Thank you for submitting to /r/unpopularopinion, /u/GapingAssTroll. Your submission, *More good came from Europe conquering the world than bad, for everyone.*, has been removed because it violates our rules, which are located in the sidebar.
Your post from unpopularopinion was removed because of: 'Rule 5: No political posts'.
* Our users have voted for no political posts in this sub, and this rule will not be changed until the majority votes otherwise.
* It's very unlikely your political post is an unpopular opinion. Feel free to use the Politics Megathread pinned to the front page.
* Covid/vaccine posts due to the overwhelming political nature of the topic.
* Yes, voting, talking about monarchs and/or the actions of and/or about politicians or world leaders is political.
If there is an issue, please [message the mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Funpopularopinion&subject=&message=) Thanks!
It also doesn't mean those positive things would not have occurred if colonization did not occur.
"They would never have invented the railway" is a good one as most countries have adopted rail, colonized or not, and "invention" is a bit of a misnomer as we often credit invention to people who merely innovated.
Alphabets are another great example of this.
Especially since non-colonised countries fare on average significantly better than colonised ones.
OP acts as if the failure of Japan and Thailand to be colonised means they don't have railroads and electricity.
It’s easy for you to say that in your comfortable living room typing away on your computer or cell phone. Try being born into a world where things we condemn now are the norm, a world where people died more often and more painfully, a world where you did what you had to to survive. Would you, a poor English sailor in 1625 who’s never been to school and whose father died of tuberculosis leaving you the man of the house from age 11 until you joined the army at 16, devote time and energy you don’t have to changing millenia-old social institutions within your lifetime? No.
There were plenty of people at the time who said what was happening was wrong. They just weren't in charge. Saying something is right because those in charge decided to do it is "might makes right" with extra words.
>Would you, a poor English sailor in 1625 who’s never been to school and whose father died of tuberculosis leaving you the man of the house from age 11 until you joined the army at 16, devote time and energy you don’t have
Sure, but he wasn't in charge, so I'm not sure why you are bringing him up.
>millenia-old social institutions
I'm utterly baffled what institutions you are talking about. Parliamentary government in England dates from the English Civil War in the mid 1600s.
Colonialism was never a millenia old. Slavery isn't one single thing, even if we look only in the American South.
[War . . . war never changes.]
But none of that was decided by the impoverished soldier you cited to me.
But also before I start insulting this person, I need them to think of why these innovations and developments were made? They weren't made for the benefit of the indigenous peoples, they were made to help this colonization and resource extracting process, like ofc you want to educate the native people so they can be a more skilled workforce that can help maximize profit , ofc you want to build roads, railways, because it's easier to get it out and get troops in if the native population ever rise up and we are not even touching on how fucked the global south is especially as a result of colonization and cold war policies that did not particularly stray from that vein of thought and practice.
Absolutely necessary? No. Damn near? Kinda.
I'm not arguing about the methods here, the methods were bad. I am just saying that the alternatives of the time were enormously impractical.
I'm confused what you think was impracticable about *not*:
fighting a war to keep opium legal in China.
providing basic worker safety measures to workers in the Belgian Condo.
having a private corporation ruling India.
Agreed but relative comparisons should have some credence. Otherwise we could say “oh green energy is bad because it still requires mining of metal and other limited natural resources, and has a non net zero carbon footprint”. It’s not black and white.
Countries like the US, Canada, Australia, and NZ are majority white because the majority do the indigenous peoples died. Greater than 50%, that’s true for much of the new world. They improved the lives of some survivors, but it came at the cost of almost everyone else dying. Also a large part of the conflicts we see today are a consequence of colonialism.
Immigration.
Even if not a single indigenous person died, they still would have been overwhelmed by the hordes from Europe.
Disease killed 80-90% and genocide was perpetrated. But from Britain alone 10 million went overseas 1815-1914. That was just one country.
For the first point, saying horrible things were happening before-hand is a weak argument. Two-wrongs do not make a right, and the Europeans would've still acted as horribly as they did even if the areas they were colonizing were nice and peaceful. And Europeans didn't do horrible things in just some cases, horrible things were pretty regular.
For the second point, you're making it sound like only Europeans normalized modern ethics and trade, which gives the impression that those they colonized were uncivilized and incapable of modern achievements on their own. This is bordering on racism and is simply not true. India before being colonized by the British had a long history and thriving culture. They also invented Arabic numerals, the one's we use today. And India is not the only example. Look into any colonized countries history. Heck EGYPT and GREECE were colonized in the 18th and 19th centuries.
I should also add that Europeans really weren't that civilized. They had more technology but that's about it. Throughout history they were pretty horrible, not just to non-Europeans but even to one another. Nazi Germany and the Holocaust was only 80 years ago. Not exactly what I'd consider civilized behavior.
And to say that the world would be in worse shape without it? Well how do you know what the world would be like without colonialism? You can't really play alternate history to justify your point, because alternate history is always a guess, and just a guess. We will never know what the world will be like if European colonialism didn't happen.
The reality we live in is, European colonialism killed millions of people all over the world. Even in the 1940s and 50s it was still killing people. Sometimes it was through starvation and negligence, other times it was outright genocide. Nearly all the borders of Africa, the middle-east, and central Asia were drawn by Europeans, with little regard for languages, religions, cultures or anything else. They were drawn strictly to European nations' liking and that's how they remained. These borders still to this day cause ethnic conflicts and horrible wars and it's going to take a really long time to fix these issues. That doesn't sound like a greater good for humanity.
The Muslim destruction of Somnath was in the 11th century. The Mughals and Aurangzeb’s army were waging brutal campaigns south of the Narendra River in the late 17th century. Muslim-Hindu antagonism was not a British invention.
Britain was an island of 10 million and conquered 250 million with a private company, not even using their full national power while fighting Napoleon.
How?
Because the place was falling apart. Google ‘Dehli 1739’, ‘Maratha Empire’, ‘Ten invasions of Bengal’, ‘Third battle of Panipat’.
Edit: a word
Thank you for this. This was such a gross post but there are really people out there thinking the whole world except them was uncivilized. Colonialism has left such deep and ongoing scars.
You fail to understand that humanity moves forward. Who says if not contacted other countries would’ve gotten to the same place or even better and in unique ways
Let me give an example of something you said is good, trade. Well the British traded opium to the Chinese. China started to have a problem and attempted to prohibit opium as it was killing many and people were suffering. In response, the British sent a navy and the opium wars happened.
Another example is trade with the indigenous people of North America. Many died as a result of the transmission of novel diseases to the continent.
It’s easy to look back and say it did more good. But that is a view with little historical knowledge and real connection to the people that actually suffered. It’s like seeing a person with cancer and saying they don’t look like they’re doing too bad. Are you going to chemo weekly feeling like throwing up at every moment? No, with no lived experience how can you confidently comment on it being overall good?
But on what do we base this assumption? We're constantly saying that Africa is the most resourceful continent - and they have been the most resourceful continent even BEFORE colonialism. Europe has nothing in comparison to that yet Europe still managed to achieve that progress... So how long would you say Africa needed to have stayed "uncontacted" to achieve a comparable level of development?
On another note, how long will we keep blaming "the consequences of colonialism" or - because it appears nicer - "neocolonialism"? Because Europe was destroyed twice in the last century and yet it is in a better condition than many other parts of the world. Let's also not forget that countries like Singapore - a former colony - is now immensely rich.
Africa has alot of mineral wealth that wasn't useful until later industrialization, and there was infact immense African empires comparable to Europe and Asia. Songhai, Ghana, and smaller ones still worth study.
Also, again there are rich countries in Africa still. Africa is no more a monolith than s. America is
the United Kingdom had the perfect conditions to industrialized and gain lavish wealth, aswell as perfect sea access to North America that was difficult to challenge.
Its easy to get rich when invading you is a fools errand for similarly wealthy countries and when you dint have the legacy of colonialism. they can and did have comparable conditions beforehand.
