我們需要重新評價殖民主義: European Colonialism Reconsidered.

this is the sort of video that I would
love to do with Chinese subtitles Chinese translation to be bilingual to some extent there are a couple of topics I like to make videos on right now that I'd love to do bilingual Chinese in English and I do not have time I'm really busy right now preparing for the next chapter of my life in various ways a lot of our time and energy is going to travel and making plans to the future um but the Chinese language takes absolutely as much time as I have to to give it it will absorb every minute in every hour I can dedicate to it I'm both studying Chinese myself as a student and I'm really engaged in being a teacher for my girlfriend learning Chinese and teaching her Chinese from level one and working up it's really good for me also both in reviewing the fundamentals of the language and it also is an opportunity for me to relearn written Chinese to some extent relearning spoken Chinese with special reference to Taiwan because the writing system for Taiwan is significantly different and some of the vocabulary for Taiwan is significantly different so I am in many ways having to relearn the basics in Chinese myself and three hours can go by in the blink of an eye study girl learning Chinese but the issue I want to address here even if only 10 15 20 Chinese people were to see this video I really would like to reach out to a Chinese audience and address it for the following reason I had a professor at University of Victoria I still know him I still chat with him a little bit my girlfriend I he's the guy we met in the restaurant we were actually in a Chinese restaurant he was there with his wife and I made fun of him I said no you're a professor in the Department of Japanese studies but here you are secretly at a at a vegan Chinese restaurant ah anyway so he and I get along back when he and I were first getting to know each other he had a particular presentation in class a particular lesson and so he's a specialist in Japan but this lesson was on the political history of China and he was presenting the history of China's interactions with Europe purely in terms of colonialism and the humiliation that China endured at the hands of European colonial powers during a period of I don't know about three centuries I guess all told and of course he was I mean he is not a communist he's not consciously performing or presenting communist propaganda but really the version of history is presenting it very much is the Communist Party of China's version of of China's history where this is a dramatic tale of humiliation and then national Redemption and this is symbolized and demonstrated with the British opium war the idea that England was humiliating and breaking the power of China that China became a nation of opium addicts and then they overcame the drug addiction and overcame the British Empire and kicked out the Europeans and they were you know we're degenerated morally regenerated nationally regenerated by this by the experience he this professor and I we really did get along well enough that I could interrupt him a little bit in class so I just say that's very unusual where you're not putting up your hand but you're having a little bit of banter having a little bit of back and forth with the professor and while he was telling this tale I just pointed out to him at several key points the contrast between the national experience of China and the experience of India and then the experience of quote-unquote Indians here in Canada so again this is not Socratic method but it's I don't know it's it's similar to the ideals of Socratic method in that I was being provocative and challenging to his assumptions so he would mention a a quote-unquote humiliating treaty that was signed between the emperor of China and one Western power or another there were several of these these treaties the British are normally shown as the villains but of course they were not the only European power that we're not the only Western power involve the United States also gets involved eventually in the kind of colonial enterprises in China and I just asked him in what language was that treaty it wasn't Chinese right the native people here in Canada here in British Columbia they didn't have treaties written in their language did they and it really struck him this kind of thing being pointed out um you know I was challenging the notion that China had suffered exceptionally that they've been treated exceptionally poorly that they'd been humiliated by European colonialism and I was pointing out the extent to which they were actually treated with extraordinary respect and distinction compared to native people in Africa native people in Australia native people here in Canada or even the native population of of India and that would point out again at these various points of so-called humiliation and redemption you know history of China and you know again he not folding but he was really using these loaded terms like humiliation repeatedly and I'd say yes but they did meet with the Emperor they did recognize him as you know the sovereign authority in China right they recognized him as the legitimate government government of China in this so-called humiliating set of negotiations you know right of course this is true the British is true the French again it's not any one colonial power the Germans Believe It or Not also then with various colonial powers that came over to this and I asked them in this period of time in the same year is there anyone that they recognize as the Emperor of India is there anyone that they recognize as the Emperor of any part of Africa South America the Caribbean Ontario British Columbia none of none of these people did they recognize as having a sovereign leader as Havering as having sovereignty as having the right to exist permanently in their own territory now I raised this for a number of reasons the most immediate being that somebody said me a comment I get comments like this from time to time sometimes very hostile sometimes I don't know a little bit more value neutral but I received a comment not for the first time demanding to know what is the alternative to genocide that I'm proposing or supposing am i imagining a parallel universe in which native people of North America just developed their own civilization with no contact from Europeans with no predation from Europeans but no no war or what have you or the Cree in each giveaway I just went on to kind of build their own cities and develop their own technology or what have you now I do think it's worthwhile to point out in a sense how impossible that is that if Christopher Columbus had not come to North America somebody else would have soon enough