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Colonialism. This word can get me started. And going!
Its causes, effects, aftermath; the beginnings, endings, ongoings.
Colonizers were opportunists, greedy in their pursuit of power and certainly unstoppable in their plundering of wealth. They wouldn’t let anything get beyond themselves. With an icy cold heart on their sleeve they overpowered everyone, rendering everyone subservient to their whim of supremacy.
What triggered this post was an elderly artisan’s recounting of yesteryears. Apparently, the British colonizers chopped off the fingers of artisan women ( in India) who made silk threads with their bare fingers in order to promote the silk from (not so) Great Britain. I have no official source to vet this information and neither is one needed. It is believable.
Not entirely in context, but close enough is the instance of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan who commissioned the monument of love – the Taj Mahal. He had either the hands or thumbs of all the craftsmen who built the monument cut off to ensure they couldn’t create another building like it. The chief architect is said to have been beheaded.
The lengths and breadths power can take one to- the heights of fame and wealth, and the depths of oppression and brutality.