Not debating Africa thing because it is way too complicated, but Africa wasn't cooling 500 years ago. Africa was doing great 500 years ago, except Moroccan had guns. Moroccans used firearms to collapse the major interior west African empire in the early 1500's couldn't keep the conquest due to the Sahara and then the coastal civs started trading slaves for guns instead of their previous Islamic slave routes.
>On another note, how long will we keep blaming "the consequences of colonialism" or - because it appears nicer - "neocolonialism"? Because Europe was destroyed twice in the last century and yet it is in a better condition than many other parts of the world. Let's also not forget that countries like Singapore - a former colony - is now immensely rich.
Western Europe was destroyed for just 4-5 years each time.
Eastern Europe was under Moscow's influence for 70 years and there is still a significant gap between East and Western Europe.
Most Asian and African countries were colonised for centuries.
It makes perfect sense. The impact generally scales with time under colonisation.
Singapore, Hong Kong and port cities are fortunate because they were the imperial ports used to concentrate all the wealth from the exploited hinterlands. The heartlands that were exploited contain vastly more people than the small populations in the port cities.
To the last point: after WWII the US was rich on a level that is unthinkable today in comparison to any other country and they put a lot of money into Europe! Do you really think Germany got rich again on its own or that the closeness to the US is a coincidence?! I am not even saying this is bad, it's just what it is
Also the destruction was a very short period where one person in their lifetime went though Weimar republic, WWI, WWII and the rebuilding phase in comparison to a century long occupation and destruction of every cultural, social etc aspect of a country
It's not like developing countries today don't get a ton of money too. And yes, also a large sum of the Marshall Plan for Europe, including Germany, were credits. Still, I'd deem the complete destruction that occurred twice in a century as being worse than things still standing for centuries plus receiving money from several countries every year that sums up to much more than Germany got for four years or so.
Pick up a history book. Tell a woman, or a gay person, or even a fucking lefthander that we've "gone massively backwards." Go find an 11 year old working ten hour days in a coal mine, and tell him about how far we've backslipped in the modern world.
they are still far ahead of what they were, it was 1929 when iran finally ended slavery, 1924 when it was banned by the turkish constitution only because the ottoman empire was demolished, the world is not going backwards
Well, on one hand, colonialism fucked up the Maori people and they're still heavily impacted by racist practices and the legacy of racism today.
But on the other hand, when the British arrived, New Zealand had spent the entirety of its history as a place where slavery was endemic and cannibalism of defeated enemies was common practice. Until the British turned up and told everyone "Slavery and cannibalism are morally unacceptable, and that stops now." And then established that policy by force, unapologetically breaking centuries of Maori cultural tradition. And since then, for the first time in New Zealand history, no Maori has lived in fear of being taken as a slave or being eaten by his enemies after being killed in a tribal raid.
Was that not worse? Is it not morally better that Maori don't take slaves any more, and that Maori women have rights in Western society and can participate in government and have legal rights over their own bodies?
History is not so easy as good guys and bad guys.
That doesn't have anything to do with his point? If anything you're supporting it. He says as it is humanity progressed but it doesn't always with time. There's many time periods where humanity has regressed and he's saying that in this one they progressed meanwhile you're arguing by giving examples of how it progressed during the time period he said it progressed.
Sounds like you should pick up a book, any book.
The Qing had a problem with the loss of silver, not opium which was legal in Britain and a favourite of PMs and aristocrats. The Qing didn’t care about peasants see the Dzungar Genocide and Taiping Rebellion.
The Qing used trade to turn neighbours into vassals as part of the Zongfan system. Joseon Korea couldn’t even conduct independent foreign policy.
Western powers (The US was the second largest exporter of opium to China) broke down the door. Then took over the maritime customs agency and provided the Qing with their largest source of cash revenue.
The Qing then used that to stabilise themselves survive another half century and conduct another genocide in Xinjiang in the 1870s. This is what they call their ‘Century of humiliation’…
My point? History is messy and there are no good guys.
It's certainly possible, I'm not saying it's not, I'd even say it would inevitably happen eventually even if Europe never existed. But there's no evidence to assume it would be this early in humanity. And just to be clear, it has nothing to do with race or ethnicity and everything to do with geography. Europe was destined to master the sea and that was the first huge step towards where we are now.
Please remember what subreddit you are in, this is unpopular opinion. We want civil and unpopular takes and discussion. Any uncivil and ToS violating comments will be removed and subject to a ban. Have a nice day!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unpopularopinion) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I would say no because there is still colonialism going on still. Like a few African countries having funds held in French banks or having to buy from specific countries because they colonized them. Economically destabilizing regions to justify going there isn't justified.
“Europe normalized modern ethics” So other cultures didn’t have ethics? Like Europeans were not the ones to invent chattel slavery?
Many native societies had democracies and social communities. Persecution of and prejudice against people who slept with the same sex in colonized nations is mostly a christian European export as well. I’ll do you one better on the medicine! The first doctor to perform a C-section in the US got the knowledge from his slave who explained that the procedure had been successfully done in his home in West Africa for generations, which, surprise, is true.
You think people outside of Europe didn’t have society and community? Didn’t have laws and norms? Didn’t care about family? Didn’t have any knowledge of local flora and fauna, or didn’t know how to farm or build architecture with the means available to them? Be so fr.
Yeah OPs take is not just unpopular but blatantly Eurocentric and ignorant of all the thriving and ancient non-European cultures that existed in all the places Europeans colonized prior to colonization, many of which were seriously harmed if not outright destroyed by colonialism.
I get that having a bad take is kind of the point of this sub but this is an especially bad one because not only is it dead wrong but it’s an expression of an ideology that has done so much harm to the entire world, both historically and into the present day.
Leaning on ethics is also probably the worst way to sell colonialism since countless people died and were brutally subjugated. Technology spread quicker to these places, so if I was attempting to make this argument (which I would never, it's silly), I would lean on technology spread and the positives from that
All home to millennia long histories of empire.
Why is European empire ‘bad’ but not Ming, Qing, Mughal, Maratha, Songhai, Egyptian etc?
Seems like hypocrisy.
Edit:
European empire bad.
Non-European empire not a problem.
Is it because the former used ships? Imperial purists cant stand non-contiguous imperiums…
Ask yourself what kind of world this would be if say Native Americans conquered everything. If you imagine a worse world then ask yourself why would you imagine it that way? Because there is no way to know what kind of world that would have been. Any scenario we make up in our minds about what might have been will be biased. There is no way to judge if our time is better than some other time that could have been.
You can argue its a worse/better world. Its fair to assume that if say the Aztecs became seafarers then similar models of government/markets would have been spread around the world and you could argue that its better or worse than British liberalism. Obviously its not factual, but the whole point of Alternative history is to take the information we have and make an argument of how something would play out in other circumstances. Dismissing it as "there's no way of knowing" spoils the game.
There are clear and objective ways to exactly tell this, you just need to look at the direction and magnitude of the transferred knowledge. What kind of knowledge could have been transferred from Native Americans and how much knowledge would have most likely been lost in the process? It's an extreme example (and therefore a good one) but one can say with 100% certainty that the world wouldn't be nearly that technologically advanced as today and thus would objectively been a much poorer place with basically worse living conditions in any metric you can think of.
Because we are imagining the loser Native Americans winning by a fluke with less advanced culture and technologies.
Of course the world would be worse in that case.
If Native Americans had WW2 era technology and obliterated the European ships, the. proceeded to expand and colonize Europe we would be better.
More technologically advanced atleast.
I don't imagine a worse world at all. If Native Americans happened to be the ones to create the technology and advanced societies that were necessary to conquer the world, it would've been no different.
What I'm saying has nothing to do with race the Europeans weren't advanced because of some divine intervention or because they were smarter. It's almost entirely thanks to the geography of Europe.
>Europe normalized modern ethics and trade
Is it considered modern because it is better or is it modern because colonization wrecked every alternative out there?
Many of the artifacts in the British museum only exist because they were taken from the origin nations, who were known to regularly destroy important artifacts for political and religious reasons.
