The land was settled in order to extract resources back to the home country. Only the schmucks and undesirables actually went out to live in the colonies. To the extent that bourgeois settled too, it was for upward mobility, and they deemed themselves entitled to wealth for bracing the so-called savage lands.
After centuries of settlement, and after the formal end of colonialism, the descendants of the original white settlers have lost connection with their own history. They must make up a new one which imagines that capitalism is natural, that the settled land was pristine before they arrived, and that the country was founded on principles of liberty rather than exploitation and genocide.
The land was settled in order to extract resources back to the home country. Only the schmucks and undesirables actually went out to live in the colonies. To the extent that bourgeois settled too, it was for upward mobility, and they deemed themselves entitled to wealth for bracing the so-called savage lands.
After centuries of settlement, and after the formal end of colonialism, the descendants of the original white settlers have lost connection with their own history. They must make up a new one which imagines that capitalism is natural, that the settled land was pristine before they arrived, and that the country was founded on principles of liberty rather than exploitation and genocide.