Conquerors, Colonizers, and History
We came, we saw, we screwed things up for a while…
Conquerors, Colonizers, and History
By Andrew Meblin, copyright May 2, 2025
We may be, perhaps, beyond peak use of the words ‘colonizers,’ ‘colonization,’ ‘decolonization,’ and any other derivative. The internet (which is true, always) writes that “Colonized people are individuals who were subjected to imperial practices, power relations, and collaborations by colonizers leading to erasure of the original ways of knowing and emergence of hybrid identities within the empire”
Looking back at historical records supports this statement, as we grow retrospective of the American experience. Even the name, America, is a European-influenced label, dredging up the story of the Italian Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine living in Seville, Spain, who sailed to Brazil where he is said to be the first European to set his eyes on Rio de Janeiro. In 1507 a cabal of scholars in a French commune, yep a commune, who worked to create a book with cut-outs of continents before the invention of Cricut) so people could make their own globes. One big brainy guy decided to label that big bulge down there as America. Then, that mapmaker Mercator, several decades subsequent applied the names North and South to the continents. So now you know.
Anyway, Oh-and-two, as Vin Scully famously said.
Colonization has been a thing since people began migrating. If we accept the theory that human life began in Africa, and migrated to the four corners of the world (back when it was flat), then Africans colonized Europe, and everything else. But I know little of the actual events, relying only on my minimal knowledge of history, and books. One book I have been perusing lately is the DK publication History of the World Map by Map, and as the title implies the story of us is told through maps, color-coded, with arrows, dates, and captions.
Each section features different eras and regions and cultures, which people went where, conquered whom, and when that happened. It’s a wonderful book.
Here maps inform us of migratory patterns in pre-Columbian times.
Over the last 18 months, or so, an unusual amount of attention has been focused on Israel, and Gaza, with Israel declared ‘colonizers’ of the Levant, having mainly migrated from Europe in the 20th century. There is little to dispute about that last phrase, but the application of the word colonizer to Jews fleeing the horrid mistreatment by Germans, Russians, British, French, Spanish, Poles, and probably every other peoples, is a bit of a stretch. Jews have returned to their ancestral homeland (see Old Testament, written by ancient guys). Does that constitute colonization? According to Marxist-style revisionism it does.
The labels Jew and Israeli tend to get conflated since the reestablishment of Israel by a resolution of the United Nations, but that’s wrong. My father the Jew never visited Israel. Some far-left American Jews I know deplore the actions of Israel as pertains to people who descend from groups of Arabs living in the Levant after the Roman massacre, enslavement or banishment of Jews following the Siege of Jerusalem 69-70 CE. These peaceful Jews believe in the two-state solution, I expect. And that degree of tolerance is admirable, of course. But is it possible to maintain a state next to another whose government has proclaimed the goal of eliminating your existence? Mark R. of Truckee says that the threats written in the Hamas charter are merely hyperbole, idle threats necessary to appeal to other powers in the region. Iran? Death to Israel is a stated goal, but how serious are the mullahs of Iran? I hope we never learn the answer to that question. One can suppose these threats are just blustery talk, like some of DJ Trump’s outlandish comments, but the frequency of utterance of a threat increases the level of sincerity by the commentator.
The Israelis are committing genocide against Arabs in Gaza, people say. If so, then they’re not doing a very good job of it, because a true genocide looks more like herding a few more than 6,000,000 people into camps and working them to death, or just gassing them cyanide-style. Genocide was razing Jerusalem and enslaving or killing ninety percent of the population, and parading through streets of Rome with the riches looted from the synagogue, as Vespasian and his son Titus did.
Six centuries later, after the prophet Mohammed had his revelatory visits from God, his word spread from Arabia throughout the Levant, across North Africa and into Spain, and eastward into the ‘stans. This was accomplished by persuasion of force. Convert or die, was the choice offered to millions of “infidels.”
Ascenders or colonizers?
Charles Martel stopped the Islamic invasion as the believers in Mohammed crested the Pyrenees and swooped into the southwest of what is now France. Islamic people dominated Spain until the country was slowly wrestled back by Christians. In 1492 Muslims were ejected from Spain, and for good measure they sent the Jews packing as well.
