobody could prove what's the right way.
Maybe it is, like you seem to think, an agriculture based economy until the end of time. I prefer my modern life and I think most others would feel the same if they could decide.

This strikes me as a very unfocussed discussion.

Did Europeans commit atrocities in the colonies under their control? Of course they did. Did they commercially exploit their colonies? Of course they did--after all economic expansion was the lifeblood of colonialism.

But what's the object of this discussion? If we are not assigning blame to today's beneficiaries of yesterday's misconduct, then what are we trying to do? Is this intended to create support for a countervailing policy to economically benefit those who were previously exploited? If so, then it had better start playing catch-up, because free trade and globalization have already started down that road.

The Muslims invented science itself. The Chinese were about to have an Industrial Revolution during the Song Dynasty if it had not been for the Mongols and they probably would have had one in the Ming Dynasty if there was no Manchu Conquest. After all, the Chinese 800 years ago already had most, and in some areas more, of what Britain had 300 years ago: A higher literacy rate than 1700 Britain and mass produced written materials; the Bessemer Process; relatively widespread education at all levels of society; an arguably more fluid class system; fossil fuel extraction; highly intensive agriculture. Even the Emperor was being eclipsed by the Chancellor during the Song Dynasty. And the Song never tried to conquer India, the Islamic World or the Khmer Empire, despite clearly having the capacity to do so: They even allied with the Cholas, who got gunpowder weapons from the Song. Even their vassals, Korea, Japan and Vietnam, were basically amiable protectorates that benefited overall from being tributaries to the Chinese state, nothing like the British Raj or New Spain. So do not assume that only the West could give the world modernity, for this is clearly not true; why did it take almost two millennia for the West to fully recover from the Fall of the Roman Empire when it took China but a few centuries to recover from the Fall of the Han Dynasty? Or why did it take but a couple centuries for the Andean world to recover from and advance beyond the Fall of Tiwanaku and Wari?

And I do believe strongly in progress, BTW, not an everlasting preindustrial way of life: I much prefer the Information Age to the Preindustrial World that it eclipsed. Yet, the Information Age most certainly did not have to come about from all the racism, genocide and other atrocities committed by the West: That is a false dichotomy.

Ohh, you seem to read very much xD
I don't care about who would have been able to invent. And I don't even care about who did invent. I'm not interested in the time it has been invented too.
The only thing I care about is that it exists now. I haven't read any book about China so anything I know is that it has been existing for a much longer time than the western civilisation, in the whole time it has been lead by countless dynasties who in fact didn't make any noteworthy progress since the introduction of the writing until they introduced an effective educational system similar to Platons politeia that made them a solid agrarian state. Strangely it wasn't the Chinese who invented the petrol engine. Why not, if they have been extracting fossil fuel? But it's not a challenge. It was nothing but a matter of fortune that the European and later also the Americans had the perfect requirements for research. That was of course not planned by anybody. It just happened. It's just that you seem to wish that it would have been somebody else. Is it some kind of altered Stockholm syndrome because you are concerning yourself with those cultures so much?

I'm sorry for my drive of dissuading others from concerning with history. To me history is a plaque that leads to patriotism, hate, recrimination, revenge (one of the most destructive forces of all), outcasting of minorities and racism through a communal spirit that's based on historical "facts", etc.. And the only benefit it brings is that some people can feel elite by recitating dead persons or so "extremely important" facts that have no relation to the present times we live in and can of course also not be applied on our times since the situation is TOTALLY different.
You might have thought that my contradiction against your words would be because I would think the opposite. In fact I only detest the fact that people waste their time with history and are so totally serious about it. And now I realise that by answering you I do nothing but the same. Ideally, just read what I'm saying about the term history and forget about my answers to your smartypantsism^^

There was the point made in the OP concerning how the west teaches a pseudo racial science to justify the conquest of indigenous peoples. To my surprise, no one seemingly addressed this point.
In fact, I don't see any such race theories taught in any western schools in modern times. Long past is the justification of "the white man's burden," or the insane racism taught in German schools under the Nazis. If anything, westerners today flagellate themselves over what our ancestors and culture had once done. The modern emphasis is on civil rights achievements, and on the liberalization of western civilization in accepting any and all peoples into it's fold.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer