Colonizing Europe

[jhameia]

This conversation stems from a review here of Alastair Bonnet's Idea Of The West. (I was directed to his work by a prof, and he works on whiteness, anti-racism and psychogeography.) So I present to you an excellent conversation with jaded16 of Oi With the Poodles Already.


Jaymee: now i'm not sure if the review just hasn't really talked about it
but by claiming that the non-west invented the west
it sort of takes away the impact European colonialism has had on third world countries today that have their own ideas of what the West is like

Jaded: Uh okay that is one weirdarse text

Jaymee: yeah
i mean, i can kind of see his point
that historically, those of us in "the East"
(fuck this non-West nonsense)
have had our own discourses about the West
that resembles the West's discourses about the East
but
i'm not sure that the discourse from the East impacted the West in the same way

Jaded: exactly

Jaymee: mostly because there isn't very much in the West to colonize anyway

Jaded: and they started first, so our view of the "west" is coloured by what they say of us

Jaymee: yeah

Jaymee: and it continues too
so to say "the idea of the West was invented by the non-West" is kind of disingenuous
because, of course we invented the idea of the West first
we were aware of the West before they even founded their own civilizations

Jaded: YES
but the way we went about doing things with that knowledge was very different than what they did

Jaymee: yes
exactly!
except for Genghis Khan
we largely left them the fuck alone

Jaded: Yes, but he didn't form empires
he wanted to
but couldn't
what it comes down to, who had the structural power to claim racial superiority

Jaymee: and the West just so happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right structures to impose themselves on the rest of the world

Jaded: yes, exactly
to deny that and say we did the exact amount of damage as much as they did to us
is ridiculous

Jaymee: i dont think that's his argument
but it's easy to construe his argument that way

Jaded: I skimmed it, can't say I liked what I saw

Jaymee: neither do i
but then the review comes from a swarthy dude who prolly has his own biases =)

Jaded: Ha yes, I was just going to say that
braintwin moment

Jaymee: am trying to think if Asian empires would have tried to conquer Europe if we had the infrastructure for it

Jaded: maybe?

Jaymee: i mean, even China didnt bother, they just demanded tribute
and seeded local communities

Jaded: don't doubt our potential to colonise
not one bit
just that we didn't have enough resources

Jaymee: potential is one thing, but thereès not a a hell lot in Europe to colonize, is there?
when we have each other to fight already

Jaded: there could be
HA yes

Jaymee: i mean, we are awesome
we got so much
of course we're gonna fight over each others' toys

Jaded: and tv time

Jaymee: yeah
what's the little corner of North West Asia got to offer us that we'd fight over it?

Jaded: snow?

Jaymee: China got snow
Japan got snow
nobody gives a shit about Hokkaido except to say HEY WE GOT IT

Jaded: True
Okay, so what does Europe have besides snow?
JHA THIS IS BUMMING ME OUT
I CAN'T THINK OF A THING

Jaymee: they have coal?
maybe iron?

Jaded: we have that
and bauxite also

Jaymee: ....
yeah i'm stumped too

Jaded: huh.

Jaymee: i mean if we really wanted those things from Europe
i guess we could colonize them economically
make them dependent on our trade

Jaded: Huh.

Jaymee: ike today's neocolonism

Jaded: But what would they have to offer to us

Jaymee: well china liked to demand silver

Jaded: you see Jha, why they needed to colonise us. THEY KNEW THEY HAD NOTHING MUCH EXCEPT SNOW

Jaymee: which the british had to buy from the rest of europe
pretty much
England especially
rainy island with an inferiority complex

Jaded: yes, I know
and an ugly as fuck monarch
with hairline issues

Jaymee: MANY ugly monarches
the only pretty ones were women

Jaded: yes

Jaymee: except queen victoria
after ALfred died she was a cow

Jaded: I KNOW
UGH
a pug actually

Jaymee: yes pugs are more british

Jaded: there's a reason why they are

Jaymee: ok British bulldogs
WHY

Jaded: they resembled their queen

Jaymee: bwaha
she wasn't THAT wrinkly

Jaded: Eh. Give or take a few years.