Several centuries later Turkish armies controlled the Levant, along with much of the land captured by earlier Islamic armies, and established the Ottoman Empire. Many great inventions came from the Arabs, including distillation of spirits (although the Chinese claim this as their own). Istanbul had been known as Constantinople for a time, as it served as the capital of the Roman Empire. then Byzantium, and it was the center for Eastern Christianity, until adherents of Islam conquered it. Empires rise and fall, and 1917 brought an end to the Ottomans, but their name lives on as a piece of furniture. Fun fact: Istanbul lays both on the European and Asian continents. Cool?
Egypt held onto Gaza after the 1949 Arab-Israeli War, but maintained it as a territory, denying Egyptian citizenship to Arabs in Gaza, and restricting movement into Egypt. Why weren’t the Arabs of Palestine/Israel welcomed into Trans Jordan or Syria, or Egypt? I know what some people have claimed the reasons to be, and possibly it reflects a bigoted viewpoint, so I’ll not pass them on.
My father’s family emigrated from Russia prior to the dissolution of the Russian empire. Czars and czarinas had forcibly dominated Belarus and Ukraine by the early years of the 1700’s, right around the time that American colonies began to thrive. Yes, Ukraine was dominated by Russia for the same period of time as the United States have been a country. I detest Vladimir Putin, and the Russian brutality, but there is a historical comparison for you.
I know a bit of the independent nature of the Ukrainian people. When the country achieved independence, as one result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dream had come true. For just a brief time after the overthrow of the Russian royal family Lenin allowed Ukraine autonomy, but that was quickly reversed as the Reds realized how much grain and iron ore they would lose. And to break their spirit, Soviets under Joseph Stalin systematically vilified the successful farmers of Ukraine while Red bureaucrats committed a true genocide using starvation and relocation as weapons. Millions died, but little attention was paid to this abomination. Stalin and the Soviets had good press relations, somehow. See New York Times, Walter Durante for one.
In a classic case of whataboutism, I point to history books that detail how countless groups of people have engaged in territorial expansion through violent and barbaric means. It does not excuse it, but hopefully some context can be presented to enlighten people living in the 21st century. Putin’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine is to be deplored, but that is how people have done business since the dawn of time. Are there any solutions? I know of none.
Where colonization results in improved conditions for people living marginally, it is a benefit. Where disease and cultural oppression occur, obviously those are negatives. Forcing the colonizing country’s culture on colonized people is the epitome of brutality. Once while teaching a class of 5th graders in Orinda, I explained the Columbian Exchange.
A boy raised his hand and asked for clarification. “So Europeans came here and got corn, beans, squash, hot peppers, tobacco, and all the Indians got was horses and smallpox?”
Me: “Yeah, pretty much,”
Him: “That was a crumby deal!”
Since it was a 5th grade class I omitted the transmission of syphilis, a condition which it is believed some indigenous people had evolved to live with without suffering the illness Europeans did.
Anyway, oh and two. Getting back to Israel, Gaza, and the Islamic countries… Why is it that the Israelis are the focus of so much attention for their return to what was once the homeland of the Hebrew people? Consider the tenets of Islam in which
What is intended to be taken by writing these words is the knowledge that ‘settler colonialism’ has been practiced by perhaps every culture in the brief history of homo sapiens. This is not intended as an excuse for treatment cruel or criminal by elements of an encroaching group.
But yes, there is a whatabout theme here, because while we know past infliction of harm does not justify current or future such activities. Beyond that, the small proportion of residents of this country screaming the loudest about Zionism* are disingenuous at best, and victims of malevolent propaganda at worst.
Islamic leaders have expressed the view that there exists a Jewish/Zionist conspiracy to rid the Near East, the Middle East all the way from Marrakesh to Kazakhstan of Islamic influence, substituting Jewish hegemony. Given that there are at most 15 million Jews that seems impossible. The world population of Muslims comes in at one and a half billion. Do the math.
For further reading I recommend Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond.