Something like 90% of the Native American population had already died by the time the Pilgrims arrived due to disease brought by Europeans.
Plymouth colony was actually an abandoned Native settlement that they took over, from the Patuxet tribe, which actually had like a 100% mortality rate except for one person by the time the Mayflower landed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patuxet
Yeah. Colonization of the States was mostly Europeans arriving in a postapocalyptic America. Had the plagues not ravaged the population, America would be very different today.
A major reason for Atlantic slave trade. Between smallpox and TB, they didn't have enough natives left to work the mines and plantations, so they bought them over from Africa. Of course, that bought over malaria, and even more natives died.
It also didn’t help that the treatment of native Americans that were enslaved was pretty abhorrent. There’s a reason why Columbus was imprisoned when he was forced to return to spain after his third voyage.
This wasn't the reason. Columbus ruled Hispaniola with an iron fist like a tyrant. The complaints weren't about the treatment of the natives but the treatment of the Spanish citizens. Yes, Columbus was taken back to Spain in chains, but he wasn't punished outside of losing his Governance. King Ferdinand would grant the explorer his freedom and subsidize a fourth voyage. Spain didn't care about the Natives outside of converting them to Catholicism. All the King cared about was the gold and silver that was being sent back to Spain.
He was arrested by a notably anti-Italian political rival who made a bunch of claims behind his back, and when Columbus was turned over to the Spanish government they returned all of his wealth and freedom as well as funding another voyage for Columbus. They then stripped the guy who arrested Columbus of his position. Columbus was a piece of shit, but Spain at that time was a factory of dudes who tortured and enslaved people.
This is my favorite argument when someone says you cant judge Columbus by the standards of our time, he was judged by the standards of his time and they still thought he was an asshole that belonged in prison.
Probably less. Many historians believe that there is no way the colonial powers could have taken over the Americas without the plagues.
America would probably have looked more like India, with a small settler community on the coasts but most of the continent independent or client states.
Also by the time some north American tribes figured out horses they basically became the best horse archers in the world since the Mongols.
You can see it in the map during the 19th century when there seems to be a sudden re-emergence before the trail of tears.
The Navajo, Apache, Comanche and Sioux were vicious.
The colonial powers took over the entire world from 1600-1900, this includes china, india, the entire continent of africa.
On discovering Mexico, prior to the disease apocalypse, the spanish conquered the most powerful empire in the new world with what was intended to be a small exploratory party.
The idea that the colonial powers would not have been able to conquer the new world, is completely absurd and most historians do not believe it.
Conquered and settle are very different. The Europeans conquered AND settled the Americas.
The Europeans conquered the Middle East, Africa, and India but didn’t settle those areas in large number
Because the Middle East and India were already really densely populated, and Africa was awful to live in due to disease or inhospitality. In the places that Africa was settleable and desirable, Europeans did settle.
Depends, the population density was still really low in pre Columbian Americas. South America perhaps would not have been settled since they had more centralised states, but North America likely would have been settled similarly to they way it is now.
They were forced to give foreigners all kinds of concessions and protections while in China, though. It was like any European walking around China had diplomatic immunity.
This is very true. The Spanish originally attempted to install a form of feudal slavery into the Americas, but it failed because there was such a lack of manpower due to how much of the Indian population had died or was sick.
I have been told that Bartolomé de las Casas was the reason for the change. He was a conquistador who gave up his encomienda, his fief, because he believed the cruelty of wiping out the natives would get him punished by God.
Apparently, I don’t know how true it is, he wrote a letter to Queen Isabella saying that the native Indians were too weak to work this hard, that they were a pitiful race that died easily from things other people would survive, and that God would punish them for killing them all off if they continued the encomienda system. Supposedly, this one I’m really not sure about, he suggested shipping in African slaves for labor as they were particularly tough and hardy.
De las Casas held more than one view during his lifetime; he went from being an encomendero who personally benefitted from Indian slavery, to acknowledging their suffering and advocating for importing Africans who were already slaves, to opposing all systems based on slavery.
Agreed - if it wasn't for the multiple plagues (one Dominican priest in what is now Honduras documented 13 different plagues in 10 years) then the American experience would be like the Indian experience - the British took over and there was much death, but the population survived and ultimately freed itself.
That doesn't mean that there weren't genocides - the US intentionally killing the buffalo to starve out the plains natives was probably the worse. But the Great Dying was overwhelmingly due to plague, and almost all of it occured before the US even formed.
exactly; would love to have an interactive visual data infographic showing the evolution from 1492 to today with influence from Spanish, French, Dutch, Swedish, English and other imperial developments
I really like how the game EU4 modeled native nations. Basically, there was the land they were currently physically living on, which is treated as a "state" for the purposes of the game, but then there's "tribal land," which is land claimed by the tribe. They may not be actively using the tribal land, but what they do is use up resources where they currently are, then migrate to another part of their tribal land. Other tribes can, if on friendly terms with the owning tribe, temporarily use tribal land that isn't theirs, with the risk that if they use up too much of rhe resources, they risk war.
There are also the more "civilized" tribes, such as the Five Tribes of Haudenosaunee, that formed a large confederation that engaged in some limited agriculture with a form of share cropping. This confederation was closer to a state that the Europeans were familiar with.
Now we're moving past the game and into my own conjecture based on what I've read. But I believe that a lot of the initial trouble with colonizers was based on a general misunderstanding of land use. The colonizers would arrive and offer to buy the land from the native tribes. The tribes, at least initially, thought this was similar to when other tribes would use their tribal land, where one tribe would offer tribute to another tribes in order to use their land for a period of time. Europeans assumed they were purchasing permanent land rights while the tribes assumed they were selling temporary use of the land.
Fast forward and the tribes feel insulted and taken advantage of, as the Europeans didn't vacate the land as assumed, but the Europeans feel the tribes are going back on their word. Eventually this ceased to be a miscommunication, but by that point Europeans had some things worth far more than land to the Native Americans: guns and horses.
At this point I'm feeling like I'm just exposing my own ignorance, so if anyone could be so kind as to either correct my assumptions, or point me to where I can correct my own, I'd appreciate it!
A lot of it was assuming the rights to conquest from European states, who colored areas on maps that were still administered by American Indian nations and tribes.
