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Yes, I think those are some examples I was looking for. To put a little context to my question, the Philippines has had several constitutions, but pretty much all of them were the result of conquest/upheaval/revolution: When the Philippines first declared independence from Spain in 1897, when the Philippines became a Commonwealth under the United States in 1935, when the Philippines became a puppet under Imperial Japan in 1943, a naked power-grab by right-wing dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1973, and finally the 1987 Constitution that was established after Marcos' overthrow. And so I wondered if there were any countries that updated/amended their constitutions absent of such circumstances.
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Mar 13, 2014 17:57
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That reminds me- why exactly did we accept Phillipines as a a concession from Spain in the Treaty of Paris, let alone given Spain money for it, when the colony was in open revolt again Spain and had declared independence? Were we just not aware of what was actually going on or did some idiot diplomat think of it as a fixer-upper?
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Mar 14, 2014 02:50
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Some Guy TT posted:That reminds me- why exactly did we accept Phillipines as a a concession from Spain in the Treaty of Paris, let alone given Spain money for it, when the colony was in open revolt again Spain and had declared independence? Were we just not aware of what was actually going on or did some idiot diplomat think of it as a fixer-upper? It was another Pacific territory, but this one was incredibly close to China/East Indies so it was highly beneficial for trade. (e: looking this up on Wikipedia it seems that's the basic reason) It seems Spain didn't really want to give them up, and that's why we gave them $20 million for them.
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Mar 14, 2014 02:54
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There was also the motive of having a place in the world "conquered" by the US, in the same vein as French Indochina, the British in Singapore and India, and so on. Since we didn't want to overtly control Cuba, the Philippines was a nice way to show to the world the US was becoming an imperial power in its own right.
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Mar 14, 2014 04:45
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Coaling as well. At the time, ships were fueled by coal and their range was limited. Coaling stations were highly strategic in order to be able to swing your
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Mar 14, 2014 05:23
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Ron Jeremy posted:Coaling as well. At the time, ships were fueled by coal and their range was limited. Coaling stations were highly strategic in order to be able to swing your p. sure this was the biggest factor. The Philippians were really well placed for coaling.
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Mar 14, 2014 06:07
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Besides the reasons mentioned, the Philippines was a gateway to the Chinese markets and had significant mineral wealth. My maternal grandfather was mining engineer (mostly copper) and did pretty well for himself. No oil, though. There was also the idea that the US had to take the islands from the Spanish or else the Germans would swoop in and take it for themselves, as they were also looking to establish a colonial empire. Germany's Asiatic Squadron was hovering around Manila Bay in the days after Admiral Dewey's victory there and the two fleets nearly came to blows. It's also correct that there was a "native" revolution that sprang up in 1898. That the Americans refused to recognize it and just treated the islands as though Spain had handed it off to them was pretty much the reason for the Filipino-American War. New question: How does history remember Woodrow Wilson? I've been reading a lot of WWI literature so he comes up fairly often and the image I'm getting is that he was this really idealistic guy (even progressive?) whose lofty dreams unfortunately ran into the brick wall of reality too many times. What was he like before the war, and is generally regarded as a good or a bad president?
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Mar 14, 2014 07:44
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gradenko_2000 posted:Besides the reasons mentioned, the Philippines was a gateway to the Chinese markets and had significant mineral wealth. My maternal grandfather was mining engineer (mostly copper) and did pretty well for himself. No oil, though. He's remembered as an idealist abroad, but a racist at home, and the resounding rejection of the League of Nations generally paints him into the 'ineffective' corner. Given the way we went into WWI, he's also seen as pretty passive and/or reactive. Weirdly, the 'Wilsonian' or 'Idealist' doctrine in foreign policy marked a much more interventionist tone, though often framed in terms of civilizing savages. You recognize it as both 'spreading democracy to the Middle East' and 'giving more than basically anyone in foreign aid,' so both good and bad there. Some pretty big changes happened under him though, including the national income tax and woman's suffrage, though of course it's not like he did that personally because he happened to be in the White House at the time.
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Mar 14, 2014 08:09
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Sylphid posted:There was also the motive of having a place in the world "conquered" by the US, in the same vein as French Indochina, the British in Singapore and India, and so on. Since we didn't want to overtly control Cuba, the Philippines was a nice way to show to the world the US was becoming an imperial power in its own right. Surely there were people who saw the irony of this. Our entire origin myth is that it's antithetical to freedom for a country to be at the mercy of the arbitrary laws of a foreign power. The only possible rationalization I can come up with is that those rules only apply to white people. That's right guy who thinks we arbitrarily turn everything into a race issue- give me some kind of explanation for this cognitive dissonance that doesn't straight up boil down to brown people don't count. And why didn't we want to overtly control Cuba anyway? Is it because Cuba was so close that they would have a decent chance of getting statehood?
