Culture Crashers: How To Break A Society - In 7 Simple Steps

Cultures are delicate things. They depend on staple foods, political structures and tribal players, social taboos and ancient superstitions. Throughout history cultures have swamped others with varying success. I have to say, the most successful one has been the taking of the New World by various European powers (Chiefly the Spanish, Portuguese, English and French). Think about, around 70 million people on two continents decimated by disease and war in less than a century in its most populated zones. (Mexico, Peru, Southeastern US, the Carribean and Coastal Brazil). Just recently has the Amerindian population recovered to pre-contact levels. Some 500 years later. Their European conquerors thought they'd die out by now but they're still alive and kicking thank God.

Another less well known one but still important is the Bantu Expansion. Following the invention of agriculture in West Africa, that region's population swelled to such a point where migrations were taken to venture down in Central and Southern Africa. Except there was a problem. Central Africa was full of pygmies and Eastern and Southern Africa were full of people who spoke with clicks like the Bushmen. Both groups were hunter-gatherers. Farmers like to have large families and need land to grow crops, especially if they're slash and burn farmers like those in Africa. They had trouble settling in East Africa but Austronesian plants like bananas, asian yams and taro helped them settle pretty well there and in the Great Lakes region. The Khoisan and Pygmy peoples were swamped due to better technology (the Bantus had iron tools), organization, more food and people. The pygmies and Khoisan bushmen who survived had to live in places no Bantu would like the Congo rainforest or the Kalahari desert.

Still, both Native America and Khoisan-Bushmen Southern Africa were conquered. Their societies smashed and the budding conquerer in you can do it too in 7 simple steps.

Step One: Know Who You're Dealing With

The Aztecs got to know their enemies by sending out spies in the guise of traders to gather secrets about their armed forces and society. The British practically did the same in the form of their various companies (Royal Niger Company, East Indian Company etc). Getting to know how a society work makes it a lot easier to topple. For instance, same you realize you need to control the population but the hostile majority tribe or caste is pissed off at you. No problem! Just use the other 15% of the population to run the whole thing and carry out the massacres. It's better that the natives remember their tribal foes living next door than you! Which leads us to the next item on the list.

Step Two: Get Someone To Be Teacher's Pet

If you're in a place, where the climate isn't favourable to your people (tropical Africa or India) getting someone else to do all the work for you, manage the bureaucracy and man the garrisons is crucial. The British used the Sikhs after finding out they were a 'martial race' and were forced to rely on them more after the Indian mutiny. Loyal Sikhs helped recover Central India from the rebellious sepoys. They also used the Iroquois to fight the French in North America when the French and British weren't at it. The Iroquois became the enemy of the French after they killed a few Iroquois chiefs back when Champlain first visited. This hatred culminated in the destruction of the Huron and the ultimate ass-kicking the French received at the Battle of Quebec. Even if you do wind up being teacher's pet, not everything is a benefit. For example the Tamils got shipped to all over the damn world when they were teacher's pet from Guyana to Fiji. Life isn't all the grand for the imperial lapdog, at least you get to survive however.

Step Three: Make Him An Offer He Can't Refuse

It's simple. The ruler you're against is being a bitch. He knows that you're a threat to the power he has on the island. You send down your own Henry Kissinger and he tells it real simple "Listen bud it's like this. Either you give us access to free trade in your tiny tropical hellhole with no other competing partners or we shell your palace, kill your sons, rape your daughters, force your people to be indentured servants and burn the temples and genealogical records of your ancestors". If you were smart, you'd say yes master and give them all they want. If you're smart you become the puppet of some far-off yet greedy Empire. If you're stupid like the former Kings of Burma. You die. The British fought 3 wars with the Burmese for the very reason pseudo Harry Kissinger stated above. Also, the fact that they didn't want an expansive power near British India hence wars with Nepal, Afghanistan, the Sikh Empire etc.

The agreement is a mutual one however. This ruler, chief, rajah keeps your policies and fills your coffers. You make him richer and keep him alive from any potential enemies. A sickening parasitical relationship.

Step Four: Imperial Grunts

Using native auxallaries to conquer territory for you is one of the oldest tricks in the book. From the Romans using German mercenaries, the Byzantines using Norse, Russians and Saxons, Ottomans using Christian boys to create Janassaries etc. There's ways you can go about this. One good example is conquer the most war-like tribe and make a deal with them. Promise them life in exchange for serving Your Majesty. Like the Gurkhas from Nepal. That deal is still going strong despite the crash of the British Empire. The French used the Senegalese when they were running out of healthy 20 year olds on the Western Front. If you're lucky, your settler colony will give away its best and brightest to do the dying like the Anzacs in Anatolia around 1915 in a place called Gallipolli.

The good thing about this is that you're keeping both subject peoples weak. The native soldier's tribe is without its warriors so things are quiet over there despite the casualties their men are taking. While the tribe you're rubbing out is getting massacred. It's better than having your troops do the killing and them remember as opposed to them remembering a Sikh, Malay or Visigoth.

Step Five: Kill Their Gods, Crush Their Spirits

A time tested manner to crush their collective will is to destroy their religion. Introducing a new faith divides the people and makes the elite battle the people in society who converted (usually the lower classes) thus creating a class conflict via religious conflict. Excellent. Seriously, how would you fight if you knew the British blew up your sacred shrine like what happened to the Igbo of Southern Nigeria. Harder, or would you realize the power of your Gods is non-existent and surrender to these superior forces knowing that their One God and his Dead Son reign supreme. In Colonial Africa, this was the norm. Convert to crush them. It always worked unless they were already Muslim.

Step Six: Burning Drowns Out Any Lamentations

If you have a really unruly population which always rebels or is fighting against you. You gotta hit them where it hurts. Especially if they're a rural society. It's harder when they're city-based which makes the case for setting German and Japanese cities aflame during the Second World War. If they're agricultural, the farm is everything. It produces the most important goods - food. It's the center of the home and hearth. Destroying farms is key to victory in total war. The Boers, the White Tribe of Africa were subjected to this to crush their guerrilla campaign after conventional war failed when more troops arrived to the South African veldt. The forces against them outnumbered the two Republics - the Transvaal and Orange Free State so guerrilla tactics became a must but even Lord Kitchener grew tired of the Boers 'running away on their ponies'. A campaign to destroy Boer homesteads and herd them into British concentration camps crushed Boer resistance. Destroying every home, field, animal made sure the Boers would become destitute, depressed and no more a strong nation. The British won the Boer War but lost South Africa as soon as they left.

Step Seven: It's A Whole New World

If you manage to subdue a territory, and reduce its native population to a manageable population the most logical step next is to annex and swamp the place with your people. Making your country more homogenous in the process. This is happening today with Han Chinese in Xianjiang and Tibet. Javanese people flooding Western Papua New Guinea, Sudanese Arabs going into Southern Tribal areas. This process is so succesful, the most powerful nation in the World the United States owes its power to this process. Starting out as a collection of English provinces on the Atlantic Coast it's nearly endless land (a significant portion being arable) allowed millions of immigrants to come to its shore, promoted a large birthrate to fill space in the new country and exploit any resources which were found and plenty were found to fuel this new nation. America was bound to be a new Empire as Washington deemed it because of its land. The same can't be said of Tibet, however it makes the population more loyal to the central government in case rebellion breaks out.

So, there you have it. Seven steps to conquer and break a society. I can't think of any society being re-made in this way since we now have a Global Culture apparently. Except of course in the Middle East. I can't really see Afghanistan becoming Ohio but I can see Iraq resembling an even worse Detroit (if that's even possible)....

South Asia Getting Better...Or Worse - Sri Lanka

After 26 years of warfare, assasinations and suicide bombings the Sri Lankan Civil War or the Eelam War is over. The Sri Lankan PM (Mr Rajapaska) was so happy, he flew home from a diplo-meeting in Jordan so he could bask in his military genius. What prompted the Sri Lankan to finally win? I think it may boil down to three things.

1) Tamil Tiger hubris by solely relying on convention tactics

2) Tamil civilian fatigue from over a quarter century of warfare

3) The improvement of Sri Lankan army overall

Yes, the Tamil Tigers had grown complacent. Instead of keeping the Tamil Revolution alive in Sri Lanka it became a bureacratic monster. It started acting as if the war had already been won and Tamil Eelam had been created. It had post offices and its own stamps, a form of currency, police officers and it even processed documents. Seriously, what guerrilla army does this. Even Mao had to jettison this during the Long March to save the Chi-Coms. The worst part is that a guerrilla army had become conventional. Sure, it was cool to have your own airforce and navy but Tigers were just getting ahead of themselves. Guerrilla armies can always melt away to fight another day, when conventional armies lose battles they really lose.

Then again, could the Tamils afford to lose land to save lives as Mao's Red Army did. Not really, Sri Lanka is a tear drop shaped island off India in the Indian Ocean. Sure, it can always get money from Tamils in India but there isn't much land to trade for time and men's lives on a tiny island. Even so, the Tamils in India began caring less and less about their tribal brethren in Sri Lanka. When IBM, Intel and other companies began investing in literate Dravidian India those Tamils never looked back after getting a good job with AT&T. These Nouveau riche Tamils evoked the words of Oliver Cromwell and told the Tamil nationalists to "In the Name of God, Go!" or in this case Rama. This sentiment was soon echoed by the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Like all guerilla armies, the LTTE or Tamil Tigers thrives on people. It needs people to build trenches, man positions, make food, carry water, extol the group and just in general support the cause. Even Mao the mass murderer attempted to be a genuine friend of the people while the LTTE led by Generalissimo Prabakharan just wanted to have Tamil slaves. Chai and Punkah-wallahs all around. Having a despot before the guerrilla leader even becomes top dog is unbearable. Soon the Tamil civilians were willing to flee to Sri Lankan territory as the LTTE terrorized its own people. The people it was trying to "defend" or squeeze money out of. The LTTE lacked what a guerrilla army had to do : Be friendly with the villagers and keep guerilla. Once you go conventional, you can be beaten conventionally. Ask any Biafran nostalgic in Nigeria. However, the Nigerian army is a decrepit Hausa-Fulani militia and the Sri Lankan army is less so. Just Sinhalese.

The Sri Lankan army throughout the war began undergoing a learning curve. It established military colleges to train platoon leaders on fighting in the bush, it got help from foreign services like the Israelis to fight Counter Insurgency Warfare and it got bigger using Chinese equipment to get the job done. Considering the fact that it had less than 100,000 troops in the first Eelam war compared to close to 200,000 now it's a major improvement. Tamil numbers and recruits keep going down, even the child soldiers it uses are becoming a rarity. While the Sri Lankan army got smarter, the Tamils got real stupid. That helps of course during a war.

So what will happen to the Tamils? Not genocide as many Tamils screaming in Toronto like to claim. In today's world, killing a mere 200,000 people is called genocide. Ask Bashir of Sudan! Also, it's getting harder to kill millions of people. You need to be bureaucratic machine like Nazi Germany to get that done and Sri Lanka isn't in the country where the printing press came from. Even if it did massacre a few hundred thousand Tamils, how would the 80 million Tamils in Bharat India respond? Not too kindly I suppose. However, the Tamils sealed their fate in India when they killed Rajiv Gandhi - just because he didn't like them.... oh and the Indian invasion of Sri Lanka during the Eelam War. The worse thing that can happen to Sri Lankan Tamils is economic disenfranchisement, a lifetime in refugee camps and land seizures by the Sinhalese. Call it, the Palestinian plan and they should hurry before the WWF complains about the last Tigers of Sri Lanka becoming extinct.

Just looking at the way the outcome is turning out, maybe the Tamils need to study the Palestinian plan. They really need a Hamas right now.

Where Have All The Blacks Gone?

The Atlantic Slave Trade was the biggest forced migration in human history. Around 10 million Africans were taken (mostly from West Africa) and brought to the Americas. Their lives after the journey, if they managed to survive was one of constant hardship, cultural destruction and exploitation. Yet, to this day their descendants (some 100-200 million in both Americas) survive. Yet, race as a concept has failed to define those who've assimilated into Latino culture. More and more blacks as years go by have become brown. Especially in places like Brazil and Venezuela. Even Mexico and Argentina once had large African populations. Where are they? Where have all the Blacks gone?

Colombia - Blacks were brought to work in gold mines, sugar plantations, cattle ranches etc. They were emancipated in 1851 but government policy was brought into make the country "lighter". However, this was unsuccessful and many of their descendats still live in the Pacific coastline. Around 9 million live in Colombia today.

Ecuador - After the Spanish conquest of the Inka, the Blacks were brought to replace the lost in native labour due to European epidemics. Since they were brought, they've suffered discrimination by the government and of course slavery. They've made cultural contributions like Marimba but still over 1 million of them are poor and ostracized by the rest of society.

Venezuela - More than 50,000 Africans were brought to work the cacoa plantations of the country and soon the nation became mixed race. Their situation is a bit better compared to the rest of South America. Hugo Chavez is an Afro-Venezuelan. Some 4 million live in Venezuela.

Argentina - Argentina's blacks are nearly gone. Only 52,000 remain. Africans from mostly Angola were brought here and in the 1700s, nearly half the population was black. What happened? According to historians (though I think this is false), slave owners would use their blacks to fight for them in wars against native populations and Brazil. The worse blood-lettings was against Paraguay in the War of the Triple Alliance. Then Argentina, like Colombia became obsessed with making their country lighter by allowing the large scale immigration of Spaniards, Italians and others into their nation and with a lack of black men due to warfare, black women married European males. Despite the cultural contribution of Tango among others, there's little place in Argentinian history for Blacks. A private census taken by an Afro-Centric organization estimated 2 million black descendants but no one knows for sure.

Mexico - Again, the decline of millions of potential native labourers forced Spain to import hundreds of thousands of black from West Africa. Slavery was harsh and there were many rebellions but by the 16th century, there was a significant amount of blacks in Mexico. However, intermarriage between blacks were discouraged to encourage intermarriage with Europeans and natives. Many of their descendants still live around Veracruz in southern Mexico and their contributions are still important such as the 2nd President of Mexico Vicente Guerrero was Afro-Mexican. Around 1 million still remain.

Cuba - Cuba was among the first places African slaves were shipped to, soon after Columbus's explorations which killed the native Arawaks. Blacks have always made up a large part of Cuba's populations and around half of them are black or have African ancestry.

Blacks of managed to thrive in Brazil luckily but their decline has been noted in most of Latin America. In Latin America three colours have been noted. Black, White and Brown. Brown is becoming more and more prevelant as time goes on and will probably be the norm but the only reason why brown is becoming the norm is because the darker you are, the poorer you are. The lighter you are, the richer you are. Simple as that.