No wonder I love reading!!

I am reading this book that someone recommended to and lent me FOUR year ago, that I am just now getting round to reading!! 'The Caribbean' it's called, and it’s just a really amazing book!! I begin to see why people read non-fiction – I mean the historical perspective that I am getting on slavery in that area, the fight by European powers for domination, the profit from slave labour, the slaves' fight for freedom, the bloodshed!!! It’s quite something!! Today it occurred to me to wonder if human beings are just naturally self serving! The extent to which these colonialists went to safeguard their interests in the Caribbean was astonishing; add to that their treatment of the slaves – really beyond belief (although there were certainly some gentle and reasonable slave owners). I also came to discover that some of these guys TRULLY believed Black people inferior, responding to nothing more than animal instincts, and being completely closed to reason! Many of them though had to gain grudging respect for the Blacks during their fight for freedom, and indeed a number of them came to love and admire them.

The book is also a study in the character and actions of the various weak and strong men that rose to prominence during that period; the atrocities that weak men committed in trying to assert their authorities, compared to the honorable and respectful way that stronger men ruled, really enlightened me on the nature of men - it’s so true that cowards can be extremely cruel.

One other thing that interested me was the Spanish culture of looking after one’s own family and shamelessly promoting them to positions of authority in order to build up the strength of the family as a whole – I guess that was the practice with the nobility and upper classes throughout Europe at the time, and I wonder when ‘nepotism’ became unacceptable… I guess as the uprisings by poor people and other disenfranchised persons became more commonplace. Anyway, the Spanish suffered greatly for this, stealing from their own governments and impoverishing their own colonies, so that they early on lost their extensive hold on the colonized world, being superseded first by France, who in turn was overrun by Great Britain.

I was also impressed by the part little Holland had to play in trade and general participation as these powers rose to prominence – even when they had few colonies to speak of - I was quite proud!! (I do love that country!) Ok, I know they behaved atrociously in South Africa but so did France and Britain and Spain in their own colonies, it’s just that The Dutch are more recently in our memory!! And anyway we Africans behave no better towards our own brothers – all this leads me to the conclusion that I started out with: man is inherently self serving, given a chance!