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Mar 14, 2014 08:39
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Some Guy TT posted:Surely there were people who saw the irony of this. Our entire origin myth is that it's antithetical to freedom for a country to be at the mercy of the arbitrary laws of a foreign power. The only possible rationalization I can come up with is that those rules only apply to white people. That's right guy who thinks we arbitrarily turn everything into a race issue- give me some kind of explanation for this cognitive dissonance that doesn't straight up boil down to brown people don't count.
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Mar 14, 2014 08:41
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Some Guy TT posted:Surely there were people who saw the irony of this. There were.
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Mar 14, 2014 08:49
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Some Guy TT posted:Surely there were people who saw the irony of this. Our entire origin myth is that it's antithetical to freedom for a country to be at the mercy of the arbitrary laws of a foreign power. The only possible rationalization I can come up with is that those rules only apply to white people. That's right guy who thinks we arbitrarily turn everything into a race issue- give me some kind of explanation for this cognitive dissonance that doesn't straight up boil down to brown people don't count. Yes, it was absolutely ironic. It was kind of a thing during that time for statesmen to try and reconcile the American national myth with American national interest. As for Cuba, the Teller Amendment of 1898 was a compromise to allow US troops to land in Cuba and restore order following the anti-Spanish insurgency, on the condition that the US would assist the Cubans in establishing a stable and independent government and not annex the island.
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Mar 14, 2014 08:55
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gradenko_2000 posted:Yes, it was absolutely ironic. It was kind of a thing during that time for statesmen to try and reconcile the American national myth with American national interest. How was it in our national interest anyway? Due to the United States' remote location large size, and robust military, haven't we basically been impervious to any kind of military threat for, what, the last 150 years? In an alternate universe where we don't conquer the Philippines, or just demand the Spanish grant them freedom instead of selling the place, does anything particularly bad actually happen? That's what I really don't get about colonialist justification, both at the time and in the present. The vast majority of these holdings are just never relevant. About the only country I can think of that had a genuinely good reason to fear an existential threat if they didn't grab a hold of some colonies was Japan, and that's because Japan's colonies were in the same general area as Japan, not on the other side of the planet.
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Mar 14, 2014 09:05
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Some Guy TT posted:And why didn't we want to overtly control Cuba anyway? Is it because Cuba was so close that they would have a decent chance of getting statehood? Even at the time, it would have looked bad if the US had taken advantage of the anti-Spanish insurgency to formally annex Cuba, and in any case, the idea of annexing Cuba at all was basically a relic of the slavery era, when Southern politicians were flirting with the idea of taking more land after the Mexican-American War to expand the number of slave states. Of course, Northern politicians had no interest in anything like that, and fought bitterly against those efforts. Naturally, nothing ever came of it. And basically, annexing Cuba was pointless. All business interests really wanted was a market, and a pro-American regime in Cuba would be more than accommodating to that kind of arrangement. Cuba is close enough to the US mainland that it's not useful as a coal station the way the Philippines would. There's no doubt possession of the Philippines would give the US ability to project naval power near anywhere in the Pacific. But a part of me would like to think that even in the fevered craze of colonialization that marked the last quarter of the 19th century in the Western world didn't hit the US as bad as it did Britain or France. American possessions even after the Spanish-American War were like dust in the wind compared to the French and British colonial empires, and after the Spanish-American War, I believe the only other time the US gained direct control of even part of another country was in the post-World War II peace settlement where we controlled about a quarter of Germany. Essentially, annexing the Philippines was an anomaly in US foreign relations. It's the first time where the US entirely took control of another country, but the general tone of US diplomacy has always been to secure foreign markets for American businesses and keep spheres of influence in East Asia, Central America, and Western Europe. Sylphid fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Mar 14, 2014 |
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Mar 14, 2014 09:34
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Mecca-Benghazi posted:Wasn't that basically the reason given to Ho Chi Minh? Well Ho Chi Mihn's invocation of the Declaration of Independence was in petitioning Wilson to give Vietnam, then a colony of France, independence. As Wilson was negotiating Versailles. So he's asking someone who is known to be fairly racist even for the time, in 1919, to tell one of the victorious powers in a grueling war, a close ally of his, to just give up a pretty big chunk of its empire so it can be run what Wilson thought of as racially inferior heathens. So yeah, basically the United States in 1912 was quite racist, it would've been a massive insult to a close ally, and nobody actually cared about those ideals to begin with.
