kittybeast said:
I often wonder how those damn English came in and said "No...those diamond mines are OURS!" pretty much the same way the came to the U.S. and said to the Native Americans....'NO this land is OURS!"
kittybeast
I think a little historical context is in order. The native Americans were not native at all. In fact proof from excavations continues to build that the indians tribes were invaders in the North-America's. And it turns out that they conquered the continents from its spare inhabitants, who were killed, that were living there before these Asian new tribes arrived.
Furthermore they themselves has no conception or respect of property rights. For instance, the Black Hills in Dakota used to be the home of the crow people. but they were chased away, killed and beaten in a war with the Sioux nation. The Sioux nation were a collection of warlike tribes that dominated the north-west until they were chased themselves from the Black Hill by the US army that wanted revenge for the victory of the Sioux at Little Big Horn.
Now I don't want to excuse what the US government did between 1865 and 1900. Especially Grant wreaked havoc among the Indian tribes. And the attack on the peaceful camp of Black Kettle by G.A. Custer lives on in infamy among US historians, as it should. In fact Grant used the same scorched earth strategy against the tribes as he did against the Southern states in the civil war.
My point is that not all of these "Native" Americans were innocent peace loving, living in balance with nature peoples. Far from it, when we are talking about the prairie tribes and the tribes just north of the Rio Grande. War was an essential part of their culture. The weaker tribes had to submit or die. And this was going on thousands of years before any European set foot on the American continent.
Most of the time it were the western *governments* with colonial ambitions that displayed a hunger for land. The people that lived there most of the time has to go or were captured as slaves. Not just by western nation but even more and much longer by the Islamic nations as happend if Africa.
As for "the Diamond mines are ours" idea, they felt that when they discovered the mines, dug into them and delved the diamonds they had a claim on what their work had brought them.
The problem is and was that they did not ask the people who lived there any kind of permission to use their land. Also because those people had no conception of land being property in the western sense of the word. Those people used the land for farming, most of the east coast tribes, or hunting, the mid west tribes, and that was it.
Remember also that there was a certain culture clash. In the very early beginnings settlers offered to buy the land of the east coast tribes but most of them refused having no idea what those white man were suggesting. There were a lot of misunderstandings. Also in the early beginning the first colonists were peacefully trading with the north-western Indians before the French-English war in 1755 ended this.
It was not all bad whites against good native Americans. There are stories of whites having succeeded to buy land from a tribe, settling down on the land and starting a family and then being slaughtered by the very tribe they bought the land from. And of course the same thing happened with whites as perpetrators.
In short history is seldom as black and white as most people think it is.
:edit:
In the remark that you quote I was talking about the fact that the *current* African governments don't respect the property right of the black populace that is living there now. At this very moment the recognition of property right in many third-world countries is non-existent. Ie. my remark had nothing to do with the historical colonial past of these countries. Most African countries became independent around 1962! The lack of recognition of property right falls squarely on the *current* African governments.
:edit:
