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It's because you live in a country that was heavily impacted by European colonization.
Which is admittedly a lot of countries.
But if you lived in China or Korea for instance, you'd be more likely to talk about the evils of Japanese colonization.
China calls the period it was dominated by European powers (+Japan) 'the century of humiliation'.
Look at who fought the Boxer Rebellion. All traditional Western colonial powers.
To be fair the century of humiliation also stems from the Chinese notion of cultural superiority being destroyed by defeats and economic losses. China was never colonized in the same sense as, say, Algeria.
Likewise, the Boxer rebellion got western powers involved due to the Boxers killing western missionaries/citizens, no? Still colonialism but not a war that colonial powers were gungho about
To simplify it, yes. But they'd be contending with powers like Russia, Portugal, and the United Kingdom beforehand where they knew some elements of their country were not superior.
But it was the breaking down of millenia old cultural views and believed superiority through for example, the opium war and western powers no longer treating them with great deference, that I posit caused the true humiliation rather than just not being the greatest military power.
I mean, they had reason to be? The Chinese empire was the cultural, economic, and military hegemon for basically all of Asia for centuries. Arrogance beget the downfall but it's not unreasonable over the course of their history
West colonisation is still a huge topic in China (alongside Japanese) and things like the loss of Hong Kong, parts of Shanghai to western powers as well as the destruction of the old summer palace in Beijing are still viewed as moments of national humiliation.
For example, as opposed to Europe where it is a symbol of remembrance, the poppy is a symbol of humiliation in China due to its association with opium.
That's kind of funny given the fact that current china is a result of centuries of brutal imperial expansion that makes european colonial wars look like hanami picnic.
Casualties of war in China were insane, the record was only topped in the west after WW1 due to more modern machine guns and mechanized warfare.
This to just give scale of how big the wars in China were...
In England we pray every poppy day that the Chinese forget that we forced them at gunpoint to keep legalised opium and paid them pay us back for the annoyance of having to do that war.
Ironically the arrogance of such dominant victories lead to Britains greatest military failure walking a generation of teenagers slowly into automatic gunfire and executing them if they wouldn't.
Poppy's are a good symbol of the British military and the blood they spilt to keep the oligarchs rich.
>destruction of the old summer palace in Beijing are still viewed as moments of national humiliation.
It's just a distraction from the fact that communist China itself destroyed an immeasurable amount of Chinese traditions and culture during the '40s through '60s.
The destruction of the old Summer palace is a single drop compared to the ocean of culture and traditions that the communist government destroyed.
Great answer, they say history is written by the victors but I would add that truth is remembered by their victims. And there’s a whole lot of people on earth who descended from victims of European Warfare.
imo, for Korea perhaps, but for China it was more a brutal invasion (Japan never got far deep into China beyond the North China Plains, the Yangtze river or the coastal areas, the easiest places to conquer). If anything, the mongol invasion of China was the most brutal followed by the Japanese invasion (more recent but still). Still these 2 are dark episodes in Chinese history.
>But if you lived in China or Korea for instance, you'd be more likely to talk about the evils of Japanese colonization.
No, the Chinese would be happy to talk about the horrors of the British drug cartels that operated there for decades. There's a reason China is so harsh on drugs, they still bear the scars of the opium trade.
Someone got was asking me about Japanese culture, they were wondering why we don’t have “black representation” in Japanese media especially anime.
My response was simple, “keep American problems in America.”
Than someone else said that I was being xenophobic.
Well , the Japanese have their own “ black “ people . I can’t remember their name but they’ve pretty much been treated on the same level as native Americans in the us even though they’re Japanese . Disrupting harmony is a worse sin so it’s not talked about
A big component is also the industrialized nature of the imperialism in the late 19th anf 20th century. It wasnt just a province controlled and taxed by a government far away like in times past, but a systematic industrial exploitation of the people and resources. The entire government structure in these colonies were built to facilitate this.
There is a recency bias, the fact that its impact is being felt still by the people living there, the racialized component that is effecting the people there today, on top of the material conditions of the time.
Yeah it is kind of difficult to describe how demoralizing it must be to have your entire culture, country, people etc be turned into nothing more than a production plant for whatever resource the colonial empire wanted at that time to fuel their factories back home. For *hundreds* of years, in many cases.
And it's not very comforting to live in that reality and have someone say "Well actually, Bantu migration assimilated or displaced many groups in sub-saharan Africa 1500 years ago so in the grand perspective it's not that bad."
Isn't that exactly what all the other conquests were? Come in, kill their armies, make them pay as much tribute as they can afford. They're lucky if they weren't made into literal slaves in most of the ancient wars I read about.
Of course I'm nobody. r/ask historians for real answers.
I think the most important question is “are the negative effects still felt?” Rome invaded Gaul, but France isn’t currently poorer than Italy. But Belgium colonized what’s currently the Democratic Republic of Congo much more recently, really brutalized the place, and the DRC remains much worse off than Belgium.
Yes and no. Its the industrialized nature that sets it apart mostly in a 'materialist' sense. The older conquests don't have hundreds of millions of people who where the colonial subjects like we do today. Thats apart of the recency along with the documentation that came with the modern era.
The spanish and portuguese conquests of south america basically deleted entire empires there in the 15th and 16th century, we don't have films of these happening.
But thats also not as well researched in the west, and is acknowledged to be so atleast at the department where i got my bachelors. There is also the issue with eurocentrism in the research that has been conducted. The research has been from a european perspective and was mostly developed in the 19th century. It informs the humanities as a whole today even though we had the postmodern revolution in the 20th century. (Some historians claim that the postmodern movement is also a form of eurocentrist thought)
Not really. A lot of the time with older conquests it just meant different nobility and the same way of life, maybe a linguistic shift over time.
Much like it did to transportation, communication, and production, industrialisation transformed colonisation into new levels, just mad how entire countries were strip-mined and cultures shattered.
This is the right answer.
And the technological advancements made colonizing far more brutal. A people turning on and usurping their neighboring nation is vastly different than a far off kingdom coming in and slaughtering or capturing your neighbor, its an ocean of difference.
One reason for this is probably the globalized nature of the times that came after, mass media etc. Another one is probably the sheer amounts of documents and records that were prevelent among the european imperial powers in the early modern to modern time. There is alot of data for researchers surrounding this era.
I would say both 'yes' and 'no'. Some countries and parts of countries express deep regret, others glorify those times because of nationalism and their great state. It differs from population to population.
Some sentiment is also expressed to keep their economic ties with their former colonies. It was wrong to do it this way, she should just trade like equals.
Crazy to me that a subreddit dedicated to serious academic discussion gets shit for not devolving into the same shit as every other Reddit thread.
Lame joke that’s been posted 15000 times
DAE think this insanely popular opinion is valid, or am I the only person alive who has ever thought that?
Not a historian, but here’s some shit I just made up
I’M TAKING A POSITION ON A CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUE AND YOU EITBER AGREE WITH ME OR ARE A PIECE OF FUCKING SCUM WHO DESERVES TO DIE (whatever you think I’m talking about, and whatever side you assume I’m parodying: self reflect)
actual answer, five upvotes
However, this cannot be said in general, as historians on the sub do not always represent the consensus in research. Its still reddit after all.
It is often worth obtaining further information elsewhere and looking at the research of other historians in order to avoid a one-sided perspective.
To expand, history is filled with one sided literature and historians must extrapolate truth from fiction.
The truth is that alot of it is guesswork. An example is much of what we know about the huns is from the romans. And they obviously are not too keen about them.
Generally most historians will align until new evidence shows up to validate a new hypothesis. But if you want to look. You will find a different certified mba historian that will argue every point in history. Its just the nature of the business.
The best and least biased history class I ever took was one where the professor laid out his biases and opinions on day one and had an optional textbook that had a completely different outlook on most matters.
Whenever you read a primary source you always have to consider three things:
1. Who is writing this?
2. Why are they writing it?
3. For whom is it being written?
And another step, mostly for the average joe, when looking at a source study, know the definition of the terminology used. People nowadays make some really dumb statements cause they don't know what there talking about.
>However, this cannot be said in general, as historians on the sub do not always represent the consensus in research. Its still reddit after all.
Or are necessarily competent ones. I've seen a lot of just bald errors of fact go through there, like simply not knowing the timeline of, say, Ancient Greek history.
Also, the sub is really enamored of fashion in historiography. To the point that they'd argue things like the Ottomans couldn't have done otherwise because they have agency. Which is... in tension to say the least.
Word. It's nice to see well-moderated communities here. Nobody likes having their comment/post deleted but mods are the only thing stopping reddit from becoming a shit show
I think it's more just irritation at how often you can click on a comment thread there, and literally *every* response is deleted.
Feels like you got robbed.
Also super annoying that they default to deleting comments from anyone not verified rather than actually just removing disinfo/inaccurrate history.
I remember a post on Justunsubbed where someone showed that their comment got deleted and then basically the exact same comment got reposted by a verified user and stayed up.
The goal of the sub is great and I often go there when I have a broad history question, but imo it’s a terrible sub to actually subscribe too. It takes at least a day, more likely a couple or more for a good answer to be posted.
The problem is that the way Reddit shows you content you will only ever see threads without an answer unless you go out of your way to bookmark it and come back to it.
Just not something I ever actually did
Yeah, askhistorians is definitley a sub which thrives in spite of reddit algorithms, not because of them. They are very aware of that but they don't see any better alternative.
That's why they have a sticky comment in every thread linking directly to the remindme bot. If you see a question you'd like to see an answer to, get a reminder to check on it a few days later.
