Was it morally justified to colonise America?

[AlNg]

Evangelizing with the sword can never be justified. And the Americas were indeed evangelized with the sword. Making piles of money were, as far as I know, the primary reason to go there.

It is wrong to conquer, to enslave, to make war, to subjugate.

I don’t see how a person could make a salient argument that it was morally justified. It was not. The territory was taken at the end of a barrel or through the crafty guile of treaties.

Effectively whole nations used Jesus as a thin cover for plunder, murder, slavery … we should be offended more than anyone that such a thing ever happened in our Lord’s name.

I agree that of course, murder, plunder, robbery, slavery and torture of the American Indian and his land was immoral and unjustified. If the European wanted to settle in America, they should have worked out a peaceful agreement and treaty with the people who were here instead of murdering them, robbing them and enslaving them. i remember the Ten Commandments:
Thou shalt not kill.
Thou shalt not steal.
And once you have stolen something which does not belong to you, there is an obligation to return what is not yours and what was not yours.

 

[AlNg]

What was the alternative to colonization?

Peaceful agreements with the natives.

 

[JimG]

Agreements for settlements? That did happen in some cases. But often the treaties were broken and the tribes pushed off the land anyway. When two types of societies come into contact who are at hugely divergent stages of development, the chances for disaster are nearly inevitable.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

Agreements for settlements? That did happen in some cases. But often the treaties were broken and the tribes pushed off the land anyway. When two types of societies come into contact who are at hugely divergent stages of development, the chances for disaster are nearly inevitable.

Then colonising isn’t a good option.

 

[AlNg]

Agreements for settlements?

I favor peaceful, fair and respectful resolution of problems.

 

[tafan2]

Where are human sacrifices condoned in the Bible?

 

[Pat_Albertson]

Did they even know what they were doing? Did Columbus know that he had found new continents, or did he die thinking he had attempted to find a route to India that didn’t involve traversing the Middle East and that he had been successful?

Did the people of the bronze age know that they were people of the bronze age? Did the people of the middle ages know that they were in the middle ages? Did stone age people know they were in the stone age?

People caught up in the great currents of the ages were not in the same position as, say, somebody today pulling down a statue. It was not obvious to anybody back then that one would be committing some sort of crime by boarding a ship in Europe in the same way that it ought to be obvious to an iconoclast in the present that destruction of public property is wrong.

Even now, when they ought to know better because they can fully see all the elements of the situation and refrain from their reckless and dangerous activities, the iconoclasts still fail to grasp fully what they are doing, or did those statue pullers pull down that confederate statue on that guy’s head on purpose?

 

[VonDerTann]

So Europeans were supposed to have “peaceful agreements” with the natives?

The same natives who kidnapped St.
Isaac Jogues and his compatriots; gnawed their thumbs off; pulled their arm tendons out through their wrists; then later gave them tomahawk chops to the back of their heads?

One can’t have “peaceful agreements” with natives like that. And that was who the natives were - not the noble peace-lovers they are today falsely depicted as being.

PS they gnawed off Isaac Jogues’ thumbs as a deliberate affront to his ability to hold the Eucharist with his hands. Nope, I’m not apologizing to those folks’ descendants; I’m not paying reparations; and I’m not going to apologize either.

 

[whatistrue]

Granted. However, my statement was in reference to the motives of the human authorities who ordered the execution. I may be off base, but my take on it is that God took advantage of what people were going to do for His own purposes, but that particular death was not intended as a religious ritual by the people who wanted it to happen.

 

[petra22]

And why are we judging what happened all those years ago? Should my dad have married my mom. Hypothetical–their 6 children were all born with handicaps-- You can judge yes or no but the fact is they did marry and their children are here… Now, has anything good come from that? One is a doctor. One is a preacher, one is a shop owner, one is a mother and grandmother to 6 children and 15 grandchildren… you get the picture…

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

One can’t have “peaceful agreements” with natives like that. And that was who the natives were - not the noble peace-lovers they are today falsely depicted as being.

There were different types of tribes and not all were aggressive. But even so, there were many evils that were mixed with the good that colonisation caused.

 

[phil19034]

I argue that it was morally neutral.

Colonizing, in itself is morally neutral. Engaging in an unjust war is immoral. There are ways to colonize without conquering people.

In regards to the Americas: were their sins committed by the Europeans? Yes. Were their motives pure & honest? Some yes (or kind of) & others were purely motivated by greed.

The colonization of the Americas was complex & nuanced. While the colonization of Africa & Asia was very different. The BAD THINGS learned from the colonization of the Americas were used to colonize Africa & Asia.

But in the lands that became the EASTERN United States & Canada was sparsely populated. There was room for both Europeans and indigenous settlements. (What happened during the 1800s in the United States is a different discussion.)

In Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, & South America; things were very complicated too. Some people were there & motivated totally by greed. Others were appalled by the human sacrifice that was taking place, which convinced good Catholics (including good clergy) to go to war with the indigenous kingdoms that existed. In other places, indigenous peoples asked the Spanish support them in civil war to over through their cruel kingdoms (esp the ones that practiced human sacrifice).

