Colonial slaveholders justified enslavement as an education in civilization

Evidence

Some indication of the morality to which Ennes refers with approval are the sentiments expressed by Colonel Domingos Jorge Velho while justifying his impressment of Indian natives into his army:” [W] e augment our troops, and with them we carry war to those obstinate ones who refuse to give up; and if afterwards we avail ourselves of them for our plowing, we do them no injustice, because it is that we may sustain them and also their children no less than ourselves and ours; and so far is this from enslaving them that it rather does them an inestimable favor in that it teaches them to plow, plant, reap and labor for their own support—a thing which, before the whites teach it to them, they do not know how to do.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1945

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the civilizing-mission rhetoric Robinson develops throughout the book as ideology masking the violence of primitive accumulation.
• SHARE: This quote is so nakedly revealing of colonial self-deception that it would be perfect for a historian of Iberian colonialism.