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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Why is Chinese imperial revisionism more acceptable than German/Japanese? e: Given that Mao and CKS have both been established as terrible, who would have been the best person to lead China out of the mess started by Qing imperial arrogance?
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Aug 21, 2015 10:53
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Guavanaut posted:The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Why is Chinese imperial revisionism more acceptable than German/Japanese? A smarter version of Yuan Shikai was the perfect person. Yuan Shikai was a general and the de facto commander of the Beiyang army: the most modern and cohesive force in China in the early 20th century. Pretty much all of the Chinese 20th century history occurred because of Yuan Shikai. He supported the 1911 revolution against the Qing, thus leading to the fall of the dynasty. Had he wanted to, he could have propped up the dynasty instead. His decision to back the rebels led to the end of 2000 years of the Chinese imperial system. After the revolution China had somewhat democratic elections for a national legislature, resulting in a KMT majority. But Yuan subsequently dissolved the legislature at gunpoint and assassinated the then leader of the KMT. He ran a messy military dictatorship, and then he tried to make himself emperor of a new dynasty and lost the support of the other Beiyang generals because of it. After abdicating he ended up simply dying and with him dead there was no person or institution capable of holding together the army, so China fell apart and army generals became warlords unanswerable to any central government. Each holding onto to their own provinces and fighting each other for control of land. It was in this chaotic time in which both the KMT re-emerged and the Communists became a major force. The Japanese found a divided China easy prey for her own expansions, the rest is of course, history. A smarter and more capable Yuan Shikai could have very least averted the era of the warlords and ruled as strongman. At best he might have well oversaw imperial China transform into a flawed but democratic regime with a strong bureaucratic tradition in the early 20th century, either under a republic or a constitutional monarchy. In any case China would have being spared the rape of Nanking, the era of the warlords, and the horrors of Maoism. Typo fucked around with this message at 11:14 on Aug 21, 2015 |
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Aug 21, 2015 11:05
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kustomkarkommando posted:Any statements regarding Britain's activities against the slave trade in Africa have to also be weighed against the British expansion and manipulation of traditional corvée systems in Africa that persisted well into the 20th century as means of raising a free labour force for colonial construction projects, murder and violence where routinely used by traditional chiefs acting as administration proxies to force compliance - with the British keeping the system at arms length while profiting immensely from forced labour especially in East Africa. Panzeh posted:Britain also used forced labor in its colonies in other forms than chattel slavery during the 1800s very regularly, usually through debt peonage, a common technique in colonies throughout the world. During the Congress of Vienna (the peace conference after the Napoleonic Wars), Britain attempted to force slavery abolition on the other colonial powers (Portugal, Spain, France - the Netherlands had already abolished slavery) and also demanded the right to enforce this, through the right to board, search and confiscate literally any ship on the seas they suspected of slave trading. These were what Britain called its 'maritime rights' and it threatened to pull out of the Congress several times if they weren't met. Those powers took the view that the Brits only wanted to abolish slavery now in order to solidify these advantages. Britain had a colossal pool of effective slaves whilst other powers that had actually fought the Napoleonic Wars on their soil were struggling to sufficiently populate their colonies with labour of any form. Wilburforce and co. were good people, but Britain's anti-slavery stance was primarily economic in the same way that, say, Spain's pro-slavery one was.
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Aug 21, 2015 12:01
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asdf32 posted:It does. Okay I'll bite, what's the good kind of slavery that D&D is unfairly maligning by painting all slavery with a broad brush.
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Aug 21, 2015 14:13
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VitalSigns posted:Okay I'll bite, what's the good kind of slavery that D&D is unfairly maligning by painting all slavery with a broad brush. Well first it depends on what the definition of slavery is and what the alternatives are. If slavery is defined as "living in a state" then I love slavery. When someone makes an argument like this you can try to fight their definition. But it's perhaps easier to recognize the moral absolutism. More in the veign of what got us here there is nothing wrong with deciding that slavery is always bad. But the problem remains that this isn't useful for historical analysis analysis alone without relative comparisons (I.E. which empire was worse).
