Scuse Me

When speaking of colonialism, irony comes naturally. The song “Great Nations of Europe” by Randy Newman mixes elements of irony with explicit facts to ridicule colonialism in the 16^th century. Newman refers to the colonialists as “the great nations of Europe”, which becomes an ironic designation when he says what they did. For example,

 “Hide your wives and daughter; hide the groceries too.

The great nations of Europe comin through.”

or

“Columbus sailed for India found Salvador instead.
He shook hands with some Indians and soon they all were dead.
They got tb and typhoid and athletes foot, diphtheria and the flu
'scuse me great nations comin through.”

Here we see a discrepancy between the expectation and the actual situation. We would expect a positive consequence from “the great nations comin through” and instead we get fear and death.

Another example of the use of irony in this song is,

“Balboa found the Pacific, and on the trail one day,
he met some friendly Indians whom the Church told him were gay,
soooooooooooooo
he had them torn apart by dogs on religious grounds they say
the great nations of Europe were quite holy in their way.”

The tension here lies on what is said and what is meant. Clearly the great nations of Europe weren’t “quite holy in their way” if they had the Indians torn apart by dogs for being gay. The sarcastic phrase adds spice to the wholeness of the song.
On the other hand, there are some lines completely lacking of irony, which doesn’t make them less ridiculous.  For example,

“The Grand Canary Islands first land to which they came
they conquered all the canaries there which gave the land its name
there were natives there called guanches, guanches by the score
bullet's, disease the Portuguese, they weren't there any more.”

These lines are explicit to the border of redundancy. The progression of events is completely true, which comes to show that often history needs not the aid of imagination to make it ridiculous.

Overall, the song is a simplification of the horrible results of colonialism; one might say the facts speak for themselves. Therefore, although it is not an accurate representation of the colonies, it serves to express criticism and make them relevant to modern times.