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Tulip posted:I've always thought the claim that Napoleon became the most powerful man in Europe in arguably centuries via nepotism to be a kind of profound misunderstanding of what nepotism is. Compare with https://www.amazon.com/Black-Count-Revolution-Betrayal-Cristo/dp/0307382478/ref=asc_df_0307382478/ though! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas-Alexandre_Dumas Such a [edit] more interesting story! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Nov 14, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2023 18:31
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napoleon wasn't some bean counting middle class guy, but from the lower parts of the nobility there was a clear distinction between those
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Nov 14, 2023 18:32
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skasion posted:From loving Corsica though. This is by far the most insane part of Napoleon’s life story. For a decade this guy ruled half of Europe among and against its own divinely anointed crowned heads, when he was a semi-assimilated “notable” from an irrelevant island mostly known to other Europeans for poverty and crime. It’s completely baffling that it occurred. It’s like if the Galactic Emperor turned out to be from Scranton, PA. The weirdest part of his whole career is the time he requested leave from the army after Corsica's three-way civil/independence war broke out, was granted it and returned there, overstayed his leave by nearly a year as he participated in the war, even briefly fought against French forces on the island as he served under his family's old Corsican nationalist patron (not realizing Paoli had since become a royalist secretly allied with Britain), and then after all that managed to get himself reinstated as an officer in the French Revolutionary Army.
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Nov 14, 2023 18:39
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Napoleon was a hero to a lot of big thinkers at the time, because when he came to power, he was finally a leader with charisma in charge of the Republic who wanted to get the country functioning again rather than just do mass executions. For a little bit he was the symbol of republicanism and democracy, until he crowned himself emperor and all those people really soured on him as a traitor to the intellectual idea of a Republic. Still, during the period in which he occupied most of Europe, Napoleon's administration came with promises of a meritocratic bureaucracy full of jobs that wouldn't be restricted to corrupt wealthy nobles, which meant a lot for the people who before and after saw their areas ruled incompetently in a system where there was no hope of participation and government jobs would often just not be paid on time for months on end. That meant a lot to a lot of people. America, especially under pro-french, pro-war Thomas Jefferson, might've had good odds on at least severing ties with Britain if not joining the war with Napoleon, if it weren't for the XYZ Affair, where France's foreign minister happened to be a corrupt noble who kept trying to get the American diplomats to pay massive bribes up front as a cost of doing business. Fuschia tude posted:The weirdest part of his whole career is the time he requested leave from the army after Corsica's three-way civil/independence war broke out, was granted it and returned there, overstayed his leave by nearly a year as he participated in the war, even briefly fought against French forces on the island as he served under his family's old Corsican nationalist patron (not realizing Paoli had since become a royalist secretly allied with Britain), and then after all that managed to get himself reinstated as an officer in the French Revolutionary Army. Helps that the French army was desperate for officers after nearly all the ranking officers fled the country. Sure Napoleon might've been under suspicion of treason, but so was everybody else with leadership experience.
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Nov 14, 2023 18:44
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I suppose that's fair enough. It's just hard to see napoleon as a heroic rather than a villainous figure. From my perspective there’s no Napoléon, and no continental war at all, if the perfidious redcoated fuckers and their continental stooges stay the gently caress out of our Revolution 
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Nov 14, 2023 18:45
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I suppose that's fair enough. It's just hard to see napoleon as a heroic rather than a villainous figure. Ask yourself if you'd rather live in Napoleonic Europe or the Europe of Metternich and Alexander I of Russia. From a purely objective point of view the villain of the Napoleonic wars is England, their refusal to come to terms with the revolution for decades resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the complete suppression of liberalism on Europe for decades.
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Nov 14, 2023 19:06
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SlothfulCobra posted:I do wonder if there's any kind of african-nationalist movements about Carthage like there are with Cleopatra, trying to claim historical figures from Africa (the continent) as black (the racial identity from the American perspective), regardless to actual genealogical records or accounts of their appearance. There is a bit of this around Hannibal specifically, yes. It's nowhere near as prominent as the Cleopatra stuff but I've seen it before.
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Nov 14, 2023 19:31
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Cleopatra is related to the whole hotep/hebrew israelite community that claims that every single Egyptian was black until the arab conquests. She was an egyptian queen therefore must be black. Hannibal is very tangential to that but its the same logic, that anyone who is African Must Be Black. Its just a sad outcome of stripping people of their history, language, and culture and then brutally oppressing them for 400 years. A few people go way to far in a search to connect with a history they were robbed of. WoodrowSkillson fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Nov 14, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2023 19:35
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Gaius Marius posted:Ask yourself if you'd rather live in Napoleonic Europe or the Europe of Metternich and Alexander I of Russia. From a purely objective point of view the villain of the Napoleonic wars is England, their refusal to come to terms with the revolution for decades resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the complete suppression of liberalism on Europe for decades.
