Colonial Encounters

Europeans had defined others largely in religious terms, now they adopted the idea and techniques of more “advanced” societies equals precedent by wealth, and used both to produce unsurpassed military power.  It’s not surprising that their opinions of other cultures dropped sharply. European eyes to the status of tribes led by chiefs as a means of emphasizing their “primitive” qualities. Still Europeans used the apparatus of science to support their racial preferences and prejudices. (Measure the size of the skull, white skull larger; therefore more advance and intelligent) Race in this view, determined human intelligence, moral development, and destiny. “Race is everything”. The sense of responsibility to the “weaker” races. Europeans had “duty to civilize the inferior races”. “Discipline and production for the market to the lazy natives”. Charles Darwin – “the survival of the fittest” led to the “social Darwinism” – destruction of backward races or “unfit” races.

Second wave of European conquests between 1750 and 1914 was a second and quite distinct round of conquests: Asia and Africa. Construction of these new empires in the Afro-Asian world, involved military force. Countless wars of conquest of colonial European states. India and Indonesia, grew out of earlier interactions with European trading firms. British East India Company (took advantage of the fragmentation of Mughal Empire and facilitated penetration for them). Dutch acquisition of Indonesia was also as traders and alliances. Slowly without a plan, soon they had conquered the islands.

Half a dozen European powers against one another as they partitioned the entire continent for 25 years (1875-1900) which equaled extensive bloody military action. Under European rule Australia and New Zealand, both taken over by the British during the nineteenth century, were more similar to the earlier colonization of North America.  Diseases that reduced native numbers by 75%.  United States practiced a policy of removing, exterminating Indian people. Also there were boarding schools (many children removed, to civilize the remaining natives), kill the Indian, save the Man.  Filipinos acquired new colonial rulers when United States took over from Spain (Spanish American war 1898) many freed migrated to West Africa

Unpaid labor on public projects, such as building railroads, constructing government buildings. All “natives” (blacks) were legally obligated for “statute labor” of 12 days a year until 1946. One of the cruelties of forced labor, in Congo, governed by king Leopold II of Belgium, forced villagers to collect rubber and starved them to death, or if not collected a certain amount would cut ears, arms, body parts. Commerce in rubber and ivory made possible by the massive use of forced labor in Congo and Cameroon, causing AIDS epidemic jump from chimpanzees to humans. Congo main city Kinshasa, networks of sexual interaction spread. In Indonesia, forced labor took shape in the so called cultivation system of the Netherlands East Indies. Peasants required to give 20%-40% of their land in crops and government payed those fixed prices, low prices.

In some places, colonial rule created conditions that facilitated and increased cash-crop production to the advantage of local farmers. Since they provided irrigation and transportation, they started laws that facilitated private ownership of small farms. Local farmers benefited considerably because they were now able to own their own land, rice production increased so much that fed millions worldwide. But on the other side, in Vietnam and many other places these led to the destruction of mangrove forests and swamp lands along with the fish and shellfish. Still these led to a shortage of labor, fostered to exploit workers and generate tensions between the sexes. Men (interested) married women since they were most hired in agriculture food process.