How should people facing colonization act to avoid cultural and economic subjugation?
They ought to subjugate themselves, obviously!
Or, to be a little less flip; if you are facing such a fate, it is because your society is overwhelmingly weaker than its rivals. Yes, as Lumifer, below, suggests, the Native Americans needed weaponry, but it’s hardly an accident that they lacked it—they weren’t capable of manufacturing such things for themselves, or of producing anything of value to offer in exchange for the weaponry. As a result, they were forced to rely on the goodwill and charity of their neighbours, which is just as disastrous for nations as is it for individuals. Even if the USA had left the natives well alone, the Mexicans, or the French, or some other predatory nation would have wiped them out.
What the Native Americans needed to do was to reorganise their society, to give up their traditional way of life, to live in cities, to adopt the settlers’ customs, laws, methods of production, and so on. See, for example, the example of Japan 60 years later.
None of that will stop them dying like flies to smallpox.
Oh and also, giving up traditional ways of life to live like the Americans didn’t work out so well for some of the Cherokee. They played by all the rules, but as soon as prospectors found gold on their land they were pushed aside.
Strikes me that adopting Western customs and technology (such as the smallpox vaccine, Jenner, 1798) would have been exactly the right solution to that issue too.
As for the Cherokee—I agree they tried. But they were still too weak to stand up for themselves. My suggestion is not “play by the white man’s rules and hope he treats you nicely.” It’s “copy the white man’s ways so you have the strength to resist him.”
Huh, I didn’t know the smallpox vaccine came about that early.
Either way, there were still plenty of nasty diseases from the Old World that had (or still have) no vaccines, like cholera, typhus, typhoid, measles, malaria, influenza, leprosy and bubonic plague. Their cumulative effect sapped native societies of their vigor, and this would have persisted even if they adopted the kind of sanitation technologies that Euros brought.
The reason it took Europeans until the 19th century to conquer the African interior was that disease was so difficult to overcome. Until quinine was developed, the half-life of a British garrison on the Gold Coast was less than 18 months. With this severe a disadvantage, I don’t think there’s anything the native Americans could have done, no matter how enlightened their chieftains.
The most successful tribe at adapting to the conditions of European settlement were the Comanches, who dominated a huge region of the west for about 100 years.
What the Native Americans needed to do was to reorganise their society, to give up their traditional way of life, to live in cities, to adopt the settlers’ customs, laws, methods of production, and so on. See, for example, the example of Japan 60 years later.
The most successful example of Native American resistance against colonizers were the Comanches, who did pretty much the opposite of this. Instead of settling down, they shifted from being semi-sedentary to highly mobile. They did not practice agriculture or even animal husbandry. They foraged and lived off of seized livestock.
Adapting doesn’t mean copying your enemy. When you copy from your enemies, best case scenario you become a match for them one-on-one. Realistically something is usually lost in translation when you copy, and it takes a long time to get up to speed. And in this case it was completely hopeless because Natives were much fewer in number and had various heritable vulnerabilities to disease and alcohol.
In other words, when things are asymmetric, you use asymmetric warfare.
In what sense were the Comanche the most successful? Yes, they caused the most problems for the USA, but that is looking at the issue through the wrong end of the telescope. The mark of success is how your own nation flourishes. We are supposed to be looking at this from the Native American perspective.
There are today more than twenty times as many Cherokee as Comanche. It’s pretty clear which strategy was more effective.
You’re just wrong that when things are asymmetric you should necessarily use asymmetric warfare. It’s equally true that you should trade, using Ricardian comparative advantage. It is just this adversarial, warfare-based frame that I am trying to challenge.
I deliberately gave the “if you were a chieftain” example because spontaneous reorganization is almost as difficult as making your enemies spontaneously nicer.
Also there are examples from history of colonized people who suffered less than others.
I deliberately gave the “if you were a chieftain” example because spontaneous reorganization is almost as difficult as making your enemies spontaneously nicer.
And I deliberately gave the example of Japan. I don’t know enough about Native Americans to say exactly how I’d go about the equivalent of a Meiji Restoration, but that’s what I would attempt. I’d pass laws mandating compulsory Westernisation, forcibly settle the nomadic peoples, do my best to Christianise the country, and try and import as much technology and Western practices as I possibly could. And naturally I’d try and crush my rivals to make sure there was no alternative plan. I’d have tried to make Western contact as much of an opportunity as possible—Western imperialism was the best thing that ever happened to the country my family are from.
Also there are examples from history of colonized people who suffered less than others
Definitely so. The ones who suffered less are generally the ones who adapted. There is no alternate history where a nation of nomadic hunter-gatherers are wandering the Great Plains hunting buffalo in 2014. And frankly that would have been a pretty miserable outcome even from the Native Americans’ perspective. Unfortunately, it’s that rather romantic vision that inspires, rather than a more pragmatic one of a rich and populous Native American nation, but which is culturally not much different from its “American” neighbours.
