I enjoyed your piece very much. Could you please share the reference of the interview to Gabor Maté that you are referring to? I would like to read/hear it if it is available. Thanks!
Yes! I have to dig through my YouTube history. It was a talk mostly about Israel/Palestine, so I’ll give you the time mark of that particular line as soon as I find it if you don’t want to listen to the whole thing (it was one of those hour-plus conversations).
I put this aside to read and then missed it until it resurfaced, and that court decision is enraging if not terribly surprising. The right for powerful men to profit shall not be infringed, and is the first and utmost right considered by law.
Thanks, as always, Nia. I suspect you've already written on this, but I wonder about the nexus of capitalism and the Doctrine of Discovery. I guess we could say that they're symbiotic or subservient partners to one another. I do wonder whether exploitation of land and people, owing to the incredible ascendency and versatility of capitalism, might have happened anyway even without the doctrine. Of course the doctrine set the table. But I wonder whether the doctrine have withered or weakened (like slavery in some parts) without capitalism and its own concomitant partners (science, the state, and most recently transnational corporations). Or maybe it did indeed yield to capitalism. Yeah, that could be it. (But we'll talk about it next month!)
I haven't *exactly*, believe it or not! It's always on my mind but I haven't gone straight for it except when writing about commodification. Amitav Ghosh's "The Nutmeg's Curse" (which Swarnali mentioned in the comments) doesn't specifically mention the Doctrine, but it's pretty much about what you're talking about, the colonization of this island in order to start commodifying and extracting profit from nutmeg.
I guess it's kind of what this whole book project is about, the intersection of resource and power hoarding, exploitation, and a severed relationship with nature.
To the broader question, I'm obviously not an expert in this area. My instincts are that this problem goes back much further than the kind of modern capitalism we think of as taking over economies in the last few hundred years. Mesopotamia is full of stories and ruins from ancient civilizations that built themselves on exploitation of land and people. I always think of the part of the Epic of Gilgamesh where is describes the massive cedar forests in what is now Lebanon, which were extracted by different empires over the centuries, and that landscape has never recovered.
Excited for in-person conversation about it all and other things!
Looking forward to it! Yeah, I'm no expert either. As I recall, Yuval Noah Harari may have covered it in "Sapiens," with capitalism basically going as far back as the development of written numbers. 😳 I could have that wrong. I think sugar is the best example of this nexus — 600 years in the making: https://chasingnature.substack.com/p/can-nations-really-save-nature
There's a lot in Graeber and Wengrow's book "The Dawn of Everything" if you haven't read it. Incredibly comprehensive exploration of all the different ways human societies have shaped themselves throughout history. And James C. Scott's "Against the Grain" traces some form of "capitalism" (actually, state formation and its attendant oppressions) to when grain cultivation started ousting hunting and foraging. Because grains could be stored, hoarded, stolen, and taxed.
I think I said to someone else recently that I don't want to detract from the readers anywhere else, but the ones here are the BEST. If only they'd stop sending me more enlightening research! (Just kidding, it's actually very helpful, especially internationally.) I love how thoughtful everyone is, and how interested.
Just when I’ve decided I wasn’t born with original sin after all, I learn about the real original sin. And it’s a doozie. Hard to wash our hands of this one. Thanks for this. I’ll follow up the links.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure that we’ve changed much over the past several hundred years. If we’re good at one thing, it’s how we can justify just about anything.
Maybe less a sin for any of us trying to become more aware than a sense of responsibility to help steer a different future. That's how I try to think about it anyway. It's certainly an uphill battle. This reality is very much in your face where I live, and most people are very invested in making sure things stay the way they are. I'm not much of a fighter but at least I can keep working on bringing the realities forward!
Thank you for this repost. I came to the party a little late and had not seen it before. This is very well written (of course), and so very important.
These are the lines that most resonated with me:
"They’re one of the bases for nearly every claim of absolute land ownership or property rights. […] The doctrine carries within it a hunger for profit and a near-obsession with the right to wring dry every drop of life itself in the pursuit of wealth. […] It defines how humans are allowed to survive in and relate with our world."
