South Africa parliament votes to seize white owned land

[masterpanthera_t]

(03-08-2018, 02:29 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Well, we also have to keep in mind that "progress" and "advancement" are terms that aren't necessarily accurate when speaking about civilizations, societies, or cultures. Those subjective terms rest on the idea that there is an evolutionary, linear track on which civilizations progress. This is a false narrative that was concocted during the era of European imperialism in order to justify their colonization and subjugation of indigenous people the world over. However, such classifications are not accurate, are not based on objective methodology, and are now mostly dismissed. The social sciences still have a hard time moving on from them because that was really the beginning of the movement, but there is a concerted effort to focus on more objective methodology since, as the name says, they are sciences.

Agreed.

Also what I've noticed in these type of arguments is that is heavily skewed in one sided narratives from the perspective of the victors and characterized many times by blatant omission of facts regarding atrocities that led to the destruction of a lot of human capital. While the British colonization served the Brits very well in terms of all the wealth, natural resources looted from their colonies, and helped them advance their own interests and growth, it is debatable that there was much of a NET "advancement" for the colonies. For probably every one good thing that happened, there were an equal if not higher number of negative consequences. One of the "legacies" of British rule is all the conflict zones left behind by either incompetent or intentional misrepresenting of borders. Considering that the primary strategy of British colonization was "divide and conquer", one might wonder if that just fit the pattern to keep the areas left behind in a disunited state both for weakening those areas and to make the British colonization seem like a good thing cause "look what happens after we left."

Edit:

It is also debatable that with the ever more increasing inter-connected nature of the world, that any "advancements" would not have taken place organically without colonization, which brought with it all the loss of lives that gets lost out of the "advancement" argument. I mean who cares if a "few" lives are lost to "advance" civilization, right?