Sure, yeah basically in the 1700’s common morality for colonialists was that blacks, natives, asians were all non-people. Like homo-sapiens sure, but literally just not humans. So Jefferson could sincerely and whole heartedly say that all men are created equal and deserve fundamental rights but he didn’t mean “non-people”. When we pushed natives onto reservations or sold black people it wasn’t in a moustache twirling spirit of capriciousness. Colonial Americans literally thought they were the good guys. They just also thought that other human beings weren’t actually humans.
Jefferson specifically made some lip service to respecting the “noble savages” and how his actions were in an attempt to elevate and integrate them to white American society but that was kind of kayfabe. In reality he was selling their lands with the implication being they never owned them to begin with. If you’re ever interested in seeing inside the minds of colonialists, check out his memoirs. They’re a world class treatise on rationalizing theft and he contorts to some interesting positions to justify it.
Wow, thanks for the great response! That makes a lot of sense.
Our colonizarion was slightly different as it happened after those attitudes started changing - we/they still fully expected to eradicate the Maori peoples and saw them merely as an obstacle but at least weren’t enslaveing them (much - that happened a little, from memory)
As someone from the other hemisphere with bugger-all knowledge, can you expand on that a little?
We tried watching gods and generals on the plane a few days back but it required a lot of context and seemed unbelievably slow and long…
Sure, yeah basically in the 1700’s common morality for colonialists was that blacks, natives, asians were all non-people. Like homo-sapiens sure, but literally just not humans. So Jefferson could sincerely and whole heartedly say that all men are created equal and deserve fundamental rights but he didn’t mean “non-people”. When we pushed natives onto reservations or sold black people it wasn’t in a moustache twirling spirit of capriciousness. Colonial Americans literally thought they were the good guys. They just also thought that other human beings weren’t actually humans.
Jefferson specifically made some lip service to respecting the “noble savages” and how his actions were in an attempt to elevate and integrate them to white American society but that was kind of kayfabe. In reality he was selling their lands with the implication being they never owned them to begin with. If you’re ever interested in seeing inside the minds of colonialists, check out his memoirs. They’re a world class treatise on rationalizing theft and he contorts to some interesting positions to justify it.
Wow, thanks for the great response! That makes a lot of sense.
Our colonizarion was slightly different as it happened after those attitudes started changing - we/they still fully expected to eradicate the Maori peoples and saw them merely as an obstacle but at least weren’t enslaveing them (much - that happened a little, from memory)