I see this dynamic at play in the real estate and development industries (the new conquistadors). Speculators and investors swoop into “underdeveloped” communities, no matter how happy and content the residents may be, and pillage those communities for every dollar of profit that can be bled out of them. No square foot of land is left unravaged. Nothing is sacred…except, of course, the almighty dollar. All land, all of nature, is mere prostitute for profit. And in many cases that profit is considered proof of God’s blessing, dontcha know. The long-time residents whose lives are unsettled, uprooted, and made more difficult, do not matter a whit. After all, they weren’t making the most of things. And the god I created in my own image wants me to make the most of things, dontcha know.
A few years back, maybe a decade, there was an eminent domain case in front of the Supreme Court out of somewhere in New England. A lower income community had been seized under eminent domain ... in order for a developer to build higher-end condos and leisure development or whatever. Profit being seen as a greater public good than places for normal people to live.
Did you read Grace Olmstead's "Uprooted"? It's on my pile. I haven't read it yet but heard a good interview with her a while back. It's mostly placed in Emmett, Idaho, where she's from, and sounds like she goes straight for a lot of the issues you're talking about here. Also Ryanne Pilgeram's "Pushed Out," which is about gentrification in Dover, Idaho.
I have not read Olmstead's book. It sounds like a good one. While I don't live all that far from Emmett, I haven't been out there in quite a few years. I hear from a friend that it has lost much of it's old character, the character that gave Emmett it's traditional charm, and is becoming yet another gentrified boutique community for (mostly) transplanted Californians with inflated equities and bloated retirement accounts . It is tragic the way money ruins everything in its path, under the guise of "the good life."
I get the impression that that’s what she was writing about quite a bit, the gentrification that happened fast and changed things drastically, and the issue of rural gentrification in general. I’ve never been there but I can imagine some of what it’s like.
Money is a curse for all of us, in a way, isn’t it?
Very true about the future, and public lands. That's part of why I do this work, but the bulk of it is to show how deep and ancient these roots run. Even 500 years isn't a very long timeframe for hoarding of power and resources.
We're wussies! Although we deal with the occasional hurricane 😜
It's been unusually rainy. 60s-70s we whine if we don't get sun after 48 hours. I hear Catherine Hepburn's voice in my head saying something like, " it's positively dreary" my Dad's in Estes Park so he'll get it as well!
Haha, if you want to see someone who can't take the weather, try getting me in humidity! Even in the 50s, if it's humid I just wilt. Lame!
It got down to -50s last night, and was -31 at 8 this morning (-40-something with wind chill but it wasn't breezy today). The dog's not thrilled to go out, but for a few hours in the middle of the day the sun was shining and as long as we were careful about frostbite it was SO beautiful.
In this weather, yes! (I forgot — you’re a vet, yes? Thanks for looking out for her! The cold didn’t seem to bother her today but yesterday she was not loving it.)
I hope to get a treat to see a photo of that midday splendor. I can't fathom those temperatures.
. I lived in Manhattan for 1 year. was it pretty cold one?
And it hurt my eyeballs. Nobody likes the humidity.Of course, I'm Acclamated to pretty much everything here in the tropics. Warming planet is noticeable Even amongst the locals🤮
Unfortunately, the cold doesn’t come through in the photos, though I took some audio of me cross-country skiing around the road and yard today. I could personally hear how dry the snow was, but I’ll have to see if it comes through. Pretty day!
Sadly, amongst most locals here climate change is still “not a real thing” or “a plot from the UN to take over our land” (truly) or “I don’t think that caused [drought/low lake levels/extreme weather patterns/megafires/take your pick.” We do what we can.
Just saw "Killers of the Flower Moon," and I like your essay better!
I guess now that there's nothing more to discover on this earth (especially with GPS), the Doctrine of Discovery has been updated to mean: The Doctrine of Whatever Already Happened.
Thanks, I think! I haven't seen it yet but have heard nothing but great things, especially about Lily Gladstone.
I guess in a way it has but I think about it a lot when people ask when "we're" going to colonize space. What the implications of that perspective are, even if we don't find life that we understand elsewhere.
Oh, the film was fine; I'm being tongue-in-cheek. Even if I do get lots more insight into colonialism from your posts than a 3-hour Hollywood movie. And yes, Lily Gladstone is a presence. It was sort of funny to see De Niro doing his vintage De Niro thing in that Oklahoma setting. Maybe you can give a review eventually.