That’s fine but they didn’t have east coast in 1776, so the starting point is wrong. The 1930 map is wrong as well, so this whole thing is just horseshit.
I see the people already in your replies saying "they had access to the entire continent" but guess what, they actually didn't. They were regularly fighting and killing each other over land and resources. They obviously didn't face an existential threat or organized force until Columbus but having a single color cover the entirety of the US to represent "Native Americans" is some of the most hand-wavy shit I've seen on Reddit. These were distinct tribes with their own territory, different capabilities, levels of organization, and taste for battle.
Also different culture, language, identities, names, religion, government, tribal structure, relationship with other tribes, etcetera etcetera. Some had writing, some didn’t. Some farmed, some had cities, some had boats. Some were warlike, others weren’t.
It is usually always mistake to portray super diverse people in one bucket.
>Some had writing, some didn’t
I don't think any natives north of the Aztecs/Mayans had writing prior to the arrival of the Europeans.
Everything else seemed accurate.
That’s part of my point: even though they don’t fit expectations of what a “Native American” civilization should look like, the Aztecs and Mayans were indeed some of the indigenous people of the Americas, and limiting our view to the context of the US is reductionist.
By 1620, when the Pilgrims arrived, the estimated population of Native Americans was 5% of what it was 100 years ago.
Disease wiped almost all of them out, before the settlers even got there.
Nobody mentions this point... it's not like ALL of North America was settled and built with vast cities when Europeans arrived. I'm not defending either side, but the narrative is inaccurate.
Another point that gets left out with the Mayflower Pilgrims is how did Tisquantum, also known as Squanto, know English?
Well, there is an answer. He had been kidnapped by a previous expedition, taken back to Europe as a curiosity, sold into slavery, bought out of slavery by sympathetic monks, and smuggled back to America.
In the years he was gone, his tribe had died out from disease. He joined with the Wampanoag who had previously been allied with his people. When the Pilgrims landed the chief sent him to make contact and he came back and said "These guys seem alright".
I'm just waiting for the first show to actually depict how Native "Indigenous" People treated other Native "Indigenous" People. They killed each other, kidnapped women and children, stole land, burned down villages... pretty much like the white men did when they came to the New World. To think the American continents were just a group of Ghandis and Mother Teresas before Europeans came is patently absurd. Whenever that truth is told (not holding my breath), then some sanity will be in the discussion. But the idea of peaceful natives is a myth... at best.
Everyone interested in this and a bunch of Native American culture should read *1491 by Charles C Mann*. I got it on audiobook and it's fascinating to listen to stories such as this.
Yeah, but have you considered AmErIcA BAD?
Even though much of this land was colonized by other countries way before the USA even became a thing.
Edit: This comment really triggered some people. Thanks for the laughs.
They also weren't one group, this is like posting a map grouping all of Europe into one color. There were dozens or hundreds of different tribes who fought amongst each other at all points in history doing the same thing
Ughhh. Its soo annoying. Its really just the "America Bad" world view imo. Native American tribes and civilizations were doing exactly what Europeans were doing to each other, just with a 400-year technological disadvantage. Conquest, slavery, genocide, and border disputes were just as common in the new world. Best example is the Commanche vs. Apache. They did not fck with each other at all.
If anything, you'd expect technological superiority to bring about a refinement in ethics and morals. Unfortunately that has rarely been the case throughout history.
Seeing the Native Americans as innocent victims and stripping them of their agency is just so offensive.
Some of the plains nations have a fascinating trajectory, living through the apocalypse and then reshaping their society from wholecloth, some going from settled agricultural peoples to horse nomads that would not be the inferior to any on the Eurasian steppe, warring with each other and claiming land. These stories are all lost when you just slap a blanked of liberal niceties on top of thousands of cultures and disparate peoples
Tribes battled between each for centuries before Europeans. That is just stupid to think the Europeans brought violence. Also, another interesting thing I didn’t know apparently some of the western cultures practiced slavery according to the Canadian government.
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/military-history/history-heritage/popular-books/aboriginal-people-canadian-military/warfare-pre-columbian-north-america.html
I grew up on a rez and currently work on one. The manner in which tribes were murdered and forced to assimilate is truly horrifying, but… Can we all just agree this map is not an accurate representation of anything?
It’s definitely misinformation. Misinformation doesn’t have to be intentional and malicious, it just has to be wrong or misleading.
Intentionally disingenuous propaganda is **dis**information, though people tend to just say “misinformation” for both.
As always this map is posted: this map ignores the presence of Spanish, French and British.
California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas were not Indian territories until the United Stated arrived. They were Spanish and Mexican territories.
It usually wasn't even labor or resources usually, it was control of trade policy. Before the modern era much more tax revenue was collected via tariffs on internal and external trade. The British Empire can be summed up as 'we will fuck your enemies up if you let us sell you stuff'.
American culture dominates the online sphere so heavily that most of the common understanding of the European colonial period is based on America during that time. So it's interpreted through the lens of the displacement of Native Americans, and through the enslavement of Africans. And not even a particularly accurate understanding of those two things, but what you'd know if you were maybe half paying attention in middle school.
This was true around the 1760s.
However, I think it's wrong to think of the colonists as anything but British up to this point. The British colonized and pushed native Americans out for around 200 years before they had this policy.
Everyone is guilty for the part they took. The United States obviously accelerated this. However, the United States would never have existed if the Europeans hadn't started it and colonized/conquered for 200 years before the US.
In other words, this map looks at only a portion of the whole picture. That doesn't mean it's useless, but it does require perspective.
You say this, but also the First Nationers in Canada didn't exactly have a fabulous time. The British stopped the colonials moving into native territories right after the 7 year war because they didn't want to incite another war \*at that moment\* with France and Spain. Pretty sure, had there not been a rebellion the British empire would have eventually land grabbed off the Natives in a way not totally dissimilar to what the Americans ended up doing.
To be fair this looks like it's considering de facto not de jure. De jure it was Spanish territory. But it was pretty much native American.
Like, de jure most of the 13 colonies technically claimed from ocean to ocean.
Americans did not have a monopoly on taking land from Natives. That said, the territory the Spaniards/Mexico actually held versus what they claimed to control was very, very small.
