Decolonize: But only Sometimes
A Broader View Of World History Puts Oppression In Perspective
This article is written anonymously by a Canadian teacher.
Decolonize we are told. “Burn it all down” Tweeted Harsha Walia to the fawning approval of thousands. Adherents of Marxist Critical Race Theory are taking aim at the history and institutions of Western civilization. Institutions such as: democracy, rule of law, constitutional rights and scientific inquiry are so “racist” as to be irredeemable. Their proof? Always- inequality, with a single causal reason: racism. Conveniently, they reject any serious multivariate analysis. What would they have these institutions replaced with once “burned down” is never spoken aloud.
The edifice of western civilization is decaying, not because the structure is rotten, but through neglect. The columns forged centuries ago still hold- if some have forgotten to appreciate “home”. It is not the bones of the old house that are rotten; it is that some of its inhabitants now scorn the roof under which they peacefully slumber. And while those inside are too tired or fearful of condemnation to say anything good about Her, zealots work to pull the temple down. “Burn it down” they say, and if they are phased when “metaphor” intersects the very real arson of churches, they are unapologetic.
Western civilization is rotten they say. Built on slavery, colonialism, conquest, racism and violence. Why these same sins are ignored in the case of all other civilizations none seem willing to answer. However, the fact that far left zealots choose myopathy, does not require we do.
Slavery:
“The landscapes of slavery span the world…” writes J. Black in Slavery: A New Global History. For thousands of years, slavery was a terrible feature of most civilizations: China, India, Africa, North and South America, Europe and the Middle East. It took many forms from: agrarian, galleys, mines, soldiers, households and concubines. As Black writes the concept of “otherness” was important in justifying man’s inhumanity to his fellow. Islam prohibited the enslavement of fellow Muslims, and by the 12th century, slavery in Europe declined because of “Christian opposition to the enslavement of fellow Christians. [i][1] But the “other” remained. For two centuries, Baghdad became the centre of a slave network which drew enslaved people from: Africa, Central Asia and Europe.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade altered the demography of both the Americas and West Africa- and claimed in the range of 18 million lives. That Africa suffered disproportionately from an evil practiced the world over is indisputable, but why has the East African Slave, conducted by Arab slavers, received little mention from the proponents of Critical Race Theory. According to some estimates, the Mideast Slave trade conducted from the 7th to 19th century resulted in the loss of 19 million lives. [2]
The radical left wants people to believe colonialism, conquest and slavery were unique to the West. When confronted with evidence to the contrary, they [Nichole Hannah Jones and others] fall back on the claim that the East African Slave Trade was somehow not as bad. That it was perpetrated against those who were usually non-Muslim is obvious, but the claim that it was somehow less vile wreaks of double standard.
The East African Slave Trade valued females more highly than men because females were used as sex-slaves in harems as opposed to the Atlantic Slave trade being more based on forced agrarian labor. Both these systems used race to create “otherness”. African males were not only castrated as part of the East African Slave Trade; the survival rate was chillingly low. In Fortunes of Africa, Meredith writes: “as many as nine out of every ten boys did not survive the operation.”[3] The argument that the East African Slave Trade was not raced-based flies in the face of Istanbul Slave Markets which did in fact build race into “price”.
Colonialism:
The colonization of North and South America was a calamity for Indigenous people living on both continents. The fact that Europeans came to stake out territory and build lives in foreign territory, often through conquest, is well known. Today, UN convention prohibits the seizure of territory through conquest and the building of settlements. However, prior to WWII this was how many of the world’s largest civilizations thought. The invasion of neighboring countries and colonization of territories includes: Egypt, Persia, Greek, Roman, Turk, Mongol, Mughal, Arab, English, French to name only a few.
The Arab Colonization of the Maghreb
The subjugation and settlement of the Americas is commonly discussed in classrooms, but a wider context is seldom discussed, leaving children easy targets for anti-western ideology.
In 639AD, Arab armies invaded Egypt ending Greek/Roman rule. A little more than a decade later they sought to extend their dominion into Christian Nubia or present day North Sudan. Their failure to subjugate the Sudan resulted in the Baqt which began the slave trade and formalized the terms of the peace. The Baqt, which lasted 600 years, stipulated that 360 slaves of good health be delivered to the new Arab rulers each year. [4]
In the seventy years which followed, Arab armies conquered and began the permanent colonization of North Africa. The Berber population rapidly adopted Islam “as ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀs required that the defeated pay the tax imposed on non-Muslims (jizya) by selling their sons and daughters.” [5] So to avoid the tax and receive more equal treatment, the Berber population was rapidly assimilated into the culture of the colonists. Despite their adoption of Islam, the Berber population continued to be looked down upon and this resulted in the Berber rebellion which saw hundreds of thousands of their fellows enslaved.
