Revising revisionist history

Of the many casualties of the political correctness crusade that we are all subject to at Columbia, a vigorous examination of colonialism is certainly the most disturbing. The purpose of attending a university is to explore new ideas under the lens of critical thought, yet when it comes to colonialism, it seems that an intellectual gate has risen to which only the anthropology and ethnic studies departments hold the key. Rather than being objectively studied as a critical moment in human history, European colonialism has become a politicized issue—one that seemingly is used in perpetuity to blame all of the world’s problems on the West through specious logic and myopic historical analysis.

Before going any further, I want to clearly state that I am in no way attempting to justify the phenomenon of European colonialism, nor am I attempting to belittle the suffering of those people who were subjected to it. My qualm is with the contemporary arguments used against European colonialism, which I believe are more based on knee-jerk politically correct reactions than on serious academic inquiry. It is my hope that in highlighting some of the logical fallacies contained in traditional anti-colonial rhetoric, we can move towards developing more reasoned, thoughtful points of view regarding this highly complex issue.

The basic criticism of European colonialism is that it is morally wrong for one group of people to forcibly subjugate another group in order to seize control of their land and resources. The question is: how far back in history do we go in order to assess violations of this maxim? Critics of European colonialism will assert (and I will agree with them) that it was morally wrong for the Spanish to conquer the Aztec empire, because Europeans imposed their system of government on an indigenous culture with great brutality. Yet, were the Aztecs really the indigenous culture of the Yucatan Peninsula? In reality, the Mexica (the principal founders of the Aztec empire) emigrated from northern Mexico, displacing various peoples as they moved south. Eventually, they formed the Aztec Triple Alliance, and proceeded to conquer central Mexico. To make our analysis even more complex, we can question whether the people the Aztecs displaced were really indigenous to that region, and so on and so forth through the thousands of years of history since humans began occupying Central America.

Ultimately, we have to conclude that colonialism is really just a form of migration, differing from the modern conception of the latter word in that it is based on the application of force to benefit a stronger group at the expense of a weaker one. However, for most of human history this principle has governed relations between different peoples—be they Aztec, Roman, Ottoman, or Spanish, no empire ever cared about the “rights” of the people it was conquering. Thus, looking at colonialism within this larger historical framework, it becomes difficult to understand why something like the Moors’ conquest of Spain is seen in such a dispassionate historical light, whereas European expansion is considered to be a distasteful political act.

Now, your local Lucha member will probably tell you that the difference lies in the fact that the former was a historical event that happened long ago, whereas the injustices of European colonialism are still occurring today via the power structure that exists between former colonial powers and their holdings. However, this argument is insufficient, because it basically ignores all but the most recent history when assessing blame—in other words, all of the world’s problems only began after 1492. Moreover, most people who oppose colonialism do so on moral grounds, yet I have just shown that occupation and brutality are not European monopolies. I therefore find it difficult to believe that contemporary criticisms of European colonialism are actually based on morality. If they were, then left-wing activists would have to hold rallies against any act of population displacement that ever occurred in history, since an act is just as immoral whether it happened 50 or 5,000 years ago.

In reality, the problem that most groups have with colonialism is that it happened to them. That is, people are more dissatisfied with the power structures created by European colonialism than they are disturbed by the act of conquest itself. Empire building has been practiced by countless non-European peoples, many of whom eventually succumbed to Western expansion. Thus, before we single out the West for being imperialist, we have to wonder what culture wasn’t, or wouldn’t have been if it had had European technology. Although it took until the 1960s for colonialism to end, it nevertheless remains a fact that until that moment, human history had been defined by the occupation and oppression of one people by another—a dynamic that the West was a part of, but not solely responsible for.

Jon Hollander is a Columbia college junior majoring in economics. Reasonably Right runs alternate Thursdays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com