University tells students Britain "invaded" Australia

[Deleted]

So what? Saying you "discovered and colonized a place" means pretty much same thing as invaded when there are people already there. Who cares if a university decides they don't like the euphemism?

That's exactly my point.

[tehealadin]

if truth and reality is PC then I'll gladly be PC.

Agreed. No one can call me some PC regressive, but Britain did invade. Whites are not native to that place, we sent them there. This isn't PC gone mad, it is just a simply statement of historical fact.

[Ripster42]

That's exactly my point.

Sorry, my rage was making me read incoherently. If that exists.

[Deleted]

the brits invaded the entire world

If there's one thing we were good at, it was taking other people's shit.

[belfpala]

What? You fuckers invaded the proto-US, which resulted in essentially genocide (not your fault, ours), then tried to invade twice more. No one has clean hands in the West on these matters.

[derpkitteh]

honestly, as bad as dead natives is, would they have ever really done all the things with the country that the british did?

same with the native americans. i highly doubt the US and australia would be as large and powerful as they are today had the british not colonized them.

[Vanyali]

I wonder whether using the concept of sophistication would be acceptable or unacceptable?

Do we have any information indicating that the societies were either complex and/or diverse? Multiple societies existing does not necessitate their diversity. Another question concerns whether complexity and diversity can really be understood non-comparatively. Surely when we say something is complex, we mean either complex for someone or something, or we mean complex by comparison to someone or something?

Were the societies of the Aborigines peoples complex and diverse by comparison to, say, Indian, Chinese, British or American society? It does in fact strike me as being the case that they were comparatively unsophisticated, and that there is nothing derogatory about that description.

At your last question... yes, they were.

Culture can be complex without advanced technology; technology is a single facet of culture, and not a very important one if you're looking at complexity and diversity, as all cultures having the exact same technology would make them stagnant.

[nextormento]

At your last question... yes, they were.
Culture can be complex without advanced technology;

I don't think this answers the question. Rather points at one measurable that you claim doesn't have much weight into the equation
But they didn't even bring tech into it.
While most of these "progressed", "advanced", "sophisticated", qualifiers generally apply to how similar other peoples are to European standards [of progress advancement sophistication], I think a better question is how does one measure complexity.

In the guide they have one bizarre bit about how the prehistoric qualifier is inadequate.
Because, apparently, they can have history without passing through the European standard of what history is (written record), as opposed to what prehistory is.
Because we decided at some point that having a non modifiable record marks a turning point after oral tradition. As the account of events in not written records are harder to interpret.
And while, they surely have a past, and a culture, and a record of events in other mediums, they don't pass through the measurable (written record yes or not). And since the qualifier can be used as derogation, they prefer to throw the measurable out the window.
At which point one needs consider if there is any value in pointing out that they were complex, if no measurable is provided as to how complex they were.

[Vanyali]

I don't think this answers the question. Rather points at one measurable that you claim doesn't have much weight into the equation
But they didn't even bring tech into it.
While most of these "progressed", "advanced", "sophisticated", qualifiers generally apply to how similar other peoples are to European standards [of progress advancement sophistication], I think a better question is how does one measure complexity.

In the guide they have one bizarre bit about how the prehistoric qualifier is inadequate.
Because, apparently, they can have history without passing through the European standard of what history is (written record), as opposed to what prehistory is.
Because we decided at some point that having a non modifiable record marks a turning point after oral tradition. As the account of events in not written records are harder to interpret.
And while, they surely have a past, and a culture, and a record of events in other mediums, they don't pass through the measurable (written record yes or not). And since the qualifier can be used as derogation, they prefer to throw the measurable out the window.
At which point one needs consider if there is any value in pointing out that they were complex, if no measurable is provided as to how complex they were.

I don't necessarily disagree with this - the idea that cultural diversity is tied to technology is what irks me, because that has little to do with cultural sophistication and everything to do with environmental pressures on said culture.

I'll also quibble at the idea that history is written only; an oral history IS still history, and doesn't make it prehistory by default. But it's a minor semantics quibble at best, so no real problem. You can also note that written history doesn't necessarily mean written language; you can have one without the other, and dismissing it because it's not what the observer thinks of as "written history" is a bizarre and sad facet of early anthropology.

[nextormento]

I'll also quibble at the idea that history is written only; an oral history IS still history, and doesn't make it prehistory by default.

I mean, that's for you folks working on these things to decide. There's always a disconnect between what the population understands and what professionals in the field do.
I do consider many things happening before the written record as history, because my training is in history of the arts. In that field the concept of prehistory is essentially meaningless. And language is, well, largely out of the question.
But history, for the layperson, is taught as revolutions. It's understood as a series of no turning points. And one such turning point is writing stuff down. I'm not aware of any culture abandoning writing once it's established, because it's an incredibly powerful technology. One developed independently by different cultures, so I can see why it evolved to signify one such major revolution when figuring other civilizations and cultures.

So much so for technologies. Writing is a technology. In the context of the aboriginal nations of Australia, it makes very little sense to distinguish a prehistory in that sense, because they didn't' develop writing prior to the invasion. So it's all prehistory, with that measurable, but it's entirely irrelevant: because they didn't have any pressure to develop it.

I think they're pushing a fair nomenclature, but there's a whole lot to unpack in there.