Poll: What major colonizing power had the worst impact on their colony's natives

What major colonizing power had the worst impact on their colony's natives

  • Britain

    Votes: 42 25.9%
  • France

    Votes: 13 8.0%
  • Spain

    Votes: 54 33.3%
  • Portugal

    Votes: 10 6.2%
  • The Netherlands

    Votes: 6 3.7%
  • The US (western expansion)

    Votes: 67 41.4%
  • Germany

    Votes: 18 11.1%
  • Japan

    Votes: 30 18.5%
  • Belgium

    Votes: 99 61.1%
  • Italy

    Votes: 6 3.7%
  • Russia (eastern expansion)

    Votes: 8 4.9%
  • Nazis

    Votes: 52 32.1%

  • Total voters
    162
I mean it's very difficult to measure something like this. You could perhaps say that some where worse than others but even the powers that are seen as somewhat more benign were beyond brutal toward some populations (I can't imagine Tasmanian Aborigines can be said to have thrived under the British, nor the natives of Hispaniola under the Spanish, and so on).

The absence of Belgium is pretty jarring however, and Japan could be easily argued to be among the ranks of the brutal colonising powers (the Koreans as well as numerous people who suffered under Japanese occupation in World War Two would concur).
 
This might had worked better as multi-choice but if has take only one, perhaps Spain. It destroyed markable part of American native population (altough partially non-intentionally) and destroyed their cultures and empires. But some other colonising powers were too very assholes.
 
If you're going to include US western expansion, then why isent Russian Eastern Expansion also up there? Siberians are people too!
 
I chose Britain (especially Australia), Spain (especially from 1492-1550), The U.S., Belgium (Leopold II) and Japan.
 
Yes. The answer is literally yes, they all did beyond reprehensible damages to every people they touched and to claim otherwise is ignorance at best and "well meaning" malevolence at worst.
 
What's the point of questions like these though? They were all bad for the natives. It's like asking what's worse slavery or the holocaust? They were both horrible events,and to put one as worse than the other just diminishes the legitimate suffering of the victims of the other tragedy.
 
I'm not surprised the Belgians are surging ahead but I am surprised that the Germans feature so low.

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versus
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I'm not surprised the Belgians are surging ahead but I am surprised that the Germans feature so low.

versus
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I know colonialism isnt nice, but kinda cheap of the authors to link it to link it to Nazism and the Holocaust. The Germans were doing exactly the same as all the other colonisers in Africa. But this sells of course.
 
I know colonialism isnt nice, but kinda cheap of the authors to link it to link it to Nazism and the Holocaust. The Germans were doing exactly the same as all the other colonisers in Africa. But this sells of course.

I'm not necessarily convinced of that. Although may indigenous peoples were wiped out its not often that was the express policy of the government at a strategic and tactical level. General Lothar von Trotha did set out with the express intention and strategy of ending the Herero as a people. The Herero and Namaqua saw 80% of their peoples murdered in this campaign alone...

“No war may be conducted humanely against non-humans” … "The Hereros are no longer German subjects. All Hereros must leave the country…or die. All Hereros found within the German borders with or without weapons, with or without animals will be killed. I will not accept a woman nor any child. …There will be no male prisoners. All will be shot". Fun guy that von Trotha and about 30 years too early...

This is significantly different from the generalizations like "the only good injun is a dead injun" of the US variety etc.
 
I know colonialism isnt nice, but kinda cheap of the authors to link it to link it to Nazism and the Holocaust. The Germans were doing exactly the same as all the other colonisers in Africa. But this sells of course.

As @TheKnightIrish already pointed out, it was much worse than other African colonies. The death toll of 80% experienced by the Herero and Namaqua is greater than the highest estimate of the percent of Jewish people that died during the Holocaust (60-63%), and also greater than the percent of Romani that died during the Holocaust (50%), so a Holocaust comparison is definitely warranted.
 
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God its so hard to chose even just three off the list.

People forget Portugal's attempts to keep their empire under their own fascist regime were effectively "If we kill a significant percentage of the population every time the colonies rebel then they'll stop eventually but also they're core part of Portugal and therefore are not colonies"

but I'd say the US takes the #1 spot, even more so if you consider that it wa the land and resources gained from its genocide that then allowed it to become the #1 imperialist power in the world and exploit how many hundreds of millions nowadays.


Fuck man.

Imperialism sucks.
 
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