Huh. How can gold, silver and emeralds taken from South America, be “national cultural patrimony” of Spain? Aren't they a treasure of the South American natives they were taken from?
Are you from North America? Canada or US? Because following the same rules you state the land in which you live is not yours, but from the native Indians you exterminated before.
Or in a more recent example, ISIS would be the rightfully owners of the modern day gold, oil, that is under their territory the US wants to steal from them.
Your point is that you feel queasy about how brutal life was back then and you wanted to throw some shade to feel better about your obviously better moral standards, and in doing so you missed the shot in the map by thousands of miles.
As do I, and that's why I understand the whole "generational white guilt" spiel, cause I hear it often. Even an educated person such as yourself will be quick to jump the gun.
I get it, condemning their actions gives you the higher moral ground, you feel like a mensch and somehow detach you from whatever shared responsibility you think you shoulder.
IMHO, we can't judge old-day actions with current-day ethics. The same way we don't generally allow ex post facto law, we should be careful to deliver ex post facto moral judgement. If there's a place for moral relativism, it is probably when comparing different times in history.
That is not to say I excuse everything that was done during the colonial times —there are plenty of recollections of senseless atrocities— but there's definitely a tendency to look at all this in a reductionistic and emotional way that I don't think is fair.
My guess is it would be similar to what it is today, specifically in that the diverse landscape, including the three Andean mountain ranges that run through it, helped isolate regional Colombian cultures (and in isolation they grew stronger). Meaning we'd have a regional, culturally-diverse landscape, with Muisca, Carib, Wayuu and other peoples spread out through the land.
As for it being mostly monolingual under the imagined circumstance, I can't say, but it's possible Gran Colombia (current-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, etc.) would have naturally formed and, under it, a monolingual pidgin.
Me too. It would be cleaner, unpolluted, less bloody, and the native cultures would probably be blossoming and making interesting stuff by combining their knowledge with outside influences. Too bad most of them were exterminated and dispossessed (the galleon being just one instance of that dispossession), and too bad they continue to be institutionally and structurally marginalised, decimated, and dispossessed.
The spaniards have been better prepared for war and overcame the local population in bloody conquest — this is a historical fact that no one will argue with.
How, from this fact, do people come to an assumption that local population had higher moral values than invading spaniards?
Have you completely no idea what pre-columbian era indian cultures were like? I mean, not today's "New Age" versions that have been adopted for Californian yappies, but actual kingdoms, chiefdoms and empires that resided there several hundred years ago.
In fact, most of the army Hernán Cortés used to overcome the Aztec empire were natives that hated the oppressive power of the aztecs. He managed to exploit these regional feuds, and also internal problems of the Aztec government.
The spaniards alone were a skeleton crew, not enough to conquest anything that big, despite having better technology.
Genocide is the word you are looking for, not exterminate. Besides, why stop with ownership by modern, Native American indians? Genetic ties have been established through Anzick boy to people near Siberia.
Well, technically Colombia was then part of the Spanish Empire, and that galleon belongs to the Spanish Crown. I personally don't mind but knowing how low gold is in the spanish central bank, probably the spanish gov will make some kind of move to get back its "historical heritage"...
Empire which was revoked due to being an illegitimate and genocidal regime. Your argument suggests they should be allowed to re-steal now what they would have stolen back then.
No, I'm not saying that they should be allowed to re-steal. I said that I don't care about a shipwreck, but the spanish government has been known to claim this kind of finds in the past because technically that is a Spanish ship and legal precedents exist.
Also, all the global empires have been built on the same coercive foundation, and that doesn't make them "regimes".
The reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a"vast genocide", the most sustained on record.
I'm British and I don't believe the Rosetta Stone belongs to Britain. However, that's probably a minority view, many people here in Britain are still brainwashed about the glory of empire and all the good it did for the world.
The same could be said about every historical artifact not in display in its native nation. Should we repatriate all artifacts and pieces of art to its original nation?
Legally? Going by whose laws? The legitimate owners of all that wealth are the indigenous inhabitants of the territory it was extracted from by invaders. According to indigenous law, it is definitively NOT legally owned by Spain.
In other cases, Spain has won the rights over salvaged treasure from sunken Spanish ships, as the countries they plundered the gold from weren't countries at the time, but colonies of Spain (for example: Peru).
