User:Jackie.gran42/Colonialism and genocide

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Colonization has been reinforced through various aspects of history, even throughout progressive movements such as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment, a period in 17th and 18th Century Europe dedicated to progressive reform, reinforced natural social hierarchies, deeming those of an educated, white, European background as high-class and less educated non-European people as lower class. These natural hierarchies were reinforced by progressives such as Marquis de Condorcet, a French mathematician, who, despite supporting the abolition of enslaved people, believed slaves were savages due to their lack of modern practices. The colonization process usually first works to attack the homes of those targeted. Typically, the people subject to colonizing practices are considered to lack modernity, as they do not have the same level of education or technology.

The term genocide, although practiced long before, was coined in the 20th century following the Holocaust. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer, first used the term genocide. Years later, the term was unanimously accepted by the United Nations and adopted as an internationally illegal practice as a part of Resolution 96 in 1946. Various definitions of genocide exist. However, the Convention of Genocide has defined it as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” It is important to note that all definitions of genocide involve ethnicity, race, or religion as a motivational factor.

Additionally, instances of colonialism and genocide in California and Hispaniola are cited below. The instance in California references the colonization and genocide of indigenous tribes by euro-Americans during the gold rush period. The example in Hispaniola discusses the island's colonization by Columbus and other Spaniards and the genocide inflicted on the native Taino people.

Researched examples of genocide linked to colonialism

 * Another example of colonialism and Genocide is of the Taino tribe in Hispaniola alongside the arrival of Christopher Columbus and other Spanish colonizers. Columbus and his people arrived on the island of Haiti in December of 1942. Initially leaving behind 39 Spaniards, Columbus left and returned a year later with more Spaniards to further conquer the Dominican republic. There are no exact tallies of how many Taino people inhabited Hispaniola upon Columbus’ arrival. However, estimates pinpoint the population to at least hundreds of thousands and perhaps up to a million or more. Regardless, over 25 years of Spaniards colonizing the islands of Hispaniola, the Taino people were murdered, subjected to slavery, and by the year 1514, only approximately 32,000 people of the Taino population remained.
 * According to Jack Norton, a Hupa and Cherokee scholar, the colonization of California was attributed to manifest destiny, and the success of European colonizers in the West was due to the genocide of indigenous people. In a government-sponsored move to California, European colonizers emigrated west to further colonize the north American continent due to the discovery of gold in California. Upon arriving, Brendan Lindsay, an American behavioral scientist, notes that the euro-American group encountered nearly 150,000 indigenous tribes, in which colonizers worked to drive them away, murder them, or have them collected by militiamen or vigilante forces. As the gold rush ended and euro-American colonizers began to cultivate the land and create democracy in California, the treatment of indigenous tribes became much worse. The first California Governor, Peter H. Burnett, declared a “war of extermination” on Indians, which is recounted by numerous newspapers of the time.