That's a good point about space. I don't really believe we'll ever be in a position to colonize anything beyond Earth, but you're right, it's important to wrestle with that regardless.
I am inclined to agree with you. It's been an interesting dream for decades, but if we manage to build a common future on this planet, it'll mean letting go of a lot of that kind of thing; and if we can't, well, it's not going to happen anyway!
I'm no movie critic! My taste tends toward Lord of the Rings and The Lego Movie. ;) That said, this is probably the only review of Killers of the Flower Moon I want to read: https://chrislatray.substack.com/p/denies-and-silences
Nia I am so glad you reposted this essay. It’s rightly aligned with my current research of what happened in the Nilgiris with british ‘discovery’ of the region. I was learning the concept of ‘terraforming’ in context of colonisation of America and how it often involves the concept of subjugation and cleansing of the land of its ethnicities rather than just discovering and occupying. ‘discovery of land was equivalent to ownership of it’ this hit me like a bus in terms of understanding what I might be missing in my research. Although Indian territories and Americas are two very different places that underwent the waves of colonialism, I cannot help but see deeply entrenched mechanisms that are controlling the way land was owned by force.
I thought of you and your essay on Britain’s theft of India’s wealth a lot while rewriting this, Swarna! (I plan on referencing that one when I repost the piece on the British East India Company.) I’d forgotten about the concept of terraforming in colonisation, but have heard it before somewhere. On a podcast maybe. Now I wish I could remember where because it’s SO important to understand it that way.
There was a presenter from India on that webinar about the international implications of the Doctrine of Discovery. One of the slides of his I screenshot had something like “pre-occupation, the people owned the land. After independence, the state owned the land AND the people.”
He has a paper about the Doctrine in North India. I only skimmed it and it might be relevant (though it looks like a different region). I’ll email it to you. <3
I read about it in The Nutmeg’s curse recently. Gosh was referring to how shocking the concept came off as when HG wells used in his War of the Worlds because he juxtaposed the concept of colonising anglo centric metropolitan cities by aliens in the same way the Europeans did the rest of the world.
I have no clue of the doctrines in north India, I am really excited to read what you send. Thank you 💜. Also yes the pre occupation land ownership was also skewed due the ‘zamindari (landlords) system’. It was whole another messed up class system pre existing but obviously hugely encouraged by the British because they profited from the tax of the zamindars. This class mirrored the regency era landed gentry class lifestyle- totally evil.
That book is so invaluable, isn't it? And it's amazing how so many people of a colonial mindset (or what I've heard many now call "moderns") can't see that if aliens came to Earth and did what was done to so much of the world, they'd be furious and outraged and all sorts of things, and yet are somehow surprised that there is so much lasting grief and real, tangible damage from the invasions and genocides and thefts that actually happened.
I don't think I'd read about zamindars before, but that makes so much sense. From what little I've read, wherever colonial powers landed, they first worked to co-opt already-existing class and oppression structures. (Was that in Nutmeg's Curse? I can't quite remember but it rings a bell.)
Maybe that’s there too but I am a snail reader and haven’t came across it yet. Plus my brain keep getting in the way by making all these connections and correlations and I keep taking notes and that slows me down even more.
I can really see why colonialists would want to incentivise the already established oppressive systems. Just look at it from their perspective even if the perspective is inevitably crooked, wouldn’t it be convenient to leverage the already skewed oppressive ideologies set in place to isolate a certain demographic of people who are already downtrodden and then manipulate them by appointing them to work for you?
I am not sure if the concept of divide-and-rule was ever applied outside of the colonial India but such were the British strategies. It was used to inflate the necessity of absolute British domination by stirring constant conflicts between different religious groups, which later led the subcontinent into massive religious riots. These tactics are still being manipulated by political leaders to create vote banks. It has proven to be one of the most evil thought experiment implemented in political context till date.
That's the best way to read! Slow, making connections ... like living, I guess.
I think there were adjacent if not similar tactics used here in the pre-U.S. The British and French and Spanish empires worked through treaties with various Native American Nations, since there were a lot of earlier pre-existing conflicts for them to leverage for their own empires' benefits. But the tactics in India seem almost worse, if anything can be compared from those centuries.
