Bertrand Russell Quotes
When white men first effect contact with some unspoilt race of savages, they offer them all kinds of benefits, from the light of the gospel to pumpkin pie. These, however, much as we may regret it, most savages receive with indifference. What they really value among the gifts that we bring to them is intoxicating liquor which enables them, for the first time in their lives, to have the illusion for a few brief moments that it is better to be alive than dead.
Russell, Bertrand. The Conquest of Happiness. Horace Liveright, 1930, p. 28.
Even at this early time, it was clear that whites had brought numerous diseases that decimated the Indians. Alcohol and disease killed many more native Americans than all the wars—intertribal and with the whites—ever did. Neolin warned but did not have more than regional influence.
Albert succeeded his dead uncle, Leopold, whose Belgian Congo colonization was particularly rapacious. His statement was a signal that the colonial abuses were to stop.
First Published American Indian Author
In 1898 the President was faced with a great dilemma in the Philippines. Giving the islands back to Spain after the war was unthinkable. Germany and France were waiting to step in. Self government was viewed as impractical, given the state of affairs at the time. The President decided to take the islands.
Genocide generally means the intentional destruction and elimination of a people. In the case of Columbus and the Spanish Conquistadors, they thought little of the lives of the indigenous people of the New World, but they wanted them for slaves to extract the gold and silver. They wiped out several peoples, mostly as a result of the communicable diseases (mainly smallpox) they brought from Europe for which the South Americans had little or no immunity. Also the size of the invasion forces (the Spanish) was relatively small. The size in land and number of people who they invaded was huge. The Spanish were the worst of the European empires from the point of view of the native colonized people. And Columbus was the trigger. So Chavez has a point in castigating Columbus and the Spanish but, typically, and like many politicians, his oratory lacked the precision of total accuracy.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell OM FRS was a British polymath, philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. Bertrand Russell was one of the most influential and widely known intellectual figures of the twentieth century. In 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his extensive contributions to world literature and for his “rationality and humanity, as a fearless champion of free speech and free thought in the West.“
