Thoights of the colonial black book.

Evermore intellectuals see the colonizes as a natural result of west’s inherited superiority. But none that have suffered from colonises have ever by their own free will accepted it.

Colonial history has three chapters according to the African philosopher Valentin Mudimbe. The first chapter is about the territorial conquest. The savage’s land is brought under rule, as only the western man knows how to properly make use of it. The second chapter is about how the economy is brought under systems of trade controlled by western companies. And the third chapter is about salvation, the religious, cultural and scientific conversion of the colonized people from their own self-inflicted ignorance and superstition.
Each chapter has its hero: the explorer/conqueror in the first, the trader/businessman in the second and the missionary in the third. As an example in Mexico: first Cortés who gave Spain suverinity of the land, thereafter miners to extract the colonies resources, and finally the monks such as Bernardino Sahagun who “helps” the locals to orient themselves in Christian values.

For over five hundred years the pattern has repeated itself in small variations. And it continues – even as recent as this year. First general Franks the commander of the coalitions army. Once Iraq’s soil is conquered Bechtel, Halliburton and others move in to “reconstruct” the nations economy. And finally the diplomats and academics, responsible for bringing “democracy”.
The parallel of the Mexican conquest in 1519 and Iraq in 2003 might be harsh, but when but into a historical perspective it is but a part of western rule. Broken and miserable, grand and bold.

Admittedly for better and worse. Does the scale tip over for good or bad? The question might seam meaningless as history cannot be remade, nor unmade. Even if you could imagine a world where Aztecs, Arabs or Chinese ruled, you can not guarantee it would be a better world.
But still it is our moral duty to view today’s world order from the eyes of those who was trampled to make it reality. This duty is the very same as the duty to judge the Nazi world order from the eyes of their victims.
But then again, the victors write history, dictates right and wrong.

Many are those who have voices their right to be compensated for the injustice cast upon them, some successfully the majority not. Mainly because the victims – Australian aborigines, American Indians and slave descendants – must call for laws dictated by the perpetrators, not in seldom created to hide their crimes.

Is the poet Aimé Césaire right in his claims? Is what Hitler can never be forgiven not the crime as such, but that Hitler brought terror reserved for Arabs, India’s Kulies and Africa’s Negros upon the white man?
It is not too hard to think so when one every child knows about the monstrosities during World War II and still are almost completely ignorant to 15 million Africans brought in chains as slaves to the new world, 7 million Indians reduced to a tourist attraction, 30 million Arabs slaughtered in the name of our lord, and this only the tip of the iceberg of countless of languages, cultures and lifestyles all crushed into nothingness, denied even the recognition to have ever existed. Whole nations doomed to beg for the crumbles at the western nation’s doorstep.

How dare we even have the impudence to blame our victims for the injustices and insecurity of this world? It takes a grand man to admit ones faults, but now is the time for west to redeem what has been done. Not only for the sake of our victims but also for more selfish reasons: if we do not extinguish the fuse of this barrel of dynamite we have made for ourselves we will be our own doom, and heed my word: no mercy will be shown to us if we have given none ourselves.