Still have an uncanny, strange look to it when you open a thread. Looks like some forgotten ancient war took place and all but the winner is to be found, the losers, silenced by time itself.
Those comments are just racist guys having racist chats with each other about how the nazis should've won the war and who's got the coolest tanks though so this is for the best
Its effects are more impactful on modern day geopolitics.
The state of many countries around the world can directly be attributed to this colonization moreso than ones by neighboring nations thousands of years ago.
For example Indians still consider the Aryan invasion (not that kind of Aryan) a tragic chapter in history, but obviously British colonization was way more relevant and damaging.
South-Koreans and Chinese do condemn Japan’s many historical atrocities and crimes.
Less so in the west but more out of ignorance, less connection to the history, and associating Japan with their modern image instead.
Exactly, if we were having this conversation in Chinese instead of English, we would see a perspective that emphasizes those experiences of colonialism. But for anyone speaking English, British colonialism has almost certainly had the biggest influence on their life.
also doesn't help that Americans don't really learn about our involvement in Asia outside of the pre approved pro govt propaganda. the Japanese empire before and during WW2 did some absolutely heinous shit, often with support, backup, and guidance by the US empire
plus what we teach about Korea is a joke. if all you know about US and world history is from high school textbooks, you don't really know all that much tbh
Yeah, in Asia we have Japanese occupation movies the way the West has anti-Nazi movies. One time, I started dating a Japanese and oh boy the outrage I copped from my mother, like I'd committed the worst sin against my ancestors...
That's unfortunate. The sins of the father shouldn't be on the shoulders of the children. The children didn't commit those atrocities. New love and relationships shouldn't be ruined by the past.
Well, that is the balanced take to my point. If the child is pro atrocities and seriously supports the wrongdoing, then it will be a problem. But most people just want to live their life and don't care about politics or history.
Not if you're old-school Dutch. My parents and grand parents never forgave them for what happened in Indonesia (Dutch east Indies at the time). The people in Indonesia also have the right to not forgive the Dutch for what happened afterwards, but that stuff doesn't get taught in Dutch schools.
Yea the "politionele acties" are covered nowadays. Less indepth in primary school but fairly indepth later on. And the 3rd time (I chose history as a course) the decolonisation of the world with a segment dedicated to the Dutch decolonisation of Indonesia and how shitty the Dutch handled the whole thing.
Not really "Belgians" as much as King Leopold II of Belgium being an all-around awful human being.
The phrase "crimes against humnity" was litearlly invented to describe King Leopold's atrocities.
You say this as if he personally went to the Congo to fuck people up. He sent people, probably Belgian, to carry out the atrocities. No, "I was following orders" is not a valid excuse.
Bollywood makes tv shows and movies, and a lot of Asian countries have a niche film culture.
It's the half that makes movies and TV shows that we don't see in the west.
Japanese imperialism was basically modelled directly on English and German imperialism. Obviously it was by an Asian culture, but it was a semi-direct outcome of European imperialism.
Glad to see the correct answer in the comments. Japan got beaten by the Europeans and thought to itself: “shit how did they beat us? It must be their government, technology, and empires that gave them the edge…” and then went on a 100 year bender to try and copy all three of those things from Europe as fast as possible. The Japanese Empire doesn’t exist in anything like the form it took without European empires setting the example.
Yes and no. While it was modelled on European powers, government-sanctioned sex slavery and six-weeks of mass-rape, arson, and massacres wasn’t exactly the cup of tea the Brits liked to drink.
I mean, imo Japanese imperialism wasn’t a unique, new post-Meiji concept introduced to them by Western powers. In the late 1500s, Japan fought the Imjin War in an attempt to conquer and colonize Korea and China (some say Hideyoshi even had ambitions of reaching India). Obviously Western imperialism played a role in helping shape Japan’s foreign policy from the Meiji Restoration up until the end of WWII but I think the idea of colonizing their neighbors had always been a Japanese idea. Even during the Restoration before the Satsuma Rebellion, Saigo Takamori offered to act like an asshole in Korea so that the Koreans would assassinate him, giving Japan a free pass to conquer the nation.
True in the East, but not for the West, which is where most of the people on this forum live.
Conversations about colonization in the east, conducted in eastern languages on Eastern forums, likely do focus much more heavily on Japanese colonization
The colonial expansion craze that caused the clash of economic powers that preceded WW2 was started by the European countries. I know Japan is to blame for all the atrocities, but at the time they looked at all the hypey countries with 10 different time zones and went "Hmmm, that actually seems like a good idea"
China and South Korea at least are already large and developed economies that stand on their own feet. Southeast Asians on the other hand..., though their problems have nothing to do with Japanese aggression and more about poor living standards and whatnot.
I am sorry but that just... isnt true. Japan ruled those countries for a small handful of years and outside of murdering people they changed effectively nothing about these countries. It is not as if they exported their religion, law, hierarchy, culture etc onto these countries and radically shaped them to their liking for hundreds of years.
I would argue the big exception is Korea, which actually does have somewhat of a similar relation to Japan as the world does to Europeans.
India got geopolitically double-tapped. Invaded and colonised by Muslim powers, then invaded and colonised by European powers.
Ironically, not so dissimilar to British history. England was conquered first by the Romans and then swiftly by the Anglo Saxons.
>The state of many countries around the world can directly be attributed to this colonization moreso than ones by neighboring nations thousands of years ago.
I think this is a matter of perception rather than reality. You would think that Arab colonization of North Africa and Levant has even more profound effect on the modern day Middle East and North Africa than European colonialism.
I think the contemporary geopolitics aspect of the question and comments is important here. You might be right that \*culturally\* speaking, the Arab colonisers has had a more profound and enduring impact on North Africa and the Middle East but in terms of modern armed conflicts, borders, migration and refugee flows and the overall economic situation, Western imperialism is clearly of much greater relevance to North Africa and the Middle East today than the Arab conquest and Ottoman Empire.
>For example Indians still consider the Aryan invasion (not that kind of Aryan) a tragic chapter in history,
You talking about dravidian people right? Because majority of the sub continent are the descendents of those "Aryans" so if anything most Indians wouldn't say it's tragic because it's where there religons and languages come from.
It's almost funny how much it happens in Spanish Speaking colonies. You have white people demanding to "bring the gold back" while discriminating against anyone with a native surname.
I'm not diminishing the fucked up stuff the Spanish Empire did or trying to whitewash it, but don't victimize yourself if you are a descendant of the colonizers lol
Iran - means "Land of the Aryans".
The Aryans drove the Dravidians out of the northern part of the Indian subcontinent and on to Sri Lanka, if I remember correctly.
Isn't that story a part of one of the sacred Hindu texts?
>The Aryans drove the Dravidians out of the northern part of the Indian subcontinent and on to Sri Lanka
Dravidians are still the main population in southern India so no just northern India really.
Agreed. Particularly as there are people still alive who have experienced European colonisation. I believe, once the last generation with experience dies, the effects will lessen. Eventually all that colonisation will be confined to secondary accounts and treated as history. An example is how The Roman Empire is viewed now. No Empire is better or worse than any predecessor.
I don't think this is relevant comparison. The central asian migration to the Indian subcontinent wasn't an "invasion", and at no level did it lead to any colonisation, exploitation, or mass murder of any kind that we're aware of.
If you're referring to the Mughal invasion in the subcontinent then that's different, but there's no tragedy to be associated with the Aryans in the context of the Indian subcontinent whatsoever.
I'd say it's more that the impact is obvious. The French territory being conquered by the Roman empire, with the local culture being erased, the population being adapted to a completely new political system... it most definitely impacted the history of all the country, which also impacted the history of all the countries impacted by France, so huge part of Africa, the US when they left the UK, countries in Asia... It's just one example but the consequences are of course massive.
But it's not that easy to visualize how this event shaped nowadays life.
The big one is that the borders that europeans drew arbitrarily in many places are still there and they still have very real ramifications on international and regional politics.
It’s not that the borders are arbitrary. They are intentionally bad. Saying they are arbitrary makes it sound like a naive but well intentioned kindergartener came in and randomly drew lines on a blank map.
The borders of territories that eventually became the modern borders of states were largely drawn to INTENTIONALLY separate and divide tribes and ethnic groups, so that they could not become too powerful within one single territory, while smushing other groups together into one territory so that they had conflict amongst each other rather than fighting against their colonial aggressors.
I know you didn’t intend anything by it, but by using the word arbitrary, it hides the nefarious and malicious intent of it
>It’s not that the borders are arbitrary. They are intentionally bad. Saying they are arbitrary makes it sound like a naive but well intentioned kindergartener came in and randomly drew lines on a blank map.
that's literally how 2 Americans decided the line between North and South Korea. they thought the 38th parallel looked good on the map
Yeah I learned this fairly recently on South America and policies for example. And yeah in Africa it was kind of obvious. Middle East of course. Its crazy but it doesn't fit in a 1 minute video that's shiny so nobody knows/cares
Most detailed records is a big one.
European nations and companies kept detailed records of transactions, including slaves, for accounting purposes. This means we have a quite accurate figure on the Atlantic slave trade, on plantations, on famines.
These happened well before the Europeans got involved, but because there are few records it is forgotten about.
Coincidentally, this is also why the Holocaust is such a big thing. The amount of scrutiny with which they wrote everything makes this event particularly evil, to the point where we have trials where the main arguments were "as you see in this record, this many train containing this many people left to the camps daily. In conclusion, I am only guilty of killing 1.5 millions and not 2.5 millions"
Indeed but also because the European after WW2 got big on human right and general moral policing the world, which obviously was slightly contradicting their either recent or even current history at the time.
