Racism is a consequence of colonization. “But there’s racism in other ages and societies!” - “There is a difference between xenophobia and racism.”
Racism is based on an essential hierarchy.
Colonization switches prejudice according to religion to prejudice according to skin color.
Enslavement → dehumanization → racism
[He is actually talking about why we shouldn’t use the n-word now.]
Black people could still be hired crew on ships; white people could also be enslaved in plantations.
White plantation owners introduced legislation to prevent coalition between white and black enslaved people.
← blood purity (limpieza de sangre, the religion thing) brought up again
This gets further legitimized in the years to follow.
Coloniality
Coloniality is the structure of colonial domination. Talks of the Colonial Matrix of Power.
Decolonial (decoloniality) studies.
Traumas (!)
[Omg Fanon]
Fanon was intrigued with the psychology of colonization, violence, the consequences of colonization on the minds of the colonizer and the colonized.
Aimé Césaire spoke of the chosification of the colonized, dehumanization of the colonizer, and the connection between colonialism and nazism.
Memory
The way we look at the colonial past today is different to the way we looked at it even in the previous decades [wowza]
“Why do so many people still defend colonization? Label it as woke, ideological, rather than historical knowledge?” Because they’re falling for propaganda even from back during the actual colonial period.
Through education, expositions, and so on, the colonizers created and perpetuated propaganda.
from the 1960-1990s there was just silence towards the colonial past.
Since 2000s greater interest
Whitewashing of colonization started happening semi-recently, people went to the Congo, and then compared blatant propaganda with the current state of the Congo, talking about how everything fell off now.
Nobody took non-white perspectives into account
Everything was very whitewashey and non-nuanced.
2010 much nostalgia
Van Reybrouck [apparently this guy was the prof.’s colleague???] is a particularly bad offender.
Mobutu “was the greatest kleptocrat.”
Since 2015: decolonization
Introduction over (finally)
The treaty of Tordesillas
Cabral reaches Brazil in 1500 (hence why the Portuguese had such profound influence in Brazil)
and the treaty of madrid
The disintegration of the Portuguese Empire:
begins in 1578 with the defeat of Portugal by the Moroccans in El Ksar-El-Kebir
The Portuguese King, Sebastian, died there.
1588-1654 it is weakened by Spain’s wars
- Dutch and English victories in Asia
- Portugal loses inter alia Malacca and Ceylon
- Portugal keeps Macau, Portuguese India, and East Timor
19th century it loses Brazil (but expands in Africa)
and 1974 decolonizes after Carnation Revolution
1492
Hispaniola
Haiti in the West, Dominican Republic in the East nowadays. Columbus first traveled here in 1492. He established the capital Santo Domingo.
Santo Domingo is the first European city in America.
There is thereafter a gradual expansion, 20 years before anyone would settle on the continent. Mayas & Aztecs → New Spain; Incas → New Grenada & Peru; […]
The Spanish also colonized the Philippines, first reached in 1521 by Magellan. Manila )the capital) was founded decades later.
In the course of the 16th and 17th century, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Louisiana get founded.