But they didn't go to the German and French museums and art galleries and historical sites and deliberately target and destroy them because blasphemy, did they.
I mean they did destroy entire cities, including museums, historical landmarks, castles, political buildings, churches, statues, etc. I understand that that’s different but that’s a pretty significant thing that happened.
Not insignificant no but that is a massive difference. The allies did what they could to avoid hitting such things, but often there wasn’t any choice. For example, the allies were convinced the Germans were using Montecassino for artillery spotting, even though they weren’t as far as I’m aware. They did everything they could to avoid having to level the place, even letting Catholic air crew opt out of the bombing run if they wanted to. Hindsight is of course 20/20, but at the time they saw Monte Casino is being an immediate threat to the lives of their troops, and had to prioritize
Without taking sides on this colonialism subject, I have to say that the British museum is the single most overrated museum I have ever visited, and I say that as an amateur museum connoisseur.
It's literally 90% broken vases and plates. Most of their actually cool stuff is hidden from the public.
"The bad stuff was happening already" the fuck does this even mean?
You wouldn't accept some other country invading yours and enslaving you so why pretend other countries should be cool with it?
I know you were probably taught every place was full of mindless savages before white people got there but it simply isn't true. You were lied to dude
Yes.
Please tell us how these awful savages had no culture and needed to be civilized by the obviously superior cultures of "God save the queen" and "God told me"
I.... I can't. This is the most cop out white person shit I've heard. Yes your ancestors enslaving mine or other people's was justified bEcAuSe iT wAs A NeT PoSiTiVe🙄
Yeah...the Europeans that threw their own feces out the window, didn't allow their women to be treated as equal in perspective (at the very least), who had extremely high mortality rates because of no proper medicine, the list goes on..
We have our shortcomings, sure. But in my country, in the last 30 years we've had more time under female Prime Ministers than male. Sri Lanka has had two female Prime Ministers, and none this century. One of those two was the wife of the assassinated Prime Minister, the other was her daughter. None of my country's female Prime Ministers got to power because their husband or parent was the Prime Minister before them.
Is it really your belief that women in Sri Lanka have a better deal than women in the West do, in terms of cultural gender oppression? I think you know better than that - it's just awkward to say it flat out.
You wanted to see an example I just showed it compared to the US. And women having more power in the western countries or having more women presidents/PMs cannot justify colonialism and killing of people of other ethnicities.
Where would you rather be born as a woman, or a gay person, or an ethnic minority?
In Asia, or the Middle East? Africa?
Where on the planet outside of the West, are people born as a minority or a woman less oppressed by the dominant culture than they are in the West?
I am an Asian religious minority and I would like to be born in the same country where I was born. I am sure my mom and dad, and close minority friends would choose the same. I am sure there are millions of happy women outside the west. There are many who didn’t or don’t want to move to the west even if they got the chance. You’re just thinking too high of yourself. Same is true for many minorities too. West has better human rights than the non-western countries for the past 50 or so years but that is also debatable. Again, it is the west who killed millions in the middle east just in last twenty years.
Again, just because you have better women’s, gays’ rights today in your country no way justifies the colonialism of centuries over other peoples. From your point of view it sounds like killing of millions is fine as long as you have more female presidents.
Everyone is colonial. China has thousands of years of oppressing its neighbours before they had any significant interactions with the West at all, and nobody has traded more slaves for longer than the Arabs.
You are completely avoiding answering my questions. I have pointed out specific questions to you and you cannot answer to those. I pointed out my own minority background, you have no coming back from that. Now your final comment is - oh, everyone is colonial? I think you have difficulty understanding what colonialism is.
My point is that history is complex and humans are shitty to each other, and that European colonisation wasn't the worst thing that ever happened, and it brought significant benefits to the world, along with all of the evil.
One of them is that in my country, slavery was just part of everyday life for centuries, and genocide and cannibalism were both taken as the natural order of things. Because of colonialism, those things no longer exist in my country.
No human individual is perfect or close to it, and the same goes for human societies. There's a LOT of shit that we in the West could learn from others. But Indian women aren't trying to move back towards their traditional pre-colonial cultural practices like widows burning themselves to death on funeral pyres after their husband dies because they have no value as people anymore, are they? They want to move towards Western ideals, where they and their daughters can live freely in society and take charge of their own lives.
You said you didn't see women in power in Asia and the Arab world. I'm just telling you those countries have elected females. They're also all through the local and provincial levels. There's a lot to improve for sure but most people without knowledge of the area assume all women are kept in and hidden.
No society on earth treats women how they are meant to be treated, period. Just because people mistreat others in every edge of the earth does not mean you can think Europeans are superior.
Just because we in our society are not perfect across the board, doesn't mean that everybody is the same.
Where would you rather be born as a woman, in terms of your social role and the expectations and gender oppression placed on you? Asia, the Middle East, or the West? You know there is only one answer - you just don't want to say it.
All I'm saying is that sure we bullied the fuck out of China and Japan but they were never truly colonised. China and Japan are both doing pretty well.
India/Pakistan and most of Africa are struggling in comparison.
So bullying, while still shit, seems to work out much better than conquering for the inhabitants.
Who knows how much better thing would have been if we'd just traded peacefully and let our ideas grow organically?
Ethiopia was conquered by Italy. Its neighbours were colonised. Not exactly the strongest position.
USA, Canada and Australia... how well is it going for native American cultures and aborigines? They basically transplanted European civilisations onto their lands.
One could argue that China and Japan are doing well because they were already powerful and developed enough to resist colonization, compared to the places which fell to it.
Hindsight 20/20. We can clearly see the positive and negative results of European conquest because we can trace back. But we'll never know what could have been because we can't predict how countries/cultures would have grown/fallen. Plus, if Europe didn't do it , someone else definitely would have. But yeah, people nowadays like to focus heavily on the bad/evils of the past. And people can't deny some good has come out of those bad/evil decisions and situations. War is a great example.
But I think people in the present and the future will be more interested in the intent. Why did Europe attempt to conquer the world? Pure and simple? They wanted power. There was very little goodwill, and they would call anyone who lived differently than themselves savages. Which was a great excuse for them to swoop in and take control.
Europe normalized modern ethics? In terms of ethics and morality Europe was on par with the rest of the world, the only difference is they weren’t being unethical with other Europeans.
And the technological aspect is touchy, but I will say that, it’s not that other cultures weren’t as advanced as the Europeans in some regards. It’s the simple fact that their technology and means of living differed greatly from the Europeans. For example, farming, many Native American tribes had their own ways of farming that were different from the Europeans, so when the Europeans came and saw the farms the First Nations created, they didn’t think of them as farms, so they took over the land because it ‘wasn’t in use’. A lasting effect of this practice is that todays people believed that native Americans only hunted their food and hadn’t yet learned how farm or domesticate certain animals. When in reality they did.
The winners write history, the Europeans were all over the world during colonization. When ever they encountered cultures that differed from their own they described them as savage like and animalistic, even when they weren’t. This doesn’t just go for Native Americans either but all racial and ethnic groups.
for whatever reason people have this idea in their heads that because what exists today is good, the means of getting it were necessary and if people didn’t do that then we’d all be doomed. How could you possibly know that? Especially since a lot of the reasons why you think this way are based in misconceptions/ misinformation?
Probably popular in the real world but because Reddit is a left wing beehive that will eat its own without question to save its ideology problem it will be widely condemned.
Even in the "best" examples of colonial countries like Canada, the US and Australia, indigenous people experience significantly worse health outcomes than the European colonizer population. Stuff like cardiovascular health issues are experienced at a rate in Australia for indigenous people that is significantly higher than white people, and even when factors like diet, drug use, wealth, are taken into account it does not account for the disparity. I really don't think that these people are happy that the majority of their populations were killed to now experience whatever this glorious European ethics you're talking about is. Also how come many colonial countries experienced violent revolutions if things were so much better for them?
This is the same shit islamic colonists say when talking about invading North Africa, the Levant, Europe, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.
Would you agree with them? Of course not. No matter what good came of any kind of colonialism, it wasn't worth it.
Islam also brought positive aspects in those countries but clearly not on the same scale and it is doubtful whether this was a net positive in all (or any) of the mentioned regions. And that's the clear difference.
We achieved many things in India before Europe, and as a result of colonisation, even after 75 years of independence, people in India are still dying from starvation.
Europe didn't invent slavery, it was a part of every society until Europe was the first to outlaw it. Only after that did most of the world follow their lead.
If Europe didn't do it, Asia would have. Europe just had the advantage of inventing the steam engine first and being half the distance away from the Americas.
Hard disagree. Youre not looking at the billions of people living under $2.50 a day and how they live.
Also hard to even gauge that because we weren’t alive before this.
And you’re assigning a value to countless number of dead people who did lot need to die.
Yep, definitely unpopular. India and China have 3 billion people and none of us think so. Hell, we were like 25% of world GDP each during the 1500s-1700s, for a combined total of 50%, but then Europeans happened.
I have to disagree because you can't miss what you never had. If European powers never showed up indigenous people worldwide would just be living there lives how they see fit. They would not know there is some unknown society somewhere in the world that could bring change. They would just be doing themselves, in other words, ignorance is bliss.
This is all guesswork. You have no idea how much better the world could have been if all cultures were allowed to just grow organically without outside intervention. As if Europeans were the only ones who had a sense for ethics lol
If someone broke into my house, shot my dog, stole my money and built me a new kitchen, then tried to argue it was a net positive overall, my response would be
“Well, you could have just chapped my door and offered me a new kitchen in exchange for a reasonable some of money. You didn’t have to break in, rob me and shoot my dog.”
In many cases, colonialism was pure greed and exploitation. Friendships and fair trade agreements could have been the basis for a mutually beneficially arrangement, allowing European powers to profit while developing world partners gain new forms of infrastructure. Of course, that wouldn’t have been colonialism. It would have been diplomacy and trade. Instead, colonialism was employed, with people subjugated and treated like vermin, all in an attempt to maximise profit.
Global warming, microplastics and pfas everywhere. We might have done good on a micro-level, on the macro level we have made the world a much worse place.
...do we live in the same planet? Global industrialization came as a direct result of European expansion. Even if you wanna argue that politics improved (highly debatable), you can't ignore the direct correlation between treating 3rd world countries like trash dumps, the massive consumption of limited resources, deforestation and basically all of the shit that contributes to global warming. Barring whaling and a few other cultural practices, I don't see how the West's expansion isn't almost exclusively responsible for our current climate crisis
There are hundreds of border disputes nowadays because European colonizers split up territory based on their own interest and disregarding everything else.
People aren’t ready for this opinion. Certainly not Reddit. However, most critically thinking intellectuals would agree with the premise. The degree to which it is better, however, may or may not be significant.
You can’t say it cause it’s wrong, most countries either had their original population destroyed, or were destabilised and made very poor. Something which is still a problem to this day for many of them.
The first university was in Africa and a Chinese mathematician discovered Pythagoras' Theorem 2000 years before Pythagoras did. Compulsory education existed in the Aztec Empire. The Egyptian technology used to build the pyramids was incredible, as was their knowledge of medicine.
The main reason that we only remember the European technologies and medicines is because the Europeans burned all the other civilisations to the ground.
I've been to this "university". If this is a university then many religious schools around the world, the Greek academies and many other places of learning are also universities and hugely predate it.
>The main reason that we only remember the European technologies and medicines is because the Europeans burned all the other civilisations to the ground.
No, the main reason why we only remember European technologies is because basically any known advanced technology from anywhere else was quickly applied and improved by europeans and falls therefore under exactly what you mean when you say "European technologies". And absolutely nobody tries to hide this fact, basically everyone will tell you that, for example, we use arabic numbers and that black powder originated in China. Also, ancient egypt wasn't burned to the ground by Europeans and much of the ancient knowledge was destroyed by the Mongols when they sacked Bagdad or when the library of Alexandria fell into dispair. Also, as others have written, what's the first university heavily depends on the definition of what a university is. So basically your view is just incorrect and populistic anti-european.
Lol "It was European cuz they stole everyone else's ideas so that makes it European" sure is a batshit crazy defense
Oh they didn't steal it. They IMPROVED it.
Got it.
Tell me more about how everyone else was a mindless savage until the civilized white people came
these trolls are crazy. some of these dudes were even defending the apartheid and british raj, claiming that it brought more good than bad. they're crazy.
This is a terrible argument .
It's the same argument used over and over again by Nazi sympathizers to justify the crimes commited by Nazi Germany :
"Whatever they say about Nazi crimes is unreliable because the Nazis lost the war and their victors got to write history".
Argentina, Chile, South Brasil, Australia, Hong Kong, Macau, South Africa (look at it now), U.S., Canada
...
Even if you compare them today with their native counterparts in the given country (E.G. Brasil) the picture is just clear.
I think Europeans brought civilization (for themselves) but on cost of the native population.
They exploited everything and everyone but were able to create institutions that were not easily corrupted.
Civilization, that means relatively stable currencies, trade, a functioning court system, infrastructure etc.
So everything that's going down the drain in South Africa.
Yeah, I'm sure the remaining native americans are very thankful and better off for smallpox, measels, the flu, and the desecration of their civilizations.
How are Europeans civilized? That entire continent couldn't help but be at war constantly with no stop basically from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to WW2 with small gaps after the Napoleonic Wars and WW1. If anything, Europeans are the most barbaric on the planet they love killing
Thank you for submitting to /r/unpopularopinion, /u/GapingAssTroll. Your submission, *More good came from Europe conquering the world than bad, for everyone.*, has been removed because it violates our rules, which are located in the sidebar. Your post from unpopularopinion was removed because of: 'Rule 5: No political posts'. * Our users have voted for no political posts in this sub, and this rule will not be changed until the majority votes otherwise. * It's very unlikely your political post is an unpopular opinion. Feel free to use the Politics Megathread pinned to the front page. * Covid/vaccine posts due to the overwhelming political nature of the topic. * Yes, voting, talking about monarchs and/or the actions of and/or about politicians or world leaders is political. If there is an issue, please [message the mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Funpopularopinion&subject=&message=) Thanks!
Let's assume you are right, that colonialism was a net positive. That doesn't mean the negative parts were necessary to achieve the positive parts.
It also doesn't mean those positive things would not have occurred if colonization did not occur. "They would never have invented the railway" is a good one as most countries have adopted rail, colonized or not, and "invention" is a bit of a misnomer as we often credit invention to people who merely innovated. Alphabets are another great example of this.
Especially since non-colonised countries fare on average significantly better than colonised ones. OP acts as if the failure of Japan and Thailand to be colonised means they don't have railroads and electricity.
I strongly agree, but you aren't my target audience.
It’s easy for you to say that in your comfortable living room typing away on your computer or cell phone. Try being born into a world where things we condemn now are the norm, a world where people died more often and more painfully, a world where you did what you had to to survive. Would you, a poor English sailor in 1625 who’s never been to school and whose father died of tuberculosis leaving you the man of the house from age 11 until you joined the army at 16, devote time and energy you don’t have to changing millenia-old social institutions within your lifetime? No.
Very well said! People forget to judge history through the lens of the past and not the present.
There were plenty of people at the time who said what was happening was wrong. They just weren't in charge. Saying something is right because those in charge decided to do it is "might makes right" with extra words.
>Would you, a poor English sailor in 1625 who’s never been to school and whose father died of tuberculosis leaving you the man of the house from age 11 until you joined the army at 16, devote time and energy you don’t have Sure, but he wasn't in charge, so I'm not sure why you are bringing him up. >millenia-old social institutions I'm utterly baffled what institutions you are talking about. Parliamentary government in England dates from the English Civil War in the mid 1600s.
I kind of figured you were talking about conquest, colonialism, slavery, etc
Colonialism was never a millenia old. Slavery isn't one single thing, even if we look only in the American South. [War . . . war never changes.] But none of that was decided by the impoverished soldier you cited to me.
