Colonialism
Blumenbach: anthropologist who applied Linnaeus and Kant into racial classification cranology. In order to strengthen the arguments of what others had already said.
The enlightenment is otherwise the age of rationalism, humanism and universalism. But at the same time many of these enlightened thinkers also subscribed to a hierarchy of race. How did this come about? By just having a kind of double standard? Maybe.
Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner despite being an idol of enlighenment, much the same with Voltaire (who was a share holder in slave companies).
In the 19th century this was strengthened with social darwinism and eugenetics. Initially in the US.
This is one consequence of colonialism.
Another one is coloniality. ie. the logical structure of colonial domination. This is more of a situation. Coloniality is a social state of mind. It exists through executing power in a wide range of fields. Coloniality has wiped out precolonial modes of thinking. Coloniality according to the following thinkers exists contemporarily as well. These thinkers actually react against postcolonial studies. They are known as decolonial. Postcolonial thinkers make no sense give the fact that there is still a large sense to which colonialism still exists.
Another effect of colonialism is Trauma.
Frantz Fanon was interested in the psychology of colonial violence. He analysed the minds of coloniser and colonised. He talks about racialisation. The creation of races. He argues for the white gaze: white people defines what black people and their level of inferiority. So therefore black people accept this way of thinking, and so they want to be more white in order ot have some level of power in society. This leads to a fundamental level of inferiority.
Aimé Césaire comes before Fanon. In his studies in the 30s was part of a movement of black intellectuals who developed ideas such as Négritude. Wrote discours sur le colonialisme. He talks about chosification of the colonised. People are turned into objects by being dehumanised. However this also dehumanises the coloniser. He connected colonialism to nazism. He did not call for violence at the same level of Fanon. Was politically active and represented the island of Martinique for a very long time.
Next section
Memories of colonial past.
The way how we today look at the colonial past is completely different from how previous generations did. It is interesting to understand that on the one hand, to understand why so many people defend colonialism and who don’t accept this criticism and label it woke or ideological – they are brainwashed. White authors in spite of claiming to be open to other perspectives, to have left eurocentrism behind, but are not open to other perspectives and are very much eurocentric. There is a propaganda-machine in the western world as well. There was only around two minutes of colonial history during the professor’s schooling.
Belgian society was shocked by Hochschild and De Witte. The belgian government came to the conclusion that it had a moral responsibility in regards to Lumumba.
In 2010, when Congo celebrated its 50th anniversary, it was especially that nostalgia that dominated. Many books appeared in that year, and most of them were not critical about the colonial past. Marc Reynebeau, a major TV-journalist in Flanders, followed the tracks of Stanley and made a documentary. He contrasted the pictures and movies from the colonial era with the calamities of the present-day. He meant that Congo went to shit after Belgium left.
What did we miss about this? Histories written by the congolese themselves.
First time congolese historians were translated into dutch was 2017. Prior to that Flemish people only read european authors of the colonial past.
David van Reybrouch shows himself aware of the dark ages of the colonial past and he asks congolese perspectives too, but he claims to write a history of the entire congo, but starts only with the colonial era. He neglects a lot of the prior research on oral sources about precolonial congo. He problematically argues that we do not know how many congolese died in the congo free state, whilst there are still quite alright estimates between 1-5 million. At the same time he gives examples with exact numbers, and also elaborates on the psychology of the early colonisers in a way that sort of justifies by neglecting the systematic nature of colonialism.
The major metropoles
We’ll talk about 5 major metropoles which came into being during the early modern age.
Largest dome is the Gol Gumbaz in Bijapur. The capital of the Deccan sultanate. It is fairly unknown.
Largest pyramid is Cholula in Mexico. Doesn’t exist anymore tho.
Portugal is a precedent setter. 1415 is the first conquest of overseas settlement, ie. the conquest of Ceuta in Morocca. Don’t care about the rest of the years. In 1487 the Portugese reached Good Hope. In 1498, Vasco da Gama reaches Calicut in India.
Why did the Portugese set out on these voyages of discovery?
The reconquista is one reason. Portugal and Spain was ruled by muslims, and so there remaind a hostility and competition with muslim rulers. It was a quintessential part of their identity, and the Ottomans were blocking the profits of their trade roads. They hoped to find gold that was undiscovered, and they also somewhere hoped to find Prester John against islam. Prester John may refer to the coptic church, though it is unclear.
Goa was controlled by the Portugese from 1510-1961. This was when prime minister Neru invaded Goa. This was called Estado do India. In the west and the south of India Portugal created certain fortified trading outposts. Many of these colonies were later taken over by the Dutch. On the African coastlines, Angola and Mozambique became Portugese. In east asia, Malacca was Portugese. Macau is now Chinese but remained Chinese up until the end of the 20th century. India for them was the metaphor for the entire empire. The Portugese almost never penetrated inland. Most of India was ruled by strong monarchs, like the Mughals in India. There were also too few portugese in all these places. However, they dominated the trade due to the armed ships they used. It was a kind of gunboat diplomacy. The Portugese colonial empire was based on trade, but they never had a monopoly unlike the dutch. They only ever controlled 40% of the pepper trade. They wouldn’t gain as big of a success as their successors. They also imposed certain taxes on trade in the Indian ocean. How did they succeed in this? The monsoon winds and the currents. Trade went through particular safe roads. At the same time, the Portugese also went to the West. Vasco da Gama reached India in 1498, just some years after Columbus reached America. 1492 is Columbus. And the Portugese rejected Columbus.
Eventually this competition between two catholic kings led to some lobbying by the pope, which led to the treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. They divided the world between two lines. Portugal was entitled to the Eastern parts of the world, whilst Spain was entitled to the West.
In 1500, Cabral reaches Brazil. The treaty of Tordesillas explains Portugese colonialism in Brazil. There wasn’t only trade there but also plantations. Slowly the colony moved inlands. In 1750, the treaty of Madrid corrected the treaty of Tordesillas to include more of the Amazon.
Disintegration of the Portugese empire.
Starts in 1578, when the Portugese suffered a defeat in Morocco. Moroccans rose up against Portugese presence in El-Ksar al Kabir, where King Sebastian died. Spain profitted from this crisis and occupied it between 1580-1640. This affected the portugese colonial empire, because Spain was fighting a war with the Netherlands. Portugal was involved in Spanish-Dutch war, and Spain was the leader of Catholicism and therefore fought England. The enemies of spain also attacked portugese colonial posessions. So the Dutch and the English sometimes invaded and conquered their colonues.
Malacca and Ceylon for example. Portugal managed to secure Macau, Goa, and East Timor. Also in Brazil, Portugal eventually succeds in defeating the Dutch and the English. The Portugese empire does not disintegrate as such but weakens.
In the early 19th century the porutgese suffer a severe blow when Brazil becomes independent. And in 1974 the other colonies become independent in the Carnation Revolution. Portugal was the first to colonise but also one of the last to decolonise.
Spain.
Is a pioneer in three different fields. They introduce new elements in European colonisation that the portugese did not do extensively. They conquered vast territories and had a vaster impact with further economic exploitation.
Portugal conquered very few territories in comparison to Spain. Most of Spanish colonies were of vast interial territories in South America, in the viceroyalties of New Spain, New Granada and Rio De la Plata.
It all starts in 1492 with Hispaniola. It is now divided between Haiti and Dominican republic.
Columbus travelled 4 times to america. He established his first capital in Santo Domingo, the capital of the dominican republic. This capital was quickly moved to mainland america. Santo Domingo would become more peripheral later on. It is like Brugge. It is the first European city in America with much age.
In 1512 they set foot on the continent in Panama. In 1519 the Mayas and Aztecs were conquered by Cortes. And in 1524 the Incas was defeated by Pizarro. And n 1536 Buenos Aires was reached, and Santiago by 1541.
Following Tordesillas, the Spanish also colonised the Phillipines which was reached in 1521 by Magellan, and Manilla founded in the 60s. Magellan’s voyage was the first to circumnavigate the world, Elcano was the second in command who actually survived.
They also colonised North America. In the 1565 Florida is colonised, in 1598 New Mexico and Arizona, and in 1602 California. In 1763 parts of Louisiana also.
Santa Fe was the Capital of New Mexico.
The columbian exchange.
The exchange of crops and species between america and eurasia. Parts of this exchange was also diseases. It led to the entire wipeout of much of American population. The entire American population was only 1/10th of what it was before contact in the 1600s. New people arrived. 240 000 spanish settlers by the 16th century. The spanish migrated in large numbers, whilst the portugese did not to the same extent. They also participated in the slave trade. Ie. the transatlantic slave trade from the African kingdoms in which they were bought and brought to the carribean. Deported around 11 Million slaves.