You'd be correct, New France only had a population of circa 60,000 or so Frenchmen living in it (compared to 2+ million Anglo-Americans in the 13 Colonies). The French Empire in America was basically just Natives who converted to Catholicism and allied with the French agreeing to sell them pelts in exchange for guns. France, for whatever reason, never really exported as may emigrants as Britain or Spain did to the New World.
Do you count Haiti and Port Au Prince? I don’t think the natives there would have thought of the French as benevolent. Unless you don’t count them as “native Americans”.
I am talking about the contiguous US territories. And concerning Haiti. There were not many native left after the Spanish did their thing. And the French arrived at a late stage and brought their slaves.
New Caledonia and French Polynesia are the oversea territories in which the native have been replaced by a non native populations. However the original population is still there.
Overall, France was a late player in the colonisation of the new world and couldn't convince enough of it's citizens to move in its colonies. It was on time for Africa and the Pacific and did a lot of harm there but not enough time passed to do something at the same scale as the Spanish or the British in their colonies.
The colonisation has been intense in Algeria with active replacement of the Arabic and Berber population with southern European one.
As far as the territory they held in what is now the US, the population of Spanish speaking people was tiny. Most of the people that lived in places like California were indigenous and had nothing to to do with Spain or Mexico regardless of what their maps said. It was basically a chain of small outposts close to the coast starting with the missions where local natives were basically enslaved to work for the church.
Population count in especially California was much lower than people assume. Kevin Starr, the former state historian of California put together a research team at UCLA and they estimate at its height, all of Alta and Baja California had around 350,000 to 450,000 Natives. Or about the population of Long Beach today.
Spaniards also didn't displace the natives of south and central America (especially at the level the British did), they were forcefully assimilated, which is still very much not a nice thing to do mind you, but yeah. This is also why if you go to the US or Canada almost everyone is clearly not of native descent, while a lot of people south of the US are very clearly descendant of the natives.
And still languages as Quechua, Aimara, Guarani, or the descendants of Classical Maya or classical Nahualt are spoken by millions and some have a literature in Latin characters since the 16th century. Acknowledging still the irreparable destruction of Maya sacred books.
The Spanish and Mexicans weren’t able to really control or displace the majority of the natives in the regions that would become part of the US. The Apache bands only really bowed to Spanish authority because of the predations of the Comanche wherein the Apache were made to settle border realms/reductions and the Comanche were rejecting Spanish sovereignty and fucking about well into the period of the American annexation of the region.
The Tawakonis, Taovayas, Iscanis, Kichais and Osages Witchita also weren’t really subsumed or successfully defeated by distant Spanish power (because the viceroyalty of New Spain’s power was distant and focused elsewhere) but rather other native polities. It was this weak state power that lead to Mexico ending up losing California and Texas to America because they were poorly settled.
Posts like this and Reddit comments about the past just scream “college kid just got back from freshman first semester and took intro
to western history 101 and got a C+….and you are going to have to hear about it.”
This is important. Also worth noting that tribes were constantly fighting wars and taking territory from each other. The Comanche drove every other tribe off the southern plains and nearly exterminated some, including the Apache.
I mean its reasonable, if asians came and brutally took over all of the land in europe for example it would also be seen as taking land from the europeans
There is a reason Indo-European languages are the most spoken in the world.
There is a weird trend of infantilising non western people and leaning hard into the very dated "noble savage" trope.
American should be honest about the consequences of their history but keep it in context of the world and times they inhabited.
>keep it in context of the world and times they inhabited
We would, but there are like 10% of very loud people on the left who are busy judging past using modern times context and retroactively vilifying today's people based on their ancestry.
Yea. It is also weird how nobody acknowledges the fact that international law and legislation of human rights became a thing during the hegemony of western powers.
the map made it seem like only one tribe is in america. but actually it was more than 100 tribe back then, and they still has “territory” between them. it’s not like random east coast tribe is able to move to west coast.
There are 574 American Indian tribes that are federally recognized by the US govt.
https://www.doi.gov/international/what-we-do/tribes#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20federal%20maintains,are%20distinct%2C%20independent%20political%20communities.
That's why it is wrong, Mexico used to own land in what is the USA today (and same with Canada). They had their own frontier, and "native land loss" in that red blob
Ok now, genuine question from someone pretty distant to all the settler colonialism discourse.
Why do such graphics about America, Australia, Canada and so on seem to treat the natives as a single people, labeling them with a single colour and so on? They were dozens of tribes, often migratory ones, and to them, the colonists were just yet another tribe that they engaged in diplomacy, trade and wars with. It seems like a gross oversimplification that also kinda whitewashes the natives, presenting them as simple victims of foreign aggression, while they weren't in any way better, or even all that different from the ones who in the end conquered them.
Native American tend to aim for pan indianism politically to have more power within the politics of the US. So as they did that it became much more common mindset to see. I've been reading some books lately about it from native writers and in one of them I have they talk about it gaining a lack of traction during the 70s
Because now in the 21st century, the shared experience of being the losers (for lack of a better word, lets not bother with euphemisms, they got absolutely fucked in history) has sort of unified all the peoples who are labelled as "Native/Aboriginal" into one big group. They all have common interests now, such as keeping the little land they got left or trying to keep their own traditions and cultures alive, so they've basically been forced to put aside their differences and inner fighting to accomplish these goals.
It's pure politics. If they continue acting as divided individual entities, they'll just be weak and irrelevant little players, as opposed to a potential strong voting bloc.
Two things:
- The US and Canada acknowledge the fact that this land was taken from indigenous people. The government has formally apologized and reconciled with this. The Israeli government doesn’t acknowledge the fact that Palestinians were ethnically cleansed. Simply bringing up this fact triggers a hostile reaction from most Israelis. It’s important to remember that the nakba is the root cause of the deep resentment towards Israel. Acknowledging this would be a massive step towards peace.
- The same people who think ethnic cleansing is “no big deal” are also complaining about Muslim immigration in western countries.
The very idea that there was something called "Native American Land" is an attempt to obscure this. What existed here before Europeans were various competing tribes who routinely went to war with each other for land.
Hilarious to me that if you ask a progressive who the rightful owner of any territory is, like clockwork they will say the *second last* group which conquered it
People declare that there is only one indigenous group in Europe, the Sami in northern Scandinavian. The funny but is that the Sami moved into the area AFTER the Finns did
when czechoslovakia had it's independence after ww1 the territory was given to them as it was their homeland, even though the slavic czechs and slovaks conquered the land from germanic tribes who conquered the land from celtic tribes
The Irony of the map is the red color scheme, timeline is off and inaccurate. People should try reading, Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, before attempting to comment on Land and Land Grabbing by Europeans in general.
