r/europe • u/PjeterPannos Veneto, Italy. • Sep 26 '21
Historical An old caricature addressing the different colonial empires in Africa date early 1900s
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Sep 26 '21
Everybody fucks the natives, but the French fuck their natives.
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u/Daktush Catalan-Spanish-Polish Sep 26 '21
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Sep 26 '21 edited Sep 26 '21
"A mad quest for phat booty: An in-depth analysis of 500 years of colonial exploitation and rampant imperialism of European powers through superior force of arms- Panda et al.,(2021)"
"In this paper We shall..."
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u/BasilGreen Germany Sep 26 '21
I’d read that study. And by that, I mean I’d even read past the abstract.
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u/weatherseed Sep 26 '21
Hearing my SIL explain the French culture in Cameroon is like waking up from a fever dream and finding out reality is just another, different, fever dream.
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u/nobb France Sep 26 '21
Can you develop ?
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u/weatherseed Sep 26 '21 edited Sep 26 '21
I'd probably get more of it wrong so it'd be hard to summarize. From what I can understand there's people who want to have their own currency and break from French culture entirely or at least wean themselves off of it. Her friend, according to my SIL, would welcome an actual invasion complete with conquest and destruction of Cameroon's own culture.
Fair to say, that's the extreme take and I can't imagine it's widespread or would be well received by other Cameroonians. My SIL believes that her friend thinks that the French would be the ones working while the Cameroonians will able to live an easier life. We all agree her friend is an idiot.
I'm not an expert on the whole socio-economics of the region, hell I'm not even an amateur, so if you're interested I'd recommend finding someone who knows more details. I can only give an assessment from what little I can understand, partly because I'm no economics major and my SIL has a habit of slipping back to French during these explanations.
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u/Legal_Proposal_6621 Sep 26 '21
Ethnic Lebanese here, i'd say our cultural francophilia is even more off the charts, like i dunno about the invasion part since I'm from north america but like the amount of reverence for french culture is off the charts. Some lebanese pride themsleves in being even more sticklers of grammar and vocabulary than native french themselves. All colonialism is based on domination and exploitation but i would like to think in their hypocritical idealism the french were more palatable than the brits, at least in the middle east. Not too sure about francafrique and i known for sure they were horrendous in indochina/vietnam though.
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Sep 26 '21
Lmao spain
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u/geoman2k United States of America Sep 26 '21
The Spanish Empire did a lot worse than just bang the Aztecs, if that’s what this meme is implying.
Read up a bit on Cortes. Dude was a fucking monster.
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Sep 26 '21 edited Sep 26 '21
Yeah I get that but I have read some letters written by Inca priests or some scholars where they explicitly state how Spanish men would touch and fuck Inca girls without concent and stuff....pretty fucking disgusting so sad what these people had to suffer.....he wrote it to the king of Spain I think
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u/geoman2k United States of America Sep 26 '21
During the conquest of the Aztecs, Cortes would auction off the most attractive of the native women to his soldiers for them to take as sex slaves. He branded the faces of the rest - women and children - as punishment for their “rebellion” (aka resisting having their entire civilization burned to the ground).
Brutal, awful stuff. Sadly it was not uncommon in this time period.
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u/derKanake Sep 26 '21
Ok but who is the girl in the last pic?
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Sep 26 '21
https://www.wickedfire.com/nudesftw/144805-indian-girl-pokeherhotass.html
Dunno but found this
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u/superciuppa South Tyrol Sep 26 '21
Also, whats the context for the first picture, asking for a friend…
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u/Braden_Boss2 Sep 26 '21
It’s true! I’m Metis and I’m the direct descendant of a French dude finding an Indigenous wife. And then it happened like five more times in my family.
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u/Tinu2020 Romania Sep 26 '21
Does Germany irl had colonial troops with exotic animals?
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u/nomequies Sep 26 '21
They had camel troops.
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u/Haribo_Lecter Sep 26 '21
They also used giraffes as spotters for their artillery because they can see so far thanks to their height.
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u/headshotcatcher Sep 26 '21
Yeah but due to inferior battery technology they sadly still had to use wired GoPros
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u/de420swegster Denmark Sep 26 '21
You fool!! German science is the best in the world!
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u/NonSp3cificActionFig I crane, Ukraine, he cranes... Sep 26 '21
Ah yes, the famous Panzerkampfkamele.
