Sociology

Takakis analysis of the English views of the Irish and Native American races and the suppression of the Nathaniel Bacon revolt suggests that racism and racial conflict always has an underlying motive in greed and the lust for power.

The definition of the Irish as the racial other led to them being dehumanized in the minds of the English.  The English saw Englishness as the equivalent of being civilized and being true Christians belonging to the Reformed church, while the Irish were savage heathens, Catholics of a particularly degraded variety (Takaki).

The English saw themselves as inherently civilized, their brutal occupation of Ireland and genocidal campaigns of subjugation did not render them uncivilized in their self image. On the other hand, for the Irish, things like their pastoral lifestyle and tribal system of government rendered those savages in the view of the English (Noonan).

Irish attempts to resist the English occupation only served to reinforce the English opinion that the Irish were savages. For the English it legitimized using more and more brutal tactics in the attempt to suppress them.

The characterization of the Irish had definite advantages from a material standpoint. Since the Irish were just wild people they could be classed together with other creatures that lived wild on the land the trees, the birds and the beasts. The lands of the Irish were thus converted into terra nullis which the English could claim for themselves and take over without any guilt. Every subsequent colonization attempt used this model.

The characterization of the Irish as savages also meant that driving them off their lands had no more moral penalty than driving wild animals out of a forest in order to convert it into arable land. If the Irish resisted, they could be exterminated, men women and children, and it would be no more than an extermination of wild animals that threaten a human habitation.

The racial model of the other as savages was brought in effect in the Americas as well. In the case of the Native Americans, the effect of dehumanization was exacerbated by the dire straits the new colonists found themselves in. In desperate need for food and supplies, they attacked the Natives with whom they had earlier established good relations (Takaki).

An argument for the colonization of Ireland was that since the Irish were mainly pastoralists, the productive capacity of the land for agricultural produce was being wasted. This argument was applied to the lands of the Native Americans as well, even though it was known that the Native Americans farmed corn on a large scale. This shows that the savage as a (non-English, non-Christian) non-agriculturalist race was a rigid social construct with little basis in actual observations of the Native Americans (Takaki).

According to Takaki, the institution of slavery was built upon the tensions of an underlying class struggle. The plantation owners feared rebellion from their White indentured servants and started replacing them with Black in indentured servitude (Takaki). These were then replaced with Black slaves who were easier to exploit. Legislation was passed that allowed Whites to oppress the Blacks, gradually Blacks were deprived of all rights allowing White slave owners and White indentured servants to bond together over shared superior status to Blacks (Takaki).

The Nathaniel Bacon rebellion, although was based on the extremely racist view that the colonial authorities were over indulgent and overprotective towards Native American who should be driven off their lands or exterminated, nevertheless brought together Blacks and lower class Whites (Takaki). It was for this reason that it was seen as extremely dangerous by the colonial authorities who knew that the stability of the existing order depended upon the unity of lower and upper class whites in the oppression of Blacks.