To say that the Europeans were innocent is totally false.
But to say that the indigenous peoples (esp in Mexico, Central & South America) were all peace loving, innocent pacifists is totally false too.

The indigenous peoples of the Americas (eps in Mexico, Central & South America) were at one time were highly advanced civilizations. But corruption had caused their great civilizations to weekend & become even more corrupt. In many instances, the Europeans were seen as emancipators by the average indigenous person who feared their indigenous rulers.

The Spanish & Portuguese also witnessed the many people dying from illnesses, which continued to through the indigenous empires into turmoil.

My point… the colonization of the America was FAR more nuanced than the colonization of Asia & Africa.

Summary: did some people sin - 100% yes. But were many acting in good faith, 100% yes. Things were far more nuanced than people think and for people to call St. Junipero Serra a butcher, racist, etc is horrible.

 

[commenter]

In my city and suburbs there is a single tribe. There is much written and taught about how they were pushed off part of the area by White settlers.

But this tribe was not the original settlers here. It was settled by one tribe, which later was pushed totally out of the area by the second tribe. Then that second tribe was later exterminated by the third tribe, which still is here.

The third tribe has been unfairly by the fourth “tribe” (Europeans). They received compensation when land was taken, but still that is not the same thing as justice.

But how much compensation did the earlier tribes get? In any event, they have been citizens for the past century, able to live on the reservation or anywhere else in the area.

It’s hard to determine a path of justice for current peoples. Unfortunately what our area has done is build casinos in which a few Native Americans get fabulously rich, mist benefit little, and people of all races gamble money many can’t afford to.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

I’m not talking about reparations.

 

[AlNg]

The colonization of the Americas was complex & nuanced.

There is a book that came out recently:

Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas​

by Jeffrey Ostler

Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas|Hardcover

The first part of a sweeping two-volume history of the devastation brought to bear on Indian nations by U.S. expansion “An elegant, organized narrative of the United States’ dispossession of Native lands east of the Mississippi. . . . A remarkable book in its...

www.barnesandnoble.com

The author recounts the unrelenting tragedies and continuous bloody campaign of brutal conquest against the American Indian. In 1492 there were anywhere from 12 to 15 million Indians, whereas by 1900 there were 237,000 left alive. Thomas Jefferson called for “their extermination, or their removal beyond the lakes or illinois river.” A British colonel is quoted as urging to use “every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race.” IOW, the Europeans conducted a merciless bloody crusade to eliminate the American Indian from their native land. The book goes into meticulous detail about this tragic episode of American history.

 

[phil19034]

phil19034:

The colonization of the Americas was complex & nuanced.

There is a book that came out recently:

Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas​

by Jeffrey Ostler
Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas by Jeffrey Ostler, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble®
The author recounts the unrelenting tragedies and continuous bloody campaign of brutal conquest against the American Indian. In 1492 there were anywhere from 12 to 15 million Indians, whereas by 1900 there were 237,000 left alive. Thomas Jefferson called for “their extermination, or their removal beyond the lakes or illinois river.” A British colonel is quoted as urging to use “every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race.” IOW, the Europeans conducted a merciless bloody crusade to eliminate the American Indian from their native land. The book goes into meticulous detail about this tragic episode of American history.

FYI - My post was mostly about the Spanish, not the British & the United States.

 

[commenter]

In 1492 there were anywhere from 12 to 15 million Indians, whereas by 1900 there were 237,000 left alive.

I suppose the 1900 census data is somewhat more exact than the 1492 stats

 

[AlNg]

I suppose the 1900 census data is somewhat more exact than the 1492 stats

True. The book gives 12 to 15 million as an estimate of the American Indian population in 1492. Other books vary. For example, In the book:
The Native Population of the Americas in 1492
Second Revised Edition
Edited by William M. Denevan
March 1992
ISBN 978-0-299-13434-1
386 pp. 6 x 9
29 illus., 7 maps.
William M. Denevan writes that, “The discovery of America was followed by possibly the greatest demographic disaster in the history of the world.” Research by some scholars provides population estimates of the pre-contact Americas to be as high as 112 million in 1492, while others estimate the population to have been as low as eight million.

 

[tuffsmurf]

Are those numbers only within present day United States or for the entirety of the continents? Today there are som 70 million native americans in North and South America combined, so there were for sure a lot more than 237 000 in 1900.

 

[AlNg]

Are those numbers only within present day United States or for the entirety of the continents? Today there are som 70 million native americans in North and South America combined, so there were for sure a lot more than 237 000 in 1900.

As you point out, it looks like it is for the US only. By combining all published estimates from populations throughout the Americas , we find a probable Indigenous population of 60 million in 1492 . According to the US Census Bureau, the current total population of Native Americans in the United States is 6.79 million, which is about 2.09% of the entire population. The 1890 United States Census formally enumerated all of the Indians of the country. According to the US Census, there were a total of 248,253 Indians in the United States : 58,806 are “ Indians taxed” (that is living off their reservations) and 189,447 are “ Indians not taxed” ( Indians on reservations).