The Fall of Constantinople
The Turkic people are thought to have migrated out of Western Mongolia. “In the 11th century, Turks began appearing at the edges of Asia Minor (Anatolia), which was then controlled by the Greeks.”[6] In 1451, Mehmet II succeeded his father and immediately set about the conquest of Constantinople. For years, waning Byzantine power had seen it recede into the great walls of its capital while the Turks encroached deeper into Anatolia. Though the siege of the city lasted 53 days, the preparations for the attack took more than a year. When the ancient city fell on May 29th of 1453, atrocities abounded. “The women of Constantinople suffered from rape at the hands of Ottoman forces.” According to historian Philip Mansel, widespread persecution of the city's civilian inhabitants took place, resulting in thousands of murders and rapes. The vast majority of the citizens of Constantinople (30,000-50,000) were forced to become slaves.” Religious desecration was widespread and rapes were carried out in Hagia Sophia the holiest site in the dying empire. [7]
Like the colonization of North Africa and the Americas the colonization of Anatolia by the Turks was to be lasting. The city was renamed, much of the population sold into slavery and the Hagia Sophia converted into a mosque. In 1917, approximately 1.5 million Christian Armenians were massacred in what was to be the first genocide of the 20th century.
Now, let me be clear that my intent is not to employ history for the purposes of division. Much to the contrary, it is my hope that through a broader understanding of world history we are able to see through the lie being peddled by Critical Race theorists that war, colonization and slavery were unique to the West. They were not. We must see “our” failings not within the context of race, but within the context of a flawed human species. Critical theory derives from a Marxist view of people engaged in a grasping struggle for power. They seek to create the very division they condemn. We are better than that. Beware of those who seek division and their own easy virtue. It is with good reason they never explain what comes after; if indeed we sit idle while they light the match.
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This post was written by an anonymous supporter (a Canadian teacher) of Woke Watch Canada. Also from this author - Don’t Let The Woke Re-Write History and The West Has Entered Its Own Cultural Revolution and Who Controls the Past?
[1] J.Black, Slavery: A New Global History (Great Britain: Robinson, 2011), p. 35
[2] S.Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), p. 195
[3] M. Meredith, The Fortunes of Africa (New York: Simon and Shuster,2014), p.78
[4] M. Meredith, The Fortunes of Africa (New York: Simon and Shuster,2014), p.65
[5] R. Rouighi, “The Berbers of the Arabs”.
[6] A. Pillalamarri, “The Epic Story of How the Turks Migrated From Central Asia to Turkey” (The Diplomat: 2016)
[7] Wikipedia contributors, "Fall of Constantinople," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, (accessed July 14, 2022).
Slavery was not finally stopped in Turkey until well after the fall of the Ottomans, in 1924. In Persia, which in the same period became Iran, slavery was not abolished until 1929.
The Woke slavery meme is basically a lazy fraud pulled on gullibles who simply do not understand that until the industrial revolution, it was a normal practice in most parts of the world and needs to be put into some kind of comparative framework against industrial working and living conditions in the emerging industrial cities in the first 30-40 years of the nineteenth century
More, Western African states were completely hooked on the slave trade. The African rulers were in effect a slave mafia who used their own security forces to raid their neighbors for slaves to meet contract requirements....and would take their own if there weren't enough people caught up in the external dragnets. It was the European imperialists that finally and permanently shut down the trade by putting its main African beneficiaries out of business and introducing the rule of law and the fundamentals of habeas corpus.
https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2073158-Racial-Hystericism-Rewritten
No one can define the specifics of "decolonialization." The dictionary definition says "to withdraw from a colony, leaving it independent." Obviously, the new meaning is different, but what is it exactly? At a recent conference I attended, an indigenous speaker told everyone "colonization does not work for us." He didn't say exactly why, but mentioned under colonization there was limited access to "our traditional medicines, our language, and our traditional ways of life." "When we walk the city streets, we feel we do not belong," he said. He spoke through an electronic microphone.