Colonization, Imperialism questions

Let us say you are a ruler of a greater power. You have the option to conquer and assimilate other lands to help your nation's prestige and prosperity, but you have the option to let people there live there rule themselves with their own soverignty.

Was that the case, or did people simply not think like that, because, you know, Native Americans and Africans were "savages", noble or ignoble.

Well basically I'm against Imperialism so I wouldn't go around conquering other nations and assimilating though Imperialism does have its beneficent for both groups , though with your second question we could take it with , Do you think democracy should be forced onto a population? (should a foreign dictator,resulting in a war, resulting in democracy) or should it be a natural tradition.

I honestly don't get what your getting at with the Native Americans and African post.

As in cause to take the Americas and Africa, because they wwere insuperior or nonChristian, or lost souls

Imperialism and by extension colonialism are OK if implemented correctly. How the US dealt with the Native Americans, or how the British dealt with India, or how most European countries dealt with Africa are not cases where they are implemented correctly. Two examples of how they were implemented correctly are French-Native American relations in the 17th and 18th century. I will elaborate on this as with the French Canada and the Indians who lived their coexisted quite well. The Indians were (for the most part) treated as equals, but the only flaw with such an example is that while they did coexist peacefully, that is because they didn't expand their territory, as colonization was not the top priority for the French, rather trade with the Indians. It is hard to have a successful attempt at imperialism in which both the colonizer and native people coexist mainly because as more people arrive at the colony, the bigger it becomes, the more it expands, the more territory it takes away from the natives.

I would go the dutch route, and trade.

Yeah, the Dutch road was paved with quite a bit of native bodies as well.

Not as bad as the spanish or english though.

But the good news is they got casinos, blankets, and whiskey out of it.

Was trying to be original with my examples. But yeah, we pretty much committed genocide on the scale of the Holocaust against the Native Americans.

True, but that doesn't make it any better. The Dutch were also quite busy on the slave trade markets, if I'm not mistaken.

http://books.caribseek.com/Curacao/Commercial_History_of_Curacao/rise-of-the-dutch-slave-trade.shtml

I love how you're trying to make your country sound the worst.. I want to join in!

Well, for a start, Britain had druids sacrificing humans to the Gods over 2000 years ago, savagely killing men, women and children to appease out ferocious deities. Then, in Anglo-Saxon times, warring kingdoms ravaged the land constantly. And then you have; invading and repressing Ireland, invading and repressing Wales, killing French people, participating in the slave trade, invading and repressing India, killing Aborigines in Australia, killing Maori in New Zealand, killling Zulus in Africa, invading and repressing half of Africa, killing Boers in South Africa, taking over Afghanistan and repressing them and then in present times helping to invade Iraq and Afghanistan.

So there we go, you simply cannot compete with this level of evil and world-altering chaos.

I would agree with colonization if it is meant to build up and industrialize an area, as well as prop up a constitution and elections, which would obviously be done by the 'natives'. In the case of colonization throughout history though, it has usually been a technologically superior race believing it is their divine right or duty to spread their culture and religion to others, and anyone who was not of the same culture and religion were automatically classified as "savages" and the country doing the colonizing attempted to convert them. Then, there was colonization for an area's resources. Here, I'll quote Battle Los Angeles (a great movie ). In the movie, one of the broadcasters said, "When you colonize a place for its resources, the first thing you do is you wipe out the indigenous population". That is quite true, and was shown throughout history. So, I'm for colonization if it is beneficial to the native population, while I'm against it if its simply to spread certain beliefs or get more resources.

Of course, Switzerland has never done that

Well, I wasn't trying to make it sound the worst, but Romulus seemed to imply all the Dutch did was trade, which is quite far from the truth.

What this basically means is that if you have flag then you have to right to conquer those who doesn't have a flag.
You do not need to overcomplicate things.

Or just go by the rule of "gun beats spear".

So wait I can conquer all nations without a flag, does Antarctica have a flag?