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Mar 14, 2014 09:51
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Some Guy TT posted:How was it in our national interest anyway? Due to the United States' remote location large size, and robust military, haven't we basically been impervious to any kind of military threat for, what, the last 150 years? In an alternate universe where we don't conquer the Philippines, or just demand the Spanish grant them freedom instead of selling the place, does anything particularly bad actually happen? These arguments were made loudly and repeatedly at the time. The Philippine adventure was not popular. It's funny how for a country with such a strong sense of division between antagonist governments (we hate 'em!) and peoples (we want to liberate them!) this thread has ignored the division within the US and colonialist powers in favor of reductive (and absurd) "America did this" statements. The US and UK governments made foreign policy decisions that were divisive and unpopular throughout the 19th century just as they did in the 20th century. How often do critics of colonialism acknowledge that the Opium Wars barely survived moral outrage in the UK for example, or the fierce domestic critics of early 20th century US imperialism? Probably enough if they're doing real history, but I doubt it's mentioned when critics use the past to attack the modern state by proxy. Gets in the way of the narrative. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Mar 14, 2014 |
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Mar 14, 2014 09:56
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Arglebargle III posted:These arguments were made loudly and repeatedly at the time. The Philippine adventure was not popular. Election of 1900
Noted members of the Anti-Imperialist League were
America Inc. fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Mar 14, 2014 |
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Mar 14, 2014 10:31
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Edit: Nevermind.
Redeye Flight fucked around with this message at 12:44 on Mar 14, 2014 |
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Mar 14, 2014 12:38
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Some Guy TT posted:And why didn't we want to overtly control Cuba anyway? Is it because Cuba was so close that they would have a decent chance of getting statehood? Yeah, probably: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t923053/ http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t930622/ http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t923783/
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Mar 14, 2014 14:43
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icantfindaname posted:Well Ho Chi Mihn's invocation of the Declaration of Independence was in petitioning Wilson to give Vietnam, then a colony of France, independence. As Wilson was negotiating Versailles. So he's asking someone who is known to be fairly racist even for the time, in 1919, to tell one of the victorious powers in a grueling war, a close ally of his, to just give up a pretty big chunk of its empire so it can be run what Wilson thought of as racially inferior heathens. China did something similar with petitioning to return the Shandong province to them (it had been controlled by Germany before WW1) and instead they gave it to Japan. This was likely a major reason why China turned Communist.
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Mar 14, 2014 14:48
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computer parts posted:China did something similar with petitioning to return the Shandong province to them (it had been controlled by Germany before WW1) and instead they gave it to Japan. This was likely a major reason why China turned Communist. I'm not certain this was the case; the Commie's message of "liberation and prosperity for the peasants" and "we won't be corrupt shitlords like the warlord cliques" was their popular rallying cry during the 30s-50s. Even if they failed to deliver. Also, when they were running southern China in the 30s, they did a decent job of it, as compared to the rest of China, so they had some cred to back up their claims.
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Mar 14, 2014 15:09
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sullat posted:I'm not certain this was the case; the Commie's message of "liberation and prosperity for the peasants" and "we won't be corrupt shitlords like the warlord cliques" was their popular rallying cry during the 30s-50s. Even if they failed to deliver. Also, when they were running southern China in the 30s, they did a decent job of it, as compared to the rest of China, so they had some cred to back up their claims. The main push as I learned it was that intellectuals began to reject Westernization and began looking to other political philosophies (particularly Communism). The CCP didn't even exist until 1921, you know. Mao's success is probably mostly unrelated to ceding provinces to Japan 20 years prior but I don't believe either major party in China really *wanted* Western influence any longer, and that could be a major factor.
