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Another appropriate word for the colonization of America is genocide. I'm old enough to remember being taught how America was settled by expanding into the vas

Another appropriate word for the colonization of America is genocide. I'm old enough to remember being taught how America was settled by expanding into the vast wilderness of the continent, and that sometimes they had skirmishes with natives but they found them new places to live. It turns out it wasn't quite as neat and tidy as suggested.

philipallstar 8d ago
"It's not neat and tidy so it must be genocide" - not sure that's quite right.
- dsr_ 8d ago
  In this case, it was genocide.
  - amanaplanacanal 8d ago
    It definitely was. There were at least sometimes extenuating circumstances though. My sense is that in the US and Canada settlers found a great deal of "apparently" uninhabited land, largely a result of the diseases that had swept through because of earlier contact, decimating the existing population. My guess is that had disease not done its work, the European settlers would have found it much harder to displace the existing inhabitants.
    - pstuart 8d ago
      I have yet to read 1491, but yes I imagine that it would have been much more challenging without that first strike. But the weapons capabilities of the europeans were also going to make it happen one way or another.
kspacewalk2 7d ago
America is a big place, populated by a lot of different people. Some of those were in fact victims of a genocide by European colonists. Others were allied to the European colonists from day one, and were instrumental in defeating/exterminating their indigenous enemies (see e.g. Tlaxcallans). Most of the victims were decimated by Eurasian diseases well before seeing any European with their own eyes. So presenting colonization of America as a "genocide" is every bit as selective and simplistic as what you're old enough to remember being taught, just in the opposite direction. The history of Americas is much more interesting and complex than all that.

philipallstar 8d ago

"It's not neat and tidy so it must be genocide" - not sure that's quite right.

dsr_ 8d ago
In this case, it was genocide.
- amanaplanacanal 8d ago
  It definitely was. There were at least sometimes extenuating circumstances though. My sense is that in the US and Canada settlers found a great deal of "apparently" uninhabited land, largely a result of the diseases that had swept through because of earlier contact, decimating the existing population. My guess is that had disease not done its work, the European settlers would have found it much harder to displace the existing inhabitants.
  - pstuart 8d ago
    I have yet to read 1491, but yes I imagine that it would have been much more challenging without that first strike. But the weapons capabilities of the europeans were also going to make it happen one way or another.

kspacewalk2 7d ago

America is a big place, populated by a lot of different people. Some of those were in fact victims of a genocide by European colonists. Others were allied to the European colonists from day one, and were instrumental in defeating/exterminating their indigenous enemies (see e.g. Tlaxcallans). Most of the victims were decimated by Eurasian diseases well before seeing any European with their own eyes. So presenting colonization of America as a "genocide" is every bit as selective and simplistic as what you're old enough to remember being taught, just in the opposite direction. The history of Americas is much more interesting and complex than all that.