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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, James Simpson writes:
> Last semester I took a continuing ed. course on the age of British scientific
> exploration; chiefly that of the Pacific and Australia. IMO, the worst
> British atrocities in all of the Empire were committed in Australia against
> the Aborigines. The professor teaching this course made the interesting
> point that when the ideas of Social Darwinism really took root in the western
> mind, the true atrocities began in Australia. Prior to that time, the
> British had indeed seen the Aborigines as savages; but entirely human and
> redeemable. The ideas of Social Darwinism, however, granted intellectual
> permission to the British Crown for the wholesale slaughter and expulsion of
> Aborigines from their land. Aborigines were by this time seen as a relict
> species of crude humanity; a people that had survived by chance the selection
> of evolution and who must now make way for civilized man to supplant them.
Is this the black armband view of history or what! I think it's telling that
the present govenrment refuses to apologise for a policy that was so
explicitly racist. Apparently Aboriginal settlements were the inspiration
for South African apartheid.
> > Never asserted or meant it was a consensus. Let's talk about the leadership:
> > the power behind the leadership was the church in one way or another.
> > Monarchies of the time maintained that the king was appointed by God.
> > Therefore, the king was only doing God's work. Think of Galileo getting
> > shafted for saying the earth wasn't the center of the solar system, in fact
> > just an ordinary planet circling the sun? That sort of religious ignorance
> > is what I'm talking about.
>
> Agreed. But the king often did merely his work, and religion be damned.
Or as in the case of Henry VIII, if the Pope gets narky you found your own
religion.
> > > And one final point: Being born of an ethnic or nominally Christian
> > > culture/ heritage does not make one a Christian. By such rationale, many
> > > of us are guilty of religious crimes.
> >
> > Well, we do what we can and help those in need. That's the best anyone can
> > expect and we shouldn't have to answer for the crimes of our ancestors.
What if the "crimes of our ancestors" continue to have an impact on the
descendants of their victims? In the case of theft of land, what kind of
reparations are appropriate?
--DaveL
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Essential nature of mankind
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| (...) That is a good point; in terms of colonization, the Spanish had a more overtly religious tone to the economic exploitation. An interesting irony is that while the Spanish often used divine right as a justification, they also, over the course (...) (23 years ago, 5-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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