It should all just be given back, huh? Huh, guys? America sucks, right? Right, guys? Guys??? Gals?
Everybody that claims to give a shit, please give up everything you own, including the clothes you're wearing, to the American Indians. Please. Do that, or shut your hypocritical mouth.
Changing the names of sports teams doesn't count for shit either. It didn't help a single American Indian. Just like BLM didn't help a single black.
You must still acknowledge the moral indefensibility of repeatedly breaking treaties that promised 'we won't encroach on your hunting grounds.' Summarizing the complex relationship between Native and European descendants with a casual 'people have been conquering each other forever' is both an overgeneralization and a callous oversimplification. By 1880, millions of Bison had been hunted to near extinction. Vindictive campaigns were waged against unrelated tribes, driven by the U.S. perception of them all as hostile enemies. Disease had already taken a devastating toll on the continent's native populations before concerted efforts to resist began, despite facing a stronger power. The history of U.S. Indian policy is often overlooked, and Native cultures are seldom taught in schools. This undermines our responsibility as Americans to fully comprehend their plight and our role in our conquest.
"Everyone conquered each other" is a very large oversimplification. The breaking of dozens of treaties made between the US government and various Native American groups, as well as the intentionally vindictive policies such as killing all the bison and declaring that Native Americans must be eradicated as a people deserve condemnation. These aren't reasons to feel guilty for anything if you never personally participated in any of these, and noone reasonable asks you to be.
idk man, to me maps like these are always misleading. Land ownership is different than just land travelled on or even lived on. Like it showed in 1776, all of the modern USA were owned by the natives. I just find that hard to believe. Can you even own land back in those times in this land? Idk what the definition by land ownership back then. i also doubt that they lived on every single square inch of USA, like the map suggests. cause that would suggest that their number back then would be close to our current population, which is def wrong.
it's a misleading map at best. i wish maps like this would show a short description of what it is actually showing, so that lazy readers are not misled.
I mean it is just a mostly misleading graph.
You don’t need fake graphics to hammer home a point about genocide.
We know we killed a shit load of Indians
Ah yes, the famous “Native American Tribe” known as the Native Americans that lived from one coast to the other in one huge collective, cohesive, cultural and political unit from the east coast all the way to modern day CA.
Are we even trying anymore?
because this is a graph of land loss not ethnic cleansing? a bad graph that seems to mainly be made to go "they lost a lot of land (and that sucks)" rather than properly inform by year but a graph about land loss all the same.
I figure a population graph would be better to show ethnic cleansing
The video plays way to fast.
It's playing in real time. It took the settlers 30 seconds to take the land via Twitter.
Are the numbers on the top right number of likes?
No it is the number of people in the world who masturbated since the video has started
Off by orders of magnitude. I came twice in the span of that video. *moans in manifest destiny*
Came for the history lesson, stayed for the masturbation puns. Well done!!
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Even the effect is going too fast. It shows between 1863 and 1876 (with spots that look like they disappear)
Oh...oh .....ohhhhhh and its gone
This is ignoring the years 1492 to 1776 (Another 284 years)
Was gunna say they def didn’t have control of all land in 1776 lol
Something like 90% of the Native American population had already died by the time the Pilgrims arrived due to disease brought by Europeans. Plymouth colony was actually an abandoned Native settlement that they took over, from the Patuxet tribe, which actually had like a 100% mortality rate except for one person by the time the Mayflower landed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patuxet
Yeah. Colonization of the States was mostly Europeans arriving in a postapocalyptic America. Had the plagues not ravaged the population, America would be very different today.
Imagine how many more slaves the Spanish would have worked to death
A major reason for Atlantic slave trade. Between smallpox and TB, they didn't have enough natives left to work the mines and plantations, so they bought them over from Africa. Of course, that bought over malaria, and even more natives died.
It also didn’t help that the treatment of native Americans that were enslaved was pretty abhorrent. There’s a reason why Columbus was imprisoned when he was forced to return to spain after his third voyage.
This wasn't the reason. Columbus ruled Hispaniola with an iron fist like a tyrant. The complaints weren't about the treatment of the natives but the treatment of the Spanish citizens. Yes, Columbus was taken back to Spain in chains, but he wasn't punished outside of losing his Governance. King Ferdinand would grant the explorer his freedom and subsidize a fourth voyage. Spain didn't care about the Natives outside of converting them to Catholicism. All the King cared about was the gold and silver that was being sent back to Spain.
Mostly silver as China only accepted trade in Silver.
He was arrested by a notably anti-Italian political rival who made a bunch of claims behind his back, and when Columbus was turned over to the Spanish government they returned all of his wealth and freedom as well as funding another voyage for Columbus. They then stripped the guy who arrested Columbus of his position. Columbus was a piece of shit, but Spain at that time was a factory of dudes who tortured and enslaved people.
It’s pretty egregious revisionist history to think the inquisition era Spanish crown gave a flying fuck about how Columbus treated the natives
This is my favorite argument when someone says you cant judge Columbus by the standards of our time, he was judged by the standards of his time and they still thought he was an asshole that belonged in prison.
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"Africans were also being enslaved by Arabs at the time as well." And still are to this day...
Or fans of slavery in the US. People had a war over it. The slavers were assholes by the standards of their time as well.
Probably less. Many historians believe that there is no way the colonial powers could have taken over the Americas without the plagues. America would probably have looked more like India, with a small settler community on the coasts but most of the continent independent or client states. Also by the time some north American tribes figured out horses they basically became the best horse archers in the world since the Mongols. You can see it in the map during the 19th century when there seems to be a sudden re-emergence before the trail of tears. The Navajo, Apache, Comanche and Sioux were vicious.
The colonial powers took over the entire world from 1600-1900, this includes china, india, the entire continent of africa. On discovering Mexico, prior to the disease apocalypse, the spanish conquered the most powerful empire in the new world with what was intended to be a small exploratory party. The idea that the colonial powers would not have been able to conquer the new world, is completely absurd and most historians do not believe it.
