Title: ﻿The European conquest of the world - Global Learning
Headings: 
﻿The European conquest of the world
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Content: Whereas Europe and the European settler societies deny the significance of colonialism, the colonized peoples of the world are not able to forget the colonial transformation, and they consider it their duty to remember. Whereas in Europe it is assumed that Western economic and technological advances are explained by cultural characteristics, the colonized understand colonialism and neocolonialism to be central to European development and Third World underdevelopment. Whereas public discourse in Europe rarely refers to colonialism and neocolonialism, public officials and political figures in the Third World regularly name colonialism as an important part of their present reality. The fundamental difference between European and Third World perspectives is their vastly different levels of consciousness of colonialism and of the colonial situation in which the vast majority of persons in the world live. The European colonial denial is a distortion. It prevents us from seeing fundamental historical facts and from understanding contemporary realities. It is not simply a matter of a difference in perspectives. It is a question of one perspective that cannot see important components of the human condition, giving rise to partial and limited understandings of a wide variety of social issues; and another perspective that addresses relevant questions and that formulates an informed understanding. It is a question of a legitimating and distorting ideology as against a scientific understanding.