So first: it's recent and second: Streisand Effect
And the scope. I think we understand that we have had various groups fighting with each other across borders for all of human history, with one occasionally conquering and colonizing the other. But that feels different in scope from England and Spain dividing all of North and South America, ruling it in one form or another for centuries, and killing, enslaving, or forcing into serfdom the indigenous population.
I disagree: Genghis Khan conquered an enormous land area, long before England and Spain existed. But it was so long ago that no one really cares any more.
Edit: ok, maybe it wasn't long before England and Spain existed. I should have said "long before any European colonization".
Certainly people feel less aggrieved about something that happened 750 years ago, but Genghis Khan is known as one of the great villains of history based on scope of conquest.
It baffles me that more people aren’t upset Mongolia exists as a country and builds big ass statues of their founder. Every Columbus Day you hear people complaining about his statues but you don’t hear a peep about the worst guy in history lol
Although it was big, it didn't manage to have an effective political hold on conquered territories and it went to shit before it could have the impact that the British/Spanish empires had. So it is not just a matter of extension, it is a matter of control.
Long before? Kingdom of Castile is contemporary of Mongol Empire. Kingdom of England was already Norman for over a century when the conquests happened.
* Considering it the most horrific is a very Western-centric view. So many countries in Asia would disagree, simply ask them about their opinion of Japan.
* On the same line, us having this discussion in English already introduces a large bias.
* For many countries it is their latest experience, what they suffered (or inflicted) before was often just as bad or worse, but the larger distance in time makes them history and less of a emotional topic. I know my people have been colonized by Charlemagne, but that was 1200 years ago and nobody bears hard feelings about that today.
* Also the European countries have a tendency to see their own history very critical in recent years, in contrast to most others. For how many centuries have Arabic caravans captured their slaves in Africa, and when was the last time you ever heard their politicians discussing this topic critically? The topic just does not come up at all.
Besides the modern day impact, colonization during the age of sail was done in a scale never before seen. They had technology for it, like carracks and caravels, which could sail farther than any vessel previously, and could go get slaves far and wide.
They also were armed with cannons which could devastate any coastal cities they came upon, so then could dominate coastal regions and deep waterways militarily like never before.
Check out these videos from Flash Point HIstory about the Portuguese dominating the Indian Ocean in early 1500's
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RU7GZxN6OI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RU7GZxN6OI)
Recency bias and it’s effects are still seen in the modern world. A lot of the modern version countries who were colonized have existed for under 100 years and there are people who lived under colonization still alive. When Joe Biden was a kid, India was still a British colony. Pretty crazy to think about
For example, Egypt has been “colonized” by multiple empires in its history (Persian Macedonian Roman Ottoman etc) We don’t talk about the Roman colonization of Egypt because it happened 2000 years ago. The is no lasting Roman legacy in Egyptian 2024 government. we talk about the most recent colonizer, the UK, because they were under their rule just 80 years ago.
Also a lot of countries were literally dragged into the modern world by colonization. When the scramble for Africa occurred 140 years ago, much of sub-saharan Africa was still tribal. They are all now modern nation states, that transition took thousands of years in Europe. It’s a pretty drastic change in life and culture for those people in a very short period and the ramifications are still felt
The ***British Empire*** controlled 26.35% of the world and was the largest empire in the world, with multiple colonies in many different places around the world (*colonies in the Americas, multiple African countries, Hong Kong, India, and some islands*).
The ***French Empire*** (*the first and second versions combined*) controlled over 10% of the world and had colonies in multiple different places around the world.
The ***Portuguese Empire*** (*first, second, and third versions combined*) controlled about 6% of the world.
There isn't a non-European empire that is comparable to that, having colonies in multiple different continents around the world. One that comes close is The ***Mongolian Empire*** which controlled almost 18% of the world which took over parts of Asia (*inclusing West Asia/Middle East*) and parts of Europe. There was also ***Japanese Empire*** mostly took over islands but also some land in Asia.
Another that comes close are ***Islamic Empires*** or Caliphates which took over most of West Asia/Middle East (*and wants to keep the ancient Jewish homeland of Israel*) as well as Indonesia (*in South-East Asia*) and parts of Africa.
It makes sense why people are more focused on European empirse, but I think Islamic colonialism should be criticized more. Islam has a lot of people like christianity and there are muslims calling for religious Islamic sharia laws in different countries.
Yep. The year Christopher Columbus sailed for the New World was the exact same year as the end of the Reconquista: the expulsion of the last Muslim invaders from the Iberian Peninsula after centuries.
But they ignore this. I’m Greek and it’s the same thing, we’ve conquered and been conquered but the been conquered is always ignored because we are “white” and “colonisers”.
As a “colonised” person I agree. I mean the discussion around colonisation is relevant to me on a local level, but the overall chastising of white people as “coloniser” is gross. I’m still connected to country and my ancestors either way
Territorial conflict with neighbors isn't really imperial colonization. Aside from Genghis Khan (whose conquest is also considered horrific), there isn't much that compares with the European history of trying to claim multiple continents as their own despite virtually none of their population residing there.
But the real reason is that nearly every non-European culture that currently exists has been negatively affected by European colonization in ways that are still ongoing and need to be actively addressed. It's not about saying "look how bad Europeans have been historically," it's about being culpable for so many problems that exist in the here and now.
How about the Arabs and the slave trade? Arabic ain't the native language of most nowadays Arab states, not even the levante.
And the HUUUUUGE slave trade effecting almost all European countries and their coasts, the slaves and even depopulated one third of Iceland.
I'm not a historian but Japan tried it, didn't they?
Europeans were simply the first nation to discover guns + ships. If any other area made this discovery first, the result would be the same. They'd hoard gold and women like everybody else.
It's human nature. The continents aren't all that different in biology. One simply made the tech breakthroughs & then wielded it for money and power.
...
Now, even though all the Rich States have recognized that serious war between Top Dog states is not profitable, particularly because of nukes but also the results of WW2 ...
They have established "okay let's try to keep all the boundaries and ownership how things are, protect the Status Quo."
So if you're thinking about giving Hawaii back or Australia back or whatever European "meddling" you're concerned about, sorry, the Rich Owners will not allow that. We're probably stuck with this shit for the time being.
I think what made European Colonialism different from other forms of historical colonization and empire building is that European Colonialism combined both the military might of say, Genghis Khan, the Romans and the Persians with the social and political theories of the Enlightenment. While the Enlightenment was a net positive for the world, it did have some parts of it that lent itself to racism. For example, outside of Napoleon's conquest of most of Continental Europe, most imperial campaigns and wars for conquest involved the conquering of non-White peoples in Africa, Asia and the Americas by White Europeans. Even Russia's conquest of the territories that eventually all became part of the Soviet Union were mainly of non-White peoples (mainly Turks, Azeris, Georgians, etc.).
Many Imperialists justified this by use of White Supremacist tropes. That in itself is bad, but to be expected. What makes it worse, however, is that those same tropes have carried on to this day. Our entire view of the world is based on those same theories and principles that were proffered as justifications for global conquest.
This is why when Israel invades Gaza, many people in the "Global South" see it as just another example of Western/European Colonialism (I don't necessarily agree with this, but I see why they would believe that).
Objectively speaking, it was the largest scale and most horrific “colonization” to ever happen, simply by the scale of activity. Some people get offended because this sounds like a moral insult to white European, when “other culture did it too”. But it’s just true that no other civilization was able to exert that of coercive control on the entire globe.
The advances of sailing made it possible to go further and affect more people. The distance traveled also meant that native people were exposed to diseases they had no immune response for. Guns and artillery made it possible to dominate a culture to an unprecedented level. The demands of industrialization and capitalism meant that empires were never satisfied or acceptant of local rule. The empire demanded and enforced ownership of distance lands and resources. They squeezed populations into slavery or feudalism and destroyed their homelands. Lastly, all of the above coupled with religious fervor lead to racist ideologies that demand the replacement of native populations with white people. And they worked too.
We take it for granted that countries like the US and Australia are majority white when just 300 years it was an entirely different constitution. Or even that many South American countries speak Spanish. A language that has literally no basis in the land before colonization.
Nothing of that scale was feasible before European colonization. You could argue that Europeans just ran with the technology of the time. And that’s fair, but to deny that scale of the impact is an attempt of revisionist history. No empire was able to so thoroughly reshape the global until America’s current dominance.
Most recent, most impactful, and also the most cross continent and cross border compared to others. Take Haiti for example, its troubles can be directly traced back to the French still. And America too.
In many cases, the colonisation led to cultural and population admixture. Like Scotland did have many many invasions, but now the descendants of the Anglic Northumbrians and the Norse of the great Heathen Army are all mixed up with the Goidelics, you'd probably be complaining about half your own ancestry.
When the Manchus took over China, they adopted the chinese style of government and assimilated themselves into the existing culture. They actually did okay for a few centuries, before getting overthrown.
I don't know how many residents from Normandy these days will complain about the economic impacts of the time they got pawned off to the viking mercenary Rollo.
A couple commenters here are also debating India's Aryan invasion, which is another example of the ambiguity of such colonisations. The story there is the ancestral north indians supplanted/intermingled with the south indians, and while there is some delineation today due to socio-political identities and caste systems etc, the truth is that most Indians are a mix of at least 2, and up to 5, different ancestral lineages. And they ended up with cultures that have blended into each other at the edges.
The west still owns a huge amount of African resources (this includes the "kind" social democrats like Canada or Scandinavia who have been leeching off of Africa for decades) and the borders they drew are still there
Because it's the most recent + advent of media.
Ancient horrors may have been recorded, but they weren't broadcast via film nor reported via daily newspaper to the masses.
It's a question of scale. Nobody else did it around the world to every other continent with such a genocidal focus. There's a good documentary, "Exterminate All The Brutes" about this. It's pretty shocking when the entire scope of it is presented as a unified thing. Europe was Mordor to the rest of the world, just this marauding horde wiping out entire cultures left and right across the entire world.
Ephasised by whom? Who are you talking about exactly? Western people? Maybe because thats the form of colonialism that has most influence on you?
Most US citizens will be more aware about US colpnialims than about german colonialism.
Post Industrial colonization shaped the modern world, we all know what that looks like and are intimately familiar with it because we live with its fairly direct consequences.
Most people couldn’t tell you the order of most historical empires, let alone when and where they overlapped or even occurred in the first place. Atilla The Hun, Ghengis Khan, Alexander the Great, The Ottoman Empire, all of the Chinese dynasty’s and a lot more are names we might recognize but very few people know the dates and sprawl of most of them. Ask anyone who’s not a historian to list all of the Asian dynasty’s in order and match them up with whatever was going on in Europe and they’re likely to get closer to a 0 than passing grade.
I mean it wiped whole cultures and peoples on a scale that wasn’t ever seen before. Think North America. There are still Native people around, but a distinct minority.
Probably because it occurred on a global scale and its effects are still pretty obvious. Also we are of European descent or are European so we are naturally going to hear more about European colonialism. Go to Korea and they’ll talk way more Japanese imperialism.
Sshhhhh ! You can't say the others colonized , killed and enslaved too ( slavery still exists in some parts of the world but shhhhh ! ), that's racist ...
Because it is the most recent instance of colonization.
Rest assure that there was nothing pretty about Mongol colonization of China, or Moorish colonization of the Iberian Peninsula, for example.
I think one of the reasons is as multiple people mentioned, that the impacts of their colonialism are much more noticeable today.
But I think it goes much more beyond just basic borders of the modern countries that most people are mentioning. Many countries today have multi ethnic states of various minority groups but they still manage to function. A country can survive with fucked up borders.
I think the real issue is the way in which power was turned over from colonial rulers to local rulers when they left. There are instances where on the final day of colonial rule, the white government workers went to all government buildings and did things like unscrewing light bulbs, taking chairs and desks, taking everything that wasn’t bolted down with them so that the local Africans who were taking their place were left with nothing.
In Most colonial militaries, the local soldiers were not allowed to be officers or promoted above the rank of sergeant. They were only allowed to be the lowest level soldiers so that way it reduced the chance of local soldiers revolting. But when the colonial rule ended, you suddenly had hundreds of soldiers who never got any leadership experience instantly expected to become generals and admirals and commanders despite having zero experience whatsoever. So surprise surprise many of them became corrupt, their militaries were weak and poorly led, and many went on to start military coups.
In Sudan for example, when the French left, there had been a university there for 70 years. But in all that time, only one single African man got a college degree. It was only for the children of the white colonials. When the French pulled out, the Sudanese elected this one single man with a college education as president. But then the CIA and the French special forces assassinated him because they were worried he might be too “leftist” because he talked about universal healthcare and land distribution. Now there was not a single African left in the entire country with a college degree. How can you expect to run a modern country without anyone with a higher education?
In many cases, even after colonialism ended, the colonial country forced the new government to sign very lopsided deals that gave lots of things to the European country at the expense of the African country. And threatened if they didn’t agree to these terms, that British or france would invade them again and install a new government who would be more amenable. Things like mineral rights for British companies, or low trade teriffs so British goods could be cheaply sent and sold there. Or how france made every single country use the franc as their currency but pegged to a lower value so the French franc would be worth more compared to the African franc and they could only get their money from the French national central bank.
When you factor in all those things, colonialism didn’t just end in the blink of an eye when the country got independence in the 1950s and 1960s. For decades, continuing up until today, those countries have been either directly or indirectly fucked by the lasting legacy of colonialism
I think it has to do with the fact you can still see the scars of European colonization. Gauls and Picts and Anglos and Saxons conquering eachother 2000 years ago just ended up with aver age white people in the end and noone has a torch to carry for Britons or whomever they murdered along the way. Noone thinks "oh i hate my neighbor because his ancestors were Pictish."
Whereas, you can see the impact of european colonization on the Americas, with the aboriginal/native/first nations people subjugated and STILL poorly treated in a lot of situations.
You can see the impact of european colonization on Africa, where they looted precious resources and toppled governments leaving it to some degree of chaos depending on where you lived.
So, it's a matter of time and memory. Give it a thousand years and it'll probably have healed over.
I believe that it’s because we can still clearly see signs of its impact on populations. Black people in America and the racism there. In Canada we are only a generation or two removed from absolute atrocities that have created serious generational trauma. And as countries that are still closely tied to those cultures, it’s a closed loop
Whenever colonization is mentioned we have to brace ourselves to see a shit ton of "whataboutism" and poor understanting of what historiographically it entails
There isn’t an equal balance amongst all cultures though that’s just silly, obviously the European had far more of an impact in that regard than the cultures on lower end of the spectrum. It’s pretty obvious
it's very popular to hate on Europe and white people in general, thus there's a movement for reparations from America to Africa due to the slave trade, but no talk of asking Muslim nations for reparations even though they not only started the slave trade, they sold black Africans to Europeans - on top of that, the world never seems to care about atrocities committed by POC on POC - only what the white countries do - and then add to that that white people seem to be the only folks willing to berate themselves for their past - do you see the Japanese even admitting their guilt in China? Korea? the Philippines? Do Africans discuss their role in the transatlantic Slave trade? or the Arabs for their role in slavery...
no, no they don't
I don't agree that every civilization did colonies. Conquest is different from colonization.
For example, Vikings came to continental Europe and UK, killed many and ruled many small kingdoms. British monarchy could be argued to ve descendants of the Vikings. However, not many would argue that Britain was colonized by Vikings.
The template of European Colonization was a new development. Only Japan and the European countries did that.
In my experience, the average person has limited interest in prior historical periods at all, let alone a balanced historical perspective on modern life.
Honestly the criticism - while valid - often has more to do with social posturing and self interest then an honest reflection on how humanity has generally behaved over the centuries.
Because it’s used as propaganda to attack the West. My country (Egypt) was colonized by Arabs and that’s celebrated for some reason. It’s alllll just propaganda and currently the leading powers are Western so it’s used to try and drag them down.
I think we're all bad, so its bad people did things to other bad people. I don't think any countries at the time gave two shits about other countries than their own. Whoever was more powerful than their neighbor, was ready to fuck them up or take whatever they could, wherever they could.
It’s systemic and carries on.
Those older civilisations did influence colonisation also. People learn from their oppressors very well. The cycle has yet to be broken.
Hitler learned from European settlers in North America. Apartheid was built on all the knowledge of those colonisers and imperialists before, and lasted until the 90s, still yet to evolve out of social psyche/consciousness.
The impact of all these is global and still there, institutionalised even. Read neocolonialism.
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It's because you live in a country that was heavily impacted by European colonization. Which is admittedly a lot of countries. But if you lived in China or Korea for instance, you'd be more likely to talk about the evils of Japanese colonization.
China calls the period it was dominated by European powers (+Japan) 'the century of humiliation'. Look at who fought the Boxer Rebellion. All traditional Western colonial powers.
To be fair the century of humiliation also stems from the Chinese notion of cultural superiority being destroyed by defeats and economic losses. China was never colonized in the same sense as, say, Algeria. Likewise, the Boxer rebellion got western powers involved due to the Boxers killing western missionaries/citizens, no? Still colonialism but not a war that colonial powers were gungho about
Exactly, china finds it humiliating because they were not top dog.
To simplify it, yes. But they'd be contending with powers like Russia, Portugal, and the United Kingdom beforehand where they knew some elements of their country were not superior. But it was the breaking down of millenia old cultural views and believed superiority through for example, the opium war and western powers no longer treating them with great deference, that I posit caused the true humiliation rather than just not being the greatest military power.
Ehh. It’s only a humiliation of your so fucking arrogant and egotistical to begin with
I mean, they had reason to be? The Chinese empire was the cultural, economic, and military hegemon for basically all of Asia for centuries. Arrogance beget the downfall but it's not unreasonable over the course of their history
???? Are you serious? You don’t think the British colonial powers pumping in opium to ruin peoples lives wasn’t humiliating? Get a grip
You've had first century of humiliation, but what about the second century of humiliation?
West colonisation is still a huge topic in China (alongside Japanese) and things like the loss of Hong Kong, parts of Shanghai to western powers as well as the destruction of the old summer palace in Beijing are still viewed as moments of national humiliation. For example, as opposed to Europe where it is a symbol of remembrance, the poppy is a symbol of humiliation in China due to its association with opium.
That's kind of funny given the fact that current china is a result of centuries of brutal imperial expansion that makes european colonial wars look like hanami picnic.
Casualties of war in China were insane, the record was only topped in the west after WW1 due to more modern machine guns and mechanized warfare. This to just give scale of how big the wars in China were...
Not to mention that most of China's cultural heritage was destroyed during the cultural revolution, not by any outsider.
In England we pray every poppy day that the Chinese forget that we forced them at gunpoint to keep legalised opium and paid them pay us back for the annoyance of having to do that war. Ironically the arrogance of such dominant victories lead to Britains greatest military failure walking a generation of teenagers slowly into automatic gunfire and executing them if they wouldn't. Poppy's are a good symbol of the British military and the blood they spilt to keep the oligarchs rich.
>destruction of the old summer palace in Beijing are still viewed as moments of national humiliation. It's just a distraction from the fact that communist China itself destroyed an immeasurable amount of Chinese traditions and culture during the '40s through '60s. The destruction of the old Summer palace is a single drop compared to the ocean of culture and traditions that the communist government destroyed.
Great answer, they say history is written by the victors but I would add that truth is remembered by their victims. And there’s a whole lot of people on earth who descended from victims of European Warfare.
imo, for Korea perhaps, but for China it was more a brutal invasion (Japan never got far deep into China beyond the North China Plains, the Yangtze river or the coastal areas, the easiest places to conquer). If anything, the mongol invasion of China was the most brutal followed by the Japanese invasion (more recent but still). Still these 2 are dark episodes in Chinese history.
>But if you lived in China or Korea for instance, you'd be more likely to talk about the evils of Japanese colonization. No, the Chinese would be happy to talk about the horrors of the British drug cartels that operated there for decades. There's a reason China is so harsh on drugs, they still bear the scars of the opium trade.
Both things can be true!
Or mongols or chinese atrocities. Fun fun.
Someone got was asking me about Japanese culture, they were wondering why we don’t have “black representation” in Japanese media especially anime. My response was simple, “keep American problems in America.” Than someone else said that I was being xenophobic.
Well , the Japanese have their own “ black “ people . I can’t remember their name but they’ve pretty much been treated on the same level as native Americans in the us even though they’re Japanese . Disrupting harmony is a worse sin so it’s not talked about
Western history interests westerners, more at 11
A big component is also the industrialized nature of the imperialism in the late 19th anf 20th century. It wasnt just a province controlled and taxed by a government far away like in times past, but a systematic industrial exploitation of the people and resources. The entire government structure in these colonies were built to facilitate this. There is a recency bias, the fact that its impact is being felt still by the people living there, the racialized component that is effecting the people there today, on top of the material conditions of the time.
Yeah it is kind of difficult to describe how demoralizing it must be to have your entire culture, country, people etc be turned into nothing more than a production plant for whatever resource the colonial empire wanted at that time to fuel their factories back home. For *hundreds* of years, in many cases.
And it's not very comforting to live in that reality and have someone say "Well actually, Bantu migration assimilated or displaced many groups in sub-saharan Africa 1500 years ago so in the grand perspective it's not that bad."
France to Africa basically.
Isn't that exactly what all the other conquests were? Come in, kill their armies, make them pay as much tribute as they can afford. They're lucky if they weren't made into literal slaves in most of the ancient wars I read about. Of course I'm nobody. r/ask historians for real answers.
I think the most important question is “are the negative effects still felt?” Rome invaded Gaul, but France isn’t currently poorer than Italy. But Belgium colonized what’s currently the Democratic Republic of Congo much more recently, really brutalized the place, and the DRC remains much worse off than Belgium.
France and Haiti is another good example
Yes and no. Its the industrialized nature that sets it apart mostly in a 'materialist' sense. The older conquests don't have hundreds of millions of people who where the colonial subjects like we do today. Thats apart of the recency along with the documentation that came with the modern era. The spanish and portuguese conquests of south america basically deleted entire empires there in the 15th and 16th century, we don't have films of these happening. But thats also not as well researched in the west, and is acknowledged to be so atleast at the department where i got my bachelors. There is also the issue with eurocentrism in the research that has been conducted. The research has been from a european perspective and was mostly developed in the 19th century. It informs the humanities as a whole today even though we had the postmodern revolution in the 20th century. (Some historians claim that the postmodern movement is also a form of eurocentrist thought)
Not really. A lot of the time with older conquests it just meant different nobility and the same way of life, maybe a linguistic shift over time. Much like it did to transportation, communication, and production, industrialisation transformed colonisation into new levels, just mad how entire countries were strip-mined and cultures shattered.
This is the right answer. And the technological advancements made colonizing far more brutal. A people turning on and usurping their neighboring nation is vastly different than a far off kingdom coming in and slaughtering or capturing your neighbor, its an ocean of difference.
Good analysis, but there is also the crucial difference that, unlike other past colonisers, the West went on to develop guilt and atone
One reason for this is probably the globalized nature of the times that came after, mass media etc. Another one is probably the sheer amounts of documents and records that were prevelent among the european imperial powers in the early modern to modern time. There is alot of data for researchers surrounding this era. I would say both 'yes' and 'no'. Some countries and parts of countries express deep regret, others glorify those times because of nationalism and their great state. It differs from population to population. Some sentiment is also expressed to keep their economic ties with their former colonies. It was wrong to do it this way, she should just trade like equals.
Again, excellent analysis
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The replies on askhistorians: *\[deleted\]* *\[deleted\]* *\[deleted\]* *\[deleted\]* 😋
Yes, they're deleting bad answers, this is exactly why this sub is recommended if you want a quality response.
Crazy to me that a subreddit dedicated to serious academic discussion gets shit for not devolving into the same shit as every other Reddit thread. Lame joke that’s been posted 15000 times DAE think this insanely popular opinion is valid, or am I the only person alive who has ever thought that? Not a historian, but here’s some shit I just made up I’M TAKING A POSITION ON A CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUE AND YOU EITBER AGREE WITH ME OR ARE A PIECE OF FUCKING SCUM WHO DESERVES TO DIE (whatever you think I’m talking about, and whatever side you assume I’m parodying: self reflect) actual answer, five upvotes
However, this cannot be said in general, as historians on the sub do not always represent the consensus in research. Its still reddit after all. It is often worth obtaining further information elsewhere and looking at the research of other historians in order to avoid a one-sided perspective.
To expand, history is filled with one sided literature and historians must extrapolate truth from fiction. The truth is that alot of it is guesswork. An example is much of what we know about the huns is from the romans. And they obviously are not too keen about them. Generally most historians will align until new evidence shows up to validate a new hypothesis. But if you want to look. You will find a different certified mba historian that will argue every point in history. Its just the nature of the business.
The best and least biased history class I ever took was one where the professor laid out his biases and opinions on day one and had an optional textbook that had a completely different outlook on most matters.
Whenever you read a primary source you always have to consider three things: 1. Who is writing this? 2. Why are they writing it? 3. For whom is it being written?
And another step, mostly for the average joe, when looking at a source study, know the definition of the terminology used. People nowadays make some really dumb statements cause they don't know what there talking about.
>However, this cannot be said in general, as historians on the sub do not always represent the consensus in research. Its still reddit after all. Or are necessarily competent ones. I've seen a lot of just bald errors of fact go through there, like simply not knowing the timeline of, say, Ancient Greek history. Also, the sub is really enamored of fashion in historiography. To the point that they'd argue things like the Ottomans couldn't have done otherwise because they have agency. Which is... in tension to say the least.
That’s about right.
Word. It's nice to see well-moderated communities here. Nobody likes having their comment/post deleted but mods are the only thing stopping reddit from becoming a shit show
I think it's more just irritation at how often you can click on a comment thread there, and literally *every* response is deleted. Feels like you got robbed.
Also super annoying that they default to deleting comments from anyone not verified rather than actually just removing disinfo/inaccurrate history. I remember a post on Justunsubbed where someone showed that their comment got deleted and then basically the exact same comment got reposted by a verified user and stayed up.
The goal of the sub is great and I often go there when I have a broad history question, but imo it’s a terrible sub to actually subscribe too. It takes at least a day, more likely a couple or more for a good answer to be posted. The problem is that the way Reddit shows you content you will only ever see threads without an answer unless you go out of your way to bookmark it and come back to it. Just not something I ever actually did
Yeah, askhistorians is definitley a sub which thrives in spite of reddit algorithms, not because of them. They are very aware of that but they don't see any better alternative.
That's why they have a sticky comment in every thread linking directly to the remindme bot. If you see a question you'd like to see an answer to, get a reminder to check on it a few days later.
Still have an uncanny, strange look to it when you open a thread. Looks like some forgotten ancient war took place and all but the winner is to be found, the losers, silenced by time itself.
quality control.
That's cuz a lot of people don't read the rules and drop answers without sources and such.
Those comments are just racist guys having racist chats with each other about how the nazis should've won the war and who's got the coolest tanks though so this is for the best
Agreed. I did my best to do a rational and honest answer, but I'm not historian, and probably many commenting here are neither.
Its effects are more impactful on modern day geopolitics. The state of many countries around the world can directly be attributed to this colonization moreso than ones by neighboring nations thousands of years ago. For example Indians still consider the Aryan invasion (not that kind of Aryan) a tragic chapter in history, but obviously British colonization was way more relevant and damaging.
>Its effects are more impactful on modern day geopolitics. Half the world is still recovering from Japan's empire.
South-Koreans and Chinese do condemn Japan’s many historical atrocities and crimes. Less so in the west but more out of ignorance, less connection to the history, and associating Japan with their modern image instead.
I think that's the key here. In the west we know the most about what the Europeans and Americans did so we focus the most on that.
Exactly, if we were having this conversation in Chinese instead of English, we would see a perspective that emphasizes those experiences of colonialism. But for anyone speaking English, British colonialism has almost certainly had the biggest influence on their life.
also doesn't help that Americans don't really learn about our involvement in Asia outside of the pre approved pro govt propaganda. the Japanese empire before and during WW2 did some absolutely heinous shit, often with support, backup, and guidance by the US empire plus what we teach about Korea is a joke. if all you know about US and world history is from high school textbooks, you don't really know all that much tbh
Yeah, in Asia we have Japanese occupation movies the way the West has anti-Nazi movies. One time, I started dating a Japanese and oh boy the outrage I copped from my mother, like I'd committed the worst sin against my ancestors...
