Colonial facts that are older become more permanent than recent ones

Evidence

It may help to bring some sense of perspective to our thoughts here if we reflect that if after nine hundred years (1611 −711 = 900), it was justifiable still to regard the Moros/Moriscos as interlopers in the Iberian Peninsula and to throw them out, then a similar drive to put back the clock of history might with greater force be advocated in very many other parts of the globe. The European conquest of the Americas is in some areas separated from our present day by a mere one-third of the chronological gap that stretched between the Spain of the Expulsion and the Arab conquest. Yet the Americas as we know them are felt as a firm fait accompli of history, an omelet that nobody ever expects to see unscrambled. Nobody imagines America’s white and black inhabitants will one day be eliminated in favor of the peoples of the First Nations. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1347

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely paradigm-shifting observation about how temporal distance, not justice, legitimizes colonial settlement — resists easy summary and rewards sitting with it.
• QUESTION: Whether the 900-year gap is the operative variable or something else (demographic ratio, recognized sovereignty) legitimizes a fait accompli.