Reading a Quillette piece about the horror of “settler colonialism,” as in North America and Israel, got me to thinking.
Because I am always interested in what our lefty friends think and why.
Because if you hate “settler colonialism,” then you have to hate how the Angles (of Anglo-Saxons) colonized and settled the land the Romans had conquered as “Britain,” and then for some reason, ever after the Angle colonization, that land has been called “England” — as in “Angle-land.”
And you know that place called “Hungary?” You know, of course, that it was colon… No, wait, it was invaded and conquered by the Huns and I dare say they sent all the “indigenous” inhabitants of that land Out West. Of course, one of the indigenous peoples living there was the Goths. But they came originally from Sweden. And the Visigoths ended up in France and Spain.
And don’t get me started on Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde and the Mongolian invasion of western Asia and China and the “settler colonization” of the Ancient Rus for centuries.
And you know, of course, because you’ve watched The Last Kingdom on TV, about the Danes. Our hero Uhtred lived in a time when the Saxon kings of Wessex had a real problem with the Danes that occupied the eastern part of Saxon England, in the Daneland. I wonder where those Danes came from.
What we learn when we listen to our lefty friends and their lament about “settler colonialism” is that Year Zero for them is 1492, when Columbus headed out west for the Indies and the Portuguese Vasco da Gama headed out east to the Indies.
Indies? See, the point was not to colonize the Indies but to trade with them. Before 1492 the Europeans weren’t doing any “settler colonialism,” they were just fighting local wars with each other. In between invasions by the Huns & Mongols & Ottomans & Co.
Yes. Just what were those Ottomans doing to the First Peoples in the Fertile Crescent?
Oh, and, of course, in 1440 a German proto-Nazi, name of Gutenberg, invented the printing press. And pretty soon journalists and writers and professors and philosophers using the printing press had colonized the world. What about the victimized scribes that had earned a decent living making illuminated manuscripts down the ages?
But, you might ask, when is my Year Zero?
Good question, Senator. I would say 221BC when Qin Shi Huang founded the Qin dynasty, the culmination of the “settler colonization” of the whole of China, ending the chaos of the Warring States period in Chinese history.
Yes. The Chinese people are the first indigenous people victimized by the imperial hegemony and domination of the Qin dynasty. We demand reparations.