Utopian Overlays
The passing of Queen Elizabeth II elicited reactions around the globe, as is to be expected. It also elicited a deluge of social media reactions, as is to be expected.
Some of those Internet were bitter and bilious.
As is to be expected.
Because the Internet is a place where people feel free to let their inner asshole fly.
Several such that crossed my feed were of the "good riddance, evil Colonizer!" variety.
The unseemliness of dancing on the still-warm corpse of a figurehead who was, by most accounts, a good person who served with great distinction and more than a bit of wisdom aside, such simplistic denigrations suggest a bit of rose-colored-glasses naïveté. That is, a presumption that things would have been better had colonization not happened.
I'm generally not a fan of alternate history, because it's virtually impossible not to let biases color them, and as I recently blogged, history is there to teach us, not to merely validate preferred narratives.
The libertarian always prefers self-determination, but we must distinguish between individual and collective forms. A murderous dictator can arise from within a nation's borders, with no 'colonization' whatsoever, but that doesn't make the outcome a better one. An oppressive regime that's home-grown may satisfy some "at least they are our cruel despots" principle, but it doesn't make life better for the masses.
Do I condone conquest here? No, but I do recognize it as a baseline human activity and a biological encoding. It has been the entirety of human history, and the "snapshot geography" that many practice in alternate-history navel-gazing or in simplistic condemnation is a departure from that reality.
There are historical events that we can easily argue were mistakes or would have been better off not happening, but even in what appear to be clear-cut cases, projecting how the world would have progressed therefrom. These, I'd suggest, are a minority. Even one of the few "alternate history" notions I do embrace - the notion that, had Wilson kept the US out of WWI, WWII might never have happened - could be projected with worse outcome.
Despite them being fraught, we can have alternate history discussions, and it is fair to contemplate whether certain parts of the world might have been better off without British Colonialism. We should remain modest in our abilities and inference when doing so, however, because it is childishly arrogant to assume bread-and-roses as the alternative. Human history has always been ugly and murderous and oppressive, and I've little doubt that history absent the 'evil white European' colonialism would not have been some Shangri-La kumbaya love-not-war utopia.
This is why I roll my eyes at the "Colonizer!" epithet. It's just an iteration of "Check your privilege!," an ad hominem intended to shut down debate, claim a moral high ground, and assert that one cannot even have an opinion if one isn't on that side of the argument.
As for the Queen? She served her nation, and served it well, and led a good and full life. Humans are always flawed, and there are nits to pick and criticisms to level, but the opportunity for doing so was there for many yesterdays and will be there for many tomorrows, so there really is no need to be a narcissistic ass looking to make it all about you. No one is impressed by hateful rants on the grave of someone who doesn't deserve them.
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Chapter 1 - A Catastrophic Failure
Chapter 2 - A Brief History
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Peter.
During Elizabeth's reign the sun set on the British Empire. To the extent it was her decision to do so, she was a DE-colonizer. She has also forfeited much of the imperial power she inherited, leaving the royal family as little more than a figurehead today.