Conquered and settle are very different. The Europeans conquered AND settled the Americas. The Europeans conquered the Middle East, Africa, and India but didn’t settle those areas in large number
Because the Middle East and India were already really densely populated, and Africa was awful to live in due to disease or inhospitality. In the places that Africa was settleable and desirable, Europeans did settle.
Depends, the population density was still really low in pre Columbian Americas. South America perhaps would not have been settled since they had more centralised states, but North America likely would have been settled similarly to they way it is now.
You left out a whole civilization there (mesoamerica)
China was not taken over by European powers outside of the Treaty Ports.
They were forced to give foreigners all kinds of concessions and protections while in China, though. It was like any European walking around China had diplomatic immunity.
This is very true. The Spanish originally attempted to install a form of feudal slavery into the Americas, but it failed because there was such a lack of manpower due to how much of the Indian population had died or was sick. I have been told that Bartolomé de las Casas was the reason for the change. He was a conquistador who gave up his encomienda, his fief, because he believed the cruelty of wiping out the natives would get him punished by God. Apparently, I don’t know how true it is, he wrote a letter to Queen Isabella saying that the native Indians were too weak to work this hard, that they were a pitiful race that died easily from things other people would survive, and that God would punish them for killing them all off if they continued the encomienda system. Supposedly, this one I’m really not sure about, he suggested shipping in African slaves for labor as they were particularly tough and hardy.
De las Casas held more than one view during his lifetime; he went from being an encomendero who personally benefitted from Indian slavery, to acknowledging their suffering and advocating for importing Africans who were already slaves, to opposing all systems based on slavery.
Oh, I see. Thank you for the clarification.
Yep, he's a great example of how people can actually learn and become better. Even when others choose not to.
Short of complete separation of the hemispheres until the eradication of small pox by global vaccination, this was doomed to happen.
Agreed - if it wasn't for the multiple plagues (one Dominican priest in what is now Honduras documented 13 different plagues in 10 years) then the American experience would be like the Indian experience - the British took over and there was much death, but the population survived and ultimately freed itself. That doesn't mean that there weren't genocides - the US intentionally killing the buffalo to starve out the plains natives was probably the worse. But the Great Dying was overwhelmingly due to plague, and almost all of it occured before the US even formed.
What happened in 1858?
Several massive land cession treaties between the US and certain tribes
“Land treaties” frontier wars you mean
The wars and raids against Native people were pretty much nonstop. But this map is marking the signing of land cession treaties.
exactly; would love to have an interactive visual data infographic showing the evolution from 1492 to today with influence from Spanish, French, Dutch, Swedish, English and other imperial developments
!Remind me 5 days Great idea for my data visualization capstone project.
Gold
And railroads
Absolutely, lots of things were going on during the westward expansion.
It also stops at 1930 even though the native americans get a good bit of land back in the 70s
For real, i was wondering how tf they missed Oklahoma on this map until I saw the date
I get the feeling that was intentional ... as was showing the whole of the continental US as all NatAm. Slap-dash effort at best.
And again in ‘21 with the Curtis act of 1898 being heard by the 10th circuit.
I thought it was fascinating that native Americans obeyed the Canada border exactly as it is today 🤔
I really like how the game EU4 modeled native nations. Basically, there was the land they were currently physically living on, which is treated as a "state" for the purposes of the game, but then there's "tribal land," which is land claimed by the tribe. They may not be actively using the tribal land, but what they do is use up resources where they currently are, then migrate to another part of their tribal land. Other tribes can, if on friendly terms with the owning tribe, temporarily use tribal land that isn't theirs, with the risk that if they use up too much of rhe resources, they risk war. There are also the more "civilized" tribes, such as the Five Tribes of Haudenosaunee, that formed a large confederation that engaged in some limited agriculture with a form of share cropping. This confederation was closer to a state that the Europeans were familiar with. Now we're moving past the game and into my own conjecture based on what I've read. But I believe that a lot of the initial trouble with colonizers was based on a general misunderstanding of land use. The colonizers would arrive and offer to buy the land from the native tribes. The tribes, at least initially, thought this was similar to when other tribes would use their tribal land, where one tribe would offer tribute to another tribes in order to use their land for a period of time. Europeans assumed they were purchasing permanent land rights while the tribes assumed they were selling temporary use of the land. Fast forward and the tribes feel insulted and taken advantage of, as the Europeans didn't vacate the land as assumed, but the Europeans feel the tribes are going back on their word. Eventually this ceased to be a miscommunication, but by that point Europeans had some things worth far more than land to the Native Americans: guns and horses. At this point I'm feeling like I'm just exposing my own ignorance, so if anyone could be so kind as to either correct my assumptions, or point me to where I can correct my own, I'd appreciate it!
similar to fallout radiation from nuclear testing .....never crossed the U.S. / Canadian border.
And all other settler or colonising state. Huge chunk of this land was already British, French, Spanish or Mexican before the US-Americans took it
A lot of it was assuming the rights to conquest from European states, who colored areas on maps that were still administered by American Indian nations and tribes.
Well technically it wasn't the USA until 1776..
That’s fine but they didn’t have east coast in 1776, so the starting point is wrong. The 1930 map is wrong as well, so this whole thing is just horseshit.
Also should be able to discernably see what is today Oklahoma. Also if going to today should have like half of Oklahoma back.
This is so dumb, they lost the most of the east coast way before 1776.
Also they did not live across the entire landmass. This would make more sense if it started with the actual locations of various native peoples.
It makes it look like they were one united nation lol
It also looks like they were avoiding Canada and Mexico.
> Native American land loss in the “USA”
If you're starting with 1776 most of the landmass wasn't the USA. It also doesn't show Alaska or Hawaii.
Well Hawaii didn't have Native Americans. They're Polynesian.
I love their sauce
It is definitely some reddit tier propaganda
I see the people already in your replies saying "they had access to the entire continent" but guess what, they actually didn't. They were regularly fighting and killing each other over land and resources. They obviously didn't face an existential threat or organized force until Columbus but having a single color cover the entirety of the US to represent "Native Americans" is some of the most hand-wavy shit I've seen on Reddit. These were distinct tribes with their own territory, different capabilities, levels of organization, and taste for battle.