whether they arrived from the east of the West so to speak whether they arrived from Spain or from England or from France somebody would have initiated shall we say the cultural exchange between these these continents on an ever intensifying scale it's true that would have happened and you can say the same about the colonial experience in China Africa and elsewhere but this still leaves open many important questions the discourse about China tends to present the British annexation of Hong Kong as tremendously humiliating to China's natural national pride sovereignty etc that this small island that was of no importance before the British took it over by the way by the way it wasn't an urban center or something that they built this tremendous urban center there but it was a nearly empty island with a few fishermen's villages on it and so on I have by the way have formally studied that history back when I lived in Hong Kong and I've also visited the museums that tell the history but it wasn't completely uninhabited but it was a place of no importance and there's an interesting history for why that is but was basically a barren island of no importance that the British were given in this in this trade agreement to become British sovereign territory for a limited number of years and this is presented as a terrible humiliation and blah to the people of China the the people of Hong Kong were Chinese they continued speaking Chinese languages Chinese people ethnically and speaking various indigenous languages continued to be the majority population of Hong Kong they continued to have road signs in Chinese and schools in Chinese and police stations where the police spoke Chinese even though in theory English was the the sovereign language and the laws and so on of the governor there was a level of government there was a level of governance that was conducted in in English and ultimately Hong Kong was under under British sovereignty do you know anywhere anywhere in Canada do you know anywhere in the United States where where this allegedly humiliating example could could be matched in terms of the status of of indigenous people where under European colonialism you know an island like Manhattan continued to be majority indigenous people speaking an indigenous language while trading with in dealing with you know Europeans as as sovereigns Europeans as an entrepeneur engaged in in trade and so on so the most humiliating the the low mark for how badly China was treated by European colonialism is better it's infinitely better than the way indigenous people were treated in Canada Australia South America the Caribbean etc and indefinitely most of Africa admit Africa is a bit of a mixed bag in terms the history colonialism but so there are there are some relatively positive and an astoundingly negative examples of how you know European colonists treat indigenous people in the history of Africa and this of course partly just has to do with the remoteness of some parts of Africa in contrast to coasts where they were engaged in slave trading so on and so forth so is there a parallel universe in which the indigenous people of Canada had their own kings or Emperor's or representatives or government in which they continued to exist even if they were subordinated by European trading powers and empires to the same extent that the the people of China were my point being that you could you don't have to work within a set of idealized and impossible to attain examples to think of a better world in which there was a better deal for the criative way the mohawks etc etc you could actually just look at other examples of the same Empire in the same real world the British Empire was the same Empire in Canada and Quebec as it was in Hong Kong there is a parallel case to be to be begged there's a case to be thought through why couldn't the British Empire treat other nationalities of people as as badly as they treated the Chinese which we can flip around and say why couldn't they have treated them as well as they treated the Chinese even when they were treating the Chinese at the their absolute worst in a manner that the Chinese themselves look back on with resentment as as humiliation now I think I have to invert this question and briefly ask the opposite why is it today that the majority of the population of Mexico is either of European ancestry or of Missy Stowe ancestry Missy Stowe meaning partly European partly indigenous why is it that the native languages of Mexico have generally been wiped out or exist in the form of just a few lone words a few words here and they are adopted into into Spanish why is it that throughout the Caribbean native populations have either disappeared entirely or exist as just a few people with mixed ancestry still existing in islands that are otherwise dominated by descendants of European and African colonists Africans who predominantly came as slaves but it nevertheless Europeans and Africans kumuda why is this the pattern we see there and not in China why weren't Europeans why weren't colonial powers just as brutal and just as effective in wiping out China the same way they were in South America Central America North America and you know various points that map I think Australia is in other worth mentioning examples found all around the world and either totally obliterating indigenous culture or leaving behind fragments geta in amis East Oh form I think another example that would be even the Philippines the Philippines even of the people there are still you know ethnically Filipino the impact of European colonialism there it's kind of unbelievable the extent to which they lost their own language culture religion histories unbelievable it's their different different examples on a scale in terms of the the you know the impacts the genocide 'el impacts of of European colonialism I think if we're being honest and I'm now forty years old I have decades and decades of reading political history I think the truth is simply that Europeans would have done this and could have done this that Western powers could have absolutely decimated China to at least the same extent that they decimated the indigenous civilizations of Mexico that they had enough of a technological advantage they had enough numbers they had enough of a profit motive to do so believe me there was more money to be made in ransacking China than there was to be made in ransacking Mexico City when the Spanish were calling us you know first arrived in in Mexico there's absolutely no doubt that they could have been would have and I think if we're really being honest with ourselves and looking back at the history the only reason this didn't happen is due to the Geographic remoteness of China and the fact that the