somewhat impatient
Jan. 7th, 2005 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerOK, so I'm catching up with this week's topical humour. And I watched Jon Stewart's interview with Howard Zinn.
I have to issue my own personal objection to Mr Zinn's comparison between George W. Bush and Christopher Columbus. It's simply not intellectually honest to pretend, as he is clearly happy to do, that there's a similarity there. That the actions of a 21st century state are the same as the professed interests of the Roman Catholic Church, the objectives of the Crown of Spain, and the objectives of a personally directed, privately financed scientific and adventuring expedition.
First because Zinn applies 21st century standards of conduct to Columbus. That's simply just silly, but it's easy and painless for him, because he knows that most of the people watchimg and listening are going to expect a 16th century person to be just like them; why wouldn't he be, right?
Second, because he's disingenuous about Columbus' real motivations. Columbus, from all I've read about him, was not a religiously motivated conquistador like Cortez and Balboa. He was interested in finding trade routes, not converts.
Last of all, for the reason most unpopular with people like Mr Zinn. The IDEA, the CONCEPTION that people in the colonized countries might have been better off under colonial rule than native rule. Of course I'm not going to attempt to justify Columban or 16th century Spanish (or English) rule. But cast you minds on this poem about the responsibilities of empire as seen by the most 19th century Englishman and tell me with a straight face that Jinnah, Gandhi, Musharraf, Kenyatta, arap Moi, Smith, Mugabe, Botha, de Klerke, Doe, Strasser, Sankoh, yes even Ben Gurion and Meir have done a better job, created more free and more democratic more prosperous and open states than the ones they inherited from colonial governments.
You see, it's very easy to criticize and carp. When you're actually on the ground and are responsible, it's a different matter, one that I'm obliiged to think most academics are sadly unprepared for.
I have to issue my own personal objection to Mr Zinn's comparison between George W. Bush and Christopher Columbus. It's simply not intellectually honest to pretend, as he is clearly happy to do, that there's a similarity there. That the actions of a 21st century state are the same as the professed interests of the Roman Catholic Church, the objectives of the Crown of Spain, and the objectives of a personally directed, privately financed scientific and adventuring expedition.
First because Zinn applies 21st century standards of conduct to Columbus. That's simply just silly, but it's easy and painless for him, because he knows that most of the people watchimg and listening are going to expect a 16th century person to be just like them; why wouldn't he be, right?
Second, because he's disingenuous about Columbus' real motivations. Columbus, from all I've read about him, was not a religiously motivated conquistador like Cortez and Balboa. He was interested in finding trade routes, not converts.
Last of all, for the reason most unpopular with people like Mr Zinn. The IDEA, the CONCEPTION that people in the colonized countries might have been better off under colonial rule than native rule. Of course I'm not going to attempt to justify Columban or 16th century Spanish (or English) rule. But cast you minds on this poem about the responsibilities of empire as seen by the most 19th century Englishman and tell me with a straight face that Jinnah, Gandhi, Musharraf, Kenyatta, arap Moi, Smith, Mugabe, Botha, de Klerke, Doe, Strasser, Sankoh, yes even Ben Gurion and Meir have done a better job, created more free and more democratic more prosperous and open states than the ones they inherited from colonial governments.
You see, it's very easy to criticize and carp. When you're actually on the ground and are responsible, it's a different matter, one that I'm obliiged to think most academics are sadly unprepared for.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-10 04:37 am (UTC)I would say that, by and large, pre-Independence and post-Independence India are for most people very similar. The oppressors and rule-benders, the fat cats and self-interested officials are Indian rather than British. I'm not sure life is all that much better for the common man. And that's in one of the best examples of post-colonial rule. The Belgians were some of the most vicious and oppressive colonial rulers around, but I think that post-WWII Belgian-ruled Belgian Congo was a safer and more prosperous place for most common people than Zaire has been for most of its existence.
I don't get the impression that elections are, by and large, massively corrupt in India, but I think that the rule of law is nowhere clsoe to what it is in the US or Europe and that government corruption, police brutality, and mob violence are worse, far worse than, say, the American South between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement. India has been a self-governing democracy for over 50 years, and that state inheritied a well-organized civil service and judiciary; I'm not particularly disposed to give it any excuses at this point.