Is it fair to say that
* the colonization was a huge net negative and violation of the population at the time
* the colonization arguably could be a net positive for current and future generations
* the latter does not justify the former
?
* the colonization was a huge net negative and violation of the population at the time
* the colonization arguably could be a net positive for current and future generations
* the latter does not justify the former
?
Take architecture, for example. Traditionally pretty much every ethnic group I know of built with mud brick and thatch. During the colonial era - and afterwards, till today really - such building techniques were derided as backwards savagery. Of course the European way of using concrete was "better" and "modern", even though it's a terrible building material for a hot, humid climate. A mud house can keep quite cool in 35°C plus weather with just vents. A concrete house on the other hand traps so much heat at even lower temperatures that we end up needing fans and air conditioners to be comfortable indoors, which of course drives up individuals' carbon footprints and electricity bills.
The ghost of colonialism still lingers decades later in a whole lot of little things like that. So yes, we may be headed towards a net positive future but in my opinion the way to get there requires even further divesting from the colonial era and its ways of thinking (re: the architecture example, there are new schools of builders who explicitly aim to incorporate precolonial building wisdom in their work).
I know in the American southwest adobe construction is popular, but that's about sheer thermal mass moderating the effects of the heat. Small windows also help.
Phase change can get you below zero easily, it certainly works as a poor man's AC. It is incredible how much energy phase change requires compared to just raising the temperature of the medium.
We are in many ways rediscovering older methods and techniques of building, especially in materials.
Also Consider SuperAdobe [2], which uses nothing but dirt onsite and plastic bags.
1. https://www.dwell.com/article/modern-rammed-earth-homes-723d...
Seems to me that the typical comparison between european architecture and 'mud huts' is based on a lack of knowledge about european building processes.
So it seems to me that your comment is based on a dire lack of knowledge about how colonialism works. The British straight-up imposed town planning laws that banned using mud to build new houses so that they could build the concrete towns and cities they envisioned - I know precisely what I am talking about.
> It would have also been pretty cutting edge until maybe halfway through the 20th century.
Nah, there have been houses built using concrete blocks since fairly early in the 19th. Using cement in house construction was hardly cutting edge in the 1920s - 1930s.
That's the thing. I don't think that's the case. I think they are a 1900's-earliest, 1930's mainstream kind of thing.
So by the time they became mainstream, the UK was already beginning the second world war, which would mark the end of the time when they were really rich or powerful enough to be an imperial state.
For example, the first concrete built house in the US was built in 1837. Francois Coignet was making significant use of Portland cement as early as the 1850s/1860s.
Even beyond that, I'll ask you yet again - when, exactly, do you think the colonial era I am talking about was? When exactly do you think Britain let go of all its territories in Africa? Come now, this isn't exactly hidden information or difficult to look up.
The question is 'when did Britain lose the kind of involvement you need to get into low-level building regulation?'
Near as I can find, they never had that kind of interest or involvement. Which is why I wanted a source for your claim that they banned traditional building materials.
So my thinking is simple: prior to 1930 is a bit early for concrete blocks to be the logical building material outside of places like New York, and even there, it would be a bit newfangled.
After 1930 is a bit late for the british to be really calling the shots about what gets built and how it gets built, since the period between 1945 and 1960 was characterized by increasing independence and english divestment. Maybe some university buildings?
Anyway, this whole conversation is a bit of a strange digression from your original rather belicose response to my observation that concrete was not by any means the 'European way'. It's my feeling that, aside from some monumental architecture (which it seems nigeria also had) most europeans were also building with brick, wood, plaster and thatch, up until the 19th century.
If you look at a modern timber frame house in the UK, the basic structure would be familiar to a roman architect. The timber structure is laid on brick piles, which are in turn laid on concrete foundations (the only modern addition - victorian houses often wouldn't have these), then a tile roof is fitted on top. It's a ridiculously ancient design.
I think this is a misleading statement anyway, because it requires a comparison point. If it was to "no interaction at all with the colonial powers", then maybe? If it was to "free trade with the colonial powers", almost certainly not.
Even in the first case I say maybe, because who knows what their society would have looked like. It may have advanced more slowly, but maybe that would have left them with more natural resources, more culture in tact, different advancements that benefited them in different ways. The trade-off there is very unclear and just saying it would be a "net positive" is a massive leap to me.
Another problem is that settler colonialism exterminated the populations of the Americas and Australasia. The inter-generational comparison in those cases is primarily between two separate populations: the genocide of natives against the wealth of the ancestors of settlers.
I'm not an historian but my impression is that WWI was primarily the result of intra-European conflicts between the great powers with any colonial issues being little more than a sideshow. WWII in Europe then seems to have been a nearly inevitable consequence of unresolved issues from the prior war. The only aspect of the two wars that does look a great deal like a war between competing colonial empires was the Pacific Theater of the Second World War.
As for the Second World War, I would say two things. First, that Nazi ideology was, in many ways, a product of European imperialism: its ideal of a Pan-Germanic state in Central Europe, its virulently racist and extermanist designs, and even its use of concentration camps. Second, one of the main grievances of Germany was that it was stripped of its colonial territories at Versailles, and that its territories were transformed into mandates run by the League of Nations according to principles of free trade, at the same time that France and Britain continued to run their own colonies as protectionist blocs. It was British sympathy for this colonial imbalance that, in part, stood behind the policy of appeasement. As for Japan, it was a classically imperialist power, reacting to the expansion of the US across the Pacific.
As for the Nazis, their primary target was European Jews who had been living in Europe for millenia as well as other European peoples they viewed as inferior to the Germans, such as the Slavic peoples.
There is no possible narrative explanation of the war that does not centre on the scramble for Africa. Would there have been a great power war between Germany and the status quo powers at some point absent the scramble for Africa? It is very difficult to say. Had it occurred, it would have been radically different in shape. This goes back to my initial point about the uncertainty factored into any big counter-factual like this.
As for the Nazis, my point was that the very ideology of racism was a direct product of European imperialism. That it was primarily directed at Jews and Slavs is besides the point. Hannah Arendt - one of the most prominent Jewish intellectuals of the twentieth century - famously made the case that the Nazi holocaust was an outgrowth of European imperialism in The Origins of Totalitarianism.
It's worth pointing out that the one of the main rationales of Nazi imperialism was to create a living space in Europe in which to off-load Germany's surplus population. This had long been one of the main justifications for European colonialism, and the expropriation of Germany's colonies at Versailles made it look to Europe again to solve the problem. What are arguably the first two (imperial!) campaigns of the Second World War - Japan's invasion of Manchuria, Italy's invasion of Ethiopia - were both justified as means of creating outlets for their soaring surplus populations. Both of them faced profoundly racist immigration restrictions in the main destinations of migration, namely the United States and Australia.