On Sat, 27 Mar 2004, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >>What did the Athenians do with the expropriated people and the land
> >>expropriated from them, however?
> >
> >Killed or enslaved them.
>
> In other words, the expropriated did not become proletarians
No, they became slaves. And contributed to the surplus that way.
Yoshi, if you want to define the word "colonies" to mean "colonies under capitalism" be my guest. But it's humpty-dumptyism in my book. I think you would be better off arguing that "Ireland was the first capitalist colony" than to try and argue that pre-capitalist colonies weren't colonies, or weren't exploitative, or didn't contribute to the ruling class surplus or imperial advantage. Because none of those things are true.
And if by first colony you mean "first colony to provide the primitive accumulation necessary for capitalism to get off the ground" I think those were in fact in Latin America. Marx thought the gold that was dug out there by slaves and shipped back to Europe played an indispensable role getting capitalism beyond the stage of mere commodity production; Eric Wolf expanded on this idea and said that the precapitalist colonial surplus of many different sorts was the since non qua for capitalism to get off the ground. That would seem to make these capitalism's first colonies. Ireland's contribution to the system's primitive accumulation was relatively minor. Seizing church property probably contributed more to England's capitalist take-off.
Ireland was oppressed in precapitalist ways going back 800 years, and in capitalist ways after capitalism came into existence. Sliding between the two seems to produce the confusion that Ireland was the first capitalist colony. It probably wasn't. And it certainly wasn't the world's first colony.
And personally, I don't see why it matters. I think from an Irish perspective what's important is that it was the first *English* colony. That's certainly true. England has exerted rule over part of the Irish isles from almost the moment it began to exist as an independent entity itself, 800 years ago. And it still does.
BTW, Ireland didn't export proletarians until the 19th century. Petty was a visionary ;o)
Michael