Sometimes it's hard to see a way out of all these dynamics, but it's good to know there are plenty of candles in the darkness ...
Gosh’s work is incredibly intense. It is almost like reading a book of revelations. It does demand a lot of attention because it is so dense with information. Thank you so much for suggesting this, I love how I am able to think with his help!
Totally, the tactics were widely varying with the Native American nations and what they used in colonies like India or Indonesia. The Europeans were really good at devising specific treaties of dominions, custom made for the particular set of people they are dealing with depending on how savage they think that particular group is. It is not difficult to look back and notice that they almost always treated the royal families with exception. They somehow thought they were at a different level compared to the civilians. It’s all just so infuriating!
It might be a hard way out of these pre existing models of oppressions that today manifest as racism, political polarities, privatisation and many other issues that we face as countries and world as a whole - but we will continue to march with our flickering candles of hope, of dreams of a better Earth.
I audibly gasped at the part about RBG 😣 you are so knowledgeable and I appreciate all that I’m learning from you & look forward to your book! Going to watch that Ted talk too!
Thank you! ;)
I enjoyed your piece very much. Could you please share the reference of the interview to Gabor Maté that you are referring to? I would like to read/hear it if it is available. Thanks!
Okay, found it. It’s between time mark 58:00 and 59:20 (approximately) in this interview: https://youtu.be/i0WJM9RfRD8?si=A4WiqbxnTgTBs7dj
Yes! I have to dig through my YouTube history. It was a talk mostly about Israel/Palestine, so I’ll give you the time mark of that particular line as soon as I find it if you don’t want to listen to the whole thing (it was one of those hour-plus conversations).
I put this aside to read and then missed it until it resurfaced, and that court decision is enraging if not terribly surprising. The right for powerful men to profit shall not be infringed, and is the first and utmost right considered by law.
So, so true.
Thanks, as always, Nia. I suspect you've already written on this, but I wonder about the nexus of capitalism and the Doctrine of Discovery. I guess we could say that they're symbiotic or subservient partners to one another. I do wonder whether exploitation of land and people, owing to the incredible ascendency and versatility of capitalism, might have happened anyway even without the doctrine. Of course the doctrine set the table. But I wonder whether the doctrine have withered or weakened (like slavery in some parts) without capitalism and its own concomitant partners (science, the state, and most recently transnational corporations). Or maybe it did indeed yield to capitalism. Yeah, that could be it. (But we'll talk about it next month!)
I haven't *exactly*, believe it or not! It's always on my mind but I haven't gone straight for it except when writing about commodification. Amitav Ghosh's "The Nutmeg's Curse" (which Swarnali mentioned in the comments) doesn't specifically mention the Doctrine, but it's pretty much about what you're talking about, the colonization of this island in order to start commodifying and extracting profit from nutmeg.
I guess it's kind of what this whole book project is about, the intersection of resource and power hoarding, exploitation, and a severed relationship with nature.
To the broader question, I'm obviously not an expert in this area. My instincts are that this problem goes back much further than the kind of modern capitalism we think of as taking over economies in the last few hundred years. Mesopotamia is full of stories and ruins from ancient civilizations that built themselves on exploitation of land and people. I always think of the part of the Epic of Gilgamesh where is describes the massive cedar forests in what is now Lebanon, which were extracted by different empires over the centuries, and that landscape has never recovered.
Excited for in-person conversation about it all and other things!
Looking forward to it! Yeah, I'm no expert either. As I recall, Yuval Noah Harari may have covered it in "Sapiens," with capitalism basically going as far back as the development of written numbers. 😳 I could have that wrong. I think sugar is the best example of this nexus — 600 years in the making: https://chasingnature.substack.com/p/can-nations-really-save-nature
But we'll tawlk!
There's a lot in Graeber and Wengrow's book "The Dawn of Everything" if you haven't read it. Incredibly comprehensive exploration of all the different ways human societies have shaped themselves throughout history. And James C. Scott's "Against the Grain" traces some form of "capitalism" (actually, state formation and its attendant oppressions) to when grain cultivation started ousting hunting and foraging. Because grains could be stored, hoarded, stolen, and taxed.
Also, there are some thoughtful, well-considered comments here. You cave a friendly and supportive community.
I think I said to someone else recently that I don't want to detract from the readers anywhere else, but the ones here are the BEST. If only they'd stop sending me more enlightening research! (Just kidding, it's actually very helpful, especially internationally.) I love how thoughtful everyone is, and how interested.
Just when I’ve decided I wasn’t born with original sin after all, I learn about the real original sin. And it’s a doozie. Hard to wash our hands of this one. Thanks for this. I’ll follow up the links.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure that we’ve changed much over the past several hundred years. If we’re good at one thing, it’s how we can justify just about anything.
Maybe less a sin for any of us trying to become more aware than a sense of responsibility to help steer a different future. That's how I try to think about it anyway. It's certainly an uphill battle. This reality is very much in your face where I live, and most people are very invested in making sure things stay the way they are. I'm not much of a fighter but at least I can keep working on bringing the realities forward!
Thank you for this repost. I came to the party a little late and had not seen it before. This is very well written (of course), and so very important.
These are the lines that most resonated with me:
"They’re one of the bases for nearly every claim of absolute land ownership or property rights. […] The doctrine carries within it a hunger for profit and a near-obsession with the right to wring dry every drop of life itself in the pursuit of wealth. […] It defines how humans are allowed to survive in and relate with our world."
I see this dynamic at play in the real estate and development industries (the new conquistadors). Speculators and investors swoop into “underdeveloped” communities, no matter how happy and content the residents may be, and pillage those communities for every dollar of profit that can be bled out of them. No square foot of land is left unravaged. Nothing is sacred…except, of course, the almighty dollar. All land, all of nature, is mere prostitute for profit. And in many cases that profit is considered proof of God’s blessing, dontcha know. The long-time residents whose lives are unsettled, uprooted, and made more difficult, do not matter a whit. After all, they weren’t making the most of things. And the god I created in my own image wants me to make the most of things, dontcha know.
Except the almighty dollar indeed.
A few years back, maybe a decade, there was an eminent domain case in front of the Supreme Court out of somewhere in New England. A lower income community had been seized under eminent domain ... in order for a developer to build higher-end condos and leisure development or whatever. Profit being seen as a greater public good than places for normal people to live.
Did you read Grace Olmstead's "Uprooted"? It's on my pile. I haven't read it yet but heard a good interview with her a while back. It's mostly placed in Emmett, Idaho, where she's from, and sounds like she goes straight for a lot of the issues you're talking about here. Also Ryanne Pilgeram's "Pushed Out," which is about gentrification in Dover, Idaho.
I have not read Olmstead's book. It sounds like a good one. While I don't live all that far from Emmett, I haven't been out there in quite a few years. I hear from a friend that it has lost much of it's old character, the character that gave Emmett it's traditional charm, and is becoming yet another gentrified boutique community for (mostly) transplanted Californians with inflated equities and bloated retirement accounts . It is tragic the way money ruins everything in its path, under the guise of "the good life."
I get the impression that that’s what she was writing about quite a bit, the gentrification that happened fast and changed things drastically, and the issue of rural gentrification in general. I’ve never been there but I can imagine some of what it’s like.
Money is a curse for all of us, in a way, isn’t it?
This is WILD 🤯
Truth is stranger than fiction can be true in the hardest ways, right?!
While I’m all about historical perspectives, it is important not to lose sight that the future is created from the present moment.
Natural Asset Companies (NACs), which would buy up land rights throughout America.
Blackrock wants to CONTROL the national parks and all the public assets in the BLM.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/state-ags-blast-biden-wall-street-plan-to-sell-rights-to-americas-public-lands-5562665?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge&src_src=partner&src_cmp=ZeroHedge
Very true about the future, and public lands. That's part of why I do this work, but the bulk of it is to show how deep and ancient these roots run. Even 500 years isn't a very long timeframe for hoarding of power and resources.
Terrific work and a reminder that events of 500 years ago still matter today
Thank you!