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Nov 14, 2023 19:40
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Liberal republicans are idiots and napoleon made the right move. Hero of his time.
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Nov 14, 2023 19:43
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Cleopatra is related to the whole hotep/hebrew israelite community that claims that every single Egyptian was black until the arab conquests. She was an egyptian queen therefore must be black. Hannibal is very tangential to that but its the same logic, that anyone who is African Must Be Black. And people get way too hung up on modern classifications of the world, and just of the concept of "Africa" as a distinct thing. The region in the classical era is the Mediterranean. Whether a place is in what a modern person calls Europe or Africa or Asia means almost nothing.
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Nov 14, 2023 19:56
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the romans knew exactly what africa was - the roman province w/ tunis in it, lol not their fault we moderns made the definition gape
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Nov 14, 2023 19:58
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Hannibal was born like 100 years before that was called Africa iirc
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Nov 14, 2023 20:01
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Bit I was thinking of from Napoleon: A Lifequote:“Napoleon’s background as a Corsican of Italian extraction later invited endless abuse from detractors. One of his earliest British biographers, William Burdon, said of his Italian ancestry: ‘To this may be attributed the dark ferocity of his character, which partakes more of Italian treachery than of French openness and vivacity.’ Similarly, in November 1800 the British journalist William Cobbett described Napoleon as ‘a low-bred upstart from the contemptible island of Corsica!’ When the French senate proposed that Napoleon become emperor in 1804, the Comte Jean-Denis Lanjuinais expostulated: ‘What! Will you submit to give your country a master taken from a race of origin so ignominious that the Romans disdained to employ them as slaves?’ Also surprisingly thread relevant: quote:[His brother Joseph] described how, at their primary school, when the students were instructed to sit under either the Roman or the Carthaginian flag, Napoleon insisted that they swap places and utterly refused to join the losing Carthaginians. Nb, it’s a great man biography by some popular historian who if you google him turns out to be a dipshit Thatcherite life peer who supported the Iraq war. Fun read though
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Nov 14, 2023 20:01
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Cleopatra is interesting because that's another historical epic (the one starring Liz Taylor) that was panned by critics and barely broke even, and I'm sure the specter of that film looms over every pitch to make a sprawling historical epic made even to this day. Denis Villeneuve's next film will be a Cleopatra biopic starring Zendaya in the title role. This is a problem on the internet because she's not Greek. Also not a product of 15 generations of inbreeding, as far as I know.
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Nov 14, 2023 20:11
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I think we can safely ignore Greek nationalists
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Nov 14, 2023 20:13
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zoux posted:This is a problem on the internet because she's not Greek. Of course she wasn't Greek she was one of those loving hill barbarians from up north.
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Nov 14, 2023 20:14
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euphronius posted:I think we can safely ignore Greek nationalists Tell that to the North Macedonians!
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Nov 14, 2023 20:16
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euphronius posted:I think we can safely ignore Greek nationalists That’s just what the Ottomans thought
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Nov 14, 2023 20:16
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Gaius Marius posted:Ask yourself if you'd rather live in Napoleonic Europe or the Europe of Metternich and Alexander I of Russia. From a purely objective point of view the villain of the Napoleonic wars is England, their refusal to come to terms with the revolution for decades resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the complete suppression of liberalism on Europe for decades. Napoleon was a military dictator who maintained a facade of legitimacy through ridiculous rigged plebiscites, conquered countries and installed his brothers as kings of them, invaded Switzerland with no provocation, and reimposed slavery on Haiti. But apparently the fact that he also simplified France’s legal code is enough to make people defend him as some kind of progressive liberal reformer.
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Nov 14, 2023 20:20
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The Haiti stuff was bad that is true. I forgot that
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Nov 14, 2023 20:21
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Tulip posted:I knew I would regret acting like you care about your arguments. What do Americans think about Lafayette? There's a guy worth making a movie about.
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Nov 14, 2023 20:41
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Silver2195 posted:Napoleon was a military dictator who maintained a facade of legitimacy through ridiculous rigged plebiscites, conquered countries and installed his brothers as kings of them, invaded Switzerland with no provocation, and reimposed slavery on Haiti. But apparently the fact that he also simplified France’s legal code is enough to make people defend him as some kind of progressive liberal reformer. It was a very bad legal code (and so were the ones in the other countries he occupied). His legitimacy through public approval was a fraud, but some people appreciated the courtesy of pretending to have a popular mandate as opposed to most monarchs. Napoleon in Haiti is a bit like Cromwell (another celebrated figure) in Ireland. I guess Napoleon is on record more as regretting what he did there than Cromwell. There is no getting around the fact that he kept doing all this war and expanding out the fighting more and more as he tried to war his way out of a war with even more wars. But hey, you're welcome you're no longer colonies South America.
