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'Colonialism, genocide and slavery'

'The Great Dying of the indigenous people of the Americas'

'White Utopia/ Black Inferno: Life on Geologic Spike’

‘Colonization and Christianization’: Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici

Thet Lai Nu Aung

Student ID- 640435822

Faculty of Social Science, Chiang Mai University

Social Science Theory- 169701:702

July 19, 2021

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1. The Great Dying of the indigenous people of the Americas

The article 'The Great Dying of the indigenous people of the Americas' by Simon L.

Lewis and Mark A. Maslin illustrates how the consequential changes in the world stem from

European immigration and colonization of the Americas, these changes represent the ones in

natural environment history and the history of the human beings, how anthropocene can be

defined through the effects of these changes.

It was through the European immigrants and the livestock animals they brought along

that the whole region of Americas started experiencing some changes in their surroundings such

as the development of animal-borne infectious diseases which spread across certain parts of the

world, and were affected by these changes following the 12000-year isolation. Simon L. Lewis

and Mark A. Maslin elaborated on this, ''After 12000 years of isolation, Native Americans met

Europeans on unequal terms. Almost all major species of domesticated livestock were originally

from Eurasia and the livestock that tends to live closest to humans (cow, sheep, goat, pig and

horse) had been living with Europeans for thousands of years. These provided plentiful

opportunities for diseases to pass from animals to humans and vice versa, and to spread across

Eurasia, from eastern China to western Spain (Lewis and Maslin). The changes were not limited to

the new diseases through the human contact with the livestock animals. Native American people

encountered massive loss of lives when the wars were waged against the colonial settlers such as

the Spanish, Portuguese and the French and a newly formed exploitative working system called

'slavery' was introduced into the colonized land. And the local farming was destroyed, which
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gave rise to the famine and death of the native. All of these changes are significant negative

effects which were inevitable to the native people and the environment. However, it is worth

exploring further how not only negative impacts but positive ones happened due to these changes

because we would understand better why an unintentional or an intentional action may

sometimes result in dual effects.

The authors describe, 'The Great Dying of the Indigenous People of the Americas

resulted in the death of over 54 million people and the widespread cessation of farming. Natural

vegetation ranging from rainforest to Savannah reclaimed the abandoned agricultural land. So

many new trees grew that they pulled enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that it is

recorded in Antarctic ice core records.' (Lewis and Maslin)).By this description, we learnt that

plant restoration took place on the agricultural lands which had been emptied when the native

farms were destroyed by wars and the farmers were killed by the new diseases, overworking and

wars, which gave rise to the fall in atmospheric CO2 levels and the cooling environment. In other

words, it is good for the environment which has been exploited.

In addition, all of these changes have created the globalized process and homogenized

species world as the transport of animals and the diseases they cause spread from one continent

to another by different means of transportation_ transcontinental shipping used by the European

immigrants and aviation later. An interesting point here is that different beings had once been

close to and interrelated to each other in a massive landmass, which was divided into pieces to

set different places of their own. Now that the similar process happens again in environmental

history and human history, it seems to me that this is a reflection of the concept of 'historic

recurrence'[1] which was described in the 19th century by Heinrich Heine and Friedrich

Nietzsche. The only difference is that the term 'globalization' is coined to represent the
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worldwide interrelated changes and their effects. And these changes which led to the

environmental cooling process caused by the 'golden spike' (as cited in ``The Great Dying of the

Indigenous People of the Americas, para. 9) some geologists are familiar with could be

considered to define 'Anthropocene'. The writers claimed that the Anthropocene, in fact, tells us

how our actions can affect each other and the environment we live in (Lewis and Maslin).

In conclusion, both human beings and the natural environment have been positively and

negatively affected by the migration of the European to the Americas. It is because of this two

fold effect that all parts of the world have become globalized, which then, in turn, might lead to

the severe further impacts people and the natural world cannot avoid.

2. White Utopia/Black Inferno: Life on a geologic spike by Kathryn Yusoff

This article explores how overall development of the western world is the great profit

European invaders gain through invasion of the Americas or the new world while it has

detrimental effects on the well-being of the indigenous people.

To understand the whole process, it is necessary to know the changes which took

place in an exploitative way in the native land and what is the most inhumane act among

them. According to the writer, ‘The invasion of Europeans in the Americas resulted in a

massive genocide of the indigenous population, leading to a decline from 54 million

people in the Americas in 1492 to approximately 6 million in 1650, as a result of murder,

enslavement, famine and disease. This led to a massive reduction in farming and the

regeneration of the forest and carbon uptake or sequestration by forest, leading to an

observed decline in Antarctic ice cores of CO2 in the atmosphere. This orbis spike of

systematic murder marks the instigation of Global-World-space (an understanding of the

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world as a global entity that is open to the conquest of the entirety of its spatialized and

subjective relations)' (Yusoff , p.3). In this explanation, by using the term ‘systematic

murder', the writer emphasizes to say that all these atrocious activities and the horrifying

changes they lead to are designed to happen by the colonists.

