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0 pointsteleforce22d ago0 comments

>Aboriginal peoples (pre-history "colonizers")

What nonsense, colonizers do not live and settle there for thousand of years. Would you called majority Japanese now a colonizers since the originally come from Korea/China and before them they were people there?

>Singapura had already become "great ruins" according to Alfonso de Albuquerque.

Albuquerque was the first European colonial who conquered Malacca in the early 16th CE, later Dutch and then British. They all came because they wanted to bypass what they considered "trading bottleneck" created by Ottoman, the most powerful maritime empire in the Mediterranean and Europe for many centuries.

The local authorities most probably very well deployed a typical scorched-earth strategy to prevent the Albuquerque to fully utilize Singapore infrastructure. The British did exactly this to most part of Singapore including totally damaging the very important causeway when the were defeated by Japanese in the mid 20th CE. Fun facts, the world busiest causeway still not return to the its original sophisticated design with elegant pass-thru water design until today, thus pollution side effect are still happening and not being solved [2].

[1] Scorched earth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth

[2] Why Singaporeans Are Fleeing to Malaysia Every Weekend | AB Explained [video]:

https://youtu.be/vUWOhAs5rTs

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3 comments · 2 top-level

BurningFrog22d ago· 1 in thread

Here is a piece of history trivia. Not trying to have an argument.

> they wanted to bypass what they considered "trading bottleneck" created by Ottoman

The Ottomans didn't exactly close the Silk Road, but they made it harder and more expensive to use it.

But the major reason for the maritime routes taking over the cargo traffic was that it's much more efficient to sail to Asia with your cargo than to walk it on camels.

So when the Portugese found the way around Africa and landed in Calcutta on May 20 1498, the trade patterns changed forever.

teleforceOP22d ago

>So when the Portugese found the way around Africa and landed in Calcutta on May 20 1498, the trade patterns changed forever.

This new route discovery actually significantly increased the importance of Strait of Malacca and Singapore, not decreasing it.

Actually even before that important turning point event, the European already knew about about the importance of Strait of Malacca including both the metropolis Malacca and Singapore/Temasek. The is one famous quote by a 16th CE Portuguese explorer Tomé Pires, who declared: "Whoever is lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice".

To say that Singapore was an obscure fishing village is disengenious by the colonial powers and those believing this wicked narrative are in denial.

My once top comment about this "elephant in the room" has been downvoted to oblivion, but hey c'est la vie. There's a very popular saying, "you can fool some people all of the time, and all people some of the time, but you simply cannot fool all of the people all of the time".

There's also a narrative that if the tea via land it's called chai and if if the via sea it's called tea [1].

The Ottoman controlled both the land and sea route to Europe creating the trading bottleneck from the European perspective for many centuries to the far East, they never close it. Thats's why both Dutch and British created their very own East India Companies about the same time around 1600 CE as the vehicles to trade in Asia once they found the new trading route around Africa to Asia. Due to their highly profitable business endeavour, their governments willingly become the side-kick colonizers for their new companies and becoming complicit to wrestle and overcome any countries that refused to their own unfair business arrangements, terms and conditions including trading monopolies.

[1] Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea (317 comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16129454

[2] Dutch East India Company:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company

[3] East India Company:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

wahern22d ago

> Would you called majority Japanese now a colonizers since the originally come from Korea/China and before them they were people there?

Depending on context, yes, especially considering that (AFAIU) there still exist identifiable (socially, not just genetically) ethnic groups on the Japanese archipelago who predate that colonization event, and who still experience forms of ostracization typical of such colonization. There'd be no cognitive dissonance for me because I refuse to internalize a definition of colonialism that tacitly presumes European exceptionalism and supremacy through a sort of reverse White Man's Burden logic of moral accountability and historical criticism.

For the same reason, I recognize that groups we (i.e. westernized, globalist, cosmopolitan, what-have-you types) typically call aboriginal in a homogenizing, undifferentiating manner were often colonizers themselves thousands of years ago, displacing other aboriginal groups that may or may not still exist today. There are multiple such groups in Southeast Asia. And the first such modern human aboriginal group may have colonized an area occupied by pre-modern, archaic humans. (Or possibly vice versa!)

Buying into the logic of modern anti-colonialism critical theory is not required to appreciate and criticize the harms European colonization inflicted and continues to inflict. But rejecting that logic might be a prerequisite to recognizing and appreciating the exact same dynamics and harms that played out and still play out today among non-European ethnic groups.

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