That's unfortunate. The sins of the father shouldn't be on the shoulders of the children. The children didn't commit those atrocities. New love and relationships shouldn't be ruined by the past.
Problem is when the child venerates the actions of the father or avoids learning lessons from it.
Well, that is the balanced take to my point. If the child is pro atrocities and seriously supports the wrongdoing, then it will be a problem. But most people just want to live their life and don't care about politics or history.
Maybe that will be one of the good things to happen due to globalization.
Not if you're old-school Dutch. My parents and grand parents never forgave them for what happened in Indonesia (Dutch east Indies at the time). The people in Indonesia also have the right to not forgive the Dutch for what happened afterwards, but that stuff doesn't get taught in Dutch schools.
I dont know which school you went to. But the "politionele acties" were most definitely taught when i was in primary and high school.
I went to school in the 70s, so things may have changed since then.
Yea the "politionele acties" are covered nowadays. Less indepth in primary school but fairly indepth later on. And the 3rd time (I chose history as a course) the decolonisation of the world with a segment dedicated to the Dutch decolonisation of Indonesia and how shitty the Dutch handled the whole thing.
The Dutch are nothing compared to the Belgians, IMHO.
Not really "Belgians" as much as King Leopold II of Belgium being an all-around awful human being. The phrase "crimes against humnity" was litearlly invented to describe King Leopold's atrocities.
You say this as if he personally went to the Congo to fuck people up. He sent people, probably Belgian, to carry out the atrocities. No, "I was following orders" is not a valid excuse.
I learned in elementary including voc/slavery.
Yeah I have been to Koreans independence hall. It's all to celebrate their liberation from Japan complete with a was torture museum.
Not even really ignorance but a concentrated effort to bury it in order to have an ally against the Soviet Union.
Japan's rebrand is wild. Went from war crimes to kawaiiii :3
To be fair the English kinda got the same treatment. Went from authoritative evil world conquerers, to fancy polite tea people.
Not the half that makes movies and TV shows
Bollywood makes tv shows and movies, and a lot of Asian countries have a niche film culture. It's the half that makes movies and TV shows that we don't see in the west.
Japanese imperialism was basically modelled directly on English and German imperialism. Obviously it was by an Asian culture, but it was a semi-direct outcome of European imperialism.
Glad to see the correct answer in the comments. Japan got beaten by the Europeans and thought to itself: “shit how did they beat us? It must be their government, technology, and empires that gave them the edge…” and then went on a 100 year bender to try and copy all three of those things from Europe as fast as possible. The Japanese Empire doesn’t exist in anything like the form it took without European empires setting the example.
Yes and no. While it was modelled on European powers, government-sanctioned sex slavery and six-weeks of mass-rape, arson, and massacres wasn’t exactly the cup of tea the Brits liked to drink.
I mean, imo Japanese imperialism wasn’t a unique, new post-Meiji concept introduced to them by Western powers. In the late 1500s, Japan fought the Imjin War in an attempt to conquer and colonize Korea and China (some say Hideyoshi even had ambitions of reaching India). Obviously Western imperialism played a role in helping shape Japan’s foreign policy from the Meiji Restoration up until the end of WWII but I think the idea of colonizing their neighbors had always been a Japanese idea. Even during the Restoration before the Satsuma Rebellion, Saigo Takamori offered to act like an asshole in Korea so that the Koreans would assassinate him, giving Japan a free pass to conquer the nation.
The Islamic conquest of the Middle East and North Africa still piles up bodies to this day
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True in the East, but not for the West, which is where most of the people on this forum live. Conversations about colonization in the east, conducted in eastern languages on Eastern forums, likely do focus much more heavily on Japanese colonization
The colonial expansion craze that caused the clash of economic powers that preceded WW2 was started by the European countries. I know Japan is to blame for all the atrocities, but at the time they looked at all the hypey countries with 10 different time zones and went "Hmmm, that actually seems like a good idea"
China and South Korea at least are already large and developed economies that stand on their own feet. Southeast Asians on the other hand..., though their problems have nothing to do with Japanese aggression and more about poor living standards and whatnot.
also US intervention. we fucked up a lot of southeast Asia, but we fucked Korea the worst imo
I am sorry but that just... isnt true. Japan ruled those countries for a small handful of years and outside of murdering people they changed effectively nothing about these countries. It is not as if they exported their religion, law, hierarchy, culture etc onto these countries and radically shaped them to their liking for hundreds of years. I would argue the big exception is Korea, which actually does have somewhat of a similar relation to Japan as the world does to Europeans.
India got geopolitically double-tapped. Invaded and colonised by Muslim powers, then invaded and colonised by European powers. Ironically, not so dissimilar to British history. England was conquered first by the Romans and then swiftly by the Anglo Saxons.
>The state of many countries around the world can directly be attributed to this colonization moreso than ones by neighboring nations thousands of years ago. I think this is a matter of perception rather than reality. You would think that Arab colonization of North Africa and Levant has even more profound effect on the modern day Middle East and North Africa than European colonialism.
I think the contemporary geopolitics aspect of the question and comments is important here. You might be right that \*culturally\* speaking, the Arab colonisers has had a more profound and enduring impact on North Africa and the Middle East but in terms of modern armed conflicts, borders, migration and refugee flows and the overall economic situation, Western imperialism is clearly of much greater relevance to North Africa and the Middle East today than the Arab conquest and Ottoman Empire.
the economic imperialism hasnt really stopped either
Agree. Just look up what happened in the last decade, and is still happening to Copt, Druz, Assyrian, Kurds, Arab Jews, Iranians, and many more
>For example Indians still consider the Aryan invasion (not that kind of Aryan) a tragic chapter in history, You talking about dravidian people right? Because majority of the sub continent are the descendents of those "Aryans" so if anything most Indians wouldn't say it's tragic because it's where there religons and languages come from.
Co-opting the grievances of the people your invasion displaced is pretty much universal outside of English-speaking former colonies.
It's almost funny how much it happens in Spanish Speaking colonies. You have white people demanding to "bring the gold back" while discriminating against anyone with a native surname. I'm not diminishing the fucked up stuff the Spanish Empire did or trying to whitewash it, but don't victimize yourself if you are a descendant of the colonizers lol
Yeah no I doubt that China still doesn't really care about kicking out Thais and Vietnamese from South china do they? So I doubt indians do either.
Iran - means "Land of the Aryans". The Aryans drove the Dravidians out of the northern part of the Indian subcontinent and on to Sri Lanka, if I remember correctly. Isn't that story a part of one of the sacred Hindu texts?
>The Aryans drove the Dravidians out of the northern part of the Indian subcontinent and on to Sri Lanka Dravidians are still the main population in southern India so no just northern India really.
Aryan invasion is debunked. It's Aryan Immigration.
Agreed. Particularly as there are people still alive who have experienced European colonisation. I believe, once the last generation with experience dies, the effects will lessen. Eventually all that colonisation will be confined to secondary accounts and treated as history. An example is how The Roman Empire is viewed now. No Empire is better or worse than any predecessor.
I don't think this is relevant comparison. The central asian migration to the Indian subcontinent wasn't an "invasion", and at no level did it lead to any colonisation, exploitation, or mass murder of any kind that we're aware of. If you're referring to the Mughal invasion in the subcontinent then that's different, but there's no tragedy to be associated with the Aryans in the context of the Indian subcontinent whatsoever.
I'd say it's more that the impact is obvious. The French territory being conquered by the Roman empire, with the local culture being erased, the population being adapted to a completely new political system... it most definitely impacted the history of all the country, which also impacted the history of all the countries impacted by France, so huge part of Africa, the US when they left the UK, countries in Asia... It's just one example but the consequences are of course massive. But it's not that easy to visualize how this event shaped nowadays life.
The big one is that the borders that europeans drew arbitrarily in many places are still there and they still have very real ramifications on international and regional politics.
It’s not that the borders are arbitrary. They are intentionally bad. Saying they are arbitrary makes it sound like a naive but well intentioned kindergartener came in and randomly drew lines on a blank map. The borders of territories that eventually became the modern borders of states were largely drawn to INTENTIONALLY separate and divide tribes and ethnic groups, so that they could not become too powerful within one single territory, while smushing other groups together into one territory so that they had conflict amongst each other rather than fighting against their colonial aggressors. I know you didn’t intend anything by it, but by using the word arbitrary, it hides the nefarious and malicious intent of it
>It’s not that the borders are arbitrary. They are intentionally bad. Saying they are arbitrary makes it sound like a naive but well intentioned kindergartener came in and randomly drew lines on a blank map. that's literally how 2 Americans decided the line between North and South Korea. they thought the 38th parallel looked good on the map
Yeah I learned this fairly recently on South America and policies for example. And yeah in Africa it was kind of obvious. Middle East of course. Its crazy but it doesn't fit in a 1 minute video that's shiny so nobody knows/cares
That’s the case for many people. Look at turkey and israel.
If not for earlier colonialism, those places wouldn't be there in the first place, so I would argue on the significance of ramifications.
1. We live in a post-European colonization society, so it's the only reference most of us have. 2. Unlike a lot of cultures, Europeans kept records.
The western world cares more about western history + recency bias
Because it's the most recent, so we have the most detailed records.
