You’d be amazed at how fast a colonizing country can dehumanize its own descendants as soon as they breed families offshore.
I have strong doubts about that. Can you provide specific examples and expand your argument a bit? Other than the British Empire’s disdain for “going native” not much comes to mind.
I also fail to see the relevance of the Boston Tea Party. Exerting military and political power over a colony does not mean dehumanizing the colonists.
Can you elaborate? I am unaware of the British Empire dehumanizing British settlers in Rhodesia. You don’t have in mind the Boer wars, by any chance? That’s a different country (and the Boers were not descendants of Brits, too, speaking a different language, for example).
I notice that I got the examples mixed in my head. First I had thought of citing the Spanish colonies, but I assumed the examples would not be too familiar to non-Hispanic readers, so I chose to speak of the English colonies instead.
The complication with the Spanish colonies is that the first colonizers didn’t usually bring their wives with them, but instead married the Natives, so there was much more miscegenation here than in English America. The colonial government established a complex ruleset of political rights according to how much Spanish blood and Native blood was present in each individual. Even racially pure Europeans born on American soil had fewer rights than those born in Spain, and at least in the case of Colombia, that was one of the main triggers for independence.
I still don’t see much of dehumanizing. What you have is a fight over political power in the age where the idea that “All men are created equal” wasn’t either widespread or popular (outside of the religious context).
Basically, you need to show that the metropoles treat the colonists much worse than comparable groups in the metropolis itself. For example, if you have an uprising in the colony, it was suppressed much more harshly than, say, a similar uprising in the metropolis.
Your example of Spanish colonies seems to speak to racism much more than to the metropolis dehumanizing its own colonists.
I have strong doubts about that. Can you provide specific examples and expand your argument a bit? Other than the British Empire’s disdain for “going native” not much comes to mind.
I also fail to see the relevance of the Boston Tea Party. Exerting military and political power over a colony does not mean dehumanizing the colonists.
Rhodesia comes to mind.
Can you elaborate? I am unaware of the British Empire dehumanizing British settlers in Rhodesia. You don’t have in mind the Boer wars, by any chance? That’s a different country (and the Boers were not descendants of Brits, too, speaking a different language, for example).
Dehumanize is too strong a word I admit.
“Sold out” would be a better one.
Ah. Well, that happens quite frequently :-/ and is by no means limited to colonists...
I notice that I got the examples mixed in my head. First I had thought of citing the Spanish colonies, but I assumed the examples would not be too familiar to non-Hispanic readers, so I chose to speak of the English colonies instead.
The complication with the Spanish colonies is that the first colonizers didn’t usually bring their wives with them, but instead married the Natives, so there was much more miscegenation here than in English America. The colonial government established a complex ruleset of political rights according to how much Spanish blood and Native blood was present in each individual. Even racially pure Europeans born on American soil had fewer rights than those born in Spain, and at least in the case of Colombia, that was one of the main triggers for independence.
I still don’t see much of dehumanizing. What you have is a fight over political power in the age where the idea that “All men are created equal” wasn’t either widespread or popular (outside of the religious context).
Basically, you need to show that the metropoles treat the colonists much worse than comparable groups in the metropolis itself. For example, if you have an uprising in the colony, it was suppressed much more harshly than, say, a similar uprising in the metropolis.
Your example of Spanish colonies seems to speak to racism much more than to the metropolis dehumanizing its own colonists.