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
The idea that some people would put the US as the first spot is baffling, I guess everyone's entitled to their opinion though.
 
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.
I think otherwise and I don't feel ignorant or evil, thank you. (no I don't think colonialism or imperialism was good or morally neutral either, it was mostly bad)

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.
The poll is not about "which country had the worst episode of cruelness or evil" it's about each country's general impact, so if country X colonized 2 places and did something really bad in 1 another country Y that colonized 10 places but did something very very bad in 1(worse than country X) would you say that the latter had overall the worst impact in general?
 
I added the Nazis as their plan for eastern europe was to basically make it a german colony

I disagree. If you want a poll about 'major' colonizers than dont include options that didnt colonize anything just because they planned to - even if likely it would have been the worst. But it didnt happen. Especially as just by their reputation they will get a lot of votes. You distort the results this way. Though who votes the nazis for this question is probably better discounted.

And just to make this clear: I dont say the nazis werent the most evil regime in human history. I would vote for them in a poll about that. But they werent colonizers. Fortunately they didnt last long enough for that.
 
The idea that some people would put the US as the first spot is baffling, I guess everyone's entitled to their opinion though.

Well, considering how they threated natives, it is pretty understandable altough Americans weren't worst among colonial powers.
 
Well, considering how they threated natives, it is pretty understandable altough Americans weren't worst among colonial powers.
I can name medium sized wars that claimed more lives than all US massacres or deportations throughout the 18 and 19th centuries combined.
 
Okay then, name them.
The American civil war is no small conflict but it had many times the casualty figures for virtually all recorded massacres and deportations, you could take any famous 17th to 19th century conflict in Europe for the same result.

Yes but please compare it against %of the population for each group affected and if those groups today are in control of their traditional lands.
What so if someone somewhere kills the last man of a tribe he is worse than all colonial empires that ever existed? Using a purely relative metric makes no sense.
 
When it comes to the Americas the US takes the lead easily.

Despite all the atrocities of the Spanish a large portion of their former holdings retain a noticiable % of people who have indigenous ancestry which has permeated into the national culture.

In the US the Native Americans have been almost completely decimated, too the point of making up less than 2% of the entire population. And still to this day are the group worst effected by drug abuse, poverty, and lack of political representation.

Spain might have toppled empires, killed millions in mines and plantations, but the mestizos have survived, even large swaths of indigenous have.

In the US the people who lived here before colonialism have all been killed, displaced and tucked away in the worst parcels of land this country has to offer.
 
When it comes to the Americas the US takes the lead easily.

Despite all the atrocities of the Spanish a large portion of their former holdings retain a noticiable % of people who have indigenous ancestry which has permeated into the national culture.

In the US the Native Americans have been almost completely decimated, too the point of making up less than 2% of the entire population. And still to this day are the group worst effected by drug abuse, poverty, and lack of political representation.

Spain might have toppled empires, killed millions in mines and plantations, but the mestizos have survived, even large swaths of indigenous have.

In the US the people who lived here before colonialism have all been killed, displaced and tucked away in the worst parcels of land this country has to offer.
There are more mestizo and natives in the Spanish colonies because there were more to begin with, do you seriously believe that Mexico, a country which had 10-20 million natives in 1520, would end up having the same ethnic composition to the US, which average estimations don't go higher than 5 million? Plus the US today has 2-3 times more people than Mexico.
 

Lusitania

Donor
If that's your measurement then the Spanish were waaaay worse.

That may be true.

Problem is that by most estimates 90% of the pre-Columbus native population died off within 200 years of European arrival. Reasons include disease (huge culprid), famine and war.

So what are the measurements people are using.

If colonizer comes in and wipes out 10,000 population tribe destroying the tribe completely is that worse than another country killing 500,000 people from population of 2 million but the remaining population today are growing and speak their language and have their culture.

I cannot tell you which is worse because both are awful.

In my original response wanted people to consider both in determining.
 
The American civil war is no small conflict but it had many times the casualty figures for virtually all recorded massacres and deportations, you could take any famous 17th to 19th century conflict in Europe for the same result.

Well some estimates have put the numbers of Filipino civilians killed in the Philippines-American War at the end of the 19th Century as as high as 1 million, already covering most of the casualties of the Civil War (about 1.6-1.8 million people) but even if we take away the 250,000 estimated to have died to cholera that's around 750,000 people still as well as a hell of a lot of massacres (read Francia's 'A History of the Philippines' for his account of American atrocities in the Philippines-American War).
 
Well some estimates have put the numbers of Filipino civilians killed in the Philippines-American War at the end of the 19th Century as as high as 1 million, already covering most of the casualties of the Civil War (about 1.6-1.8 million people) but even if we take away the 250,000 estimated to have died to cholera that's around 750,000 people still as well as a hell of a lot of massacres (read Francia's 'A History of the Philippines' for his account of American atrocities in the Philippines-American War).
Filipinos are not native Americans, I was talking about them and so were others apparently.
 
Wow, almost no one voted for France.
The French stance with regards to its American colonies was pretty benign. It was rather brutal in Indochina - but less so than the Japanese when they came - and while its attempts at assimilation in Africa were unpleasant, it was nowhere as bad as the Belgians or Germans.
While France was probably not the best, it was definitely far from the worst.
 
Well, if Ireland counts as a colony, then UK was by far the worst. Like, they treated Indians with a bit of respect, but their behavior in South Africa, Tasmania and Ireland was horrible. They also let the Thirteen colonies gain bad habits that would stay on the US.
 
They seemed to be trying to stop said bad habits near the end. One of the causes of the american revolution was British attempts to stop the colonies from crossing the Appalachian mountains.

Yeah, they tried to keep their colonies near the coast so they would control them easier, and tried to keep their agreements with the natives, but they also treated very poorly natives inside of the Thirteens (even though I can understand to some extent, due to Radcliffe's fate OTL)
 
Top