In this case, two interrelated points should be considered: objectification of the

indigenous people or 'thingification' (Yusoff , p.3) considered equal to colonization and

global capitalism. The first point is concerned with the fact that the indigenous people

including the black are treated as objects and equated with the trading goods such as

''gold, pepper, ivory, native cloths, cattle'' (Yusoff , p.5). According to the second point,

the colonial capitalists intended to develop the capitalist economy, that is, an economy

based on private property ownership, by exploiting the excessive labour power of the

indigenous people. It is only by way of rejecting the identification of the latter as human

beings and labeling them as 'slaves', which is an abusive act of dehumanizing the

indigenous. These two points are described by the writer quoting C.L.R. James' argument

in 'Black Jacobins', ' As C.L.R. James argues in Black Jacobins, the immense wealth from

the slave trade and the Haitian sugar plantations enriched the bourgeoisie to such an

extent that they were powerful enough to set in motion the French Revolution: In other

words both the hegemony of the Western bourgeoisie and of capitalism were in their

origin based mainly on New World conversion of man-the black man-into a commodity…'

(Yusoff , p.8). Here, it is also learnt that the exploitation of the black indigenous labour

paved the way to the French revolution initiated by the French bourgeoisie. The main aim

of the revolution was to replace the monarchy with a representative government which

guaranteed the democratic principles such as equal opportunity and freedom of speech
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based on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des droits

de l’homme et du citoyen ) (History.com editors). This process seems ironic because the

denial of the social justice and liberty of another came into existence in order to fight

against an injustice imposed on a society. However, a deeper understanding of this

revolution helps us see that the nobles who were hesitant of losing their privileges are

also a part of the revolution. As it was not a revolution of purely the underprivileged, it is

no wonder why the bourgeoisie failed to consider the rights of the indigenous and did not

have the sympathy. In relation to this, I am of the opinion that the history of colonialism

might have been different and a different economic system might have been practiced

then unless the native inhabitants of the Americas and the Caribbean islands had not been

denied the equivalent status of belonging to mankind the white conquerors have never

been.

Let us continue to investigate the great profits the colonists gained and the severe

losses the colonized encountered owing to the double-edged effects of colonial capitalism

so that we would have a bigger picture of the historical realities. First, the indigenous had

to work for the colonialist in the cotton and sugar plantations and made the colonials

become the rich capitalists. On the other hand, the colonized were subjected to the harsh

working conditions to the extent that exhaustion and unhealthiness were unavoidable to

them. To signify this, the writer quotes a comparative statement of Marx's about the

slavery of the wage-workers in Europe, 'As Marx puts it, the veiled slavery of the

wage-workers in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery pure and simple in the new

world…Capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.'

(Yusoff, p.9).
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However, exploitations were not limited to the ones in the economic sphere.

What's worse, nuclear tests on the indigenous islands are another ones which adversely

affected the indigenous population. Although the inhabitants had to be displaced to the

uninhabited islands, they returned to their homelands because these islands were unfit

places of residences. For example, stone sucking was a practice by the islanders to avoid

hunger, which reflects the lack of food or food fit for human consumption. When the

natives were exposed to the radiation, this caused the present and long term toxic effects

on their health such as creating the possibilities of leukemia, neoplasms and thyroid

cancers and on the reproduction. The writer quotes a suggestion by a scholar, 'Spillers

suggests ( on the practice of medical experimentation on sick Negroes……) that ''the

procedures adopted for the captive flesh demarcate a total objectification, as the entire

captive community becomes a living laboratory.' (Yusoff, p.10). This reflects that the

captive black natives were used in medical experiments of the effects of radiation and it

would be seemingly good for the next generation as people will have been

knowledgeable enough to know what to be avoided about the nuclear technology and a

major breakthrough in the medical and technological history of the colonists thanks to the

experimentation. On the contrary, this test lacked the consideration of the possible

immediate and permanent harmful effects on the indigenous population, which is also an

act of objectification of the native.

