Was the Herero massacre unique?

[Barnabas]

Werent bushmen and australian natives also like "hunted" with special authorizations?

[Blaupanzer]

Giving an order to "exterminate all of them," in effect does seem rare in recent colonial history. The expressed idea generally was to "civilize" the barbarian, not eliminate them. In practice, the Spanish were very hard on the native populations of the Carribean, but I think the crime there was not caring if they survived rather than a concentrated effort to kill them outright. Similarly, the US battle against the Huk in the Phillipines greatly reduced that population, but that was in the name of putting down the rebellion. Those who did not actively resist were mostly left alone, although not entirely.

As noted, in the ancient period several peoples were put to the sentence: death to the men, enslavement for women and children. But in the colonial experience, I am not aware of another order quite so chilling as the one quoted.

[Barnabas]

Actually I think the spaniards were the colonial power which treated amerindians better, (after the French), with Portugal and England being the worse ones.

[Barnabas]

From National Geographic

"By the end of the 18th century, only 150 years after the arrival of the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope, thousands of Bushmen (San) had been shot and killed, and many more were forced to work for their colonial captors. The new British government vowed to stop the fighting. They hoped to “civilize” the Bushmen by encouraging them to adopt a more agricultural lifestyle but were unsuccessful. By the 1870s the last Bushmen of the Cape were hunted to extinction. Other Bushman groups were able to survive the European encroachment despite continued threats. The last license to hunt Bushmen was reportedly issued in Namibia by the South African government in 1936.
"

[Blaupanzer]

The Spanish introduced and left untreated several European diseases in Mexico and Peru. They literally worked the natives to death in the Carribean islands and Mexico. They are regarded as the worst masters in the new world, beating out the Portuguese in Brazil, who were very bad, and the British to the North who actually allied with selected tribes in their land battles. The French do indeed have a better reputation than any of the others, especially in Acadia and along the Missouri River.

[Barnabas]

I wrote a long long response, apolyton sent my reply to limbo

here, short

Spaniards also allied with natives, they were the first ones to do it, both Cortez and Pizarro were helped by thousands of native allies in the conquest of the aztec and inca empire.

In the british colonies, the colonists moved with their women, had little interest in christianizing and marrying the indians, and it was a process of killing or pushing them to the west as the whites expanded their settlements.
Amerindians were an obstacle to be eliminated.

In spanish colonies, the spaniards traveled to america with no women, married the local native american women, giving birth to the mestizo group which nowadays makes the majority of latin americans.

The natives were christianized, taxed and integrated to the empire, they were not an obstacle, they were the base of the empire, subdits.

Only blacks were slaves during all the spanish empire, amerindians were enslaved only in the first decades, in fact for most of the empire it was forbidden to enslave amerindians, they used to die because of the diseases introduced by the spaniards so often, that the spaniards got the (wrong) idea that amerindians were inherently weak, so they started to bring black slaves from africa, who were "stronger", could work under the sun, and did not die because of european diseases.
The legal standing of amerindians was almost identical to peasants under a feudal lord, which was bad, but not exactly slavery, not that different from russian serfs of the XIX century in fact.
It was a kind of caste system, with spaniards on top, criollos below, then mestizos, amerindians and blacks at the bottom.
Rules were enacted to protect the amrindians (which did not always work), there were courts where they could compalin of abuses (which did not always work), and finally the catholic church tried to defend the indians from abuses too. There are also some anecdotic stories of natives becoming priests, or graduating from university , of course it was not common, but unthinkable in other places.

[Terra Nullius]

Originally posted by Brachy-Pride
Werent bushmen and australian natives also like "hunted" with special authorizations?

http://www.bond.edu.au/about/australia/history.html

In principle, the official colonial policy throughout the 19th century was to treat aborigines as equals, with the intention of eventually converting them to Christianity and European civilization. The Governor of the time, Governor Macquarie, established a school for aboriginal children.

Such well-intentioned acts, however, were infrequently supported. ... White settlers poisoned and hunted aborigines and abused and exploited aboriginal women and children.

