Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe's Conquest of Indigenous Peoples Book

"Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold" is an eye-opening book about European colonisation of the rest of the world. Mark Cocker has done an excellent job in researching and comparing the genocide and exploitation of Tribal peoples in Mexico, Tasmania, the USA and South West Africa. This is the history which should be taught in all schools, not the watered down white-washing of our history which is currently taught. Cocker tells the true story of the Spanish conquest of South and Central American tribes and civilisations, the absolute plunder of their mineral wealth, and the destruction of their culture, including language, writing and religion. He describes the British colonisers hunting the Tasmanian Aborigines down to the last "full-blood" Truganini, and her rape and debasement. The third chapter tells of the ongoing war of the American settlers against the Apache, the broken treaties, massacres, displacement, the use of disease as a weapon, as well as guns, and the mindless slaughter of their food-source, the Bison. Cocker leaves the biggest, cruelest massacres of the South West Africans till last. The Belgian and German slaughter and disfigurement (hand removal) of the Africans actually outnumbers the slaughter of European Jews in the Holocaust. It's almost like these armies practised genocide in Africa, to commit later on their own citizens. 'Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold' demonstrates all the evil of capitalism, colonialism and racism, in times and places when the Colonists got away with Mass Murder, and still bathe in the riches it bought them. It should be required reading at High Schools everywhere.