Umm ... colonialism doesn't actually work well for the colonized.
The US didn't colonize NA land. We took it and "gave" them reservations, which we mostly ignore.
They'd be better off as colonies or independent. As colonies, we'd care about getting a return on our investment. As independent, they'd benefit from whatever development that they did.
Now, that's of course a distortion of the forces at work that caused the so-called reservation of lands to be necessary, but there's also some contemporary value to Indian leaders in restoring that sense of meaning to the word today.
There's a lot of difference in the idea of land someone else reserved for you vs land you reserved for yourself.
The place where the land is will not be changing, but it's possible to change the perception of what that land represents, and thus the benefits of that land in a political sense.
Perhaps only nominally so originally, but that doesn't mean it can't be used to advantage now.
This is tangent to my arguments against using the new term "differently enabled" as opposed to "disabled". "Disabled" indicates that there is a problem that society needs to spend some resources on to correct and fix. "Differently enabled" is some politically correct term that seems to mask a problem and make people feel ok when they shouldn't.
No, it isn't. Native Americans didn't pick the land that they were sent.
In your terms, that land was reserved for them. It was NOT reserved by them.
And even putting the genocides aside, look at South Africa under the Afrikaaners. Explain to me how this was a good thing for the colonized?
The blog post that so outraged you argued that colonial administration was better than the post-colonial regime, so I'm not sure if you're engaging with that and missing, or just raging.
Something that struck me both times I visited New Zealand was how strong and honestly respected Maori culture was. The Maori identity seemed to be much more positive and proud than the Aboriginal identity is in Australia. I'm not sure if we have an Australian equivalent of the Treaty of Waitangi (http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/politics/treaty/the-treaty-in-br...).
But what about consensual colonialism? Is it possible for the structure of colonialism to be used for mutual benefit? That's the question this article asks, and I think it's a pretty incisive and relevant question.
I think a more relevant (if less sensational) question is "What role should outsiders play in defining the goals and mechanisms of development?"
http://www.economics.neu.edu/activities/seminars/documents/i...
(I'll generally ignore the "I hate descendents of people distantly related to colonisers sooo much" part of your post, with one exception. The other measure of "good modern outcomes" is dead babies. Is "fewer dead babies" also a synthetic measurement created by colonizers?)
> I'll generally ignore the "I hate descendents of people distantly related to colonisers sooo much"
You're mischaracterizing what I said. Some of my best friends are descendents of colonizers and for that matter so am I. However, if we claimed that there were benefits for the colonized, we'd be just as self-serving as you and the person in this thread who suggested that it was really in Native Americans' interests to be colonized and the guys who wrote the paper.
Oh, while we are on the topic: Ireland was a colony of England. Some Western Europeans were colonized, mostly by other European countries (e.g., "France" wasn't always a single nation). And while you are cherrypicking Japan as an example of uncolonized Asian countries, keep in mind where Thailand ("Land of the Free") got their name.
(Also, Native Americans were a very special case. Unlike most of the rest of the world, North America and the Amazon had no livestock. This rendered them uniquely vulnerable to communicable disease.)
I love political history threads on HN.