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Mar 14, 2014 15:11
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computer parts posted:The main push as I learned it was that intellectuals began to reject Westernization and began looking to other political philosophies (particularly Communism). The CCP didn't even exist until 1921, you know. Can you really blame them? After crap like opium wars and the issues that cropped up from western imperialism I'd expect them to reject western ideas really drat hard too. America didn't want to "open up" China for the benefit of the Chinese they wanted a new place to sell stuff for profit and profit alone. They didn't give a poo poo about China or its problems; it was merely another market to exploit. sullat posted:I'm not certain this was the case; the Commie's message of "liberation and prosperity for the peasants" and "we won't be corrupt shitlords like the warlord cliques" was their popular rallying cry during the 30s-50s. Even if they failed to deliver. That's a pretty common trend among political revolutions in general. Tell the dissatisfied peasantry that everything will be just fine after the glorious revolution but have no intent on actually making things all that much better. Or, in some cases, make sure at least that nobody was going hungry but otherwise oppress the poo poo out of everybody. It's also interesting to look at how that worked out in various other parts of the world. I remember watching interviews with people after the USSR fell that said they missed communism because, hey, they might not have had political freedom but at least they weren't hungry.
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Mar 14, 2014 15:51
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Can you really blame them? After crap like opium wars and the issues that cropped up from western imperialism I'd expect them to reject western ideas really drat hard too. America didn't want to "open up" China for the benefit of the Chinese they wanted a new place to sell stuff for profit and profit alone. They didn't give a poo poo about China or its problems; it was merely another market to exploit. The thing is though there *was* a large contingency of people who wanted to Westernize; up until the revolution there was a strong faction that wanted to reform the Empire into a constitutional monarchy, and up until the May Fourth movement a lot of them looked to the US for inspiration (and to be fair the US wasn't as exploitative to them as the rest of the West even if that was only by happenstance). Also the "opening up" you're referring to is almost certainly related to Japan, not China. There was a sort of similar initiative in China known as the Open Door Policy but that was more "hey let's not divide up China so everyone can get a fair shot (because we, the United States didn't get a chance to do some dividing)". computer parts fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Mar 14, 2014 |
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Mar 14, 2014 16:00
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computer parts posted:The thing is though there *was* a large contingency of people who wanted to Westernize; up until the revolution there was a strong faction that wanted to reform the Empire into a constitutional monarchy, and up until the May Fourth movement a lot of them looked to the US for inspiration (and to be fair the US wasn't as exploitative to them as the rest of the West even if that was only by happenstance). That's kind of what I was referring to. The western empires divided up China something fierce. The Open Door Policy wasn't meant to benefit China it was meant to benefit the U.S. Whereas before everybody had their own zone of influence the U.S. was so heavily and so well industrialized at that point it could just flat out beat the socks off of the European nations by producing everything cheaper and faster. That was what they thought, anyway, and the plan was to economically nudge all of the European powers out so American could be China's supplier. So we had all these western powers arguing over who got to be the one to get China's money. Wasn't exactly nice to the Chinese and nobody really gave a poo poo what China wanted.
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Mar 14, 2014 16:04
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ToxicSlurpee posted:That's kind of what I was referring to. The western empires divided up China something fierce. The Open Door Policy wasn't meant to benefit China it was meant to benefit the U.S. Whereas before everybody had their own zone of influence the U.S. was so heavily and so well industrialized at that point it could just flat out beat the socks off of the European nations by producing everything cheaper and faster. That was what they thought, anyway, and the plan was to economically nudge all of the European powers out so American could be China's supplier. Well even if it was meant to benefit the US it still was in China's benefit (they did and still do have a large paranoia about being divided) and really the ruling dynasty was blamed for most of the issues of making China weak (and it helped that they weren't "real" Chinese aka Han, they were Manchu invaders).
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Mar 14, 2014 16:09
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Has anyone ever compared late 19th/early 20th century colonialism to the Space Race?