We're wussies! Although we deal with the occasional hurricane 😜
It's been unusually rainy. 60s-70s we whine if we don't get sun after 48 hours. I hear Catherine Hepburn's voice in my head saying something like, " it's positively dreary" my Dad's in Estes Park so he'll get it as well!
Take good care 🌻💪
Haha, if you want to see someone who can't take the weather, try getting me in humidity! Even in the 50s, if it's humid I just wilt. Lame!
It got down to -50s last night, and was -31 at 8 this morning (-40-something with wind chill but it wasn't breezy today). The dog's not thrilled to go out, but for a few hours in the middle of the day the sun was shining and as long as we were careful about frostbite it was SO beautiful.
I'm assuming the pooch wears booties?
In this weather, yes! (I forgot — you’re a vet, yes? Thanks for looking out for her! The cold didn’t seem to bother her today but yesterday she was not loving it.)
I hope to get a treat to see a photo of that midday splendor. I can't fathom those temperatures.
. I lived in Manhattan for 1 year. was it pretty cold one?
And it hurt my eyeballs. Nobody likes the humidity.Of course, I'm Acclamated to pretty much everything here in the tropics. Warming planet is noticeable Even amongst the locals🤮
Unfortunately, the cold doesn’t come through in the photos, though I took some audio of me cross-country skiing around the road and yard today. I could personally hear how dry the snow was, but I’ll have to see if it comes through. Pretty day!
Sadly, amongst most locals here climate change is still “not a real thing” or “a plot from the UN to take over our land” (truly) or “I don’t think that caused [drought/low lake levels/extreme weather patterns/megafires/take your pick.” We do what we can.
Sadly indeed! What a phenomenon this barrage of misinformation and lack of critical thinking
Just saw "Killers of the Flower Moon," and I like your essay better!
I guess now that there's nothing more to discover on this earth (especially with GPS), the Doctrine of Discovery has been updated to mean: The Doctrine of Whatever Already Happened.
Thanks, I think! I haven't seen it yet but have heard nothing but great things, especially about Lily Gladstone.
I guess in a way it has but I think about it a lot when people ask when "we're" going to colonize space. What the implications of that perspective are, even if we don't find life that we understand elsewhere.
Oh, the film was fine; I'm being tongue-in-cheek. Even if I do get lots more insight into colonialism from your posts than a 3-hour Hollywood movie. And yes, Lily Gladstone is a presence. It was sort of funny to see De Niro doing his vintage De Niro thing in that Oklahoma setting. Maybe you can give a review eventually.
That's a good point about space. I don't really believe we'll ever be in a position to colonize anything beyond Earth, but you're right, it's important to wrestle with that regardless.
I am inclined to agree with you. It's been an interesting dream for decades, but if we manage to build a common future on this planet, it'll mean letting go of a lot of that kind of thing; and if we can't, well, it's not going to happen anyway!
I'm no movie critic! My taste tends toward Lord of the Rings and The Lego Movie. ;) That said, this is probably the only review of Killers of the Flower Moon I want to read: https://chrislatray.substack.com/p/denies-and-silences
Nia I am so glad you reposted this essay. It’s rightly aligned with my current research of what happened in the Nilgiris with british ‘discovery’ of the region. I was learning the concept of ‘terraforming’ in context of colonisation of America and how it often involves the concept of subjugation and cleansing of the land of its ethnicities rather than just discovering and occupying. ‘discovery of land was equivalent to ownership of it’ this hit me like a bus in terms of understanding what I might be missing in my research. Although Indian territories and Americas are two very different places that underwent the waves of colonialism, I cannot help but see deeply entrenched mechanisms that are controlling the way land was owned by force.
I thought of you and your essay on Britain’s theft of India’s wealth a lot while rewriting this, Swarna! (I plan on referencing that one when I repost the piece on the British East India Company.) I’d forgotten about the concept of terraforming in colonisation, but have heard it before somewhere. On a podcast maybe. Now I wish I could remember where because it’s SO important to understand it that way.
There was a presenter from India on that webinar about the international implications of the Doctrine of Discovery. One of the slides of his I screenshot had something like “pre-occupation, the people owned the land. After independence, the state owned the land AND the people.”