Most detailed records is a big one. European nations and companies kept detailed records of transactions, including slaves, for accounting purposes. This means we have a quite accurate figure on the Atlantic slave trade, on plantations, on famines. These happened well before the Europeans got involved, but because there are few records it is forgotten about.
Coincidentally, this is also why the Holocaust is such a big thing. The amount of scrutiny with which they wrote everything makes this event particularly evil, to the point where we have trials where the main arguments were "as you see in this record, this many train containing this many people left to the camps daily. In conclusion, I am only guilty of killing 1.5 millions and not 2.5 millions"
It is not the most recent. Japan wasn't even a hundred years ago!
The real answer is because it’s the most recent.
Indeed but also because the European after WW2 got big on human right and general moral policing the world, which obviously was slightly contradicting their either recent or even current history at the time. So first: it's recent and second: Streisand Effect
And the scope. I think we understand that we have had various groups fighting with each other across borders for all of human history, with one occasionally conquering and colonizing the other. But that feels different in scope from England and Spain dividing all of North and South America, ruling it in one form or another for centuries, and killing, enslaving, or forcing into serfdom the indigenous population.
I disagree: Genghis Khan conquered an enormous land area, long before England and Spain existed. But it was so long ago that no one really cares any more. Edit: ok, maybe it wasn't long before England and Spain existed. I should have said "long before any European colonization".
Certainly people feel less aggrieved about something that happened 750 years ago, but Genghis Khan is known as one of the great villains of history based on scope of conquest.
It baffles me that more people aren’t upset Mongolia exists as a country and builds big ass statues of their founder. Every Columbus Day you hear people complaining about his statues but you don’t hear a peep about the worst guy in history lol
Although it was big, it didn't manage to have an effective political hold on conquered territories and it went to shit before it could have the impact that the British/Spanish empires had. So it is not just a matter of extension, it is a matter of control.
There are people in Persia that still curse the name Alexander
Long before? Kingdom of Castile is contemporary of Mongol Empire. Kingdom of England was already Norman for over a century when the conquests happened.
* Considering it the most horrific is a very Western-centric view. So many countries in Asia would disagree, simply ask them about their opinion of Japan. * On the same line, us having this discussion in English already introduces a large bias. * For many countries it is their latest experience, what they suffered (or inflicted) before was often just as bad or worse, but the larger distance in time makes them history and less of a emotional topic. I know my people have been colonized by Charlemagne, but that was 1200 years ago and nobody bears hard feelings about that today. * Also the European countries have a tendency to see their own history very critical in recent years, in contrast to most others. For how many centuries have Arabic caravans captured their slaves in Africa, and when was the last time you ever heard their politicians discussing this topic critically? The topic just does not come up at all.
Besides the modern day impact, colonization during the age of sail was done in a scale never before seen. They had technology for it, like carracks and caravels, which could sail farther than any vessel previously, and could go get slaves far and wide.
They also were armed with cannons which could devastate any coastal cities they came upon, so then could dominate coastal regions and deep waterways militarily like never before. Check out these videos from Flash Point HIstory about the Portuguese dominating the Indian Ocean in early 1500's [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RU7GZxN6OI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RU7GZxN6OI)
Recency effect, current impacts, plus quite a left wing commentary on the subject.
Recency bias and it’s effects are still seen in the modern world. A lot of the modern version countries who were colonized have existed for under 100 years and there are people who lived under colonization still alive. When Joe Biden was a kid, India was still a British colony. Pretty crazy to think about For example, Egypt has been “colonized” by multiple empires in its history (Persian Macedonian Roman Ottoman etc) We don’t talk about the Roman colonization of Egypt because it happened 2000 years ago. The is no lasting Roman legacy in Egyptian 2024 government. we talk about the most recent colonizer, the UK, because they were under their rule just 80 years ago. Also a lot of countries were literally dragged into the modern world by colonization. When the scramble for Africa occurred 140 years ago, much of sub-saharan Africa was still tribal. They are all now modern nation states, that transition took thousands of years in Europe. It’s a pretty drastic change in life and culture for those people in a very short period and the ramifications are still felt
The ***British Empire*** controlled 26.35% of the world and was the largest empire in the world, with multiple colonies in many different places around the world (*colonies in the Americas, multiple African countries, Hong Kong, India, and some islands*). The ***French Empire*** (*the first and second versions combined*) controlled over 10% of the world and had colonies in multiple different places around the world. The ***Portuguese Empire*** (*first, second, and third versions combined*) controlled about 6% of the world. There isn't a non-European empire that is comparable to that, having colonies in multiple different continents around the world. One that comes close is The ***Mongolian Empire*** which controlled almost 18% of the world which took over parts of Asia (*inclusing West Asia/Middle East*) and parts of Europe. There was also ***Japanese Empire*** mostly took over islands but also some land in Asia. Another that comes close are ***Islamic Empires*** or Caliphates which took over most of West Asia/Middle East (*and wants to keep the ancient Jewish homeland of Israel*) as well as Indonesia (*in South-East Asia*) and parts of Africa. It makes sense why people are more focused on European empirse, but I think Islamic colonialism should be criticized more. Islam has a lot of people like christianity and there are muslims calling for religious Islamic sharia laws in different countries.
Cuz they had the biggest impact/were the best at it. It's reflected in the popularity of English, Spanish and French.
Although, it is worth noting that the English, Spanish, and French previously had their homelands conquered and colonized by foreign powers too.
Yep. The year Christopher Columbus sailed for the New World was the exact same year as the end of the Reconquista: the expulsion of the last Muslim invaders from the Iberian Peninsula after centuries.
But they ignore this. I’m Greek and it’s the same thing, we’ve conquered and been conquered but the been conquered is always ignored because we are “white” and “colonisers”.
Yes. But their latest form has lasted. Not the Viking or Norman.
Short answer: it's popular to trash on white people and countries because they were the most recent beneficiaries of colonization
As a “colonised” person I agree. I mean the discussion around colonisation is relevant to me on a local level, but the overall chastising of white people as “coloniser” is gross. I’m still connected to country and my ancestors either way
Territorial conflict with neighbors isn't really imperial colonization. Aside from Genghis Khan (whose conquest is also considered horrific), there isn't much that compares with the European history of trying to claim multiple continents as their own despite virtually none of their population residing there. But the real reason is that nearly every non-European culture that currently exists has been negatively affected by European colonization in ways that are still ongoing and need to be actively addressed. It's not about saying "look how bad Europeans have been historically," it's about being culpable for so many problems that exist in the here and now.
How about the Arabs and the slave trade? Arabic ain't the native language of most nowadays Arab states, not even the levante. And the HUUUUUGE slave trade effecting almost all European countries and their coasts, the slaves and even depopulated one third of Iceland.
I'm not a historian but Japan tried it, didn't they? Europeans were simply the first nation to discover guns + ships. If any other area made this discovery first, the result would be the same. They'd hoard gold and women like everybody else. It's human nature. The continents aren't all that different in biology. One simply made the tech breakthroughs & then wielded it for money and power. ... Now, even though all the Rich States have recognized that serious war between Top Dog states is not profitable, particularly because of nukes but also the results of WW2 ... They have established "okay let's try to keep all the boundaries and ownership how things are, protect the Status Quo." So if you're thinking about giving Hawaii back or Australia back or whatever European "meddling" you're concerned about, sorry, the Rich Owners will not allow that. We're probably stuck with this shit for the time being.
Bc it was the most successful and most recent, and we're in this weird "life is so good so we should feel guilty" era.
thank god we will be exiting the "life is so good" era shortly!
Weak men create hard times...
I think what made European Colonialism different from other forms of historical colonization and empire building is that European Colonialism combined both the military might of say, Genghis Khan, the Romans and the Persians with the social and political theories of the Enlightenment. While the Enlightenment was a net positive for the world, it did have some parts of it that lent itself to racism. For example, outside of Napoleon's conquest of most of Continental Europe, most imperial campaigns and wars for conquest involved the conquering of non-White peoples in Africa, Asia and the Americas by White Europeans. Even Russia's conquest of the territories that eventually all became part of the Soviet Union were mainly of non-White peoples (mainly Turks, Azeris, Georgians, etc.). Many Imperialists justified this by use of White Supremacist tropes. That in itself is bad, but to be expected. What makes it worse, however, is that those same tropes have carried on to this day. Our entire view of the world is based on those same theories and principles that were proffered as justifications for global conquest. This is why when Israel invades Gaza, many people in the "Global South" see it as just another example of Western/European Colonialism (I don't necessarily agree with this, but I see why they would believe that).
Most people don’t have a full grasp of world history.
Because they wrote shit down
Objectively speaking, it was the largest scale and most horrific “colonization” to ever happen, simply by the scale of activity. Some people get offended because this sounds like a moral insult to white European, when “other culture did it too”. But it’s just true that no other civilization was able to exert that of coercive control on the entire globe. The advances of sailing made it possible to go further and affect more people. The distance traveled also meant that native people were exposed to diseases they had no immune response for. Guns and artillery made it possible to dominate a culture to an unprecedented level. The demands of industrialization and capitalism meant that empires were never satisfied or acceptant of local rule. The empire demanded and enforced ownership of distance lands and resources. They squeezed populations into slavery or feudalism and destroyed their homelands. Lastly, all of the above coupled with religious fervor lead to racist ideologies that demand the replacement of native populations with white people. And they worked too. We take it for granted that countries like the US and Australia are majority white when just 300 years it was an entirely different constitution. Or even that many South American countries speak Spanish. A language that has literally no basis in the land before colonization. Nothing of that scale was feasible before European colonization. You could argue that Europeans just ran with the technology of the time. And that’s fair, but to deny that scale of the impact is an attempt of revisionist history. No empire was able to so thoroughly reshape the global until America’s current dominance.
