The great heights reached by men and kept, was not achieved by sudden flight, they while the others slept toiled upwards in the night While Saint Augustine was directly referring to an uplifting of society, society will fall from great heights without constant toil. The failure to oppose of unjust laws doesnt merely allow things to remain the same over time, but causes a steady march into increasingly unjust laws. The acceptance of unjust laws allows [tyrants to] a structure that implements increasingly unjust laws until an intervening group pushes for reform. A society tolerant of oppression can fall into a relationship referred to by Martin Buber as Ich-Es, or I-It, where an individual or a small group would seen as an object to be used, and take utilized to meet an objective without regard to their welfare. It is difficult to understand how a large group can accept oppression from a smaller, even less powerful group without understanding the benefits offered to the oppressed. In the late 1500s, England worked to conquer Ireland, and gain a legal right over her lands. England coerced the Lords of Ireland to give the rights of their lands to England in a program called surrender and re-grant with negotiations backed by military threats. The Lords had had all rights to their land, except that they werent permitted to transfer ownership. In exchange for safety a pardon of dubious war crimes, the Lords were demoted from petit kings to English-style Nobles that were little more than managers of their ancestral lands. The Irish choose the limited power of their new titles rather than fight for the rights they previously had. Soon afterwards, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, an English representative for Ireland, restricted the freedom of the Irish leadership and brought new threats against them as retaliation for resisting them in war they had been pardoned for in the surrender and re-grant program. A few years later, almost the entire Irish leadership secretly escaped from Ireland and never returned in an event called the Flight of the Earls. With the elimination of the upper levels of Irish leadership, the English selected non-Irish non-Catholic immigrants to run and police plantations, and searched for defects in the land titles of the remaining Irish Catholic landowners to complete their conquest of Ireland. Before plantations, peasants had a right to make a decent living from the land they worked on, but now they where forced to relocate, although allowed to return to the land to work for minimal wages or rent the land at high rates. Title search businesses cropped up to search for land titles with flaws that resulted in forfeiture to the English crown, and a finders fee was made for the person that discovered the flaw. Non-Catholic immigrants were given the opportunity to buy and use the confiscated land. By 1701, 81% of the productive land had been taken away from the Irish. After the American Revolution, England gave Ireland a Parliament with limited power. The French Revolution caused renewed rebellion in Ireland and promises of assistance from the French, but the French either never showed up, or surrendered when they did arrive. By the turn of the century, the Irish Parliament agreed to cede their power by forming a Union with England. The Union between Ireland and England came with the promise of emancipation for Catholics, but the English reneged on their promise. OConnell became popular by pushing for emancipation. Even though the law prohited Catholics from becoming a member of Parliament, it did not explicitely forbid a Catholic from entering an election, so OConnell declared himself as a candidate for Parliament in 1828, and won over 2/3rds of the vote. Parliament quickly changed the laws and allowed OConnell to join Parliament. OConnell pioneered non-violent demonstrations, but unerringly refused to advocate an unlawful protest. His dedication to following the law severely limited his ability to hold protests when demonstrations were banned. The potato famine in 1845 brought little help from England, even though the countries were supposed to be united. Laws could have been changed to reduce Irish food exports from the plantations that produced more than enough food to prevent starvation, but England increased corn imports, forced the starving Irish to pay for it at market rates, and called it aid. The potato famine forced the Irish to realize they needed greater awareness about the need for socially responsibility measures to protect their welfare. In the early 1900s, the concept of an Irish Ireland began to take hold, and the Sinn Fein political party took form. The Easter Monday uprising ended in defeat for Irish rebels, but the British mishandled the trials and executions of the rebels, and the public began to favor the rebels. Sinn Fein had gain enough popularity to win a majority of the seats in an election after WWI ended in 1918, and began a quest for Home Rule and the successful political reform that continues to this day. In the late 1800s, King Leopold II took it upon himself to find a country that the world wouldnt notice that he could take and use for his own private property. At the time, many of the countries around the world were colonizing or being colonized. England was distracted with its expliots in Ireland, almost every European nation was colonizing Africa. From Asia to the Middle East and to northern Africa, France, China, the Ottoman Empire, England and Russia were competing for colonial rights. Leopold found a chose central Africa in region of the Congos, and organized a group called the Association Internationale Africaine, which appeared to be a philanthropic group whose aim was to support humanitarian project, send expeditions, and civilize the natives, but their primary purpose was to stake claims and and make treaties for land. Leopold took advantage of the lack of attention to Congo, and the lack of communication between the expeditionairy groups by sending utilize the groups to search for natural resources for him to exploit. By 1884, he had convinced the United States and several European countries that it would be in the best interest of the Congo and for traders around the world if the rights to Congo were transferred directly to him, and the Congo became his private property. He immediately began setting up organization to govern the country, but all the real power laid with Leopold in Belgium. His income came from ivory and rubber. The rubber extraction required that the natives slashed the rubber vines, slathered the rubber extract over the bodies, then when the rubber hardened it was painfully pried off, along with their hair. The officials in charge were motivated by constantly reduced salaries that they had to make up by increasing their exploits at any cost. A private army was created to ensure that quotas were ment, and when they couldnt be met, they blamed the Congolese and demonstrated their dedication to their superiors by making up the shortfall was made up in Congolese blood, with severed hands becoming a pseudo-currency when rubber production was low. Strict rules prevented missionaries from telling about the horrors they witnessed in the Congo, and Leopold discredited the missionaries if he suspected they were spreading rumors. His own citizens were appeased by the largest boom of public works projects Belgium has ever had. Eventually reporters started learning about the human rights abuses in the Congo, but the Western nations learned what was going on, they still didnt want to transfer power back to the citizens of Congo, and didnt have an alternative plan. After several years of intense debate in regards to the Congo Free State, the Belgium Parliament took control from Leopold and passed reforms to transform the Congo into a model country. They built schools, hospitals, cured diseases, and passed economic reforms to develop the infrastructure. By the 1950, Congo nationalism had started to grow, and riots along with it. Belgium realized they couldnt control a country that was larger than itself from thousands of miles away, and they relinquished power in 1960. History shows that unabated oppression creates a system of increasingly brutal oppression until theyre pressured to reform. Even though the changes may be small and seemingly insignificant, over time theyll try to continue to increase what they can take from the oppressed until theres nothing more to take. Millions died in Ireland, and hundreds of thousands died in the Congo because too many people stood idle instead of fighting for an end to the unjust laws being forced on them
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 01:18:12 +0000
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