Decolonizing Turtle Island
Something, something, genocide
I moved back to Canada in 2021 And settled in – but did not colonize - the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Vancouver, British Columbia.
The Lower Mainland of British Columbia is beautiful and while I would love to have colonized it, there were already people here.
This didn’t stop the Europeans from colonizing the Americas, but our situations were somewhat different. They were driven by a combination of economic, religious, and political motives, I was just tired of living in a small town.
Oh, and they carried deadly diseases which the locals had no defense against.
These included smallpox, measles, influenza, typhus, chickenpox, bubonic plague, diphtheria, whooping cough, and malaria.
All I had was COVID.
Despite the “deadliness” of the pandemic, the locals were able to withstand its effects. Well, the physical effects in at least. The psychological effects, to judge by the number of people wearing masks outside and while driving cars by themselves, were severe.
Some have yet to recover.
In retrospect it’s probably good that I didn’t depopulate the area with disease as some of those who died might have been trans which would have left me susceptible to accusations of trans genocide.
The killing type of genocide, not the “words hurt” form, or the “you’re denying my existence” form. Although the “you’re denying my existence” form of genocide is also bad as well because, as all know, that was the one that got the unicorns.
Or maybe they were too busy “playing silly games” and missed Noah’s ark. Honestly, I was daydreaming during that section of bible class so I’m not sure.
Regardless, of the details, I think we can all agree that genocide is bad. Very, very bad.
Kind of like slavery.
Oh, and colonialism.
Colonialism is bad! Very, very... oh hell, you get the point.
How do I know colonialism is bad?
Because a pub I used to frequent in Vancouver changed its name from “Colony” to “Good Co” – ya, super-lame name – because they didn’t want to be associated with the word “colonialism.”
No, I’m not kidding.
Clearly if a successful business changes its name to avoid any association with “colonialism” - presumably because other restaurants are concern it might start colonizing them and enslaving the wait staff - we can safely conclude colonization is a bad thing.
Case closed, right?
Or do we need further evidence?
It’s debatable.
Let’s look at both sides of the argument beginning with...
Words are violence!
Calling your pub “Colony” glorifies or trivializes colonialism.
In the context of modern social movements like Black Lives Matter and Indigenous reconciliation, the term can be triggering as it recalls a history of systemic racism, violence, and displacement.
It is equivalent to using racial stereotypes to brand a sports franchise. Like this one.
Oops, I mean this one:
Why is the former ok and the latter an unspeakable insult?
Simple.
The latter is a hated stereotype that demeans Native Americans.
The former is what all people of Irish heritage actually look like.
Case in point, I’m dressed exactly like the “Fighting Irish” mascot as I type and am looking forward to this evening’s activities of getting drunk and starting a bar fight.
Or Monday night as the rest of you call it.
I’m kidding of course.
Bar fights are on Thursdays.
Some of you less enlightened individuals may be tempted to ask, “how this is this not an example of a racial double standard?”
The answer is of course, “Don’t ask racist questions you stupid racist!”
Which brings us to the other side of the debate...
Sticks and stones will...
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words will never hurt me.
-- Children’s rhyme.
Words are not violence, as every schoolboy knows.
That’s it, that’s the whole argument.
And yet it is much more convincing than the “words are violence” argument.
Does it matter?
Honestly, “is colonialism bad” is not an interesting question.
Of course it’s bad.
Perhaps not entirely.
But mostly bad.
Or at least was bad.
Remember, we’re talking about things that happened well before most of us were born.
It’s complicated – Yes, I’m going to use this tool again. Whether colonization is over or not depends on your definition. Unfortunately. Is Gibraltar a colony of the UK? The Spanish seem to think so. Are the Falklands? Argentina seems to think so. Is Northern Ireland. Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Let’s not go there. For the sake of simplicity, we’re going to stay out of the weeds and focus on historical colonies. However, if you like weeds, here’s a pretty map which for some completely unexplainable and I’m sure not ideologically dishonest reason focuses on the EU and does not show any of the territories currently occupied by China.
By Alexrk2 - Natural Earth 1:50m (http://www.naturalearthdata.com), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15025858
Colonialism is bad for much the same reason that slavery is bad. It deprives people of their freedom.
However, there are many more interesting questions such as these:
Why do progressives consider colonialism to be uniquely awful?
How and why did colonialism come about?
How did colonialism lead to American slavery?
Before we can answer these questions, we need to define a few terms...
Colonialism, Conquest, and Imperialism
If you’ve paid any attention to the “debate” in Canada around who owns “turtle island,” you’ll be forgiven if you’ve come to the conclusion that so much of the left’s argument is based on half-baked ideas, lies, and word salad.
However, as is the case with all “good” activism, there is a kernel of truth here, colonialism did exist.
However, so did conquest.
Was Canada colonized or conquered?
We’ll leave that debate for another day, but what is unquestionable is that both colonization and conquest were tools of Imperialism.
So, let’s start there.
Imperialism is a strategy or ideology of expanding power beyond your borders, politically, economically, or culturally.
