Was the Herero massacre unique?

[lord of the mark]

Re: Re: Was the Herero massacre unique?

Originally posted by BeBro


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.

I had hoped I made it clear in my posts, that this was not the official policy of the Germany Empire. I did want to distinguish between what Von Trotha did, and the genocidal actions undertaken from time to time by private individuals, or low level rogue military officers or officials. Though, since this was instigated by Spiffs question in OT, about the Kaiser, and I presented this as a response, I could see how you would be troubled by what Ive implied. Perhaps I was wrong. This seems to be a grey area between "the state deliberately did it" and "private individuals and rogue state agents did it" Here its a senior (locally) and authorized state agent, who did it, albeit on his own initiative, and eventually called back by central policy.
Like General Amherst I suppose.

[Terra Nullius]

Re: Was the Herero massacre unique?

Originally posted by 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.

Not so fast, good sir.

Your OP said nothing about Africa, just "deliberate massacre of an entire ethnic group, with the authorization of an agent of a European state."

I proclaim this threadjack ferpecly gelitimate.

Now, back to talking about Tasmania,...

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Brachy-Pride


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

From your earlier post-

Originally posted by Brachy-Pride

I only explained that the english (and independent americans) were a lot worse than spaniards when treating amerindians.

So when you're assessing it against the British performance in the Americas, I take it that you are discounting anything that actually occurred outside of British influence?

[BeBMan]

LOTM, no problem, I just thought I give my 2 and 1/2 cent

And I agree with you, there's certainly a grey zone between private action of state officials/agents and deliberate state action.

[Buck Birdseed]

Has ayone read Sven Lindqvist's "Exterminate All The Brutes" which is partially about this theme, as the title suggests? It's got a couple of more examples, but on a smaller scale, I recall.

[Straybow]

The uniqueness of Namibia comes down to a few facts. Until the XIX. century there were no standing armies from the mother countries stationed in colonies. Colonial authorities were empowered to raise their own militia. Private citizens came across from Europe and did their own thing.

In British colonies there were official policies such as scalp awards, but that still doesn't compare.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Brachy-Pride


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

And what about the Guarani Massacres ? When the empires of Spain and Portugal combined to extinguish the Jesuit supported Guarani state ?



I must say, I think you're doing a great snowjob on the historic record of the Conquistadors, the Spanish and Portuguese Empires and their successor states.


One might imagine there had never been state sanctioned pogroms against Native Central and South and North Americans under any Luso-Hispanic forces whatsoever, especially not in comparison with what happended under those beastly Brits and Yanquis.

The Tainos:

The team now believes the city was the site of a 1503 massacre reported by the Spanish missionary Bartolome de las Casas. That incident marked one of the first major clashes between the Taino and the Spaniards, and set the Indians on the path to annihilation.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/41/326.html

In Peru:

Roque Martin (according to Pedro de Cieza de Leon, the Spanish chronicler of the Inca conquest) kept :

"the quarters of Indians hanging on his porch to feed his dogs with, as if they were wild beasts."

'The Conquest of the Incas', by John Hemming

Much the same kind of treatment meted out to surviving remnants of the Indian population in Guatemala, for instance, in the 20th Century:

Guatemala: Land of injustice?

Facts and Figures

Historical

Guatemala was ruled by Spain until 1823.


Internal armed conflict

Guatemala’s internal armed conflict took place between 1960 and 1996.

The Historical Clarification Commission (CEH), Comisión de Clarificación Histórica, concluded that over 200,000 people had “disappeared” or were killed during the conflict.

Of the victims it could document and identify, 83 percent were of Mayan origin.

Around 93 percent of human rights violations were attributed to government forces.

Over a million Guatemalans were forcibly displaced. Approximately 200,000 of them found refuge in Mexico.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/guatemala/document.do?id=ENGAMR340082006

It should be pointed out that not all the British or American colonists sought the destruction of North American Indians, and attempts at conversion were carried out, as was intermarriage.


No colonizer has clean hands.

[realpolitic]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Just to clarify - when I said unique, i was thinking unique in the history of European colonization in Africa, NOT in world history, (I would think it obvious there have been others genocides in world history). It was really a direct response to something Spiff said in OT.

Well, before you changed the definition, there were two glaring examples, in the European coloniztion of Europe:


The Third Reich
and
Ethic Cleansing in Serbia

[VetLegion]

lotm, what do you think about Mau Mau rebellion?

Here is an interesting review of a book about it:

http://www.exile.ru/2006-September-08/another_british_genocide.html

But there are simpler reasons, bravely revealed in Caroline Elkins's account of the slaughter of some 300,000 ethnic Kikuyu of Kenya, the torture of hundreds of thousands more, and the internment of the entire Kikuyu population, in mid-20th-century Kenya. As Elkins reveals, the Brits simply destroyed every record of the massacres they could find, and -- unlike the French, Germans or other conscience-harried colonials -- kept the settlers' oath of Omerta, never revealing what they did to the "Kukes" to anyone except other vets whose anecdotes were as bloody and full of blame as theirs. The difference between the British Empire and other fascist empires is not that these guys were nicer. Nobody who reads this book could continue to believe that, if they were fool enough to believe it beforehand. The difference is that the Brits were good at it, and had no conscience to trouble them.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by VetLegion
lotm, what do you think about Mau Mau rebellion?

Here is an interesting review of a book about it:

http://www.exile.ru/2006-September-08/another_british_genocide.html

But there are simpler reasons, bravely revealed in Caroline Elkins's account of the slaughter of some 300,000 ethnic Kikuyu of Kenya, the torture of hundreds of thousands more, and the internment of the entire Kikuyu population, in mid-20th-century Kenya. As Elkins reveals, the Brits simply destroyed every record of the massacres they could find, and -- unlike the French, Germans or other conscience-harried colonials -- kept the settlers' oath of Omerta, never revealing what they did to the "Kukes" to anyone except other vets whose anecdotes were as bloody and full of blame as theirs. The difference between the British Empire and other fascist empires is not that these guys were nicer. Nobody who reads this book could continue to believe that, if they were fool enough to believe it beforehand. The difference is that the Brits were good at it, and had no conscience to trouble them.

Ive glanced at the Elkins book. IIUC she accuses the Brits of commiting atrocities, not intending to destroy the kikuyu as a group.

Whether the Brits were "better" than the French in Algeria is another question. Thats not what I was asking here.

As for "other fascist empires" if someone is using fascist to refer to what all the empires did, thats a misuse of terminology in my opinion. If they are comparing what happened in Kenya, to what happened in Europe during WW2, well I dont agree with that either.