Even if you factor in the atrocities committed by Western powers in colonized countries, you need to look into NET EFFECTS of such atrocities - i..e. the difference between atrocities already perpetrated by local tyrants, slave traders, non-westerners (e.g. Arabs in sub-Saharan Africa) and those committed by Western powers. In many cases that net effect was negative, that is, westerners actually reduced the atrocities (cf. the British role in stopping the slave trade practiced by Arabs in East Africa.)
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Hahahahahahaha!!!
The positive net effects of atrocities?
Tremendous.
Sounds like the title of a J.G. Ballard short story about a petty bureaucrat in a blandly murderous dictatorship.
I think it was Simone Weil who wrote (paraphrasing from memory now) "we'll never know how the various peoples of Europe might have developed had they had not been under the Roman yoke."
>From the point of view you're pushing, the answer
would be, 'poorly'. Clearly, the "net effect" of
Roman atrocities was positive. There was that fabulous
road system, lovely temples, Ovid and source material
for countless sword and sandal epics of the silver
screen.
But mark ye the little lower layer Starbuck...
The subtext of your statement is this: were it not for Western colonialism, colonized people's would have stayed backwards - forever. This is followed up by a "Marx said it" chaser which attempts to give the statement an extra kick of theoretical legitimacy.
Still waiting for my Spring reading list: a tour of Western colonial benefits, described by country.
.d.