Imperialism isn’t new, nor exclusively European. Rome was an imperial power, as were Persia, Egypt, China, and the Aztecs. Even Africa, the world’s favorite whipping boy, had empires.
Imperialism was everywhere!
By Philg88: Attribution Wikimedia Foundation, www.wikimedia.org - Own work Incorporates modified version of File:Empire of the Great Qing (orthographic projection).svg. Note that the map excludes Tawang from Tibet., CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32457960
Empires have a few tools for expanding but the primary two are Colonialism and Conquest
It’s complicated – Imperialism doesn’t always need formal conquest or colonies. Economic dominance (e.g., Opium Wars leading to unequal treaties with China), Informal empire/spheres of influence (e.g., Imperial Japan prior to WWII), and cultural or political pressure (e.g., The USA in Latin America and the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe) are important examples.
Colonialization is about establishing a lasting presence in a distant territory, usually with settlement and economic extraction as the goal.
Conquest is typically about territorial control and political dominance. The goal is often to absorb or control an adjacent region for strategic, security, or prestige reasons.
They sound pretty similar, don’t they?
So, why do progressives get all worked up about one and not the other?
Why is nobody looking at Germany before unification, taking to the streets and screaming “Free Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach!”
It’s somewhere here:
Source: Robert Alfers, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4179496
Good luck finding it.
It’s kind of tiny.
Not that size matters.
Or so I’ve been told.
The similarities between Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and the Gaza Strip are striking:
Area:
SWE - 2,052 km2 (792 sq mi)
Gaza Strip - 365 km2 (141 sq mi).
Population:
SWE – 2.1 million
Gaza Strip – 2.1 million
And yet progressives are out in force in support of the Palestinians while ignoring the Thuringians.
Yes, that’s what they call themselves, the poor bastards.
It can’t be a question of time because while German unification took place in 1871, the colonization (or conquest) of the Americas took place well before that.
One can hardly argue that time is an important “here” but irrelevant “over here.”
Ok, progressives can, but nobody with an internally consistent worldview can.
Why then are progressives getting so worked up about one and not the other?
Note: Yes, the answer is obvious but play along with me for a while anyway.
Is colonialism really that much worse than conquest?
Colonialism is bad etc.
Progressives justifiably argue that colonialism inflicted severe, often deliberate harms on indigenous populations, economies, cultures, and environments across the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
While not every colonial episode was equally destructive, the following examples are extensively documented in historical scholarship and represent quantifiable human costs. The question is, are they unique to colonialism?
Demographic collapse in the Americas from disease and violence: European contact introduced pathogens to populations without immunity, combined with warfare and displacement. Estimates indicate 75–90% population loss in many regions.
While there is no direct parallel in Europe that may have more to do with colonialism being seen as one event. If we look at European deaths due to war and disease over the same period it becomes less clear.
Intra-European wars caused massive deaths from violence and disease (e.g., ~8 million in the Thirty Years’ War, up to 20–30% in German states), but populations shared some disease immunity. It is estimated that ~10–20 million Europeans died from warfare plus associated disease between about 1500 and 1700.
The Black Death (roughly 1347–1351) killed between 25 to 50 million Europeans or roughly 30% to 60% of Europe’s population.
Verdict: Inconclusive. Colonialism certainly killed more people than any single war or epidemic in Europe so if one is “comparing atrocities,” it certainly appears to be worse than conquest. However, the main difference here is that Europeans had some disease immunity while those indigenous to the Americas did not. However, if Europeans are responsible for indigenous people dying from disease, then people in Central Asia are responsible for all the Europeans who died from the Black Death.
Atrocities in the Belgian Congo Free State (1885–1908): Under King Leopold II, forced rubber and ivory quotas led to widespread mutilations, village burnings, hostage-taking, and killings. Historians estimate up to 10 million deaths from violence, famine, and disease in what was described as a “reign of terror.”
Parallels exist in European wartime exploitation:
The Holocaust (1941–1945) - Systematic, state-directed extermination of ~6 million Jews, along with millions of others.
Holodomor - Millions (3–7 million) died in Soviet Ukraine due to forced collectivization and grain requisition.
Irish Great Famine - About 1 million died; another million emigrated. British policy responses exacerbated the crisis.
Verdict: Sadly, atrocities like those that occurred in the Belgian Congo were not unique to colonialism.
Bengal Famine of 1943: Wartime policies, including food export priorities and delayed relief, exacerbated a crisis that killed an estimated 2–3 million Indians. Colonial authorities were criticized for indifference, with decisions prioritizing Allied needs over local starvation.
Direct analogs include the Irish Potato Famine (1845–52, ~1 million dead under British rule) or famines during European sieges/wars.
Verdict: Some may argue that Ireland itself was often administered colonially so its famine should be attributed to colonialism. This just underscores how closely related colonialism is to conquest. The fact is that the use of starvation as a weapon or due to neglect is not unique to colonialism.
Forced cultural assimilation and residential schools: In settler colonies (e.g., Canada, Australia, U.S.), indigenous children were removed from families and placed in institutions to erase languages, religions, and traditions. Abuse, disease, and cultural prohibition led to intergenerational trauma and loss of identity.
Parallels in European history include:
Gaelic Suppression in the British Isles (16th – 19th centuries) - British authorities attempted to dismantle Gaelic culture by banning or discouraged Gaelic language and dress and replaced traditional education with English-language schooling.
Prussian Germanization Policies (18th – 19th centuries) - The Prussian state pushed assimilation through mandatory German-language schooling, suppression of Polish in schools and public life, and the removal of Polish teachers and clergy.
French Assimilation of Regional Cultures (19th–early 20th centuries) - The French state aggressively standardized culture by banning regional languages in schools, punishing children for speaking Breton or Occitan, and framing education around a singular French identity.
Verdict: Forced cultural assimilation is nothing new and thus not unique to colonialism.
Economic exploitation and resource extraction: Colonies were restructured as raw-material suppliers (e.g., rubber, minerals, cash crops) with little local investment. Profits flowed outward, creating dependency, environmental degradation, and long-term poverty in many regions.
All empires extracted tribute. Most also structured economies to benefit the core political center and used coercion, taxation, or policy asymmetry to sustain that flow. Examples include:
Habsburg Monarchy (especially Hungary and northern Italy). The peripheral regions often functioned as agrarian suppliers to more industrialized Austrian core areas. Taxation and trade structures favored Vienna and core elites.
Kingdom of Italy in Southern Italy. After unification, the South (the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) was effectively treated as an internal periphery and became a supplier of agricultural labor and raw materials, with limited reinvestment—sometimes described as “internal colonialism.” Heavy taxation, land policies, and capital flows favored the industrial North.
Swedish Empire in the Baltic regions. Territories like Livonia and Estonia were used for agricultural output and taxation and wealth flowed toward Stockholm and the imperial core.
Verdict: Economic exploitation and resource extraction is not unique to colonialism.
A distinction without a difference
Arguing that colonialism is the great sin of the West while conquest is... meh, doesn’t make much sense.
However, holy wars are rarely based on logic and that’s what anti-colonialism is, a progressive holy war.
How else would you explain the argument that these are two of history’s greatest crimes:
By The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick - File:BlankMap-World-large.png and own work by uploader. Composed from maps found in:Stewart, John (1996) “Cyrenaica” The British Empire: an encyclopedia of the Crown’s holdings, 1493 through 1995, McFarland & Co. ISBN: 0-7864-0177-X.Brown, Judith (1998) The Twentieth Century, The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume IV, Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199246793.Dalziel, Nigel (2006) The Penguin Historical Atlas of the British Empire, Penguin ISBN: 0141018445., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5544648
By United States federal governmentThis is a retouched picture, which means that it has been digitally altered from its original version. Modifications made by en:User:pink and White. - National Atlas of the United States, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1178618
While this is no big deal:
https://cdn.britannica.com/89/4789-050-B6176F52/Expansion-Ottoman-Empire.jpg
It’s like arguing that American slavery was so much worse than any other slavery because... never mind, we did that already.
Ok, it’s like looking at two murders and saying one is worse than the other because the murder weapons were different.
Or worse, because the victims were of different races.
Which is actually what this is all about.
Progressives will claim that anti-colonialism is about justice when what it’s really about is social justice.
Any historian worth his salt will readily admit that colonialism is complicated, that there are many types (administrative, extractive, settler, etc.) and that it is sometimes difficult to differentiate it from conquest. Colonialism and conquest are on “a spectrum” (shudder).
Both colonialism and conquest were tools of imperialism.
If Imperialism was the “crime,” conquest and colonialism were simply two of its weapons.
Arguing that one was worse than the other because of the skin color of the victims is something only a progressive would attempt.
What does this have to do with Slavery?
Right. Good question. That’s why we took this little detour from slavery, wasn’t it?
Ok, I’ll admit that this strayed “a little” from the original intent. However, as the entire purpose of the series on slavery was to address how progressives warp its history, I couldn’t very well dig into colonialism without taking them to task here too, could I?
Ok, I probably could have but what’s done is done.
In part II – two, not eleven – of this topic we’ll take a look at how and why colonialism led to slavery in the Americas but not in India, Africa, and Australia.
Until then, here’s a meme that illustrates why the “fight” against settler colonialism is, ultimately, ridiculous.
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It's shocking how Europeans settlers, I mean colonizers, disrupted the cannibalistic slaver tribes.
Of the many insane ideas Jean-Jacques Rousseau spewed, the Noble Savage mythology might have been the worst.
C'mon the greatest example of cultural appropriation was Florida State University using Seminole indians as mascots. The PC crowd was shocked. Yet Bobby Bowden (the football coach) famously went to a legislative hearing on the issue. When confronted on the matter, he turned to his left and introduced the chief of the Seminoles, who stated that not only did he approve their use, but he was proud to be associated with the Florida State University. CASE CLOSED!