Where graziers sought lands for their sheep runs, the aboriginal communities of hunters were made to retreat into the drier interior.
...
It was not until the 1960s that aborigines were afforded full citizenship rights.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Brachy-pride, so I can paraphrase your case for Spanish compassion as follows-

1- The overtly genocidal period only lasted for about 50 years.

2- Slavery of the Indians was abolished because they decided blacks would be more economical as slaves.

3- Despite the genocide and slavery stuff, the Spanish settlers still managed to get Indian girlfriends by buying them flowers and nice shoes.

I'm a really long way from being convinced.

[Jon Miller]

This might just be from colonization, but didn't the French get along best with the natives of america?

JM

[Barnabas]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
Brachy-pride, so I can paraphrase your case for Spanish compassion as follows-

1- The overtly genocidal period only lasted for about 50 years.

2- Slavery of the Indians was abolished because they decided blacks would be more economical as slaves.

3- Despite the genocide and slavery stuff, the Spanish settlers still managed to get Indian girlfriends by buying them flowers and nice shoes.

I'm a really long way from being convinced.

I never talked about spanish compassion, I only explained that the english (and independent americans) were a lot worse than spaniards when treating amerindians.
Of course the spaniards did not treat amerindians nice, they were a lower caste, mainly poor peasants, but they were seen as subdits, not as bothersome pests like in the north.

[Barnabas]

Jon Miller, yes, colonization was right regarding the french.


Also, the only genocide I could think of, would be cultural genocide, wiping out the native american cultures by christianizing them, and making them "western".
Which is defended by some who say that was better, because for example, all the amerindian high cultures had human sacrifice rituals.
(I am not saying that they are right)

But there was no plan for exterminating amerindians.
The demographic disaster was because of diseases, often, the spaniards would explore an area for the first time, and find it empty because the diseases had spreaded and killed everyone before.
It is hard to know what the population of America was before the Spaniards arrived, in school I was taught that there were 2 places with high population densities, the andean cultures, and mesoamerica, both with around 6 million people, and in the rest of America around 10 millions, but no one really knows, there are scholars who say America had only 15 million people, and Scholars who say the aztec empire had 25 million people, according to wiki slightly less than 40 million inhabitants for all america is the most accepted.
The demographic disaster can be seen as bad, or not so bad, depending on what numbers you pick for pre columbian population.


Also, Spanish America was huge, and what was true in puerto Rico may not have been true in Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Buenos Aires, Bolivia, Paraguay etc, it depended on the place.
Latin america is a unity only in a very broad sense.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Brachy-Pride

But there was no plan for exterminating amerindians.
The demographic disaster was because of diseases,

Once again you're glossing over those first 50 years. You're also ignoring a number of overtly genocidal practices in later years, such as under Juan Manuel de Rosas (and in 20th century Paraguay).

[lord of the mark]

A thread about the uniqueness of the Herero massacre in the context of European colonization of AFRICA, has turned into a battle about whether the Spanish or English were more unfriendly to new world natives.

I proclaim the History Forums first successful threadjack.

[Barnabas]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp



Once again you're glossing over those first 50 years. You're also ignoring a number of overtly genocidal practices in later years, such as under Juan Manuel de Rosas (and in 20th century Paraguay).

Both Argentina and Paraguay were independent, not spanish colonies when that happened.

[BeBMan]

Re: Was the Herero massacre unique?

Originally posted by lord of the mark
In so far as it was a deliberate massacre of an entire ethnic group, with the authorization of an agent of a European state.

Not to excuse anything, but von Trotha was not following official German policy when exterminating the Herrero, his orders were his own ideas, not backed by the German public. The Kaiser and the military leadership were rather indecisive about this (some did agree with Trotha though, but thought his plan is impossible to realize due to practical difficulties), but later when they realized public opinion was against Trotha they also moved in that direction and Trotha finally lost his position because of that.

re genocide, Trothas strategy to occuppy the water sources to deny the Herrero access to fresh water and his orders to execute all Herrero on German soil (=in colonial territory) that don't leave makes it a clear case of genocide IMO. Those later orders weren't fully realized, revoked from Germany due to the negative public opinion and Herrero found by German forces were treated better then but of course that came much too late for many that already had died.