I don’t know enough about Native Americans to say exactly how I’d go about the equivalent of a Meiji Restoration, but that’s what I would attempt.
Then Japanese were much more similar to the Europeans then Native Americans. For starters they had a government. Furthermore, they had developed some institutions that were similar to western institutions, or at least more similar than anything else outside the West.
If you want to give an example of successful Westernization, Japan is a terrible example.
In the 17th century, the Dutch broke the commercial monopoly the Portuguese had over Japan, and the infighting between Dutch and Portuguese bothered the Japanese so much that they closed off the country. Only the Dutch (who had the wisdom to never use missionaries) were allowed to keep trading, and only through one port in one island.
Fast forward to Commodore Perry and his gunboat diplomacy. Panicked, the Japanese quickly copied the ways of the West, including the industrial revolution and the German education system, and by the next century they had become an imperialistic oppressor over much of East Asia. It took WW2 to put a stop to that. Then the Americans took charge of ruling the country until it didn’t appear to be a threat anymore.
During the 1980′s it seemed Japan was headed for big things, but they didn’t know what to do with that promise. Maybe they panicked again. Now Japan is a toothless beast, unsure of its future, economically uncertain (still the world’s 3rd, but stagnant), and demographically doomed.
I was tempted to give Siam as a successful example instead, if only because they managed to never be colonized, but right now they’re such a political joke that my first impression on this matter stands: there’s no way colonization can end well.
I am confused as to why your potted history indicates that Meiji Japan is a bad example of successful westernisation.
On first contact, Japan unwisely attempts to shut out the Westerners, and stagnates for centuries, leading to the humiliation of Bakumatsu. This could easily have ended in the destruction of the Japanese nation; not copying the West was a disaster.
Seeing the need to avoid that fate, the Japanese showed the flexibility and wisdom to reform their nation. They quickly copied the ways of the West, which was a roaring success for Japan; they not only avoided destruction, but managed to defeat Western powers (e.g. Russo-Japanese war). Yes, they became an “imperialistic oppressor” (your words) to their neighbours. So what? The question is how should a people facing colonization act, not how should their neighbours hope they act.
Despite the destruction of WW2, Japan quickly rebounded, becoming even more Western, and even more successful. Yes, things aren’t perfect, no, they aren’t doomed, they are one of the richest and most successful countries in the world. The Cree Nation would kill to have their problems.
I was tempted to give Siam as a successful example instead, if only because they managed to never be colonized,
The reason Siam was never colonized was that it served as a buffer state between British Burma and French Indo-China. This suggests another method to avoid colonization. Play rival would-be colonizers against each other.
They ought to subjugate themselves, obviously!
Or, to be a little less flip; if you are facing such a fate, it is because your society is overwhelmingly weaker than its rivals. Yes, as Lumifer, below, suggests, the Native Americans needed weaponry, but it’s hardly an accident that they lacked it—they weren’t capable of manufacturing such things for themselves, or of producing anything of value to offer in exchange for the weaponry. As a result, they were forced to rely on the goodwill and charity of their neighbours, which is just as disastrous for nations as is it for individuals. Even if the USA had left the natives well alone, the Mexicans, or the French, or some other predatory nation would have wiped them out.
What the Native Americans needed to do was to reorganise their society, to give up their traditional way of life, to live in cities, to adopt the settlers’ customs, laws, methods of production, and so on. See, for example, the example of Japan 60 years later.
None of that will stop them dying like flies to smallpox.
Oh and also, giving up traditional ways of life to live like the Americans didn’t work out so well for some of the Cherokee. They played by all the rules, but as soon as prospectors found gold on their land they were pushed aside.
Strikes me that adopting Western customs and technology (such as the smallpox vaccine, Jenner, 1798) would have been exactly the right solution to that issue too.
As for the Cherokee—I agree they tried. But they were still too weak to stand up for themselves. My suggestion is not “play by the white man’s rules and hope he treats you nicely.” It’s “copy the white man’s ways so you have the strength to resist him.”
Huh, I didn’t know the smallpox vaccine came about that early.
Either way, there were still plenty of nasty diseases from the Old World that had (or still have) no vaccines, like cholera, typhus, typhoid, measles, malaria, influenza, leprosy and bubonic plague. Their cumulative effect sapped native societies of their vigor, and this would have persisted even if they adopted the kind of sanitation technologies that Euros brought.
The reason it took Europeans until the 19th century to conquer the African interior was that disease was so difficult to overcome. Until quinine was developed, the half-life of a British garrison on the Gold Coast was less than 18 months. With this severe a disadvantage, I don’t think there’s anything the native Americans could have done, no matter how enlightened their chieftains.
I’ve heard it went better for the Cherokee than for other tribes, which is why the Cherokee are the ones most people have heard of.
The most successful tribe at adapting to the conditions of European settlement were the Comanches, who dominated a huge region of the west for about 100 years.