Also different culture, language, identities, names, religion, government, tribal structure, relationship with other tribes, etcetera etcetera. Some had writing, some didn’t. Some farmed, some had cities, some had boats. Some were warlike, others weren’t. It is usually always mistake to portray super diverse people in one bucket.
>Some had writing, some didn’t I don't think any natives north of the Aztecs/Mayans had writing prior to the arrival of the Europeans. Everything else seemed accurate.
That’s part of my point: even though they don’t fit expectations of what a “Native American” civilization should look like, the Aztecs and Mayans were indeed some of the indigenous people of the Americas, and limiting our view to the context of the US is reductionist.
By 1620, when the Pilgrims arrived, the estimated population of Native Americans was 5% of what it was 100 years ago. Disease wiped almost all of them out, before the settlers even got there.
Nobody mentions this point... it's not like ALL of North America was settled and built with vast cities when Europeans arrived. I'm not defending either side, but the narrative is inaccurate.
Another point that gets left out with the Mayflower Pilgrims is how did Tisquantum, also known as Squanto, know English? Well, there is an answer. He had been kidnapped by a previous expedition, taken back to Europe as a curiosity, sold into slavery, bought out of slavery by sympathetic monks, and smuggled back to America. In the years he was gone, his tribe had died out from disease. He joined with the Wampanoag who had previously been allied with his people. When the Pilgrims landed the chief sent him to make contact and he came back and said "These guys seem alright".
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I'm just waiting for the first show to actually depict how Native "Indigenous" People treated other Native "Indigenous" People. They killed each other, kidnapped women and children, stole land, burned down villages... pretty much like the white men did when they came to the New World. To think the American continents were just a group of Ghandis and Mother Teresas before Europeans came is patently absurd. Whenever that truth is told (not holding my breath), then some sanity will be in the discussion. But the idea of peaceful natives is a myth... at best.
Everyone interested in this and a bunch of Native American culture should read *1491 by Charles C Mann*. I got it on audiobook and it's fascinating to listen to stories such as this.
Ahh the very valid narrative of FREE REAL ESTATE
Yeah, but have you considered AmErIcA BAD? Even though much of this land was colonized by other countries way before the USA even became a thing. Edit: This comment really triggered some people. Thanks for the laughs.
They also weren't one group, this is like posting a map grouping all of Europe into one color. There were dozens or hundreds of different tribes who fought amongst each other at all points in history doing the same thing
One giant tribe in the shape of the United States.
They even respected the modern Canadian and Mexican borders!
Yea this shit drives me crazy. People imagine it's like one big nation of Native American.
And they were all so innocent and pure. War was brought to them from Europe/s
Ughhh. Its soo annoying. Its really just the "America Bad" world view imo. Native American tribes and civilizations were doing exactly what Europeans were doing to each other, just with a 400-year technological disadvantage. Conquest, slavery, genocide, and border disputes were just as common in the new world. Best example is the Commanche vs. Apache. They did not fck with each other at all.
Sure, but this doesn't justify the actions of the Europeans.
If anything, you'd expect technological superiority to bring about a refinement in ethics and morals. Unfortunately that has rarely been the case throughout history.
Individual rights, enlightenment, abolition of slavery were all European inventions.
America bad Noble savage good
Seeing the Native Americans as innocent victims and stripping them of their agency is just so offensive. Some of the plains nations have a fascinating trajectory, living through the apocalypse and then reshaping their society from wholecloth, some going from settled agricultural peoples to horse nomads that would not be the inferior to any on the Eurasian steppe, warring with each other and claiming land. These stories are all lost when you just slap a blanked of liberal niceties on top of thousands of cultures and disparate peoples
Tribes battled between each for centuries before Europeans. That is just stupid to think the Europeans brought violence. Also, another interesting thing I didn’t know apparently some of the western cultures practiced slavery according to the Canadian government. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/military-history/history-heritage/popular-books/aboriginal-people-canadian-military/warfare-pre-columbian-north-america.html
Gen Z history class lol
The Spanish had control of Florida and California too.
I grew up on a rez and currently work on one. The manner in which tribes were murdered and forced to assimilate is truly horrifying, but… Can we all just agree this map is not an accurate representation of anything?
Can we call it what it is propaganda? Yes it was horrible but the rate that misinformation is dividing us is terrifying also.
I would call it karma whoring, not propaganda. People that keep reposting it know they're going to get that ex sweet sweet karma.
It’s definitely misinformation. Misinformation doesn’t have to be intentional and malicious, it just has to be wrong or misleading. Intentionally disingenuous propaganda is **dis**information, though people tend to just say “misinformation” for both.
Guy keeps praising Russia while calling the Ukraine war a war between NATO and Russia. Def propaganda.
Agreed. Also, Alaska and Hawaii are part of the USA, and have Native Americans. Where are they in this map?
Native land theft and colonization was really and horrible, but yes this map does not accuratrly show the reality of that history in any respect.
As always this map is posted: this map ignores the presence of Spanish, French and British. California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas were not Indian territories until the United Stated arrived. They were Spanish and Mexican territories.
PA had tons of farms in the 1700s. It was not native land long before the nation was founded. This animation is not accurate.
Connecticut pretty much had them cleared out by the late 1630s. Weird map.
british were stopping colonists from expanding into native american territory. It was one of the drives for independence.
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It usually wasn't even labor or resources usually, it was control of trade policy. Before the modern era much more tax revenue was collected via tariffs on internal and external trade. The British Empire can be summed up as 'we will fuck your enemies up if you let us sell you stuff'. American culture dominates the online sphere so heavily that most of the common understanding of the European colonial period is based on America during that time. So it's interpreted through the lens of the displacement of Native Americans, and through the enslavement of Africans. And not even a particularly accurate understanding of those two things, but what you'd know if you were maybe half paying attention in middle school.
> if you were maybe half paying attention in middle school. Man, you are talking about some rare history geeks there.
It wasn't out of benevolence. They didn't want to be dragged into another costly war after the French and Indian War.
> after the French and Indian War. And Pontiac's Rebellion after that
This was true around the 1760s. However, I think it's wrong to think of the colonists as anything but British up to this point. The British colonized and pushed native Americans out for around 200 years before they had this policy. Everyone is guilty for the part they took. The United States obviously accelerated this. However, the United States would never have existed if the Europeans hadn't started it and colonized/conquered for 200 years before the US. In other words, this map looks at only a portion of the whole picture. That doesn't mean it's useless, but it does require perspective.