Jaymee: also
completely different from what we were just talking about
i apparently have no idea how bananas work
this banana is like green at the tips
andi dunno if it's ripe or not

Jaded: ugh why

Jaymee: i mean it ought to be

Jaded: I don't know either!

Jaymee: fucking bananas
why am i supposed to each you just to poop once a day
*eat
at least ya'll were cheap

Jaded: escapes me too

Jaymee: and it's not sweet
SEE
NOTHING TO COLONIZE IN THE WEST
THEY EVEN GET OUR FRUITS WRONG

Jaded: I KNOW
JUST SNOW AND BULLDOGS

Jaymee: TERRIERS ARE CUTE BUT NOT ENOUGH TO GO TO WAR OVER

Jaded: OOH BUT WHAT ABOUT POLAR BEARS?

Jaymee: NOT ENOUGH TO GO TO WAR OVER

Jaded: (wait that's not the West)

Jaymee: we'd just hunt the shit out of them

Jaded: Or make them sing the Ramayan
and make them Vegetarians
NOT ENOUGH TO GO TO WAR OVER

Jaymee: vegetarian polar bears singing the Ramayan would be cool but DEFINITELY NOT ENOUGH TO GO TO WAR OVER
we already got our own tap dancing cows mooing the Geeta

Jaded: exactly
too much ramayan bores the brain
NOT ENOUGH TO GO TO WAR OVER

Jaymee: exactly

Jaded: Maybe our brown/yellow brains are too biased
want to ask people out there?

Jaymee: we should ask white people what's there in their countries to colonize

Jaded: YES


Thus this post.

Comments

[jhameia]

I think it was Jaded who said that it's lack of infrastructure that prevented the East from colonizing the West. If one of us had the level of tech that the West had when they began empire building, and the same kind of centralization, it's entirely possible that the West would be colonized with justifications like "they're barbarians in need of civilizing" but yeah, given that we had so much to fight over on our side already, why bother?

[colorblue]

hmm, I feel like we both completely agree and completely disagree on the main points!

Forex, I don't think that a lack of infrastructure was a stumbling point when it came to China and India. Rather, it was the lack of a certain type of infrastructure. (India pre-18th century had a better internal economic infrastructure than most places in the West.) It was just that the development was not geared towards weapons/ships, since they'd made different decisions on how to allocate resources (though almost all the initial tech for such weapons/ships came from China, right?).

In this way, I think China and India are very different from Mongolia and Afghanistan, in that the latter two lacked natural resources and infrastructure (both are much more decentralized) and placed a lot of emphasis on weapon tech. (One reason why Afghanistan was never colonized was its lack of infrastructure/centralization. British could never figure out how to hold such a place.)

I do agree that justifications such as "they're barbarians in need of civilizing" are just that, justifications, and come after the fact, to justify economic gains due to colonization (and slavery, and genocide, etcetc). It's almost never ideology that drives these things, though ideology can exacerbate & speed up certain processes. Even the Crusades, which are almost always portrayed as a straight-up ideological action, had at their roots rather pragmatic economic reasons, right?

I suppose where I disagree (or rather, think I disagree -- perhaps there's no disagreement after all) is that your cause and effect seem more like my effect and cause, if that makes any sense (or perhaps not cause and effect at all but aspects of the same phenomena). A society that does not place much value in weapon tech would of course not be very interested in the bother of conquering anyone, barbarian or not.

[azuire]

To hitchhike off the economics point: the specific European capitalist infrastructure was also responsible. They had to travel to find new markets for their goods, and of course we were unwilling to buy ridiculously overpriced goods from them when we had our own versions, hence the muzzle of the gun.

Also, obligatory Eddie Izzard: flags.

[jhameia]

You guys are being very awesome, but you are also taking out the joy of demanding white people answer this one simple question. (Not to say you should stop though!)

Also, re: the Crusades - I've never actually really studied it enough to figure out what its roots were. =(