Yes—compared to other tribes they did the best. But it’d be pretty depressing to be a chieftain in 1800 knowing that that’s the best you can do.
The most successful example of Native American resistance against colonizers were the Comanches, who did pretty much the opposite of this. Instead of settling down, they shifted from being semi-sedentary to highly mobile. They did not practice agriculture or even animal husbandry. They foraged and lived off of seized livestock.
Adapting doesn’t mean copying your enemy. When you copy from your enemies, best case scenario you become a match for them one-on-one. Realistically something is usually lost in translation when you copy, and it takes a long time to get up to speed. And in this case it was completely hopeless because Natives were much fewer in number and had various heritable vulnerabilities to disease and alcohol.
In other words, when things are asymmetric, you use asymmetric warfare.
In what sense were the Comanche the most successful? Yes, they caused the most problems for the USA, but that is looking at the issue through the wrong end of the telescope. The mark of success is how your own nation flourishes. We are supposed to be looking at this from the Native American perspective.
There are today more than twenty times as many Cherokee as Comanche. It’s pretty clear which strategy was more effective.
You’re just wrong that when things are asymmetric you should necessarily use asymmetric warfare. It’s equally true that you should trade, using Ricardian comparative advantage. It is just this adversarial, warfare-based frame that I am trying to challenge.
I deliberately gave the “if you were a chieftain” example because spontaneous reorganization is almost as difficult as making your enemies spontaneously nicer.
Also there are examples from history of colonized people who suffered less than others.
And I deliberately gave the example of Japan. I don’t know enough about Native Americans to say exactly how I’d go about the equivalent of a Meiji Restoration, but that’s what I would attempt. I’d pass laws mandating compulsory Westernisation, forcibly settle the nomadic peoples, do my best to Christianise the country, and try and import as much technology and Western practices as I possibly could. And naturally I’d try and crush my rivals to make sure there was no alternative plan. I’d have tried to make Western contact as much of an opportunity as possible—Western imperialism was the best thing that ever happened to the country my family are from.
Definitely so. The ones who suffered less are generally the ones who adapted. There is no alternate history where a nation of nomadic hunter-gatherers are wandering the Great Plains hunting buffalo in 2014. And frankly that would have been a pretty miserable outcome even from the Native Americans’ perspective. Unfortunately, it’s that rather romantic vision that inspires, rather than a more pragmatic one of a rich and populous Native American nation, but which is culturally not much different from its “American” neighbours.
Then Japanese were much more similar to the Europeans then Native Americans. For starters they had a government. Furthermore, they had developed some institutions that were similar to western institutions, or at least more similar than anything else outside the West.
First you’d need to create a bureaucracy capable of enforcing laws.
If you want to give an example of successful Westernization, Japan is a terrible example.
In the 17th century, the Dutch broke the commercial monopoly the Portuguese had over Japan, and the infighting between Dutch and Portuguese bothered the Japanese so much that they closed off the country. Only the Dutch (who had the wisdom to never use missionaries) were allowed to keep trading, and only through one port in one island.
Fast forward to Commodore Perry and his gunboat diplomacy. Panicked, the Japanese quickly copied the ways of the West, including the industrial revolution and the German education system, and by the next century they had become an imperialistic oppressor over much of East Asia. It took WW2 to put a stop to that. Then the Americans took charge of ruling the country until it didn’t appear to be a threat anymore.
During the 1980′s it seemed Japan was headed for big things, but they didn’t know what to do with that promise. Maybe they panicked again. Now Japan is a toothless beast, unsure of its future, economically uncertain (still the world’s 3rd, but stagnant), and demographically doomed.
I was tempted to give Siam as a successful example instead, if only because they managed to never be colonized, but right now they’re such a political joke that my first impression on this matter stands: there’s no way colonization can end well.
I am confused as to why your potted history indicates that Meiji Japan is a bad example of successful westernisation.
On first contact, Japan unwisely attempts to shut out the Westerners, and stagnates for centuries, leading to the humiliation of Bakumatsu. This could easily have ended in the destruction of the Japanese nation; not copying the West was a disaster.
Seeing the need to avoid that fate, the Japanese showed the flexibility and wisdom to reform their nation. They quickly copied the ways of the West, which was a roaring success for Japan; they not only avoided destruction, but managed to defeat Western powers (e.g. Russo-Japanese war). Yes, they became an “imperialistic oppressor” (your words) to their neighbours. So what? The question is how should a people facing colonization act, not how should their neighbours hope they act.
Despite the destruction of WW2, Japan quickly rebounded, becoming even more Western, and even more successful. Yes, things aren’t perfect, no, they aren’t doomed, they are one of the richest and most successful countries in the world. The Cree Nation would kill to have their problems.
The reason Siam was never colonized was that it served as a buffer state between British Burma and French Indo-China. This suggests another method to avoid colonization. Play rival would-be colonizers against each other.