world was too big and exhausted these European power with other attractive places to dominate and plunder I attended an academic lecture at Cambridge University England had a really interesting and important digression so the woman is an expert in this kind of history and she just got into the demographic challenge that Portugal faced when they were sincerely trying to conquer domineer and colonize as much of India as possible and that was that Portugal did not have enough population to do this as much as they wanted to the only barrier they were carving up colonies in India and they wanted to do more and they were making a lot of money doing it and they were absolutely reliant on recruiting mercenaries from Africa they would sail down the coast of Africa and recruit as many physically large and strong African men as they could as they went down the coast and then went around the the Cape of Good Hope around Africa to get tuned in then would start PI radically conquering looting colonizing and slaving and indeed raping people with these you know they were led by they were they were portuguese you know sailors or didn't want to say they were portuguese conquistadors but employing mercenaries they recruited in africa and one of the most bizarre elements of this was of course that this is still true today to a lesser extent but at that time Africa had amazing linguistic diversity so as they went down that coast recruiting soldiers almost no two of the men would speak the same language they'd be recruiting Africans but they be Africans from different ethnic groups tribal groups different nationalities speaking very different languages so all of them would have to learn during the boat journey they'd have to learn Portuguese or a simplified pidgin version of Portuguese pidgin is a technical term meaning a simplified version of language and then those men that developed tremendous fealty tremendous esprit de corps as they engage in a life that today is kind of if you really read honest accounts of what this was like unbelievable brutality and bloodletting India South America Africa and in terms of the way trade by sea was drawn onto the lines of a map these presented such enormous opportunities for piratical colonial and genocidal attitudes on the part of Europeans I think there was absolutely no reason other than Geographic remoteness and the fact that Europe had already invested all of its excess population in the exploitation of these other frontiers that is I think the only reason there is no moral reason there is no ethical reason why China was treated as well as it was and why Chinese nationalism Chinese language and so on has endured through history as well as it has that is the incredibly somber note on which I want to end this video in Chinese people today present their history as one of exceptionalism it's a very strange fact most people talk about American exceptionalism I think there's a really deep I don't know there's a deep subject to be explored in present-day politics in terms of the attitude China has towards itself of of Chinese exceptionalism why is China an exception to the rule in terms of the incredibly bleak history of of European colonialism now why do you Chinese themselves think that they're an exception well I think that the Chinese nationalistic myth here is of the most dangerous kind because the Chinese do not recognize the extent to which they're a positive exception on the contrary they see their own history and a self-centered way as one of humiliation and victimization without ever once looking across the border to adjacent countries that are that are near by to hundreds they even have borders with countries like Myanmar obviously India China does Atlanta with India Nepal the Philippines even if they're only looking this far and no further the Chinese might have a sense of how different their experience of the last four hundred years of history is from these other and the Chinese today are utterly lacking an appreciation of how their own their own history is different from North America the indigenous people of North America the indigenous people of South America and of course the people of Africa these are largely people whom they regard through a veil of extremely harsh racism dehumanization and judgement they don't think that their own history is comparable of those peoples history in any way I can say that the peoples of the world learn a great great deal by paying close attention to the history of China and that China is learning nothing by ignoring the histories of these other people around the world I just mentioned I hope I will do YouTube videos bullets in future I'm currently reading an official Chinese government textbook that's supposedly assigned reading for everyone in China everyone who goes on to universities so the higher level high school students apparently everyone is given this textbook by the government showing us the official version of world history as taught to Chinese students I hope I can have some some comments on that but I'd say also I knew face-to-face one Chinese woman she was a bit a bit erudite have been interested in in history and politics interesting character and she moved from China to Africa and you know it's a real credit to her that she really took the time to speak to local African people and learned their perspective on history as a credit to those African people that they took her aside and told them because she was a Chinese woman married to a white man and they really explained to her that they don't hate her the way that they hate her husband and they really share with her their tremendous sense of hatred and resentment for how they'd suffered under European colonialism and how incredibly negatively they regarded white people in their country in Africa today this is you know current ongoing history regardless of why they were there that even if they were there on legitimate business today whatever the reasons were being in the country the intense legacy of that historical experience and they let her know that they don't regard her that way that they don't blame China they don't blame the Chinese people for that experience and I can say I mean it's an understatement that was an eye-opening experience for her because the people of China today raised as they are with a nationalistic myth that really does present China as the center of the world's history and presents China as the ultimate victim of European colonialism they are giving no thought to the African experience North American experience South America knows they are giving no thought to the rest of the world's perspective on this at all and so inevitably there's no thought given to an objective perspective on this experience at all