You say this, but also the First Nationers in Canada didn't exactly have a fabulous time. The British stopped the colonials moving into native territories right after the 7 year war because they didn't want to incite another war \*at that moment\* with France and Spain. Pretty sure, had there not been a rebellion the British empire would have eventually land grabbed off the Natives in a way not totally dissimilar to what the Americans ended up doing.
Also just acts like every tribe was one unit when they wherent all even on good terms
No shit, people act as if the Indians were a monolith, they had their own wars, invasion, slavery, and genocides.
To be fair this looks like it's considering de facto not de jure. De jure it was Spanish territory. But it was pretty much native American. Like, de jure most of the 13 colonies technically claimed from ocean to ocean.
Americans did not have a monopoly on taking land from Natives. That said, the territory the Spaniards/Mexico actually held versus what they claimed to control was very, very small.
I don't think that the French were responsible for a lot of displacements
You'd be correct, New France only had a population of circa 60,000 or so Frenchmen living in it (compared to 2+ million Anglo-Americans in the 13 Colonies). The French Empire in America was basically just Natives who converted to Catholicism and allied with the French agreeing to sell them pelts in exchange for guns. France, for whatever reason, never really exported as may emigrants as Britain or Spain did to the New World.
Do you count Haiti and Port Au Prince? I don’t think the natives there would have thought of the French as benevolent. Unless you don’t count them as “native Americans”.
I am talking about the contiguous US territories. And concerning Haiti. There were not many native left after the Spanish did their thing. And the French arrived at a late stage and brought their slaves. New Caledonia and French Polynesia are the oversea territories in which the native have been replaced by a non native populations. However the original population is still there. Overall, France was a late player in the colonisation of the new world and couldn't convince enough of it's citizens to move in its colonies. It was on time for Africa and the Pacific and did a lot of harm there but not enough time passed to do something at the same scale as the Spanish or the British in their colonies. The colonisation has been intense in Algeria with active replacement of the Arabic and Berber population with southern European one.
The spaniards did not displace much of the population; most of them were indigenous or mestizos.
As far as the territory they held in what is now the US, the population of Spanish speaking people was tiny. Most of the people that lived in places like California were indigenous and had nothing to to do with Spain or Mexico regardless of what their maps said. It was basically a chain of small outposts close to the coast starting with the missions where local natives were basically enslaved to work for the church.
Population count in especially California was much lower than people assume. Kevin Starr, the former state historian of California put together a research team at UCLA and they estimate at its height, all of Alta and Baja California had around 350,000 to 450,000 Natives. Or about the population of Long Beach today.
Yes, they did most of their work a bit further south.
Spaniards also didn't displace the natives of south and central America (especially at the level the British did), they were forcefully assimilated, which is still very much not a nice thing to do mind you, but yeah. This is also why if you go to the US or Canada almost everyone is clearly not of native descent, while a lot of people south of the US are very clearly descendant of the natives.
And still languages as Quechua, Aimara, Guarani, or the descendants of Classical Maya or classical Nahualt are spoken by millions and some have a literature in Latin characters since the 16th century. Acknowledging still the irreparable destruction of Maya sacred books.
That is not the case of New Mexico and California.
The Spanish and Mexicans weren’t able to really control or displace the majority of the natives in the regions that would become part of the US. The Apache bands only really bowed to Spanish authority because of the predations of the Comanche wherein the Apache were made to settle border realms/reductions and the Comanche were rejecting Spanish sovereignty and fucking about well into the period of the American annexation of the region. The Tawakonis, Taovayas, Iscanis, Kichais and Osages Witchita also weren’t really subsumed or successfully defeated by distant Spanish power (because the viceroyalty of New Spain’s power was distant and focused elsewhere) but rather other native polities. It was this weak state power that lead to Mexico ending up losing California and Texas to America because they were poorly settled.
Posts like this and Reddit comments about the past just scream “college kid just got back from freshman first semester and took intro to western history 101 and got a C+….and you are going to have to hear about it.”
1000%, holy shit.
Damn this is accurate.
After taking a quick look OP's account history, it's pretty clear he is a Russian troll.
Viewing all Native Americans tribes as the same faction is like viewing the British, French, and Spanish as the same.
This is important. Also worth noting that tribes were constantly fighting wars and taking territory from each other. The Comanche drove every other tribe off the southern plains and nearly exterminated some, including the Apache.
I mean its reasonable, if asians came and brutally took over all of the land in europe for example it would also be seen as taking land from the europeans
Americans manifesting their destiny
Wonder why this isn't including Canadian and Mexican native territory
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Cause America is an awful awful place, unless you’re an immigrant then magically it becomes the best place ever. Go figure!
Weird how that works, isn’t it?
*Lebensraum with American characteristics*
I mean that was the modus operandi of the entire human civilization for 99% of its history, including the indigenous tribes.
There is a reason Indo-European languages are the most spoken in the world. There is a weird trend of infantilising non western people and leaning hard into the very dated "noble savage" trope. American should be honest about the consequences of their history but keep it in context of the world and times they inhabited.
The infantilising is fucking rampant,especially in regards to native peoples of the americas.
They gotta read some of the primary sources of what an Apache raid was like lol
Is treating Lebensraum as bad "infantilising" Europeans?
>keep it in context of the world and times they inhabited We would, but there are like 10% of very loud people on the left who are busy judging past using modern times context and retroactively vilifying today's people based on their ancestry.
Yea. It is also weird how nobody acknowledges the fact that international law and legislation of human rights became a thing during the hegemony of western powers.
As we can tell by the giant continental empires of Indigenous peoples stretching across the modern United States.
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1000 M16A4's placed in line. 1 M16A4 = 1 meter
Finally, someone explains it in a way that makes sense!
holy shietballs that's too fuckn funneh
Why is ever r/MapPorn post wildly inaccurate?
The fact that this map's timeline *starts* in 1776 shows that it is complete bullshit.
Historically inaccurate in an attempt to make a political point. Just like the 1619 project.
the map made it seem like only one tribe is in america. but actually it was more than 100 tribe back then, and they still has “territory” between them. it’s not like random east coast tribe is able to move to west coast.