Sincerely, if this is in International waters, you would think there was a expiry date of shipwrecks and it's finders-keepers after, Oh, I dunno, a few hundred years or so.
The text of the article currently seems to talk about Colombia's “national cultural patrimony” -- I couldn't find much about Spain; was it edited? was the earlier text quoting Spain?
I like the fact that Spain first robbed their colonies Peru and Bolivia of their gold and silver, and then was able to rob the company who found and rescued the treasure.
I wondered that too but then they cover how it's been embroiled in a legal battle for 30 years now. So apparently its location more or less was discovered a long time ago, it's only now that the legal battle has ended that more detailed investigation can take place.
This is going to be a long fight because traditionally those ships and its content belong to the owner. There are some international rules that some countries have agreed on (UNESCO): http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13520&URL_DO=DO_TO.... Colombia hasn't signed that, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't obbey.
I don't know about this topic, so I won't add much more. However I wouldn't be so ingenous to think that the full treasure belongs to Colombia or to Spain. I suppose they will end up in international legal figths and they will end up agreeing on sharing the treasure. In any case, they CAN'T sell it (I believe) so it'd be as worthy as the tickets of the museum. It's more of a patriotic fight than a practical fight.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadIt says nothing about Spain asking anything.
Are you from North America? Canada or US? Because following the same rules you state the land in which you live is not yours, but from the native Indians you exterminated before.
Or in a more recent example, ISIS would be the rightfully owners of the modern day gold, oil, that is under their territory the US wants to steal from them.
Aztecs - Mexico Maya - Guatemala and neighbouring countries.
Here's some reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend
As someone that loves to study history, read old mediaeval documents, I know pretty well what our ancestors did.
I get it, condemning their actions gives you the higher moral ground, you feel like a mensch and somehow detach you from whatever shared responsibility you think you shoulder.
IMHO, we can't judge old-day actions with current-day ethics. The same way we don't generally allow ex post facto law, we should be careful to deliver ex post facto moral judgement. If there's a place for moral relativism, it is probably when comparing different times in history.
That is not to say I excuse everything that was done during the colonial times —there are plenty of recollections of senseless atrocities— but there's definitely a tendency to look at all this in a reductionistic and emotional way that I don't think is fair.
As for it being mostly monolingual under the imagined circumstance, I can't say, but it's possible Gran Colombia (current-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, etc.) would have naturally formed and, under it, a monolingual pidgin.
The spaniards have been better prepared for war and overcame the local population in bloody conquest — this is a historical fact that no one will argue with.
How, from this fact, do people come to an assumption that local population had higher moral values than invading spaniards?
Have you completely no idea what pre-columbian era indian cultures were like? I mean, not today's "New Age" versions that have been adopted for Californian yappies, but actual kingdoms, chiefdoms and empires that resided there several hundred years ago.
The spaniards alone were a skeleton crew, not enough to conquest anything that big, despite having better technology.
And I would like to think that most of the Spaniards agree with that.
Also, all the global empires have been built on the same coercive foundation, and that doesn't make them "regimes".
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/7302
Well, it looks like there was, in fact, a vast genocide. In the north and also the south americas. Really sad...
http://www.tulanemaritimejournal.org/finders-weepers-losers-...
However, I realise there's not much demand for such a move, so it's not going to happen any time soon, if at all.
Are you referring to some particular legal entity here, or just an overall concept?
In other cases, Spain has won the rights over salvaged treasure from sunken Spanish ships, as the countries they plundered the gold from weren't countries at the time, but colonies of Spain (for example: Peru).
Sincerely, if this is in International waters, you would think there was a expiry date of shipwrecks and it's finders-keepers after, Oh, I dunno, a few hundred years or so.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23164968-pirate-hunters
This is going to be a long fight because traditionally those ships and its content belong to the owner. There are some international rules that some countries have agreed on (UNESCO): http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13520&URL_DO=DO_TO.... Colombia hasn't signed that, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't obbey.
I don't know about this topic, so I won't add much more. However I wouldn't be so ingenous to think that the full treasure belongs to Colombia or to Spain. I suppose they will end up in international legal figths and they will end up agreeing on sharing the treasure. In any case, they CAN'T sell it (I believe) so it'd be as worthy as the tickets of the museum. It's more of a patriotic fight than a practical fight.