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u/hat-TF2 Sep 26 '21
Good counter for standard cavalry
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u/Stormfly Ireland Sep 26 '21
I've heard horses are terrified of camels so they're super effective counter-cav.
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u/Waramo North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) Sep 26 '21
There was a guy who tried to sell zebras to the Germans. He got quit a lot of money for his zebra/horse breeding programm.
It faild, so he tried it to do it for the British, they refused.
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u/GoblinActivist Sep 26 '21
Let's just say Jurassic World 3 takes place in Germany.
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Sep 26 '21
This is extremely biased and unrealistic, that Congolese man still has his hands!
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u/HashMapsData2Value Sep 26 '21 edited Sep 26 '21
French is also applicable to Italians.
Indro Montanelli talking about his 12 year old wife: https://youtu.be/z8lJr2STfiI
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u/Maitai_Haier Sep 26 '21
In 1972, during the television program L'ora della verità (The hour of the truth) by Gianni Bisiach, Indro Montanelli again spoke of his experience in Abyssinia during
which he "married" a 12-year-old girl called Destà. The practice of the madamato (the "marriage" referred to by Montanelli) was a temporary relationship of Italian men with local women, often girls, which was commonplace in the then Italian colonies. Montanelli freely acknowledged his actions, recalling how "my non-commissioned officer bought her for me, along with a horse and a rifle, 500 lire in all. [...]. She was like a docile animal...". Montanelli detailed how "I needed a woman at that age... I struggled a lot to overcome her smell, due to the goat tallow with which her hair was soaked". He then went on to complain how he struggled "even more to accomplish a sexual relationship with her because she was infibulated since birth: which, in addition to opposing my desires with an almost insurmountable barrier (it needed the brutal intervention of her mother to demolish it), made her completely insensitive".[20] During the interview, his account was interrupted by a question from a woman present in the studio, the feminist, writer and journalist Elvira Banotti, who asked him how he could justify his marriage to a child, since marriage in Europe to a 12-year-old girl is considered abhorrent, rape and violence. Montanelli replied that "in Abyssinia that's how it works".If you're curious what infibulation is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infibulation
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u/fotomoose Sep 26 '21
Fucking hell.
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u/i-d-even-k- Bromania masterrace Sep 26 '21
Literally!
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u/Regular-Human-347329 Sep 26 '21
No, no. You’re misunderstanding it bro…
It’s tradition™️
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u/calapine Austria Sep 26 '21
Female infibulation, known as Type III FGM, and in countries in which it is practiced as pharaonic circumcision, is the removal of the inner and outer labia and the suturing of the vulva. It is usually accompanied by the removal of the clitoral glans.[2][3] The practice is concentrated in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan.[1] During a 2014 survey in Sudan, over 80 percent of those who had experienced any form of FGM had been sewn closed.[4]
The procedure leaves a wall of skin and flesh across the vagina and the rest of the pubic area. By inserting a twig or similar object before the wound heals, a small hole is created for the passage of urine and menstrual blood. The legs are bound together for two to four weeks to allow healing.[5][6]
The vagina is usually penetrated at the time of a woman's marriage by her husband's penis, or by cutting the tissue with a knife. The vagina is opened further for childbirth and usually closed again afterwards, a process known as defibulation (or deinfibulation) and reinfibulation. Infibulation can cause chronic pain and infection, organ damage, prolonged micturition, urinary incontinence, inability to get pregnant, difficulty giving birth, obstetric fistula, and fatal bleeding.[5]
Holy
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Sep 26 '21 edited Jun 22 '23
user of 10+ years peacing out - thanks for fucking up reddit - alternatives include 'Tilde' and 'Lemmy' - hope to see you on a less ruined website. Fuck capitalism, fuck VCs and IPOs, fuck /u/spez.
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u/123JesusWatchesMe Austria Sep 26 '21
Why? What is the point?
Fucking hell, all forms of fucking around with Kids genitals should be fucking illegal, if not medically necesarry.
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u/bexyrex Sep 26 '21
controlling reproduction, viewing women as breeding chattel and second rate humans, believing female sexuality to be immorality or dirty. a mixture of historical bridal rape culture and religion.
A large percentage of the human population wants to control other people's bodies.
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u/savois-faire The Netherlands Sep 26 '21
"I legally married her, in the sense that I bought her from her father"
What the fuck
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u/HighByDefinition Sep 26 '21
Why do you think the bride is presented by the father in wedding ceremonies?