He has a paper about the Doctrine in North India. I only skimmed it and it might be relevant (though it looks like a different region). I’ll email it to you. <3
I read about it in The Nutmeg’s curse recently. Gosh was referring to how shocking the concept came off as when HG wells used in his War of the Worlds because he juxtaposed the concept of colonising anglo centric metropolitan cities by aliens in the same way the Europeans did the rest of the world.
I have no clue of the doctrines in north India, I am really excited to read what you send. Thank you 💜. Also yes the pre occupation land ownership was also skewed due the ‘zamindari (landlords) system’. It was whole another messed up class system pre existing but obviously hugely encouraged by the British because they profited from the tax of the zamindars. This class mirrored the regency era landed gentry class lifestyle- totally evil.
That book is so invaluable, isn't it? And it's amazing how so many people of a colonial mindset (or what I've heard many now call "moderns") can't see that if aliens came to Earth and did what was done to so much of the world, they'd be furious and outraged and all sorts of things, and yet are somehow surprised that there is so much lasting grief and real, tangible damage from the invasions and genocides and thefts that actually happened.
I don't think I'd read about zamindars before, but that makes so much sense. From what little I've read, wherever colonial powers landed, they first worked to co-opt already-existing class and oppression structures. (Was that in Nutmeg's Curse? I can't quite remember but it rings a bell.)
Maybe that’s there too but I am a snail reader and haven’t came across it yet. Plus my brain keep getting in the way by making all these connections and correlations and I keep taking notes and that slows me down even more.
I can really see why colonialists would want to incentivise the already established oppressive systems. Just look at it from their perspective even if the perspective is inevitably crooked, wouldn’t it be convenient to leverage the already skewed oppressive ideologies set in place to isolate a certain demographic of people who are already downtrodden and then manipulate them by appointing them to work for you?
I am not sure if the concept of divide-and-rule was ever applied outside of the colonial India but such were the British strategies. It was used to inflate the necessity of absolute British domination by stirring constant conflicts between different religious groups, which later led the subcontinent into massive religious riots. These tactics are still being manipulated by political leaders to create vote banks. It has proven to be one of the most evil thought experiment implemented in political context till date.
That's the best way to read! Slow, making connections ... like living, I guess.
I think there were adjacent if not similar tactics used here in the pre-U.S. The British and French and Spanish empires worked through treaties with various Native American Nations, since there were a lot of earlier pre-existing conflicts for them to leverage for their own empires' benefits. But the tactics in India seem almost worse, if anything can be compared from those centuries.
Sometimes it's hard to see a way out of all these dynamics, but it's good to know there are plenty of candles in the darkness ...
Gosh’s work is incredibly intense. It is almost like reading a book of revelations. It does demand a lot of attention because it is so dense with information. Thank you so much for suggesting this, I love how I am able to think with his help!
Totally, the tactics were widely varying with the Native American nations and what they used in colonies like India or Indonesia. The Europeans were really good at devising specific treaties of dominions, custom made for the particular set of people they are dealing with depending on how savage they think that particular group is. It is not difficult to look back and notice that they almost always treated the royal families with exception. They somehow thought they were at a different level compared to the civilians. It’s all just so infuriating!
It might be a hard way out of these pre existing models of oppressions that today manifest as racism, political polarities, privatisation and many other issues that we face as countries and world as a whole - but we will continue to march with our flickering candles of hope, of dreams of a better Earth.
Antonia, I am so impressed with the work you do. Thank you for this important information and for your passion on this subject.
Thank you so much for being here, and for engaging with these subjects, Holly. 🧡
I audibly gasped at the part about RBG 😣 you are so knowledgeable and I appreciate all that I’m learning from you & look forward to your book! Going to watch that Ted talk too!
I just read too much. 😂
The TED talk is well worth it.
lol. I read a lot too, but you have a gift for really comprehending large quantities and making your own thoughtful connections 👏🏽👏🏽
True that, Lindsey!
That is so, so kind, Lindsey. Thank you. 💗
https://landreport.com/land-report-100
Cheers! (sarcasm intended)
Wow. 😮
Way to make a dire subject worse! So frustrating. “ The Land Report is the established voice of this uniquely American asset class.” I can’t even.
I knew what your reaction would be, but I just couldn't help myself. 👺
😈😅