To summarize, the objectification of the indigenous people was used by the

capitalists as a tool to exploit the labor power of the former unconditionally via the

colonization of the new world and the subsequent colonial activities such as colonial

capitalism and nuclear colonialism so that it would help support the economic and
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technological developments of the western world, which caused the severe multiple

effects on physical and mental well-being of the indigenous communities. All of these

are, in fact, concerned with racism and the differentiation of the color line between the

white and the black because it is the black or non-white colonized who were subject to

the objectification according to the discriminative categorization practiced by the white

conquerors, based on their skin color. In relation to this, I feel grateful for the positive

advancement of the world whereby the fields of technology and literature have become

wider and people are so broad-minded that they tend to love embracing the diversity and

peaceful coexistence with the people of diverse racial identities despite a few exceptions

of discrimination in some parts of the world.

3. Colonization and Christianization: Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici

'Caliban and the Witch' by Silvia Federici examines the colonialist act of

oppression of the indigenous people, that is, 'witch hunt', and Christianization. In this

article, the writer gives us information about the strategies the colonial authorities use to

oppress the indigenous population and the main reason why they do so.

In addition, it is not only witch hunting but the act of eradicating the other

indigenous customs that the colonialists performed to justify the slavery and genocide of

the indigenous. The part of witch hunting tradition is described, 'The persecution of men

and women through the charge of witchcraft is a phenomenon that, in the past, was

largely considered by historians to be limited to Europe…………It is now recognized,

however, that the charge of devil-worshipping played a key function also in the

colonization of the American aboriginal population.' (Federici, p.220)This description

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makes us realize that witch-hunting also became a colonial phenomenon despite the fact

that it had been practiced only in Europe previously. It is to stop the resistance of the

native against the colonial authorities by using 'Christianization campaigns' (Federici, p.

219) to justify their tortuous activities. To explain about the eradication of other customs,

the writer describes, 'Most stigmatizing and perhaps projecting the Spaniards' labor needs

were ''nakedness'' and ''sodomy'', that qualified the Amerindians as beings living in an

animal state ( thus capable of being turned into beasts of burden)…' (Federici, p. 221)To

compare the cannibalistic practices in the Americas with the medical practices in Europe,

the writer argues, 'In the 16th, 17th and even 18th centuries, the drinking of human blood

(especially the blood of those who had died of a violent death) and mummy water,

obtained by soaking human flesh in various spirits, was a common cure for epilepsy and

other illnesses in many European countries.' (Federici, p. 222) Regarding the sexual

customs and lifestyles of the indigenous, the irony is that sodomy and nakedness by

which the Native Americans used to be condemned by the colonists are parts and parcel

of the sexual liberation movement which challenges traditional concepts of one's sexual

orientation and behavior and involves homosexuality and transgender identities in the 21st

century. Likewise, in the case of medical practices, the indigenous customs such as

human blood drinking which were deemed odd are the common medical practices done

by the European medical professionals.

The writer also told us about the important role of the outstanding indigenous

women as farmers, potters, herbalists, healers and priestesses in going against the

authorities by preserving their old faiths and rejecting the Christianity.

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In conclusion, I come to realize that certain concepts are not always meant to be

true, that is, 'circumstantial'. For example, the indigenous rituals and sexual practices of

the indigenous used to be considered odd or inappropriate whether or not that may have

been the actual assumption of the white colonists or a strategy to justify their oppressive

colonial activities. However, the world has become more liberalized and now is in favour

of individual rights and freedom, which results in the formation of different ways of

thinking. That is how it has become socially accepted ideas that people deemed wrong.

Bibliography

Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the witch. Automedia, 2004.

https://classroom.google.com/c/MzU4NDY5MTI4MzU5/a/MzU4NDk3NzQ0OTY3

/details,

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Y3/details. Accessed 19 July 2021.

History.com editors. “French Revolution.” History, A&E Television Networks, 9

November 2009, A&E Television Networks. Accessed 19 July 2021.

Lewis, Simon L., and Mark A. Maslin. “The Great Dying of the Indigenous People of the

Americas.” Feral Atlas, Standford University Press, 2021,

https://feralatlas.supdigital.org/?cd=true&bdtext=how-to-read-feral-atlas&rr=true

&cdex=true&text=lewis-and-maslin-invasion&ttype=essay. Accessed 19 7 2021.

Yusoff, Kathryn. White Utopia/ Black Inferno: Life on a geologic spike. Minnesota,

University of Minnesota Press, 2018.

https://classroom.google.com/c/MzU4NDY5MTI4MzU5/a/MzU4NDk3NzQ0OTY3
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/details,

https://classroom.google.com/c/MzU4NDY5MTI4MzU5/a/MzU4NDk3NzQ0OT

Y3/details. Accessed 19 July 2021.

[1] the repetition of similar events in history