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Notes -
The first colonialists were not humanitarians. They were a fairly callous, profit seeking band of adventurer-merchant-conqueror-grifters. Colonialism as a civilizing effort was a later rationalisation, and not a convincing one.
The first colonists didn't set the policy however (and they scarcely would wipe out or subjugate the whole the native population, either). The system that sent them - and came after they came back and reported they found something they can name by European name with added "New" in front - did. And I don't think "humanitarian" is a correct word anyway - at least not how we understand it now. "Paternalistic" or "nanny state" would be more appropriate term - and as we know, all these impulses did not disappear, they just turned inwards (mostly).
How do you explain multiple evidence of the people performing colonialism themselves saying that's what they wanted, and not saying what they wanted was actually to wipe out the aboriginals completely, never actually trying consistently to do that, and spending a lot of effort on things like converting them to christianity, making them follow European customs, etc. etc.? They just knew in the future people would want to rationalize their actions exactly matching the way they are behaving, and obligingly laid the ground work for that, while not doing anything to achieve what they actually really wanted - which is wiping out the natives?
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