Columbus

clairefontaine wrote: »

He landed in San Salvador.

What do you mean he never stepped foot on any of the Americas? He never got off the boat?

Apologies, he never set foot in what became the United States of America(and may not have set foot in the Americas proper). Until he died he was convinced he had found the indies/Asia. Though in his dealings with the "Indians" he encountered, he was a complete and utter bastard.

MadsL wrote: »

I thought the British deliberately infected trading blankets with smallpox?
http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html

Well there's a lot of debate on that score and little concrete evidence that they did. I'm not saying they wouldn't have if given the chance to win, but even on the practicality front it's not really much of a goer. For a start those handing over the blankets would want to be damn sure of their immunity, a concept that didn't even arise until later.

clairefontaine wrote: »

Didn't scalp or anything.

As Tigger points out scalping was a European thing. Hey the noble savage shíte always pissed me off. The Locals were as bloodthirsty as any European. Of course they were, they were human. The Aztecs et al were right immoral bastards(and no I'm not gonna say by our standards, cos 90% of moral equivalence is a crock of post modernist liberal shíte IMH)

You know just like the Celtic mist tribes who never did anything, but hang out in the green mist before patriarchy took over, they never did anything like behead each other and hang the heads off of trees.

A) they weren't Celtic and yep they were right bloodthirsty bastards. Even made the Romans, who were right bloodthirsty bastards go "By Apollo Flavious those Keltoi are right bloodthirsty bastards". Thing is the Irish like that they were right bloodthirsty bastards in many ways. The notion of warriors wading knee deep in the blood of their enemies still holds some attraction even today.

Oh no no no. It was just the evil Europeans.

Not me in this case. Yes the Europeans were kunts more than once and yes they exploited and conquered all over the place and that shít still lingers in modern problems today. On the other hand the world around us is very much European in nature and culture and law and media. If an alien landed tomorrow they'd think the world was "European". Go to downtown Bejing today and what do you see? Do you see and hear traditional Chinese dress, music. Not very often and you do see cars and buildings and technology and all the rest that is very much European in nature. The first man on the moon spoke English, not because he was English, but because Europe made colonies. But for a quirk of history he may well have spoken French or German, Spanish or even Dutch, but chances are pretty damn high even if you rewound things he'd have spoken a European language. So I am most certainly not one of those self hating Europeans. IMHO The myriad civilisations of Europe throughout the history of mankind have given back more than they took*. Still and all, even with that, we have to acknowledge what we took too.



*then again because history can get muddled you do find odd ones out there. Take slavery, especially the wholesale slaughter and slavery of African peoples, the slavery we all think of when the word is spoken. Bad Europeans, baaaad. Yep we were. However, who stopped that same slave trade? Africans? Asians? Arabs? oh wait... nope, it was those whities again. I find it extremely ironic and not a little sad when I see African American men and women signing up for Islam(or an odd local variant on it), when Islamic culture had the slave trade running in Africa way before the first palefaced eejit rounded the west African coast praying to saint Christopher because he couldn't see the north star anymore and continued it long after, even down to today. They will even claim Christianity enslaved them, when it was nutbag for the time Christians who were the most vocal in speaking up agin it.

Charlie Rock wrote: »

It'd be interesting to know how much of 'our' wealth can be traced back to imperial activities.

So? Genuine question BTW. "Imperialism" is not just a European concept for a start and it's not always a dirty word on balance. Take our neighbour the UK. The Roman's show up to a more primitive world(which is fine) and they cause chaos initially(which is not so fine), but within a generation we get villas and towns and codified laws and... well what did the Romans ever do for us takes over. Imperialism takes many forms including cultural and technological. I'm sure the myriad numbers of scribes who were making great money writing out catholic indulgences and bibles(as a side order) were not exactly happy about the new printing press*. Game over for them, first true information revolution for the rest of us. Competition begets innovation and while it's usually a difficult birth, the child is usually worth the labour pangs. I say usually. Let us imagine if today we only "discovered" the new world in the 1920's. Would the Aztecs still be chopping out living hearts to appease their gods? Not so unlikely, given the religions and practices of Europe stayed damned constant for nigh on 2 thousand years. Would this be better?






*in the Islamic world the scribes won, but the society didn't. The first printed Koran was rattled off in Russia and the first printed Koran in the Arab world was in the early 20th century.