hidingincanada: spatiotemporalcookies: ...

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

spatiotemporalcookies:

Colonizability of Africa. (1899)

A map by cartographer John George Bartholomew (1860-1920)

I’m going to take the time to type this out, because, you know, holy shit.

The pink: Healthy colonizable Africa, where European races may be expected to become in time the prevailing type, where essentially European states may be formed.

The yellow: Fairly healthy Africa: but where unfavourable conditions of soil or water supply, or the prior establishment of warlike or enlightened native races or other causes, may effectually prevent European colonization.

The gray: Unhealthy but exploitable Africa: impossible for European colonizaiton but for the most part of the great commercial value and inhabited by fairly docile, governable races; the Africa of the trader and planter and of despotic European control

The brown: Extremely unhealthy Africa

I have no words to describe any of this, except to note that this was a genocide that these bastards planned, and carried out, in many many parts.

Next time someone tells you to “just get over it”, it being the European colonization of the world…. show them this. Some things…. you just don’t ever get over. They shouldn’t either.

Over at zunguzungu, Aaron elaborates a little further on the map’s context. Go read.

There is an interesting (i.e. bizarre, spectacular) inclusion towards the end of Aaron’s blog post. It’s a quote by Howard Johnston from a later book, The Rise of the Native, and it’s gobsmackingly good:

“The godlike heads of our descendants may be shaved all over or electrically depilated; and with hair completely out of fashion we may have ceased to care about its colour or its undulations. Eyes may be screened with lenses for the telescopic or microscopic development of sight; body and limbs be so perpetually protected from heat and cold, germs and bruises, by some closely-fitting, antiseptic garment that only the beauty of its shape be visible and nothing of its skin-colour. In 2100 A.D. there may be no physical or mental reason why negroid and Caucasian should not become one flesh.”

It’s 2011, and yeah, it really appears that we’re headed that way.

It strikes me as interesting (i.e. bizarre, spectacular) that an ideology that breeds some of the most hardcore racist/orientalist views about “the people of the world” is the very same one that also gives way to a utopic longing for the postracial, where we can all merge into one flesh, colour of your skin be damned.

“In 2100 A.D. there may be no physical or mental reason why negroid and Caucasian should not become one flesh.”

Indeed. I like the inclusion of no mental reason. (Meanwhile Satoshi Kanazawa says, “Like, no way?”)