this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Probably the early invasion and control of america was not settler colonialism as we define it today?
That's basically correct: it was a domineering and extractive colonialism that revolved around forced indigenous labor to produce raw resources (or whatever you want to call gold and silver) for export, rather than the systematic ethnic cleansing of a region* to provide settlers with land. The earliest colonies were basically just there to exert hegemony and facilitate resource extraction, and it's the subsequent British colonies along the east coast that began to follow the settler colony model.
* Note that they were still genocidal projects, it's just that was more about forced labor and establishing hegemony than the sort of land-clearing and replacement with settlers that settler colonialism calls for.
Marx referred to gold/silver in his time and going back to the "new world" conquest as both a commodity and money. I think the reasoning goes that any commodity could be used as money, and it just so happened that silver (and gold) were rare enough and also considered valuable enough to adopt that role. I only remember this because that chapter (3 I think) is apparently very disliked by readers of Capital, but I enjoyed it for the historical background. He talks about the astronomical inflation in Spain mostly but also all of Europe due to the massive amounts of silver and gold being extracted from new mines in South America.
I think I'm gonna give that chapter a reread now that my curiosity is sparked.
Yes. What’s fascinating is that Spain and Portugal didn’t even have a form of early capitalism in place like they had in England, Holland, or maybe the Italian city-states. So instead of using that gold and silver to develop the productive forces, the Iberian kingdoms built massive armies, navies, cathedrals, commissioned art, and otherwise just blew it all while other parts of Europe were happy to take their gold and silver and use it productively.
This whole thread is such dogshit lol, "ACTUALLY a caterpillar and a butterfly are totally different species, you need education to stop being so confused'
There is a pretty big difference between "a horribly destructive warlord sets up shop in a fortified port city and terrorizes the region for tribute while operating slave mines and plantations, and develops the concept of racism to excuse their behavior to the Pope" and "wave after wave of settlers land and systematically drive off or kill everyone in the region and then repeat this over and over until they've conquered and ethnically cleansed the entire continent explicitly in the name of racism," if only in understanding who was doing what and what the results were.
Like you can look at this happening right now: how different the conditions are between subjugated periphery states that are exploited for resources and brutally kept under the imperial hegemon's thumb, vs the active ethnic cleansing and landgrabs in occupied Palestine.