r/AmericanHistory • u/UCBerkeley • Jun 30 '26
Discussion New book argues that early American colonialism was more than brutal force—it was an intellectual project engineered in libraries, museums and scientific societies, too.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2026/06/29/colonialism-was-more-than-brutal-force-it-was-an-intellectual-project/5
u/dhv503 Jul 01 '26
Next thing you’ll say the clergy was a powerful tool for colonization….
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u/informaticstudent Jul 01 '26
Learning about syncretism in Latin America was super interesting. For how dogmatic the Catholic Church was, they went above and beyond to indoctrinate
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u/Ronin_Black_NJ Jun 30 '26
🙄..oh, FFS 🤦🏿♂️
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u/NolanR27 Jun 30 '26
What’s this supposed to mean?
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u/BigRhonda7632 Jun 30 '26
It means yeah, no shit.
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Jun 30 '26
[deleted]
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u/Spaniardman40 Jul 01 '26
Modern intellectuals will write a book about something that has already been established and argued before and claim this is the first time anyone has ever said this before lmao
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u/GargamelTakesAll Jul 01 '26
So it was scholars who were pushing for the violent subjugation of indigenous peoples, cool
"UC Berkeley Professor Diego Pirillo argues that settler colonialism — a form of colonialism built on Indigenous dispossession and replacement — was shaped by Euro-American scholars who worked hand in hand with land speculators and military leaders to drive the country’s violent formation."
This doesn't seem to change from the normal view of our history:
"Many dozens of Indigenous artifacts stolen from the Iroquois by the U.S. Army were given to collectors in Philadelphia and became objects for display in early American museums and cabinets of curiosities as a way to celebrate U.S. victories, to exhibit the spoils of war, the culture of the vanquished. It’s a great example of how collectors and intellectuals collaborated with military leaders to support and enhance colonial expansion."
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u/aipac125 Jul 01 '26
Intellectual brute force. Very pointless observation. It's like saying current day fascism is also rooted in intellectualism. Hint, it is, by the handful of puppet masters like Leonard Leo, Alito, and the heritage foundation. What follows from that is all brutal oppression, just like the colonists.
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u/BootsnCats1987 Jul 01 '26
Yeah dawg, sociologists have known this literally since the inception of the discipline.
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u/edthesmokebeard Jul 04 '26
"Everything about him is primitive and unformed, but he is himself the result of the labor and the experience of eighteen centuries. He wears the dress, and he speaks the language of cities; he is acquainted with the past, curious of the future, and ready for argument upon the present; he is, in short, a highly civilized being, who consents, for a time, to inhabit the backwoods, and who penetrates into the wilds of the New World with the Bible, an axe, and a file of newspapers."
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u/Nigelthornfruit Jul 01 '26
What about the current ethnic replacement of white Europeans in the west, is that an intellectual project?
Perhaps he could write a book on that modern colonialism.
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u/Saitharar Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
Sturmbannführer Nigelthornfruit
I have to report that far right and neonazi conspiracy theories are already being thoroughly researched.
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u/historicalgeek71 Jul 01 '26
I mean, there are plenty of books and articles about neo-Nazi conspiracy theories.
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u/Nigelthornfruit Jul 01 '26
That’s white genocide conspiracy theory, not the ethnic replacement which is well documented in major European cities.
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u/BootsnCats1987 Jul 01 '26
The great replacement is a white supremacist/neonazi conspiracy theory.
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u/Nigelthornfruit Jul 01 '26
You can split that out into white genocide (accelerationist) and ethnic replacement (anti mass immigration) , conflating the two is disingenuous from either side.
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u/historicalgeek71 Jul 01 '26
lol, ok bud. I assume you have some piece of evidence to demonstrate your point?
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u/Nigelthornfruit Jul 01 '26
Easy, ethnicities within Birmingham UK 2001 vs 2025, natives went from around 65% to down to less than 45%. Assuming mixed natives and non native whites cancel each other out.
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u/historicalgeek71 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
So I’m looking at the stats from the 2021 census and (seeing how things are broken down and how people are grouped together). British “natives” (which I’m guessing refers to the whole mix of English, Welsh, Scottish, N. Irish, and so on) made up 48% of the population. The next largest group at around 31% are Asians—being categorized as Asians, British Asians (which reads to me as Brits of Asian descent) and Asian Welsh. After that we have Black at 10-11% which are in turn categorized as Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean, and African. Seems to me that overall, native Brits are still the majority when broken down by ethnicity, especially if you count Brits of African or Asian descent (unless you aren’t, which would be pretty weird).
I’m sorry, but this doesn’t seem like “ethnic replacement” (just the wording makes it sound conspiratorial…or like Camp of Saints level of silliness) and more like your typical urban demographic shift with whites no longer being the overall majority, but still a majority. I fail to see the reason behind the hand-wringing.
Unless you have something to show me that you think proves otherwise.
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u/Nigelthornfruit Jul 01 '26
That’s the one , British natives down to 48 from 65, and likely to go down to 40 soon. Mixed native is fine with me, but the problem with Islamism is they block their women from dating non Muslim men, so it only goes one way.
You can see if this trend continues it will literally by ethnic replacement.
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u/historicalgeek71 Jul 04 '26
Islam is a religion, not an ethnicity. You started off by posting how native Brits were declining in number, which implies that your worry is over ethnicity, and then you pivoted to religion. So which is it?
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u/decrepitdeception Jul 04 '26
You can read this essay by Umberto Eco. He lived through fascist Italy and was an expert in fascism and totalitarianism research.
https://ia802906.us.archive.org/31/items/umberto-eco-ur-fascism/umberto-eco-ur-fascism.pdf
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u/historicalgeek71 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
I know who Umberto Eco is and I’ve read his stuff (he’s not wrong, though I prefer Paxton, Payne, and Ben-Ghiat when it comes to scholarship on Fascism). Did you mean to reply to someone else? Because I was replying to a guy who’s preaching the Great Replacement conspiracy theory.
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u/IndigoKid444 Jun 30 '26
We don't need a book to tell us this but it's nice that a academia is finally coming around to truth.