09 October 2017

Dr Samuel Johnson on colonialism


From Dr Samuel Johnson’s Life of Mr Richard Savage, expressing Mr Savage’s rather dim view on colonialism, a dim view which is cited with approval by his biographer:
Savage has not forgotten, amidst the pleasing sentiments which this prospect of retirement suggested to him, to censure those crimes which have been generally committed by the discoverers of new regions, and to expose the enormous wickedness of making war upon barbarous nations because they cannot resist and of invading countries because they are fruitful; of extending navigation only to propagate vice, and of visiting distant lands only to lay them waste.
A very happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day to my gentle readers, and (as is relevant) feast day of Patriarch Saint Tikhon of Moscow.

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