the best and worst colony

got the idea for this thread from a conversation i had with some customers that frequents my restaurant...we were saying how glad we were that Cuba is Cuba, with all it's cigars, booze and chics.

   what about you guys? what do you think was the best colony...and the worst?

The dubious honour of the worst colony must surely go to the Belgians and their King Leopold, a highly underrated mass murderer.
He run the entire Congo as a private rubber plantation from 1885-1903 and during this period, and I quote Wikipedia here: �� between five and fifteen (the commonly accepted figure is about ten) million Congolese died as a consequence of exploitation and diseases. To enforce the rubber quotas, the Force Publique (FP) was called in. The FP was an army, but its aim was not to defend the country, but to terrorise the local population The Force Publique made the practice of cutting off the limbs of the natives as a means of enforcing rubber quotas a matter of policy; this practice was disturbingly widespread.�

New Spain / Mexico was the pearl of the crown for Spain during 300 years.
The population was decimated by the deseases brought by the spaniards.
The gold and silver from Mexico and Peru kept floating to a non industrial empire as Spain during 3 centuries.

Originally posted by Byzantine Emperor One of the most disastrous colonies, although it wasn't as large of a scale as the British in India, was the Greek colony of Smyrna in Florida.  I think it was established in the late 18th century under the leadership of a British Graecophile.  The population consisted mostly of Ionian Greeks, as well as some southern Italian Greeks picked up en route, who fled from the Ottoman invasion of the Anatolian city of Smyrna and the surrounding countryside.  When they arrived in the prospective site in northeastern Florida, they had to first clear the extensive swampland that dominated the landscape.  The colony made its living on picking and selling cotton and sugarcane.  Eventually infighting and disease from the swamp's mosquitoes brought an end to the colony.  I think many of the colonists died; I am not sure how many survived or to where the survivors escaped.

Of course this never stopped realtors from selling Florida swampland to Yankees and foreigners.

Tasmania still has people with aborigini ancestors. For total wipe out you need to look to the caribbean, where the Spanish ever managed to kill off (mostly though desease), or reduce the populations sufficiently through slavery, they were no longer viable and died off. The few that survived that got shafted when the other European colonial powers started garbbign the islands, bringing African slaves with them.

Worst colonies to become countries i'd say are probably Angola and Zimbabwe, or the Congo.

Angola started off better off then many other colonies in Africa, but turned foul in the twentieth century, a long anti-colonial war, followed by the Portugese pulling out, wrecking alot of the infrustructure on the way, and left the country to simmer in a 30 year civil war. FUBAR.

Congo as mentioned had the whole Leopard madness, but add to that the time that is was actualy a Belgian colony (and not the coonoy of an individiual) wasn't to bright either, now attempt was made to educate the locals, so when the Belgians left (but not without leaving mercenaries to mess the place up more), there were literaly no natives with anything resembling meaningfull knowhow as regards to running a very large, ethnicly and linguistily diverse country that didn't even have an integrated infrustructure, save routs to take goods to the coast for export.

Zimbabwe was unique amountst British colonies in Africa (save for perhaps parts of Kenya), where, instead of raising the flag and bribing loyal locals to keep things in order, but otherwise not messing things up too much; found the climate and land very favourable, and so kicked the natives off their land, built their own farms, and then imposed a tax on the natives that effectivly forced them into becoming landless labourers, dependant on working for their colonial overlords so that they could pay tax to those same overlords. Charming.
That simmers for a while untill after WWII, Rhodesia becomes indipendant, but ruled by whites, virtualy apartheid style, some natives decide they are sick of it and get to fighting about it, but as always when violence becomes the solution, the thugs take control. Britian by now entering its bizarre post-colonial guilt phase decided it was a bit embarresing and leaned towards Mugabe, horay, the crisis is solved, mugabe is in charge, and everything is the same, untill a drought hits, when the ingenious of destroying the countries farming ecomony emerges as a solution. SNAFU.


Edited by Cywr

Originally posted by Byzantine Emperor One of the most disastrous colonies, although it wasn't as large of a scale as the British in India, was the Greek colony of Smyrna in Florida.  I think it was established in the late 18th century under the leadership of a British Graecophile.  The population consisted mostly of Ionian Greeks, as well as some southern Italian Greeks picked up en route, who fled from the Ottoman invasion of the Anatolian city of Smyrna and the surrounding countryside.  When they arrived in the prospective site in northeastern Florida, they had to first clear the extensive swampland that dominated the landscape.  The colony made its living on picking and selling cotton and sugarcane.  Eventually infighting and disease from the swamp's mosquitoes brought an end to the colony.  I think many of the colonists died; I am not sure how many survived or to where the survivors escaped.

I had never heard of this incident.  Do you have any sources for information on it? 

Best colony:  the Proprietary colony of Pennsylvania in the years 1682 to 1754:

          Religious freedom under the ownership of the Quaker Penns.

          Good relations with the native population (until the F & I War)

          No army or militia

          Fertile land and plenty of it. (east of the mountains) and
          Plentiful game and fishing.

          University of Pennsylvania football (OOPS, that came later)

Worst:  Belgian Congo as detailed above.

         

         

There's no mention of Cherokees being given any option individually, nor I have heard of that before. Most likely those mixtures you mention belong to an earlier period of colonization, when their descendants lived among whites and weren't therefore considered Cherokees anymore. It's often mentioned that interracial marriages happened more frequently among the earliest colonists.

Got that off some history program, i'll look into it more. Either way, the ones that didn't go westwards, ended up intermarrying.

Only 400,000 Canadians declare themselves to be Native American (plus other 100,000 declaring being M�tis or Inuit). This out of 32 million is not any huge presence, and, acording to the map, they are dominant only in the peripheric undesirable areas of the north.

Closer to 650,000 AFAIK, but thats entirely my point, there are entire areas of Canada (and some of the sothern provinces aren't exactly undesirable) where they are numericly dominant, in a manner that contrasts with the US.

That's largely true but Cherokee were agrarian and made a huge effort in adapting to the new situation and to western uses, yet it was of no use to them. The same can be said of other "civilized" native nations, not just in the USA but also in New Zealand and Hawaii.

The Cherokee that adapted the most intermarried, the ones that didn't remained a seperate nation within the US and ended up being kicked westwards.
The Mauri and Hawaiians are significantly more numerous than natives in either the US or Canada. Theire existence merely proves my point somewhat. Agrarian societies have more staying power.

Originally posted by Cywr Theire existence merely proves my point somewhat. Agrarian societies have more staying power.

Yet the more civilised populations caved in more quickly, no?

 

Originally posted by Cywr Yet the more civilised populations caved in more quickly, no? Who do you mean? The Inca, Aztecs etc? The were the rich targets first conquered, but they populations are the once who stuck around the most.

I meant the 'uncivilized' peoples stayed independent longer. I accept that one could argue that they lived in the less desirable target areas, but to some extent that was also a function of their lack of civilisation - if you don't mine gold nobody wants to steal it.

A civilised society is (a) a more rewarding target and (b) easier to defeat militarily. It cold also be argued that a society of people used to obeying a hierarchy (of sorts) is more likely to convert easily to obeying another one.

Ages and ages ago for my scholarship essay at Cambridge we were presented with the simple title '1492' to write about. I remember developing these arguments on the fly then.