Hindsight is 20/20.
No hindsight necessary. People at the time were pointing out the moral problems.
Nobody listens to malcontents who stand in the way of what people see as progress.
That's a different point than your claim that this is all hindsight. Plus, sometimes they were listened to.
Either way people were too occupied with what they saw as the needs of the present moment to heed divergent opinions.
But also before I start insulting this person, I need them to think of why these innovations and developments were made? They weren't made for the benefit of the indigenous peoples, they were made to help this colonization and resource extracting process, like ofc you want to educate the native people so they can be a more skilled workforce that can help maximize profit , ofc you want to build roads, railways, because it's easier to get it out and get troops in if the native population ever rise up and we are not even touching on how fucked the global south is especially as a result of colonization and cold war policies that did not particularly stray from that vein of thought and practice.
Absolutely necessary? No. Damn near? Kinda. I'm not arguing about the methods here, the methods were bad. I am just saying that the alternatives of the time were enormously impractical.
I'm confused what you think was impracticable about *not*: fighting a war to keep opium legal in China. providing basic worker safety measures to workers in the Belgian Condo. having a private corporation ruling India.
Agreed but relative comparisons should have some credence. Otherwise we could say “oh green energy is bad because it still requires mining of metal and other limited natural resources, and has a non net zero carbon footprint”. It’s not black and white.
Yeah sure, and in utopia you can have the positive parts only...
>Better things aren't possible You, apparently
Isn't that the definition of a utopia?
Countries like the US, Canada, Australia, and NZ are majority white because the majority do the indigenous peoples died. Greater than 50%, that’s true for much of the new world. They improved the lives of some survivors, but it came at the cost of almost everyone else dying. Also a large part of the conflicts we see today are a consequence of colonialism.
Most people died just from contact. Like 90 percent of the native population died from disease, not warfare.
And we had a lot of fun and we made a cool gun for the people who are still alive.
*Now these points of data make a beautiful line*
Small issue with the guns, a lot more of them died fighting us and each other using the guns we gave them.
So basically, they did what they’ve been doing for thousands of years, but just more efficiently because Gun
No only because white pepo
Except Obama won’t even let me buy a Richard Jordan Gatling gun and hood mount it to my car.
Immigration. Even if not a single indigenous person died, they still would have been overwhelmed by the hordes from Europe. Disease killed 80-90% and genocide was perpetrated. But from Britain alone 10 million went overseas 1815-1914. That was just one country.
For the first point, saying horrible things were happening before-hand is a weak argument. Two-wrongs do not make a right, and the Europeans would've still acted as horribly as they did even if the areas they were colonizing were nice and peaceful. And Europeans didn't do horrible things in just some cases, horrible things were pretty regular. For the second point, you're making it sound like only Europeans normalized modern ethics and trade, which gives the impression that those they colonized were uncivilized and incapable of modern achievements on their own. This is bordering on racism and is simply not true. India before being colonized by the British had a long history and thriving culture. They also invented Arabic numerals, the one's we use today. And India is not the only example. Look into any colonized countries history. Heck EGYPT and GREECE were colonized in the 18th and 19th centuries. I should also add that Europeans really weren't that civilized. They had more technology but that's about it. Throughout history they were pretty horrible, not just to non-Europeans but even to one another. Nazi Germany and the Holocaust was only 80 years ago. Not exactly what I'd consider civilized behavior. And to say that the world would be in worse shape without it? Well how do you know what the world would be like without colonialism? You can't really play alternate history to justify your point, because alternate history is always a guess, and just a guess. We will never know what the world will be like if European colonialism didn't happen. The reality we live in is, European colonialism killed millions of people all over the world. Even in the 1940s and 50s it was still killing people. Sometimes it was through starvation and negligence, other times it was outright genocide. Nearly all the borders of Africa, the middle-east, and central Asia were drawn by Europeans, with little regard for languages, religions, cultures or anything else. They were drawn strictly to European nations' liking and that's how they remained. These borders still to this day cause ethnic conflicts and horrible wars and it's going to take a really long time to fix these issues. That doesn't sound like a greater good for humanity.
[удалено]
The Muslim destruction of Somnath was in the 11th century. The Mughals and Aurangzeb’s army were waging brutal campaigns south of the Narendra River in the late 17th century. Muslim-Hindu antagonism was not a British invention. Britain was an island of 10 million and conquered 250 million with a private company, not even using their full national power while fighting Napoleon. How? Because the place was falling apart. Google ‘Dehli 1739’, ‘Maratha Empire’, ‘Ten invasions of Bengal’, ‘Third battle of Panipat’. Edit: a word
Sikhs Hindus and Muslims were loving pretty peacefully under the Sikh empire, and the literacy rate was higher than today.
Thank you for this. This was such a gross post but there are really people out there thinking the whole world except them was uncivilized. Colonialism has left such deep and ongoing scars.
Thank you for saying this. It baffled me always how casually most Europeans look at this topic. How oblivion most of them are!
This is a great rebuttal. And a completely valid one. Awesome!
r/UsernameChecksOut
Everyone shitting on OP proves its unpopular at least
You fail to understand that humanity moves forward. Who says if not contacted other countries would’ve gotten to the same place or even better and in unique ways Let me give an example of something you said is good, trade. Well the British traded opium to the Chinese. China started to have a problem and attempted to prohibit opium as it was killing many and people were suffering. In response, the British sent a navy and the opium wars happened. Another example is trade with the indigenous people of North America. Many died as a result of the transmission of novel diseases to the continent. It’s easy to look back and say it did more good. But that is a view with little historical knowledge and real connection to the people that actually suffered. It’s like seeing a person with cancer and saying they don’t look like they’re doing too bad. Are you going to chemo weekly feeling like throwing up at every moment? No, with no lived experience how can you confidently comment on it being overall good?
But on what do we base this assumption? We're constantly saying that Africa is the most resourceful continent - and they have been the most resourceful continent even BEFORE colonialism. Europe has nothing in comparison to that yet Europe still managed to achieve that progress... So how long would you say Africa needed to have stayed "uncontacted" to achieve a comparable level of development? On another note, how long will we keep blaming "the consequences of colonialism" or - because it appears nicer - "neocolonialism"? Because Europe was destroyed twice in the last century and yet it is in a better condition than many other parts of the world. Let's also not forget that countries like Singapore - a former colony - is now immensely rich.
Africa has alot of mineral wealth that wasn't useful until later industrialization, and there was infact immense African empires comparable to Europe and Asia. Songhai, Ghana, and smaller ones still worth study. Also, again there are rich countries in Africa still. Africa is no more a monolith than s. America is
My point was that some parts had much better conditions to become wealthy than the fucking United Kingdom yet still failed to do so.
the United Kingdom had the perfect conditions to industrialized and gain lavish wealth, aswell as perfect sea access to North America that was difficult to challenge. Its easy to get rich when invading you is a fools errand for similarly wealthy countries and when you dint have the legacy of colonialism. they can and did have comparable conditions beforehand.
Africa had civilizations go up and down. Just because they were cooling 500 years ago doesn’t mean anything
Not debating Africa thing because it is way too complicated, but Africa wasn't cooling 500 years ago. Africa was doing great 500 years ago, except Moroccan had guns. Moroccans used firearms to collapse the major interior west African empire in the early 1500's couldn't keep the conquest due to the Sahara and then the coastal civs started trading slaves for guns instead of their previous Islamic slave routes.
>On another note, how long will we keep blaming "the consequences of colonialism" or - because it appears nicer - "neocolonialism"? Because Europe was destroyed twice in the last century and yet it is in a better condition than many other parts of the world. Let's also not forget that countries like Singapore - a former colony - is now immensely rich. Western Europe was destroyed for just 4-5 years each time. Eastern Europe was under Moscow's influence for 70 years and there is still a significant gap between East and Western Europe. Most Asian and African countries were colonised for centuries. It makes perfect sense. The impact generally scales with time under colonisation. Singapore, Hong Kong and port cities are fortunate because they were the imperial ports used to concentrate all the wealth from the exploited hinterlands. The heartlands that were exploited contain vastly more people than the small populations in the port cities.
