What are your thoughts on the action of colonizing other cultures?

The definition of Colonization to be discussed here is:

The action or process of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of an area.

English Oxford Living Dictionaries

I mean, I have some ambivalent feelings about the concept myself.

Don't do it.

I would say it depends on how xenophobic the culture is. I believe cultural exchange and sharing of knowledge will always be beneficial in the long term, so if forcefully inducing it via colonization is the only way for it to happen to a particular people, then I could be convinced to support it. Their current generation may be adamantly opposed to other beliefs, but I'd like their future ones to have a choice.

Interesting, so you would also agree with my position on the Sentinelese?

@theonewhopullsthestrings: Probably not with the exact methods you detailed. Those people have interacted with outsiders before and show potential for cultural exchange with less strong-arming.

Maybe it could be done by introducing vastly improved modern versions of the simple tools that they use day to day, probably clothing too, then gradually upping the ante with slightly more and more advanced stuff until they begin to crave more of it and want to learn more about it. Cultural exchange almost always did start best through a healthy trade relationship.

@gunmetalgrey: Not always. America opened the trade doors to Japan by force, and then we got an emperor who saw the weakness that was, and immediately put in place what many historians now consider the Meiji miracle, one of the fastest turns from a feudal economy into a modern one ever, in less than half a century.

It didn't start necessarily from a non-forceful offset, but it ultimately helped Japan miles, and forced them outside of their mindset in the past.

@theonewhopullsthestrings: I know, that's why I said almost always.

I mean it's been a thing since man first figured out that a hard rock could bash someone's head in. I can see pros and cons depending.

To tell you the extent of how messed up and difficult of a question this is:

- Rape, brutal murder and dehumanising of a foreign less technologically advanced culture=eventual westernisation

On one hand, it can be an extremely harsh and violent exercise in which the country colonizing brutalizes and in some cases enslaves the country being colonized. On the other hand, countries that are colonized generally turn out to be better. Look at India. Don't get me wrong India is still a shit country (trust me, I know, I was born there) but it is generally getting better and less backward.

Bumping for discussion.

Im all for colonization as along as the locals can pick and choose which colonials could colonize them.

Also Sid Meier's Colonization is one of my favorite game.

More often than not, it's good for the colonizer, bad for the colonized.

If the colonizer actually can make some fair improvement for the colonized them I'm for it.

As someone who lives in a formerly colonized country, it's bad. The few good things that may come (and it is never an equitable trade there) are far, far outweighted by the bad for the colonized people.

Being colonized is horrible, you insane people. There's no other way around it.

@spikespiegell: Well, the things is, the colonizers couldn't care less about the colonized people or culture, they're there for their own profit. It's not an altruistic quest, it's one of profit, and even if there is any improvement to the colonized, it's mostly in order that the colonizer gains more profit. It's more like a parasitic relationship than a symbiotic one.

Nah not really. Lots of people from both sides (locals and colonizers) usually end up dying in the process. Looking at some previously colonized countries now though, they're usually the most multi-racial and multicultural countries which isn't too bad overall.

it's not nice, you're basically taking control of someone else's home and destroying their rulership and independency over their own territory.

however, being "nice" was never the point, colonizing is an act of self-interest.

@tamewizzerd: Peruvian here. Yes, we're multirracial and multicultural, but the colonizer's culture and race is subconsciously treated as better unless people are aware of and consciously avoiding it.

We're getting better, but it's taken nearly 500 years to get there.

It sucks. It isn't fair. But it's nature and it is unfortunately better for civilization as a whole.

I think colonialism is great...if you are the colonizer. If you're the colonized, history shows that it ends badly for you.

Anecdotes and historical accounts are all well and good, they provide perspective, but I think the point of this thread is to look at the concept in a vacuum, with no predetermined intent to the act. We already know it can be taken a few certain ways, would it be plausible to take it in any other direction?

Philippines here. We had Spanish colonizers too but Spanish culture mixed well with the native one so you can't really tell apart anymore unless you're from an ethnic group (non-catholic). We have this culture here though that the whiter your skin or if you got western features, people will find you attractive or instantly like you. Pretty sad but we can't blame colonization at this point this is our own shit. Bet it's the same over there.

I think there are too many factors involved to make a judgement one way or the other.

I kind of feel like things would've been better here and the standard of living would've gone up for the average person if the Romans had gotten themselves a much more stable foothold and managed to stop the subsequent Anglo Saxon colonisation of the 5th century, they had a lot of advanced technology and philosophy for the time that we could've benefited from.

But saying that they did slaughter hundreds of thousands of Britons and make slaves out of countless more.

But then had they won out perhaps slavery would've been abolished much earlier, maybe instead of harsh Norman feudalism we would've been closer to democracy by the 11th century. Too many things to weigh up.

Too much thinking.

Just declare war, and conquer them.

Colonization is a complex concept. Everyone colonizes in one or other something. It might not be a whole nation or a whole culture but everyone does it. However, to what extent is a different topic.

@tamewizzerd: So you're from Philippine? I remember you were pretty secretive about where you're from.

Colonization has both cons and pros. We already know all the cons, theres a ton, but no one ever looks at the pros.

One of the pros is having a unified national language. Many countries in Africa have almost countless languages and dialects each. A written language is a huge gigantic pro, no matter how you look at it. Another pro is technology and economy. When the White people conquered South Africa, they dug into the ground and brought up water. South Africa was livable enough that it could now support big booming cities, next thing you know it's a developed country and one of the top 10 in the world.

Unfortunately, the whites never taught the native Africans how to run a country, so when they left South Africa went to economic turmoil, on top of people actively destroying and vandalizing the infrastructure. South Africa was doomed.