Every inhabitant of a tiny little hamlet deep in the anal cavity of a colonial (or former colonial) power is convinced that a denizen of a huge, bustling city in the (former) colony is a hopelessly provincial country bumpkin.
Colonial Paradox
Opinions, art, debate
Clarissa's Blog 
On the other hand, the colonial powers undoubtedly left their liberated colonies a much better world than the primitives had known before they had been conquered, and eventually liberated.
Teepees to duplexes? The time when colonists intoduced Native Amricans to European horses that eventualty lead to Geronimo’s Cadliliac? Bow-and-arrows to Winchester rifles and ultimately I-Phones? Firewater to casinos that exploit white guilt and stupidity among former colonists who inadvertently pay back to the Indian gambling establishments a greater debt that they never personally owed?
Who’s winning the Indian wars now??
Want to talk about dams built on the Nile, and railroads running across Afrrica nd India today?
Take the worst-case senario: Zimbabwe, run hideously for decades by 92-year-old Robert Mugabe, whose savage regime never merits even the slightest criticism from Western progressives, because “eveything that happens in Africa for all future generations forever is [the ancient colonists’ — in this case, Britain’s — ] fault forever.”
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Actually, Ukraine was always and still is a lot more cultured and civilized than Russia. And as for being left better off, Google Holodomor. And then Google Donetsk Airport.
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What makes taking over Ukraine a colonial attempt? There are different ways one country takes over another, of course.
In my mind, colonialism is primarily defined by treating the colonized territory as “empty space” to be settled in. Thinking about it, I guess there are a lot of clearly “colonial” countries that definition does not really apply to. So what’s the general picture and how does Ukraine fit into it?
(The Lithuanian narrative is that we very much not a colony, but were conquered in violation of international law. Far as I can tell, it’s primarily there to avoid the whiff of “it wasn’t even a real country before the big boys got there” that Dreidel’s alluding to right now.)
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“In my mind, colonialism is primarily defined by treating the colonized territory as “empty space” to be settled in. ”
In my mind, colonialism is primarily defined by treating the colonized territory as an economic asset to be exploited and/or looking at the people already living there as living clay to be shaped in the colonizers’ self-image.
In that sense, the Warsaw pact countries were Soviet colonies (leave it to the Soviets to get things so backwards that they had colonies that were richer than the heart of the empire).
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“In my mind, colonialism is primarily defined by treating the colonized territory as an economic asset to be exploited and/or looking at the people already living there as living clay to be shaped in the colonizers’ self-image.”
Yes. The British Empire, for instance, was never trying to resettle India. But India was clearly a colony.
There are many colonial models and quite a few rely on the presence of a very small number of colonial officers in the colony itself.
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“In my mind, colonialism is primarily defined by treating the colonized territory as “empty space” to be settled in.”
No, not necessarily. The Spanish Empire operated differently. The colonizers never wanted to settle. Their goal was always to come, rob and leave. It’s an entirely different model from the US colonization, and the results are very obvious today. There was no greater misfortune for a Spanish official than to be stuck in the colonies or to have his children born there. Simply the fact of having been born in the colonies made the children of the colonizers an inferior social class.
Ukraine was the colony of Russia from 1665 until 1991. Russia is now attempting to take its colony back.
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“Simply the fact of having been born in the colonies made the children of the colonizers an inferior social class.”
And things haven’t really changed much. Spanish people IME still look down on Latin Americans and casually express really xenophobic attitudes about them.
I don’t know if immigration to Spain (which started I think in the 1990s) has made that better…. or worse.
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Worse. Significantly worse, I’d say.
There is also a lot of very undeserved and boring poutiness on the part of Latin Americans towards Spain. I swear, if the Russians had stayed away in 2014, nobody would hear me bitch about them. I was so over the colonial drama and so into their culture and hoping their economy would flourish before 2014. And if they’d stayed away for 200 years, holding on to a grudge against them would be the last thing on my mind.
This is a sore issue because I’m tired of the pouty questions of “Why do I have to study the literature of the colonizers?” in my classes. Like I’m forcing anybody to attend, really. And the honest answer is: “Because your own literature, with 1 or 2 exceptions, is crap on a stick.” I actually started out as a Latin Americanist but was bored out of my mind after a couple of years.
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“There is also a lot of very undeserved and boring poutiness on the part of Latin Americans towards Spain. ”
–¡Let’s let bygones be bygones! said no Spanish speaker ever….
Yes, the weird feelings and resentments on both sides are a drag.
The first time I was in Spain (Franco had been dead for less than a decade) I heard about the Moorish occupation and reconquista as if they had pushed the last Moors out the week before.
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“The first time I was in Spain (Franco had been dead for less than a decade) I heard about the Moorish occupation and reconquista as if they had pushed the last Moors out the week before.”
So true. 🙂 The first time I was in Spain 🙂 the tour bus driver told me with great regret that it had been a huge mistake to expel the Jews. And he said it in the same tone of voice he had used to communicate that it was a huge mistake not to have any churros before leaving Toledo because they were the best.
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