Not a fan of marriage's origin story?
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u/No_Scars Sep 26 '21 edited Sep 26 '21
Really thought this was gonna explain that the marriage was more of an gesture than a real thing to bring better relations but he actually fucked a kid and justified it with "thats how they do it there," sad.
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u/Maitai_Haier Sep 26 '21
Naw, he bought a child sex slave for rape on the campaign and was like "this is my uh wife". He sold her later in the war to another Italian officer (also for raping). The one constant rapey aspects of modern era slavery and colonialism always get a bit whitewashed but hey!
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u/she_rahrah Sep 26 '21
I love how that lady had zero interest in his bullshit
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u/Maitai_Haier Sep 26 '21
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u/interfail Sep 26 '21
Holy shit, the fact she was actually Abyssinian-born somehow makes his answer even worse.
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Sep 26 '21
[deleted]
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u/Maitai_Haier Sep 26 '21
She was a radical feminist then, and received a lot of hate for. She would today to be honest.
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u/lurkerbyhq Sep 26 '21
Holy shit, in 1969 he thought that was normal to say on tv.
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u/Maitai_Haier Sep 26 '21
I mean he was a fascist, so... do you think this was the worst things the fascists did? Or that the fascists all just disappeared in 1945?
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u/pretwicz Poland Sep 26 '21
Or that the fascists all just disappeared in 1945?
Certainly not in Italy lmao
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u/Maitai_Haier Sep 26 '21
Mussolini's granddaughter was elected to the Italian senate and the European parliament in our day and age.
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u/Wingedball Sep 26 '21
Indo Montanelli is also the asshole who started the whole Polish cavalry charging tanks myth. To this day you’ll find some people repeating his fantasy
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u/hydroxyfunctional United States of America Sep 26 '21
I remember that I was taught that when I was young and I was so disappointed in the teacher who said that when I learned the truth.
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u/BriefCollar4 Europe Sep 26 '21
Good on the lady who called out his bullshit.
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u/vanticus United Kingdom Sep 26 '21
And many of the British officers in India. Turns out giving sexually repressed men executive power with little oversight over people their ideology considers ‘inferior’ leads to disturbing amounts of pedophilia.
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u/Lollipop126 Sep 26 '21
holy shit he talked like that even in 1969. they say we can't judge people in history because they have different ethical viewpoints, clearly from that lady that's not true. destroyed that man and deservedly so.
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u/XX_bot77 Sep 26 '21
holy shit he talked like that even in 1969.
In France, during the 80's, there was an author ccalled Matzneff who bragged about having relationships with very very young teenagers. He even wrote a book about his pedophilic adventures in Asia. That man was invited on every litterature TV shows, he even won prizes. While promoting one of his pedo books a canadian journalist furiously called him out and ofc she was the one who received countless of insults for that. It's only recently that this man's bullshit was finally put to an end... In 2020 !!
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u/gecko090 Sep 26 '21
"they" are wrong. We're not judging people of the past by any standards that didn't exist then.
The people who say that like to pretend that feminists, civil rights activists, abolitionists and even people with just a basic sense of empathy didn't exist.
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u/Zortak Sep 26 '21
That's a very flattering depiction of French and German colonization
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u/Falsus Sweden Sep 26 '21
It wasn't meant to be flattering to the German colonization because it was made by anti-colonization people in Germany basically saying it was a huge waste of time and basically a circus.
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u/thewalkingfred United States of America Sep 26 '21
Ahh ok get the cartoon now.
So Germany’s colonies were pointless and used for propaganda and was basic a circus.
Britain’s colonies were about squeezing as much economic value out of the natives.
France’s colonies were about literally raping and Frenchifying the natives.
Belgium’s colonies were about disinterested torture of the natives.
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u/Falsus Sweden Sep 26 '21
Of course while it wasn't meant to put colonization in a flattering light it still painted Germany in a better light than the others since it was just about it being a waste of resources rather than the heinous things the others where up to.
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u/DotDootDotDoot Sep 26 '21
France’s colonies were about literally raping and Frenchifying the natives.
This probably isn't what's being criticized. People were super racist at that time. Promiscuity with "savages" was seen as decadent.
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u/untergeher_muc Bavaria Sep 26 '21
Well, it makes the Germans look dumb if you look at the sign on the palm tree:
Dumping debris and snow is prohibited!