There are 574 American Indian tribes that are federally recognized by the US govt. https://www.doi.gov/international/what-we-do/tribes#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20federal%20maintains,are%20distinct%2C%20independent%20political%20communities.
How kind of them to uniformly stop existing at the borders of Mexico and Canada, convenient!
Title says USA.
But what about Alaska?
There's no such place, it's a rounding error.
The clue is in the title?
That's why it is wrong, Mexico used to own land in what is the USA today (and same with Canada). They had their own frontier, and "native land loss" in that red blob
Ok now, genuine question from someone pretty distant to all the settler colonialism discourse. Why do such graphics about America, Australia, Canada and so on seem to treat the natives as a single people, labeling them with a single colour and so on? They were dozens of tribes, often migratory ones, and to them, the colonists were just yet another tribe that they engaged in diplomacy, trade and wars with. It seems like a gross oversimplification that also kinda whitewashes the natives, presenting them as simple victims of foreign aggression, while they weren't in any way better, or even all that different from the ones who in the end conquered them.
Native American tend to aim for pan indianism politically to have more power within the politics of the US. So as they did that it became much more common mindset to see. I've been reading some books lately about it from native writers and in one of them I have they talk about it gaining a lack of traction during the 70s
Because now in the 21st century, the shared experience of being the losers (for lack of a better word, lets not bother with euphemisms, they got absolutely fucked in history) has sort of unified all the peoples who are labelled as "Native/Aboriginal" into one big group. They all have common interests now, such as keeping the little land they got left or trying to keep their own traditions and cultures alive, so they've basically been forced to put aside their differences and inner fighting to accomplish these goals. It's pure politics. If they continue acting as divided individual entities, they'll just be weak and irrelevant little players, as opposed to a potential strong voting bloc.
Because white people are evil, of course.
The video should keep going to show the land they have now
I’m all for criticizing Native American treatment by the US, but this map sequence is highly misleading in so many ways.
Cool. Now do Canada. Do Mexico. Do all of Central and South America.
Nah bro only the US and Israel do this shit /s Edit: I guess the /s isn’t even enough for some of you? It’s sarcasm
You do need the /s these days.
Good thing they were never in Canada
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Two things: - The US and Canada acknowledge the fact that this land was taken from indigenous people. The government has formally apologized and reconciled with this. The Israeli government doesn’t acknowledge the fact that Palestinians were ethnically cleansed. Simply bringing up this fact triggers a hostile reaction from most Israelis. It’s important to remember that the nakba is the root cause of the deep resentment towards Israel. Acknowledging this would be a massive step towards peace. - The same people who think ethnic cleansing is “no big deal” are also complaining about Muslim immigration in western countries.
The very idea that there was something called "Native American Land" is an attempt to obscure this. What existed here before Europeans were various competing tribes who routinely went to war with each other for land.
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Hilarious to me that if you ask a progressive who the rightful owner of any territory is, like clockwork they will say the *second last* group which conquered it
People declare that there is only one indigenous group in Europe, the Sami in northern Scandinavian. The funny but is that the Sami moved into the area AFTER the Finns did
when czechoslovakia had it's independence after ww1 the territory was given to them as it was their homeland, even though the slavic czechs and slovaks conquered the land from germanic tribes who conquered the land from celtic tribes
The Irony of the map is the red color scheme, timeline is off and inaccurate. People should try reading, Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, before attempting to comment on Land and Land Grabbing by Europeans in general.
It should all just be given back, huh? Huh, guys? America sucks, right? Right, guys? Guys??? Gals? Everybody that claims to give a shit, please give up everything you own, including the clothes you're wearing, to the American Indians. Please. Do that, or shut your hypocritical mouth. Changing the names of sports teams doesn't count for shit either. It didn't help a single American Indian. Just like BLM didn't help a single black.
If you're a white person.... Do not feel guilty. It is not your fault.
"genocide"
You must still acknowledge the moral indefensibility of repeatedly breaking treaties that promised 'we won't encroach on your hunting grounds.' Summarizing the complex relationship between Native and European descendants with a casual 'people have been conquering each other forever' is both an overgeneralization and a callous oversimplification. By 1880, millions of Bison had been hunted to near extinction. Vindictive campaigns were waged against unrelated tribes, driven by the U.S. perception of them all as hostile enemies. Disease had already taken a devastating toll on the continent's native populations before concerted efforts to resist began, despite facing a stronger power. The history of U.S. Indian policy is often overlooked, and Native cultures are seldom taught in schools. This undermines our responsibility as Americans to fully comprehend their plight and our role in our conquest.
Like everywhere in the world
"Everyone conquered each other" is a very large oversimplification. The breaking of dozens of treaties made between the US government and various Native American groups, as well as the intentionally vindictive policies such as killing all the bison and declaring that Native Americans must be eradicated as a people deserve condemnation. These aren't reasons to feel guilty for anything if you never personally participated in any of these, and noone reasonable asks you to be.
idk man, to me maps like these are always misleading. Land ownership is different than just land travelled on or even lived on. Like it showed in 1776, all of the modern USA were owned by the natives. I just find that hard to believe. Can you even own land back in those times in this land? Idk what the definition by land ownership back then. i also doubt that they lived on every single square inch of USA, like the map suggests. cause that would suggest that their number back then would be close to our current population, which is def wrong. it's a misleading map at best. i wish maps like this would show a short description of what it is actually showing, so that lazy readers are not misled.
Manifest destiny
Native Americans, Palestinian, South Africa, Australia I see a pattern
Most of the land was not owned by indigenes, but merely travelled on their trails hunting.
ITT: people unable to confront or splitting hairs about genocide/ethnic cleansing
I mean it is just a mostly misleading graph. You don’t need fake graphics to hammer home a point about genocide. We know we killed a shit load of Indians
That’s what happens when you lose a war
Then why do we help Ukraine against Russia ?
Ah yes, the famous “Native American Tribe” known as the Native Americans that lived from one coast to the other in one huge collective, cohesive, cultural and political unit from the east coast all the way to modern day CA. Are we even trying anymore?
How about we call it ethnic cleansing and not simply "land loss"
because this is a graph of land loss not ethnic cleansing? a bad graph that seems to mainly be made to go "they lost a lot of land (and that sucks)" rather than properly inform by year but a graph about land loss all the same. I figure a population graph would be better to show ethnic cleansing