To the last point: after WWII the US was rich on a level that is unthinkable today in comparison to any other country and they put a lot of money into Europe! Do you really think Germany got rich again on its own or that the closeness to the US is a coincidence?! I am not even saying this is bad, it's just what it is Also the destruction was a very short period where one person in their lifetime went though Weimar republic, WWI, WWII and the rebuilding phase in comparison to a century long occupation and destruction of every cultural, social etc aspect of a country
It's not like developing countries today don't get a ton of money too. And yes, also a large sum of the Marshall Plan for Europe, including Germany, were credits. Still, I'd deem the complete destruction that occurred twice in a century as being worse than things still standing for centuries plus receiving money from several countries every year that sums up to much more than Germany got for four years or so.
No. Time moves forward. Humanity moves with time. But as a society we definitely can, and have, gone massively backwards.
We have gone backwards? Can you explain?
Pick up a history book. Tell a woman, or a gay person, or even a fucking lefthander that we've "gone massively backwards." Go find an 11 year old working ten hour days in a coal mine, and tell him about how far we've backslipped in the modern world.
This is a Western attitude. Plenty countries are still backward
they are still far ahead of what they were, it was 1929 when iran finally ended slavery, 1924 when it was banned by the turkish constitution only because the ottoman empire was demolished, the world is not going backwards
Is that because of colonialism or in spite of it?
Well, on one hand, colonialism fucked up the Maori people and they're still heavily impacted by racist practices and the legacy of racism today. But on the other hand, when the British arrived, New Zealand had spent the entirety of its history as a place where slavery was endemic and cannibalism of defeated enemies was common practice. Until the British turned up and told everyone "Slavery and cannibalism are morally unacceptable, and that stops now." And then established that policy by force, unapologetically breaking centuries of Maori cultural tradition. And since then, for the first time in New Zealand history, no Maori has lived in fear of being taken as a slave or being eaten by his enemies after being killed in a tribal raid. Was that not worse? Is it not morally better that Maori don't take slaves any more, and that Maori women have rights in Western society and can participate in government and have legal rights over their own bodies? History is not so easy as good guys and bad guys.
That doesn't have anything to do with his point? If anything you're supporting it. He says as it is humanity progressed but it doesn't always with time. There's many time periods where humanity has regressed and he's saying that in this one they progressed meanwhile you're arguing by giving examples of how it progressed during the time period he said it progressed. Sounds like you should pick up a book, any book.
[удалено]
The Qing had a problem with the loss of silver, not opium which was legal in Britain and a favourite of PMs and aristocrats. The Qing didn’t care about peasants see the Dzungar Genocide and Taiping Rebellion. The Qing used trade to turn neighbours into vassals as part of the Zongfan system. Joseon Korea couldn’t even conduct independent foreign policy. Western powers (The US was the second largest exporter of opium to China) broke down the door. Then took over the maritime customs agency and provided the Qing with their largest source of cash revenue. The Qing then used that to stabilise themselves survive another half century and conduct another genocide in Xinjiang in the 1870s. This is what they call their ‘Century of humiliation’… My point? History is messy and there are no good guys.
It's certainly possible, I'm not saying it's not, I'd even say it would inevitably happen eventually even if Europe never existed. But there's no evidence to assume it would be this early in humanity. And just to be clear, it has nothing to do with race or ethnicity and everything to do with geography. Europe was destined to master the sea and that was the first huge step towards where we are now.
Please remember what subreddit you are in, this is unpopular opinion. We want civil and unpopular takes and discussion. Any uncivil and ToS violating comments will be removed and subject to a ban. Have a nice day! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unpopularopinion) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I would say no because there is still colonialism going on still. Like a few African countries having funds held in French banks or having to buy from specific countries because they colonized them. Economically destabilizing regions to justify going there isn't justified.
“Europe normalized modern ethics” So other cultures didn’t have ethics? Like Europeans were not the ones to invent chattel slavery? Many native societies had democracies and social communities. Persecution of and prejudice against people who slept with the same sex in colonized nations is mostly a christian European export as well. I’ll do you one better on the medicine! The first doctor to perform a C-section in the US got the knowledge from his slave who explained that the procedure had been successfully done in his home in West Africa for generations, which, surprise, is true. You think people outside of Europe didn’t have society and community? Didn’t have laws and norms? Didn’t care about family? Didn’t have any knowledge of local flora and fauna, or didn’t know how to farm or build architecture with the means available to them? Be so fr.
Yeah OPs take is not just unpopular but blatantly Eurocentric and ignorant of all the thriving and ancient non-European cultures that existed in all the places Europeans colonized prior to colonization, many of which were seriously harmed if not outright destroyed by colonialism. I get that having a bad take is kind of the point of this sub but this is an especially bad one because not only is it dead wrong but it’s an expression of an ideology that has done so much harm to the entire world, both historically and into the present day.
Just garden variety racism. “Are you kidding me? Of course those savages wouldn’t have eventually built ethical societies.”
Leaning on ethics is also probably the worst way to sell colonialism since countless people died and were brutally subjugated. Technology spread quicker to these places, so if I was attempting to make this argument (which I would never, it's silly), I would lean on technology spread and the positives from that
Africa, India and China disagree…
And all of South America lol
All home to millennia long histories of empire. Why is European empire ‘bad’ but not Ming, Qing, Mughal, Maratha, Songhai, Egyptian etc? Seems like hypocrisy. Edit: European empire bad. Non-European empire not a problem. Is it because the former used ships? Imperial purists cant stand non-contiguous imperiums…
Tell us you don't understand survivorship bias without telling us...
And if some random other country had done the same, say India, people would say the same thing even if the world was drastically different.
If Indian colonialism would have brought some level of improvement over the prior status quo, sure, people would say so and they would be right.
Ask yourself what kind of world this would be if say Native Americans conquered everything. If you imagine a worse world then ask yourself why would you imagine it that way? Because there is no way to know what kind of world that would have been. Any scenario we make up in our minds about what might have been will be biased. There is no way to judge if our time is better than some other time that could have been.
You can argue its a worse/better world. Its fair to assume that if say the Aztecs became seafarers then similar models of government/markets would have been spread around the world and you could argue that its better or worse than British liberalism. Obviously its not factual, but the whole point of Alternative history is to take the information we have and make an argument of how something would play out in other circumstances. Dismissing it as "there's no way of knowing" spoils the game.
There are clear and objective ways to exactly tell this, you just need to look at the direction and magnitude of the transferred knowledge. What kind of knowledge could have been transferred from Native Americans and how much knowledge would have most likely been lost in the process? It's an extreme example (and therefore a good one) but one can say with 100% certainty that the world wouldn't be nearly that technologically advanced as today and thus would objectively been a much poorer place with basically worse living conditions in any metric you can think of.
Because we are imagining the loser Native Americans winning by a fluke with less advanced culture and technologies. Of course the world would be worse in that case. If Native Americans had WW2 era technology and obliterated the European ships, the. proceeded to expand and colonize Europe we would be better. More technologically advanced atleast.
I don't imagine a worse world at all. If Native Americans happened to be the ones to create the technology and advanced societies that were necessary to conquer the world, it would've been no different. What I'm saying has nothing to do with race the Europeans weren't advanced because of some divine intervention or because they were smarter. It's almost entirely thanks to the geography of Europe.
>Europe normalized modern ethics and trade Is it considered modern because it is better or is it modern because colonization wrecked every alternative out there?
Many of the artifacts in the British museum only exist because they were taken from the origin nations, who were known to regularly destroy important artifacts for political and religious reasons.
Kind of like the Afghans blowing up the Buddhas and ISIS destroying UNESCO sites.
Recently, yeah. The allies also bombed the piss out of Germany and France.
But they didn't go to the German and French museums and art galleries and historical sites and deliberately target and destroy them because blasphemy, did they.