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Mar 14, 2014 16:10
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The backstab at Versailles was a formative event for the Chinese Republican movement, but at that point it hadn't yet split. Sun Yat-Sen was still alive. The CPC wouldn't form until 1921, although that was under Soviet influence and it's hard to say where the Soviet influence ends and domestic initiative begins in the early CPC. It wasn't until 1927 that the Communists and Nationalists started fighting openly. I would agree that Versailles pushed China away from the democracies; the Nationalists leaned towards fascism ideologically and the Communists obviously threw in with the Comintern. Both movements gave the Chinese a modern Western philosophy cloaked in psuedo-science but ultimately opposed to the modern, Western, imperialist world. Fascism and communism appealed to their sense that the West and science were the way forward, but also provided an anti-western victim narrative built into how they view the world. The Chinese relationship with the outside world has always been complicated. It's not surprising they latched onto western narratives of victimization. In a way it's a reassuring narrative for China: the West came and humiliated us for a hundred years, but now we're united and strong. It conveniently ignores the domestic problems that were drowning in China in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the bitter ethnic divisions left in the wake of Qing imperialism. The obsession with the Opium Wars and the territorial concessions to Western powers, which were minor conflicts and small land areas relative to China's population and territory, contrasted with the tendency to ignore the Taiping Rebellion which was arguably the largest armed conflict of the 19th century, shows how political the historiography is.* *Yeah, really, historians disagree on whether the title should go to the Napoleonic Wars or the Taiping Rebellion. ToxicSlurpee posted:The western empires divided up China something fierce. No, they really didn't. The vast majority of foreign concessions were within cities, and the small number that were larger were still sub-provincial in size. Again, contrast with the Taiping Rebellion which at its height controlled China south of the Yangtze. That's half, if you're not up on your Chinese geography. The Western powers were interested in China's markets, not in administering its territory and population. It's a matter of historical fact that the Western powers supported the Qing government against its domestic opponents, but that tends to get glossed or, in China, outright ignored in history class. Political and military confrontation with the West was a stressing factor in the Qing empire's political collapse but I would argue not even one of the major pressures. Economic and ethnic pressures against an archaic and ineffective government brought down the Qing. The West's greatest role in the Qing collapse was China's trade deficit in silver which, due to shockingly bad monetary policy, had a cascade effect that pushed literally tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people into poverty. Really, everything else the West did pales in comparison to the bimetallic crisis. The story that China collapsed politically and economically in the face of Western contact is just that: a story. It has been a convenient story for various Chinese governments over the last hundred years and is politically acceptable enough to go unchallenged in uncritical western classrooms, but it is a story. Chinese historiography is just a knot of problematic practices going back hundreds of years. (Not an uncommon problem.) Today you'll hear truths, half-truths, and outright fabrications cooked up for propaganda purposes 300 years ago repeated as fact in a Chinese classroom. The particular combination suits the current regime, and one of its core ingredients is the "fact" that China was subjugated and humiliated by the West. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Mar 14, 2014 |
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Mar 14, 2014 16:16
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You know I'm surprised it didn't get mentioned more often when talking about American history, even though a good deal of us on this board either lived through our were at least alive at the tail end of the last major Satan panic from the 80s ending in the early to mid 90s. Since than we've had a few waves of moral panics from the current racially tinged knock out game, to the farce of Rainbow parties and the furor over video games. That they happened so much on American history bit gets left out of a lot of topics. I wish I could give more info but it had been a long time since I freshened up on the topic. Though I do recommend reading Satan in America:the devil we know, by Scott W. Poole for an over view of Satan panics from the colonial period til today
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Mar 14, 2014 17:37
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cheerfullydrab posted:Has anyone ever compared late 19th/early 20th century colonialism to the Space Race? Not that I've ever seen, mostly because it wouldn't make sense. Nothing in space has been colonized yet, no people or resources there have been meaningfully exploited, it was so expensive that only two nations could afford to do it, and rather than becoming a competition, it wound up drawing those two nations closer together. KomradeX posted:Since than we've had a few waves of moral panics from the current racially tinged knock out game, to the farce of Rainbow parties and the furor over video games. That they happened so much on American history bit gets left out of a lot of topics. I wish I could give more info but it had been a long time since I freshened up on the topic. Though I do recommend reading Satan in America:the devil we know, by Scott W. Poole for an over view of Satan panics from the colonial period til today Scientific American has a column where they run excepts from stories published in that magazine 50, 100, and 150 years ago. This last January the article from 50 years ago was somebody attempting to debunk the panic about how violent movies would turn every into violent psychopaths. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Mar 14, 2014 |
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Mar 14, 2014 18:56
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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The space race was an arms race wearing the clothes of scientific discovery with some nationalistic propaganda sprinkled on top. All those rockets holding astronauts were developed to put nukes on Moscow and spy satellites over everything. The better comparison would be the dreadnought race between great Britain and Germany at the turn of the century.
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Mar 14, 2014 20:41
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Ron Jeremy posted:The space race was an arms race wearing the clothes of scientific discovery with some nationalistic propaganda sprinkled on top. All those rockets holding astronauts were developed to put nukes on Moscow and spy satellites over everything. The better comparison would be the dreadnought race between great Britain and Germany at the turn of the century. Eh, the early ones were repurposed ICBMs, but the later rockets (Including the Saturn V) were purpose-built for the lunar mission, since no other rocket developed to hit the Kremlin with a nuke or put a satellite into orbit could even hope of reaching the moon.
