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My short contribution to under standing and holiday general annoyance.

Cautioned on the dangers of the broad brush, I’ll try painting with a finer instrument to put more color into a topic and hopefully annoy the hell out of some while amusing or thought-provoking a few others.

Anyway, white supremacy needs color enhancement, don’t you think?

Well, I do so here goes.

History guiding us, we can pretty well agree, I hope, that no place on the globe maintained a perfected form of society.

Aggression, expansion, conflict, war were part of the human pattern in many ways including colonizing and subjugation of others by race, language or etc. Rulers favored their people over the conquered. Religious or social beliefs accommodated persecution of others and maintaining dominance within the power group.

We’re most familiar with tales of Middle Eastern and Classical civilization conquests, but the general pattern seems to follow no matter if we look at Mongolia, South East Asia, Zaire, the Mississippi or Andes.

The largest known sacrifice of children is credited to the New World well before there was any ongoing contact with Europe.

It is, however, currently accepted that European-based colonization, exploitation and racism of the past half-millennia is perniciously baddest of bad.

Not until fairly recently (past century), after all Asia showed an interest in globally gathering resources from nearby areas, from Africa, the Middle East, etc. Going with the historic accountability trend we know exactly which nations offended most. England, France, Spain and Portugal were the largest colonizers, with credit given to Holland for its go at New Amsterdam in North America.

Note, if you will, those nations on the accountability list and those largely absent from it. The bad guys are nations of the Atlantic coast.

Stands to reason going global had to start somewhere as it did developing ships and ports suitable to global trade. By that standard we might look at globalism not only as a product of colonialism but its logical end result or culmination.

With me so far that colonialism and globalism developed slowly based on maritime trade and exploitation?

Building a railroad from Paris to Pakistan wasn’t remotely in consideration, not for centuries. If seen as incremental growth, the ships and ports developed in colonialism became over time the larger system of global exploitation and distribution.

A look around shows that virtually all “peoples” migrated, expanded in area or had a legend of migration. That’s common enough to be, as I see it, universal.

Taking over or using resources from an outside area goes back a long way making colonialism an ancient part of human history grown from regional to global proportion.

So what you ask, assuming your toleration for boring reviews hasn’t shook you free? Aside from tempering the current view of Western Colonialism as the global bad actor a look at how this seems to have come about sparked my curiosity due to not one of the colonial powers being a non-Atlantic nation. Sea breezes themselves can’t make a nation go rogue colonial.

What made France become a colonial power and Czechoslovakia not? Answer, ready for this, look at the continent of Africa.

Also on the Atlantic, Africa didn’t spawn global-reaching enterprises. What about Africa made this so?
Look at the long Atlantic coast of Africa. Find the major rivers and suitable bays that would be able to support sea traffic and ports as found along the Atlantic in Europe.

The contrast is huge. Much of the West African coast is unfriendly to shipping, meaning those places (River Congo, as example) with accessibility would be focal, but being so few meant they’d not be as much centers of local or regional development.

The absence of suitable rivers, bays, islands and etc. helps explain why activity on the S. Atlantic coast was so different than on the N. Atlantic. But that can’t be all, can it?

(Grateful nod to Hendrik Willem Van Loon, dead my birth year having left good geographical tracks for a boy to follow.)

Would you believe I have an explanation handy but one you likely won’t take to?

As I see it the S. Atlantic lacked lively ocean-going marauders to spur things along.

If we take colonialism, globalism as “developments,” it’s quite reasonable to credit European pirates for pushing the enterprise forward.

Pirates? Well, maybe you term them Vikings or Viking explorers. The Vikings colonized (again remember coastal suitability) everything in reach by water.

The Scandinavians began colonizing one another before spreading out. Ireland (built up Dublin), Scotland (base at Scapa Flow), English settlements, French settlements and up the Seine, then we have Iceland, Greenland and N. America, not to mention some attention to the Azores in the S. Atlantic.

Getting around, Scandinavians accustomed coastal Europe to colonization, generally by force in expansions lasting the better part of a thousand years, plenty of time for Europe’s coastal nations to learn the basics, ones encouraged by their Norse settlers.

With Norse colonization came trade. As you in the Twin Ports know, small ship freight isn’t a winner in the big market.

Large as the Fitzgerald was on the lakes, the ocean-going Derbyshire (similarly lost shortly later) carried four times more cargo, making the Fitz a relative long boat compared to later sail ships.

It took near a millennia for Viking practice to bring coastal Europe to an expanded age of adventuring to wider lands in search of resources belonging to others.

Now here’s where many may justly balk – why credit all European whites with activities and practices clearly traceable to a particular source?

Ukrainians weren’t foreign colonizers so why blame them?

Plus, it’s hard to shrug off Scandinavian slavers. Pretty blonde or redhead children didn’t take much cargo space relative to their value when sold in a Mediterranean market. Colonizing and slave trading were established Scandinavian traditions.

It wasn’t Slavs (aka slaves) sinning so much as sinned against by northern raiders wanting captives to sell.

I doubt I’ve convinced you about some of supremacy’s root cause, but a different perspective perhaps.