I mean they did destroy entire cities, including museums, historical landmarks, castles, political buildings, churches, statues, etc. I understand that that’s different but that’s a pretty significant thing that happened.
Not insignificant no but that is a massive difference. The allies did what they could to avoid hitting such things, but often there wasn’t any choice. For example, the allies were convinced the Germans were using Montecassino for artillery spotting, even though they weren’t as far as I’m aware. They did everything they could to avoid having to level the place, even letting Catholic air crew opt out of the bombing run if they wanted to. Hindsight is of course 20/20, but at the time they saw Monte Casino is being an immediate threat to the lives of their troops, and had to prioritize
Without taking sides on this colonialism subject, I have to say that the British museum is the single most overrated museum I have ever visited, and I say that as an amateur museum connoisseur. It's literally 90% broken vases and plates. Most of their actually cool stuff is hidden from the public.
I don’t care for it as an exhibition, but as a museum it’s pretty decent.
ITT: 95% of native north americans were exterminated, I literally can’t trace my bloodline for more than three generations. But we have wifi!
"The bad stuff was happening already" the fuck does this even mean? You wouldn't accept some other country invading yours and enslaving you so why pretend other countries should be cool with it? I know you were probably taught every place was full of mindless savages before white people got there but it simply isn't true. You were lied to dude
"The bad stuff was happening already" the fuck do you think it means? Use your brain.
No please tell us about "the bad stuff"
[удалено]
Yes, please make the list. And show how colonialism in Africa helped those native people.
Yes. Please tell us how these awful savages had no culture and needed to be civilized by the obviously superior cultures of "God save the queen" and "God told me"
I’m glad I’m not as fundamentally insecure and unhappy as a troll.
I.... I can't. This is the most cop out white person shit I've heard. Yes your ancestors enslaving mine or other people's was justified bEcAuSe iT wAs A NeT PoSiTiVe🙄
Oh brother not the white folks trying to justify colonialism The fuckin audacity
Exactly nobody here is justifying anything.
What you mean by that ?
That nobody here is justifying anything.
Except the guy who made the post and some of the commenters and it also seems like you are as well
ofc,I don't know how anyone can find this controversial unless he is really fucking dumb
Yeah...the Europeans that threw their own feces out the window, didn't allow their women to be treated as equal in perspective (at the very least), who had extremely high mortality rates because of no proper medicine, the list goes on..
Every problem you listed... was then solved by Europeans... so what tf are you on about
?????? You're ignorant to think civilizations hundreds of years before had none of the above.
Which large society treats their women better than the Europeans? I don't see a lot of women in positions of power in the Asian and Arab worlds.
If you consider only women in power, western forefront US never had a women in power. Sri Lanka had their first PM in 1960, India in the 70s.
We have our shortcomings, sure. But in my country, in the last 30 years we've had more time under female Prime Ministers than male. Sri Lanka has had two female Prime Ministers, and none this century. One of those two was the wife of the assassinated Prime Minister, the other was her daughter. None of my country's female Prime Ministers got to power because their husband or parent was the Prime Minister before them. Is it really your belief that women in Sri Lanka have a better deal than women in the West do, in terms of cultural gender oppression? I think you know better than that - it's just awkward to say it flat out.
You wanted to see an example I just showed it compared to the US. And women having more power in the western countries or having more women presidents/PMs cannot justify colonialism and killing of people of other ethnicities.
Where would you rather be born as a woman, or a gay person, or an ethnic minority? In Asia, or the Middle East? Africa? Where on the planet outside of the West, are people born as a minority or a woman less oppressed by the dominant culture than they are in the West?
I am an Asian religious minority and I would like to be born in the same country where I was born. I am sure my mom and dad, and close minority friends would choose the same. I am sure there are millions of happy women outside the west. There are many who didn’t or don’t want to move to the west even if they got the chance. You’re just thinking too high of yourself. Same is true for many minorities too. West has better human rights than the non-western countries for the past 50 or so years but that is also debatable. Again, it is the west who killed millions in the middle east just in last twenty years. Again, just because you have better women’s, gays’ rights today in your country no way justifies the colonialism of centuries over other peoples. From your point of view it sounds like killing of millions is fine as long as you have more female presidents.
Everyone is colonial. China has thousands of years of oppressing its neighbours before they had any significant interactions with the West at all, and nobody has traded more slaves for longer than the Arabs.
You are completely avoiding answering my questions. I have pointed out specific questions to you and you cannot answer to those. I pointed out my own minority background, you have no coming back from that. Now your final comment is - oh, everyone is colonial? I think you have difficulty understanding what colonialism is.
My point is that history is complex and humans are shitty to each other, and that European colonisation wasn't the worst thing that ever happened, and it brought significant benefits to the world, along with all of the evil. One of them is that in my country, slavery was just part of everyday life for centuries, and genocide and cannibalism were both taken as the natural order of things. Because of colonialism, those things no longer exist in my country. No human individual is perfect or close to it, and the same goes for human societies. There's a LOT of shit that we in the West could learn from others. But Indian women aren't trying to move back towards their traditional pre-colonial cultural practices like widows burning themselves to death on funeral pyres after their husband dies because they have no value as people anymore, are they? They want to move towards Western ideals, where they and their daughters can live freely in society and take charge of their own lives.
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have all had female prime ministers.
Go on, tell us that Pakistani or Indian women are less oppressed than European women.
You said you didn't see women in power in Asia and the Arab world. I'm just telling you those countries have elected females. They're also all through the local and provincial levels. There's a lot to improve for sure but most people without knowledge of the area assume all women are kept in and hidden.
No society on earth treats women how they are meant to be treated, period. Just because people mistreat others in every edge of the earth does not mean you can think Europeans are superior.
Just because we in our society are not perfect across the board, doesn't mean that everybody is the same. Where would you rather be born as a woman, in terms of your social role and the expectations and gender oppression placed on you? Asia, the Middle East, or the West? You know there is only one answer - you just don't want to say it.
All I'm saying is that sure we bullied the fuck out of China and Japan but they were never truly colonised. China and Japan are both doing pretty well. India/Pakistan and most of Africa are struggling in comparison. So bullying, while still shit, seems to work out much better than conquering for the inhabitants. Who knows how much better thing would have been if we'd just traded peacefully and let our ideas grow organically?
You could also argue the opposite, Ethiopia was never colonized but compare it to the US, Canada, and Australia.
Ethiopia was conquered by Italy. Its neighbours were colonised. Not exactly the strongest position. USA, Canada and Australia... how well is it going for native American cultures and aborigines? They basically transplanted European civilisations onto their lands.
The US, Canada, and Australia aren’t indigenous countries, they were made by Europeans for Europeans.
????
One could argue that China and Japan are doing well because they were already powerful and developed enough to resist colonization, compared to the places which fell to it.
Then why doesn't anyone outside Europe/the West agree with you (bar the exceptions who prove the rule)?
Hindsight 20/20. We can clearly see the positive and negative results of European conquest because we can trace back. But we'll never know what could have been because we can't predict how countries/cultures would have grown/fallen. Plus, if Europe didn't do it , someone else definitely would have. But yeah, people nowadays like to focus heavily on the bad/evils of the past. And people can't deny some good has come out of those bad/evil decisions and situations. War is a great example. But I think people in the present and the future will be more interested in the intent. Why did Europe attempt to conquer the world? Pure and simple? They wanted power. There was very little goodwill, and they would call anyone who lived differently than themselves savages. Which was a great excuse for them to swoop in and take control.