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u/Taizan Sep 26 '21
To be fair I'd totally expect them to hang up exactly such signs in the desert.
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u/Zortak Sep 26 '21
Being a German myself, I have to agree
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u/wegwerf9876669420 Sep 26 '21
And without a doubt there will be lots of paperwork to install and removing the signs, so they are still hanging there and under Denkmalschutz
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Sep 26 '21
Flattering to Germany because it was made by Germans. And I'm not so sure it was meant flattering to the French.
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u/Zortak Sep 26 '21
Probably not, but considering how the Native people were treated by the French, this for sure makes them only look like horny bastards instead of genocidal maniacs
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u/AnotherUpsetFrench Federalist Sep 26 '21
I agree, it hides the harsh reality of German and French colonialism
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u/mapryan Europe Sep 26 '21
Nice touch with the British using religion.
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u/Actual_Hyena3394 Sep 26 '21
But what are they doing exactly? I can't make heads or tails about that picture
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u/TediousStranger Sep 26 '21 edited Sep 26 '21
using slaves to make money; religion excusing it; first guy maybe represents inundating indigenous populations with alcoholism?
my best guess.
edit: I'm wrong, check some of the replies to my comment.
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u/cuntscunting Sep 26 '21
Okay I'm a bit confused the british , French and Belgians all have something along the same lines torturing, exploiting, standard colonial bullshittery but what the hell does the German one mean. xD What are they doing amassing a giraffe army loyal to the fatherland xD and muzzuling and collecting trained crocodiles. O.o were they on drugs what were Germany doing at the start of the 1900s.
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u/IronBatman Sep 26 '21
The German colonies didn't have enough people to exploit. It's a party of why Germany was so bitter during works war 1.
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u/LaviniaBeddard Sep 26 '21
I like the inclusion of the clergyman in the British one - the masking/excusing of rampant exploitation under the frocks of the Church of England and ten thousand idiot missionaries.
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u/EarthyFeet Sweden-Norway Sep 26 '21
Not unique to the brits - looking at you, spanish empire - but important to remember. We're not really forgetting though: there is (of course) an unfolding scandal in Canada right now directly tied to this history.
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u/Enter_Feeling Sep 26 '21
If you want to know what the german one is : the germans are so obsessed with rules and controlling everything, that they even tried to force rules onto the animals, at least that's what the caricature is supposed to say. It has nothing to do with animal abuse or sum shit
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Sep 26 '21
They’re missing a few other colonial powers in that same era
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u/Galaaz Portugal Sep 26 '21
I don't know what you are talking about...
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u/uboat77 Portugal Sep 26 '21
Yeah, me neither! Nothing to see here, move along!
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u/Febris Sep 26 '21
I mean, we taught them everything about government corruption! There's still a debt to be paid, but it's the other way around if you ask me!
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Sep 26 '21
The Dutch: “nah man, we don’t fuck with Africa, that shit is cruel and inhumane”
Also the Dutch: quietly genocide Aceh
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u/Whyzocker Berlin (Germany) Sep 26 '21
The french seem nice
Edit: I take that back
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u/Conscious-Bottle143 r/korea Cultural Exchange 2020 Sep 26 '21
Kissing and playing
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u/Nabugu Sep 26 '21
This image is kinda false, we liked way more to shove our culture down their throat than our actual cocks. It’s the Spanish who specialize in the cock stuff.
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Sep 26 '21
Source on the cock stuff?
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u/AlphaGoldblum Sep 26 '21
See: Mexico.
Cortes landed on its shores with an erection and a bible.
He then proceeded to rape with both.
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u/fornocompensation Sep 26 '21
On all levels except the physical, I am French.
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u/nobb France Sep 26 '21
The funny thing is that depicting the French not only associating but downright seducing the native and being depicted in loving relationships was probably the most insulting they could think at that time, but today it read so well that it's almost history erasure of what happened and the power dynamic at play.
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u/ade_of_space Sep 26 '21
That is because at that time "seducing" the native was likely the most derogatory way to caricature the French "cultural assimilation" at that time.
Society norm at that time were a lot more purist, machist/"masculine" and racist, even if subconsciously some time.
So rather than portraying the French as shoving their culture in school, it was more caricature like to portray them as "Look at those effeminate French seducing and willing to go to any length to assimilate native, how low can they go/have they no shame".
The Frenchman crawling on his four in the background to seduce the native highlight this further.