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Mar 14, 2014 23:47
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PittTheElder posted:Scientific American has a column where they run excepts from stories published in that magazine 50, 100, and 150 years ago. This last January the article from 50 years ago was somebody attempting to debunk the panic about how violent movies would turn every into violent psychopaths. All this proves to me is that whenever some says that a new form of entertainment is destroying the fabric of society they're full of poo poo. I'm reading 10 Cent Plague the story behind the creation of the Comic Books Code Authority and while not very academic (no end notes) it is a very interesting read. I have been looking for something out there (preferably academic but not is okay) about Satan Panics of the 80s and especially the vilification of D&D and roleplaying games.
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Mar 15, 2014 00:16
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KomradeX posted:All this proves to me is that whenever some says that a new form of entertainment is destroying the fabric of society they're full of poo poo. I'm reading 10 Cent Plague the story behind the creation of the Comic Books Code Authority and while not very academic (no end notes) it is a very interesting read. I have been looking for something out there (preferably academic but not is okay) about Satan Panics of the 80s and especially the vilification of D&D and roleplaying games. My favorite is the pennydreadful panic of Victorian Britain, where it was widely feared that cheap adventure stories printed for the lower classes were fueling or going to fuel a crime wave. This was in the 1880s. Today a massive portion of the 16-30 age group plays computer and console games that would make the people who decried Doom faint, but the crime rate's been going down for more than a decade. I'd hope that we now have enough counter-examples to put a stake in the heart of future youth entertainment= violence moral panics, but no doubt they'll come anyway. Sucrose fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Mar 15, 2014 |
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Mar 15, 2014 01:31
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What do you think of Qing Conquest Theory? Do you (not Fojar, not icantfindaname) think China could have averted the Great Divergence?computer parts posted:e: My information comes from Jonathan Spence's The Search for Modern China, which is more an overview of the Qing Dynasty to the present, but it's a fairly good read and I recommend it. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Mar 15, 2014 |
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Mar 15, 2014 01:58
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Negative Entropy posted:What do you think of Qing Conquest Theory? Could China have averted the Great Divergence? This is the first I've heard of that theory, and it seems kind of cherry picked. The serfdom example, for instance is misleading because while it was reintroduced after the Qing conquest it was slowly phased out starting in the 1680s and by 1730 it was abolished entirely (note that this is 70 years before the British did the same for their empire). The other major thing I notice is restrictions on trade. The main reason for restrictions on foreign trade in the first place is that the Chinese silver tael was being massively devalued by the silver mines in the New World (similar problems happened to Spain and Portugal actually) and this began in the Ming Dynasty. It seems fairly likely that the Ming would have put in similar controls (and indeed, they outright banned direct trade with Japan entirely so it's not like they're the libertarian free trade types implied in the article). Now, the actual conquest probably did set things back because revolutions or invasions are highly disruptive to the social order (though not as much as you might think for the Qing because they kept a lot of the same bureaucrats around). I think the Taiping Rebellion was a lot more disruptive to the social order though, and that happened post Opium War (or at least around the same time as the second one). e: My information comes from Jonathan Spence's The Search for Modern China, which is more an overview of the Qing Dynasty to the present, but it's a fairly good read and I recommend it.
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Mar 15, 2014 02:16
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Negative Entropy posted:What do you think of Qing Conquest Theory? Do you (not Fojar, not icantfindaname) think China could have averted the Great Divergence? I don't know. The theory sort of presupposes that history has a particular endpoint, right? I'm not sure there's any reason to believe that China would have industrialized like England even without the Qing conquest. I guess the best way to put it is that I would question the premise rather than the evidence.
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Mar 15, 2014 02:48
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Sucrose posted:Today a massive portion of the 16-30 age group plays computer and console games that would make the people who decried Doom faint, but the crime rate's been going down for more than a decade. I'd hope that we now have enough counter-examples to put a stake in the heart of future youth entertainment= violence moral panics, but no doubt they'll come anyway. Where are your statistics for that? A google search just gave me a study from 2010 that said crime has been going down for only three years. Also, while I agree with the general thrust of your point "the crime rate's actually been going down" is an argument that needs to be utilized in situations way, way more important than protecting are vidja games. When was the last time anybody even seriously got mad about that? The NRA types only do it as a troll to try and keep people from talking about guns.
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Mar 15, 2014 03:57
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Some Guy TT posted:Where are your statistics for that? A google search just gave me a study from 2010 that said crime has been going down for only three years. http://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2013/01/lead-and-crime
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Mar 15, 2014 04:50
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| # ? Jun 2, 2024 16:10 |
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Video games are a reach: 
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Mar 15, 2014 05:40
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