Pat’s Polemics

Here’s an example of limited thinking on the part of educated people.
Supposedly “uncivilized” people were barbaric and given to violent warfare. The evidence is that for the most part warfare among preliterate peoples resulted in relatively low casualty rates. Under some circumstances massacres did occur but in general conflict in these societies was limited.
On the other hand, in the “civilized” societies we find much higher rates of mass armies and warfare involving combatants and non-combatants alike and costing many lives. Bringing warfare into the twentieth century we see astronomical casualty rates. Our Civil War produced unimaginable casualties – over half a million incl both sides.
The unthinking approach to the topic goes like this: there was a case of whole villages being wiped out in the 1700s during the slaving days; since this sort of thing took place in Nigeria and Nigeria was filled with primitive people, we can say that primitive people practiced whole scale slaughter.
Wrong: the people of Nigeria in the 1700s had an urban civilization equal to that of Western Europe. It was two things that ranks it barbaric on the scale of the unthinking: they were not White and they were not Christian. Hence, they were savages.
Having no knowledge whatsoever of the history, cultures, and even geography of Nigeria or of any part of Africa, these brilliant minds see no need to inform themselves nor even to think. If these people were so primitive, how come it took the Europeans so long to “conquer” them, seeing as how they had ample desire for their goods, incl slaves? After all, first contact was in the 1400s and it wasn’t until the very late 1800s that Europeans were able to gain hegemony of Nigeria. Why was that? Four hundred years dawdling on the coast, pining for good available in the hinterland and not able to just go on shore and take them?
Europeans did this in North America on the East Coast. That is b/c the indigenous people there were open to contact. The Africans, on the other hand, had learned a great deal about the Europeans by the 1500s, having sent ambassadors to Portugal and other European countries they were trading with. They knew very well what the Europeans would do if they got a toe-hold on the continent. It took them 400 years to do so and by about half a century later, they were gone as Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Cameroons, and all other former colonies gained independence.