Most recent, most impactful, and also the most cross continent and cross border compared to others. Take Haiti for example, its troubles can be directly traced back to the French still. And America too.
In many cases, the colonisation led to cultural and population admixture. Like Scotland did have many many invasions, but now the descendants of the Anglic Northumbrians and the Norse of the great Heathen Army are all mixed up with the Goidelics, you'd probably be complaining about half your own ancestry. When the Manchus took over China, they adopted the chinese style of government and assimilated themselves into the existing culture. They actually did okay for a few centuries, before getting overthrown. I don't know how many residents from Normandy these days will complain about the economic impacts of the time they got pawned off to the viking mercenary Rollo. A couple commenters here are also debating India's Aryan invasion, which is another example of the ambiguity of such colonisations. The story there is the ancestral north indians supplanted/intermingled with the south indians, and while there is some delineation today due to socio-political identities and caste systems etc, the truth is that most Indians are a mix of at least 2, and up to 5, different ancestral lineages. And they ended up with cultures that have blended into each other at the edges.
The west still owns a huge amount of African resources (this includes the "kind" social democrats like Canada or Scandinavia who have been leeching off of Africa for decades) and the borders they drew are still there
How did Scandinavia leech off Africa again?
Pretty sure what the Khan's did was worse. They raped and murdered about half the world.
There was plenty of rape and murder by europeans
Because it's the most recent + advent of media. Ancient horrors may have been recorded, but they weren't broadcast via film nor reported via daily newspaper to the masses.
It's a question of scale. Nobody else did it around the world to every other continent with such a genocidal focus. There's a good documentary, "Exterminate All The Brutes" about this. It's pretty shocking when the entire scope of it is presented as a unified thing. Europe was Mordor to the rest of the world, just this marauding horde wiping out entire cultures left and right across the entire world.
Genghis khan...
He might have come the closest. Europe still dwarfs it. Watch the doc, it’s on HBO.
Because white bad , brown good
Ephasised by whom? Who are you talking about exactly? Western people? Maybe because thats the form of colonialism that has most influence on you? Most US citizens will be more aware about US colpnialims than about german colonialism.
Post Industrial colonization shaped the modern world, we all know what that looks like and are intimately familiar with it because we live with its fairly direct consequences. Most people couldn’t tell you the order of most historical empires, let alone when and where they overlapped or even occurred in the first place. Atilla The Hun, Ghengis Khan, Alexander the Great, The Ottoman Empire, all of the Chinese dynasty’s and a lot more are names we might recognize but very few people know the dates and sprawl of most of them. Ask anyone who’s not a historian to list all of the Asian dynasty’s in order and match them up with whatever was going on in Europe and they’re likely to get closer to a 0 than passing grade.
It will largely be forgotten in another 500 years.
I mean it wiped whole cultures and peoples on a scale that wasn’t ever seen before. Think North America. There are still Native people around, but a distinct minority.
Probably because it occurred on a global scale and its effects are still pretty obvious. Also we are of European descent or are European so we are naturally going to hear more about European colonialism. Go to Korea and they’ll talk way more Japanese imperialism.
Its cool to hate on white people now. That and people are stupid.
Because Europe won history. It's the in thing to hate the victorious side.
Sshhhhh ! You can't say the others colonized , killed and enslaved too ( slavery still exists in some parts of the world but shhhhh ! ), that's racist ...
Because it is the most recent instance of colonization. Rest assure that there was nothing pretty about Mongol colonization of China, or Moorish colonization of the Iberian Peninsula, for example.
I think one of the reasons is as multiple people mentioned, that the impacts of their colonialism are much more noticeable today. But I think it goes much more beyond just basic borders of the modern countries that most people are mentioning. Many countries today have multi ethnic states of various minority groups but they still manage to function. A country can survive with fucked up borders. I think the real issue is the way in which power was turned over from colonial rulers to local rulers when they left. There are instances where on the final day of colonial rule, the white government workers went to all government buildings and did things like unscrewing light bulbs, taking chairs and desks, taking everything that wasn’t bolted down with them so that the local Africans who were taking their place were left with nothing. In Most colonial militaries, the local soldiers were not allowed to be officers or promoted above the rank of sergeant. They were only allowed to be the lowest level soldiers so that way it reduced the chance of local soldiers revolting. But when the colonial rule ended, you suddenly had hundreds of soldiers who never got any leadership experience instantly expected to become generals and admirals and commanders despite having zero experience whatsoever. So surprise surprise many of them became corrupt, their militaries were weak and poorly led, and many went on to start military coups. In Sudan for example, when the French left, there had been a university there for 70 years. But in all that time, only one single African man got a college degree. It was only for the children of the white colonials. When the French pulled out, the Sudanese elected this one single man with a college education as president. But then the CIA and the French special forces assassinated him because they were worried he might be too “leftist” because he talked about universal healthcare and land distribution. Now there was not a single African left in the entire country with a college degree. How can you expect to run a modern country without anyone with a higher education? In many cases, even after colonialism ended, the colonial country forced the new government to sign very lopsided deals that gave lots of things to the European country at the expense of the African country. And threatened if they didn’t agree to these terms, that British or france would invade them again and install a new government who would be more amenable. Things like mineral rights for British companies, or low trade teriffs so British goods could be cheaply sent and sold there. Or how france made every single country use the franc as their currency but pegged to a lower value so the French franc would be worth more compared to the African franc and they could only get their money from the French national central bank. When you factor in all those things, colonialism didn’t just end in the blink of an eye when the country got independence in the 1950s and 1960s. For decades, continuing up until today, those countries have been either directly or indirectly fucked by the lasting legacy of colonialism
Because Europeans did it like nobody else. They did it on a worldwide scale. They also were the latest to do it.
I think it has to do with the fact you can still see the scars of European colonization. Gauls and Picts and Anglos and Saxons conquering eachother 2000 years ago just ended up with aver age white people in the end and noone has a torch to carry for Britons or whomever they murdered along the way. Noone thinks "oh i hate my neighbor because his ancestors were Pictish." Whereas, you can see the impact of european colonization on the Americas, with the aboriginal/native/first nations people subjugated and STILL poorly treated in a lot of situations. You can see the impact of european colonization on Africa, where they looted precious resources and toppled governments leaving it to some degree of chaos depending on where you lived. So, it's a matter of time and memory. Give it a thousand years and it'll probably have healed over.
I believe that it’s because we can still clearly see signs of its impact on populations. Black people in America and the racism there. In Canada we are only a generation or two removed from absolute atrocities that have created serious generational trauma. And as countries that are still closely tied to those cultures, it’s a closed loop
Whenever colonization is mentioned we have to brace ourselves to see a shit ton of "whataboutism" and poor understanting of what historiographically it entails
Also “European colonialism” is just “Western European Colonialism”, they really think the whole Europe was colonial.
There isn’t an equal balance amongst all cultures though that’s just silly, obviously the European had far more of an impact in that regard than the cultures on lower end of the spectrum. It’s pretty obvious
it's very popular to hate on Europe and white people in general, thus there's a movement for reparations from America to Africa due to the slave trade, but no talk of asking Muslim nations for reparations even though they not only started the slave trade, they sold black Africans to Europeans - on top of that, the world never seems to care about atrocities committed by POC on POC - only what the white countries do - and then add to that that white people seem to be the only folks willing to berate themselves for their past - do you see the Japanese even admitting their guilt in China? Korea? the Philippines? Do Africans discuss their role in the transatlantic Slave trade? or the Arabs for their role in slavery... no, no they don't
I don't agree that every civilization did colonies. Conquest is different from colonization. For example, Vikings came to continental Europe and UK, killed many and ruled many small kingdoms. British monarchy could be argued to ve descendants of the Vikings. However, not many would argue that Britain was colonized by Vikings. The template of European Colonization was a new development. Only Japan and the European countries did that.
It's the current thing.
because white man bad
In my experience, the average person has limited interest in prior historical periods at all, let alone a balanced historical perspective on modern life. Honestly the criticism - while valid - often has more to do with social posturing and self interest then an honest reflection on how humanity has generally behaved over the centuries.
"European" in this case, is code for "white"
Pseudo-intellectualism. Academic trends.
Because they were better at it than anyone else. The others would have done the same if they could, and they tried.
Whataboutism.
Because white people bad.
Because it’s used as propaganda to attack the West. My country (Egypt) was colonized by Arabs and that’s celebrated for some reason. It’s alllll just propaganda and currently the leading powers are Western so it’s used to try and drag them down.
because we are white and "white bad!". Take into account that the only people who complain about European (British) colonization are Americans.
because global socialism is about reallocating the wealth from the wealthiest countries. so the focus is on Europe and the USA.
Agenda to suit a narrative.
Because white man bad. People are gonna give you a bunch of bullshit nonsensical reasons, but that is really gist of it
I think we're all bad, so its bad people did things to other bad people. I don't think any countries at the time gave two shits about other countries than their own. Whoever was more powerful than their neighbor, was ready to fuck them up or take whatever they could, wherever they could.
It’s systemic and carries on. Those older civilisations did influence colonisation also. People learn from their oppressors very well. The cycle has yet to be broken. Hitler learned from European settlers in North America. Apartheid was built on all the knowledge of those colonisers and imperialists before, and lasted until the 90s, still yet to evolve out of social psyche/consciousness. The impact of all these is global and still there, institutionalised even. Read neocolonialism.