Chapter 20: Colonial Encounters

Chapter Introduction: Maintaining Racial Boundaries

Chapter 20 started with a story of the author's travel experience in Ethiopia where he met an Englishman while hitchhiking across Kenya. The author observed while the children who were selling baskets and other tourist items were very capable of speaking English, the Englishman insisted on responding in Swahili. He was given a simple explanation that Europeans there generally did not speak English with the "natives" but several years later, the author found a better explanation of the action. One of them is that the Europeans were scared of the possible "dangers" that it would place on white women and girls and the other, and probably the root of all the fear, is the possibility of an uprising against the government and the Europeans. By simply depriving the natives of knowledge of English language, the Europeans are able to maintain oppression. The English language poses as a key or a foundation of the native's liberation and the Europeans are simply unwilling to share it.

A Second Wave of European Conquest

The second phase of the European colonial conquest started on 1750 and lasted until 1900 with more focus in Asia and Africa such as Germany, Italy, Belgium, United States, and Japan. It was an echo of the Industrial Revolution as their "motives and activities were shaped by the military capacity and economic power that the Industrial Revolution conveyed" (p. 590). Military force or threat was used in order to gain control. This was further strengthened by the invention of the repeating rifles and machine guns.

The Power of Guns

From this part of the reading, we can see the sudden development of courage as soon as stronger weapons are obtained. Prior to acquisition of such military power, the Europeans were less likely to get involve in direct confrontation and were said to be "less likely to provoke wars" (p. 590). It is interesting to see how quickly that changed as soon as they were armed with better weapons that can give them power over a lot of disadvantaged territories. This would be a good time to reflect on the current petition on gun control. Men usually don't have the courage and sense of power over other people's life until they are armed with weapons that can result in instant death. It is by these weapons that the Europeans were able to build their colony almost everywhere they wanted to because everywhere else had less powerful or no guns at all. At this point, I can hear gun adversaries saying that maybe had guns like the Europeans, they wouldn't have been easily colonized. But I doubt that would really stop the Europeans. In these case, they would probably proceed and the other party will try to create better weapons until it will all just be a gun show where the ones with the bigger, faster firing guns will win. It will all just be a cycle, and it won't stop until someone takes away the main cause. In may opinion, the best way to stop gun violence is for ordinary citizens to not have access to any guns at all.

Continuation of the Second Wave of Conquest
Overall, the second colonization attempt was very similar to the first one but with different players. Territories were acquired the same way: military force, diseases that eradicated 75% or more of the Aborigines in Australia and the Maori's in New Zealand, and internal rivalries. In places like the Philippines and the Hindus, their former conquerors were simply displaced by another.