In Ireland, colonisation was the opposite of a “civilizing force”
Recently, Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh wrote, “colonization has largely been a civilizing force in the world. A force for good. Most of the world would still be living in the Stone Age without it. Don’t buy into the leftist “decolonizing” propaganda.”
This was in response to the trend across western universities to critique European histories of colonialism across non-European lands. Admittedly, these critiques often overly stigmatized Europeans as being exclusively colonizing and brutal. However, those like Walsh fail to realize the proper reaction to these critiques is not to embrace the cartoonish villain colonizer that his opposition has portrayed.
The connotation of colonization today is not simply one group of people moving from one place to another. It is, instead, focused on a native people being displaced and subjugated by a foreign people justified through force. It would be incredible for any right thinking person to endorse such an activity.
It is even more incredible that Walsh – being an Irish Catholic American – can endorse colonization given his heritage. Irish Catholics were brutalized over centuries and only fled Ireland to get away from such a terrible system. Irish Catholics in America are there, for the most part, because their ancestors fled colonization in Ireland.
Walsh claims colonization was civilizing and good. He also claims countries were in the Stone Age before colonization. Let’s inspect those claims using his ancestral Ireland.
Irish Catholics in Ireland went from owning 100% of the land to 5%. They were prohibited from holding property, employment, wealth generation, education, inheritance, religious practice, bearing arms, voting, equal justice, and public office.
This disregard culminated in the Great Famine of the 1840s. Irish Catholics were artificially left to starve to death and kicked out of their homes at gunpoint while the colonizers kept exporting food to global markets, according to historian Christine Kinealy
What about any of that treatment was civilizing? What about any of that was good for Irish Catholics? Were Irish Catholics really better off in the 1840s compared to the 1040s?
Well, Walsh told us that Ireland must have been in the Stone Age, however, nothing could be further from the truth.
Esteemed author Thomas Cahill wrote the book How the Irish Saved Civilization. In it, he described that after the Roman Empire fell much of Europe regressed into the Dark Ages, however, Ireland remained almost uniquely civilized.
It produced great works of literature and art during this period. Its Catholic monasteries created a culture that acted as the Silicon Valley of its era. Irish Catholics traveled to the rest of Europe to spread this knowledge.
Charlemagne the Great, King of France and Holy Roman Emperor from the late 8th century, is seen as one of the most civilizing leaders of history for his efforts to expand education. He relied on the Irish Catholics to lead his educational mission. While much credit can be given to Charlemagne, it was many Irish Catholics who actually did the educating.
German historian Heinrich Zimmer wrote in 1891, “as in the early part of the seventh century, the Merovingian kings welcomed the Irish apostles who spread Christianity and the first elements of culture among the German tribes…[so that later in the ninth century]…in schools and monasteries all over France, the Carolingian kings employed Irish monks as teachers of writing, and tutors in grammar, logic, rhetoric, astronomy, and arithmetic.”
Irish Catholics traveled all across Europe during these early Middle Ages to spread education. Many universities across Europe owe their origins to these Irish Catholics. For example, the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland was built on the legacy of the Irish Catholic monk St. Gall who set up his hermitage in Switzerland in the 7th century.
Another historian, Keno Meyer, noted, “Ireland had become the heiress to the classical and theological learning of the western empire…[the Irish] became the teachers of the whole nations, the counselors of kings and emperors…The Celtic spirit dominated the larger part of the western world and its Christian ideals imparted new life.”
This legacy earned Ireland the moniker of the island of saints and scholars. This certainly doesn’t seem like a Stone Age culture. This seems like a culture that was one of the most advanced in the world before it was colonized. It seems like colonization drastically uncivilized Ireland. One wonders how Walsh could possibly conceive that all those prohibitions and all that destruction made Ireland better.
The founding fathers of modern Ireland were decolonizers. They wanted to abolish the English domination of Ireland and replace it with native rule.
Perhaps the greatest leader of the Irish revolutionary period, Arthur Griffith, had this to say, “Ireland and the Empire are incompatible. One cannot be an African ‘civiliser’ and an Irish Nationalist; one cannot trample on the rights of other people and consistently demand his own.”
This is no defense of unwarranted and hyperbolic cancel culture that holds no real weight of argument, but this is to defend authentic and noble anti-colonial movements. For those that prioritize freedom, fairness, and morality then the only logical conclusion is unanimous anti-colonialism. It is never a good thing for a foreign people to come to a land already settled by natives to displace, oppress, and occupy through force.
Ireland of the era of saints and scholars shows us that the Irish led the way in civilizing Europe without colonization. They peacefully interacted with other European peoples and made them better for it – so much so that the Europeans named universities and cities after them like St. Gallen. In the era of the Irish rebellions, the Irish fought for their rights as free men and inspired many other oppressed nations to do the same.
Walsh is too obsessed with campus culture of today to realize he may be ignorant of the past. Colonization destroys civilization. Ireland saved civilization. Walsh should learn the difference.
Mel Gibson’s blockbuster Braveheart (based on the Scottish revolution of Middle Ages) is one of the most popular movies of all time and held dearly by conservatives. That film is unquestionably anti-colonialist at heart.
Real anti-colonialism is summed up by a quote from that Irish Catholic American actor in that movie filmed in Ireland: “I see a whole army of my countrymen, here in defiance of tyranny. You’ve come to fight as free men… and free men you are…fight and you may die. Run, and you’ll live… at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin’ to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take… our freedom!”
Originally published on Gript on 29/10/2023:
https://gript.ie/in-ireland-colonisation-was-the-opposite-of-a-civilizing-force/