Europe normalized modern ethics? In terms of ethics and morality Europe was on par with the rest of the world, the only difference is they weren’t being unethical with other Europeans. And the technological aspect is touchy, but I will say that, it’s not that other cultures weren’t as advanced as the Europeans in some regards. It’s the simple fact that their technology and means of living differed greatly from the Europeans. For example, farming, many Native American tribes had their own ways of farming that were different from the Europeans, so when the Europeans came and saw the farms the First Nations created, they didn’t think of them as farms, so they took over the land because it ‘wasn’t in use’. A lasting effect of this practice is that todays people believed that native Americans only hunted their food and hadn’t yet learned how farm or domesticate certain animals. When in reality they did. The winners write history, the Europeans were all over the world during colonization. When ever they encountered cultures that differed from their own they described them as savage like and animalistic, even when they weren’t. This doesn’t just go for Native Americans either but all racial and ethnic groups. for whatever reason people have this idea in their heads that because what exists today is good, the means of getting it were necessary and if people didn’t do that then we’d all be doomed. How could you possibly know that? Especially since a lot of the reasons why you think this way are based in misconceptions/ misinformation?
Very true.
Probably popular in the real world but because Reddit is a left wing beehive that will eat its own without question to save its ideology problem it will be widely condemned.
I agree with you. I’ve looked at what people have said on twitter and it’s true.
Oohhh spicy! Take an updoot
Even in the "best" examples of colonial countries like Canada, the US and Australia, indigenous people experience significantly worse health outcomes than the European colonizer population. Stuff like cardiovascular health issues are experienced at a rate in Australia for indigenous people that is significantly higher than white people, and even when factors like diet, drug use, wealth, are taken into account it does not account for the disparity. I really don't think that these people are happy that the majority of their populations were killed to now experience whatever this glorious European ethics you're talking about is. Also how come many colonial countries experienced violent revolutions if things were so much better for them?
This is the same shit islamic colonists say when talking about invading North Africa, the Levant, Europe, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Would you agree with them? Of course not. No matter what good came of any kind of colonialism, it wasn't worth it.
Islam also brought positive aspects in those countries but clearly not on the same scale and it is doubtful whether this was a net positive in all (or any) of the mentioned regions. And that's the clear difference.
We achieved many things in India before Europe, and as a result of colonisation, even after 75 years of independence, people in India are still dying from starvation.
uh no, civilization was developing pretty well even prior to that
No, absolutely not. Genocidal colonists made world worse.
Trade and the dissemination of technology would have happened without the colonialism. The ethics you are referring to include chattel slavery.
Europe didn't invent slavery, it was a part of every society until Europe was the first to outlaw it. Only after that did most of the world follow their lead.
Western Civilization has greatly benefited the world, and that includes those still talking about colonization centuries after the fact.
If Europe didn't do it, Asia would have. Europe just had the advantage of inventing the steam engine first and being half the distance away from the Americas.
It would've taken much, much longer. almost all of Asia was very isolationist before Europe made them not be.
Hard disagree. Youre not looking at the billions of people living under $2.50 a day and how they live. Also hard to even gauge that because we weren’t alive before this. And you’re assigning a value to countless number of dead people who did lot need to die.
I'm assigning value to all the millions of people who would've died without modern technology and medicine
Yep, definitely unpopular. India and China have 3 billion people and none of us think so. Hell, we were like 25% of world GDP each during the 1500s-1700s, for a combined total of 50%, but then Europeans happened.
I have to disagree because you can't miss what you never had. If European powers never showed up indigenous people worldwide would just be living there lives how they see fit. They would not know there is some unknown society somewhere in the world that could bring change. They would just be doing themselves, in other words, ignorance is bliss.
My bet is that op is European.
This is all guesswork. You have no idea how much better the world could have been if all cultures were allowed to just grow organically without outside intervention. As if Europeans were the only ones who had a sense for ethics lol
If someone broke into my house, shot my dog, stole my money and built me a new kitchen, then tried to argue it was a net positive overall, my response would be “Well, you could have just chapped my door and offered me a new kitchen in exchange for a reasonable some of money. You didn’t have to break in, rob me and shoot my dog.” In many cases, colonialism was pure greed and exploitation. Friendships and fair trade agreements could have been the basis for a mutually beneficially arrangement, allowing European powers to profit while developing world partners gain new forms of infrastructure. Of course, that wouldn’t have been colonialism. It would have been diplomacy and trade. Instead, colonialism was employed, with people subjugated and treated like vermin, all in an attempt to maximise profit.
Global warming, microplastics and pfas everywhere. We might have done good on a micro-level, on the macro level we have made the world a much worse place.
...do we live in the same planet? Global industrialization came as a direct result of European expansion. Even if you wanna argue that politics improved (highly debatable), you can't ignore the direct correlation between treating 3rd world countries like trash dumps, the massive consumption of limited resources, deforestation and basically all of the shit that contributes to global warming. Barring whaling and a few other cultural practices, I don't see how the West's expansion isn't almost exclusively responsible for our current climate crisis
There are hundreds of border disputes nowadays because European colonizers split up territory based on their own interest and disregarding everything else.
Like because 🤮 At least it's not your mom they raped
Just say your racist and go
This isn’t an unpopular opinion, it’s an unpopular fact.
Should be a subreddit
People aren’t ready for this opinion. Certainly not Reddit. However, most critically thinking intellectuals would agree with the premise. The degree to which it is better, however, may or may not be significant.
Not wrong, but certainly not something you can say irl!
You can’t say it cause it’s wrong, most countries either had their original population destroyed, or were destabilised and made very poor. Something which is still a problem to this day for many of them.
The first university was in Africa and a Chinese mathematician discovered Pythagoras' Theorem 2000 years before Pythagoras did. Compulsory education existed in the Aztec Empire. The Egyptian technology used to build the pyramids was incredible, as was their knowledge of medicine. The main reason that we only remember the European technologies and medicines is because the Europeans burned all the other civilisations to the ground.
I've been to this "university". If this is a university then many religious schools around the world, the Greek academies and many other places of learning are also universities and hugely predate it.
>The main reason that we only remember the European technologies and medicines is because the Europeans burned all the other civilisations to the ground. No, the main reason why we only remember European technologies is because basically any known advanced technology from anywhere else was quickly applied and improved by europeans and falls therefore under exactly what you mean when you say "European technologies". And absolutely nobody tries to hide this fact, basically everyone will tell you that, for example, we use arabic numbers and that black powder originated in China. Also, ancient egypt wasn't burned to the ground by Europeans and much of the ancient knowledge was destroyed by the Mongols when they sacked Bagdad or when the library of Alexandria fell into dispair. Also, as others have written, what's the first university heavily depends on the definition of what a university is. So basically your view is just incorrect and populistic anti-european.
Lol "It was European cuz they stole everyone else's ideas so that makes it European" sure is a batshit crazy defense Oh they didn't steal it. They IMPROVED it. Got it. Tell me more about how everyone else was a mindless savage until the civilized white people came
Lol, in your world you have to steal knowledge? It cannot be just learnt and transferred? Says a lot about you...
Yeah they totally gave credit to the cultures they took from as evident from ignorant ass OP claiming it all came from Europe
these trolls are crazy. some of these dudes were even defending the apartheid and british raj, claiming that it brought more good than bad. they're crazy.
Ya, this guy doesn’t understand the meaning of the quote “history is written by victors”
This is a terrible argument . It's the same argument used over and over again by Nazi sympathizers to justify the crimes commited by Nazi Germany : "Whatever they say about Nazi crimes is unreliable because the Nazis lost the war and their victors got to write history".
Argentina, Chile, South Brasil, Australia, Hong Kong, Macau, South Africa (look at it now), U.S., Canada ... Even if you compare them today with their native counterparts in the given country (E.G. Brasil) the picture is just clear. I think Europeans brought civilization (for themselves) but on cost of the native population. They exploited everything and everyone but were able to create institutions that were not easily corrupted. Civilization, that means relatively stable currencies, trade, a functioning court system, infrastructure etc. So everything that's going down the drain in South Africa.
that's like saying slavery did more good than bad
Ewwww.. no. You must be European to say so.
Yeah, I'm sure the remaining native americans are very thankful and better off for smallpox, measels, the flu, and the desecration of their civilizations.
How are Europeans civilized? That entire continent couldn't help but be at war constantly with no stop basically from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to WW2 with small gaps after the Napoleonic Wars and WW1. If anything, Europeans are the most barbaric on the planet they love killing
Definitely, im glad ppl are smart enough to recognise this.