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Nov 14, 2023 20:43
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Zopotantor posted:What do Americans think about Lafayette? Extremely positive. American EF troops in 1917 famously made a pilgrimage to his grave site in Paris on July 4th and Col. Charles Stanton declared "Lafayette, nous voilà" quote:Among the Americans who were at the cemetery was a New England woman, an artist from Boston, Miss Clara Greenleaf Perry. In relating her experience she said: “ I was not far from Colonel Stanton as he spoke and when he said: ‘Lafayette, we are here!’ I was thrilled. The words came like an electric shock. I felt distinctly a quivering of my whole body as though it had been suddenly struck by some powerful force. It was just like a lightning stroke. Many people turned and gazed in amazement at one another for a moment and then burst into applause. I went home and recorded my impressions in a diary kept by me. I am sure Colonel Stanton spoke the words entirely in English.” He's probably going to be the exemplar of Franco-American bonhomie as long as both polities exist. zoux fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Nov 14, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2023 20:47
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Napoleon led a life that was highly amenable to dramatization.
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Nov 14, 2023 20:49
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and he ended serfdom too
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Nov 14, 2023 20:49
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Isn't "Was Napoleon good or bad?" one of those history questions where the answer is "yes"? I went through a brief period in books and podcasts of maybe becoming a Napoleon Guy (could be worse as types of Guys go) but bounced off it.Zopotantor posted:What do Americans think about Lafayette? There's a guy worth making a movie about. Lafayette is a major character in an incredibly popular musical from the last decade and there's are streets named after him all over the country.
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Nov 14, 2023 21:01
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Zopotantor posted:What do Americans think about Lafayette? There's a guy worth making a movie about. Everybody loves that guy. He was immensely popular with contemporary Americans and has only remained popular since, although he's probably somewhat less well known with the passage of time. There are dozens of places across America named after him. Towns, counties, schools, etc. Mike Duncan wrote a biographer about him that came out a few years ago and was a #1 best seller. I would watch a Lafayette movie. Dude had a super interesting life.
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Nov 14, 2023 21:02
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Could Napoleon beat Caesar in a fight? No items, bare knuckle only
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Nov 14, 2023 21:02
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Napoleon probably. He seems to have that scrappy little guy psycho energy.
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Nov 14, 2023 21:03
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Zopotantor posted:What do Americans think about Lafayette? There's a guy worth making a movie about. Unfortunately, he raps now
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Nov 14, 2023 21:25
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caesar since no items would be allowed, that means that they fight naked, and caesar would know his way around a naked man better
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Nov 14, 2023 21:28
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Omnomnomnivore posted:Isn't "Was Napoleon good or bad?" one of those history questions where the answer is "yes"? I went through a brief period in books and podcasts of maybe becoming a Napoleon Guy (could be worse as types of Guys go) but bounced off it. I know about Mike Duncan's book, just haven't read it yet. I didn't know about the musical.
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Nov 14, 2023 21:29
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euphronius posted:Hannibal was born like 100 years before that was called Africa iirc Cornelius Scipio earned the cognomen Africanus for beating him so i do not think this is accurate.
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Nov 14, 2023 21:36
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Good point The name is probably older than the province
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Nov 14, 2023 21:37
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Zopotantor posted:What do Americans think about Lafayette? There's a guy worth making a movie about. "Who?"
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Nov 14, 2023 21:48
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I believe Europe, Asia, and Africa were the Greek names for the northern, eastern, and southern shores of the Mediterranean. That division of the world makes a lot of sense if you're on the Mediterranean coast. Africa turned out to still be a reasonable geographic unit even when you zoom out, though Europe and Asia blur together
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Nov 14, 2023 21:51
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The Sahara has existed since modern humans have existed right?cheetah7071 posted:I believe Europe, Asia, and Africa were the Greek names for the northern, eastern, and southern shores of the Mediterranean. That division of the world makes a lot of sense if you're on the Mediterranean coast. Africa turned out to still be a reasonable geographic unit even when you zoom out, though Europe and Asia blur together There are about 30 different theories on the etymology of Africa. zoux fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Nov 14, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2023 21:52
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Humans before the modern super dry Sahara
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Nov 14, 2023 21:53
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One theory of the formation of Egypt is the people who all lived in the now turning into desert Sahara gradually congregated or were pushed into the Nile valley by desertification
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Nov 14, 2023 21:54
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