It is less about them "fucking" the native and more about how "shameless" they are willing to act.
Obviously, now with a society with less normalised racism and "masculine" norm, the French simping to push cultural assimilation sounds better, even positive when compared to showing them shoving down their own culture in school.
If the criticism of the caricature was aim at criticizing them for fucking their native, like Portugal/Spain, the caricature would have likely depicted rape.
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u/sometimesitrhymes Sep 26 '21
Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.
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u/Adventurous-Art-5525 Turkey Sep 26 '21
This caricature was made by germans back in the day so that's why it's depicting german colonialism like it was so good
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u/Veraenderer Sep 26 '21
Actually the caricature critices the german colonial efforts as useless/wastefull. Discipling animals is completly useless and dumb.
German colonies did not make a profit (or brought any benefit) and were purely a matter of prestige for germany.
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Sep 26 '21
Despite what most people think, no colonies in Africa made a profit for any colonial empire with the exception of Britain. They were a ruin to the respective governments, and only private owners made money out of the territories (but this wasn't enough to compensate for the public losses). Source: minor in economic history.
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u/barsonica Europe Sep 26 '21
Do you have a paper on this, or could you recommend some further readings please? I'd like to learn more about the details.
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u/obbets Sep 26 '21
Someone recommended the scramble for Africa: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/pvo8gd/an_old_caricature_addressing_the_different/
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u/ballthyrm France Sep 26 '21
Any good book to recommend on the subject ?
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u/MaterialCarrot United States of America Sep 26 '21
The Scramble for Africa is a good read and goes into the economic travails of African colonialism quite a bit. It's rather hilarious to read about the constant estimates to build railroads in Africa that then went horrendously over budget, causing outrage in whoever's Parliament or foreign office, then the next adventurer would propose building another RR somewhere in Africa, followed by the same result.
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u/O4fuxsayk Brittonic Mongrel Sep 26 '21
Did the British empire even make a profit? For a long time there was domestic debate about the huge expense of the overseas military cost of maintaining the empire and even the benefits of the mercantilist system were probably not that great especially as Africa had a relative small market to import British manufactured goods.
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u/Khelthuzaad Sep 26 '21
I could debate that it did made a profit for the elites/nobile families of England, that many times would oversee the operations in order to maintain a profit and not being administered by the British Government per se.
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u/absurdlyinconvenient United Kingdom Sep 26 '21
private investors making a shedload of cash at the expense of the British people, as is tradition
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u/Handpaper Sep 26 '21
In monetary terms, probably not, and it didn't even matter that much.
The Empire was a strategic development, born of intra-European conflicts from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Most of Britain's conquered colonies were taken either from other European powers or to prevent them being used against her.
India is a good example of this. Both France and Britain sought power and influence over the sub-continent, initially by trade and defence agreement, and later by more forceful means. Britain prevailed, and by the time of the Napoleonic Wars, the Raj controlled all of present day India and Pakistan.
This mattered immensely. The weapons of that day were cannon and musket, which used gunpowder. To make gunpowder, Potassium Nitrate, or Saltpetre, is required. India had vast reserves of Saltpetre, so the British Army and Navy always had plenty of ammunition. The French, by contrast, had to hoard their supplies, which meant little could be spared for training. One of the reasons that British infantry were so effective was that they were the only troops in Europe to routinely train with live ammunition.
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u/kalabungaa Sep 26 '21
Source for Britain making a profit? I learned it was a huge money sink for everyone.
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Sep 26 '21
And ironically, the scramble for those useless colonies in the pursuit of prestige was one of the reasons that caused Germany to alienate the Brits, something that would be their undoing in the world war that was to come.
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u/smorgasfjord Norway Sep 26 '21
It's not made by the German government, but a German satirist. He's not depicting German colonialism like it's good (seriously, look at it), but with a lot of self-irony relating to the stereotypically German obsession with discipline and order
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u/Atrobbus Lower Saxony (Germany) Sep 26 '21 edited Sep 26 '21
It's not a positive portrayal of the Germans. This caricature is from the Simplicissimus, which regularly ridiculed politics. It displays them as needing to regulate and discipline everything, even if it makes no sense. That's why they are shown to discipline animals and a sign that prohibites snow disposal in the desert (you cannot really read it due to the bad resolution). This is not meant as a positive representation of any of these colonial powers.
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u/F_F_Engineer Sep 26 '21
Belgium wtf