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Aug 21, 2015 15:23
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If slavery is defined as chocolate cake, then wow slavery is awesome. Penetrating analysis. I don't think "well other people are worse" is really useful. I don't think the Confederacy could justify owning slaves by, for example, saying "well we're more humane than those sugar plantations in the Caribbean" VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Aug 21, 2015 |
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Aug 21, 2015 15:26
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Obliterati posted:Britain had a colossal pool of effective slaves whilst other powers that had actually fought the Napoleonic Wars on their soil were struggling to sufficiently populate their colonies with labour of any form. For this argument to be valid, you would have to argue that the other countries would otherwise have exported their European locals en masse to do the work. They didn't do this before the war, they wouldn't have done it without the war, that's why African slavery started in the first place (by the Spanish and Portuguese, to boot).
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Aug 21, 2015 16:07
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VitalSigns posted:If slavery is defined as chocolate cake, then wow slavery is awesome. I think you're failing to grasp how often bad ideological arguments in real life take a form of either moral or utilitarian extremism. For example libertarians really are correct that government is "bad" by many reasonable standards. Deciding government is "bad" isn't their mistake. Failing to put the badness in context and/or entirely dispensing with utility is their primary mistake. Your example is a bad choice of context, not an argument that context doesn't matter. It's far less useful to compare southern states to the caribbean than to their neighboring northern states. When you make the right comparison, you come to the useful conclusion that southern slavery was actually bad.
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Aug 21, 2015 16:08
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Obliterati posted:During the Congress of Vienna (the peace conference after the Napoleonic Wars), Britain attempted to force slavery abolition on the other colonial powers (Portugal, Spain, France - the Netherlands had already abolished slavery) and also demanded the right to enforce this, through the right to board, search and confiscate literally any ship on the seas they suspected of slave trading. These were what Britain called its 'maritime rights' and it threatened to pull out of the Congress several times if they weren't met. Those powers took the view that the Brits only wanted to abolish slavery now in order to solidify these advantages. Britain had a colossal pool of effective slaves whilst other powers that had actually fought the Napoleonic Wars on their soil were struggling to sufficiently populate their colonies with labour of any form. Wilburforce and co. were good people, but Britain's anti-slavery stance was primarily economic in the same way that, say, Spain's pro-slavery one was. I spent a while looking for the information on why Britain suddenly got it up its arse to go play world slave police, and that explains it. I know we were fond of shooting continentals for more or less any reason we could get away with but I wasn't sure why they would consent to it. I was guessing it was maybe because they were technically going after pirates or something and just wanted to nick a bunch of ships and cargo, but that explains it better.
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Aug 21, 2015 16:14
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asdf32 posted:I think you're failing to grasp how often bad ideological arguments in real life take a form of either moral or utilitarian extremism. For example libertarians really are correct that government is "bad" by many reasonable standards. Deciding government is "bad" isn't their mistake. Failing to put the badness in context and/or entirely dispensing with utility is their primary mistake. Okay what is the context where slavery is good. asdf32 posted:Your example is a bad choice of context, not an argument that context doesn't matter. It's far less useful to compare southern states to the caribbean than to their neighboring northern states. When you make the right comparison, you come to the useful conclusion that southern slavery was actually bad. Yes you've said a couple times that if you make the right comparison, British slavery is actually good, but you never actually make that comparison, so go ahead because I am curious what it is?
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Aug 21, 2015 16:19
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feedmegin posted:For this argument to be valid, you would have to argue that the other countries would otherwise have exported their European locals en masse to do the work. They didn't do this before the war, they wouldn't have done it without the war, that's why African slavery started in the first place (by the Spanish and Portuguese, to boot). Nope, it's more a question of, and apologies for being so forthright with this horrible topic, turnover. You're right that locals would never be exported en masse. Spanish and Portuguese-style plantations were a lot less, uh, survivable than British/French counterparts - originally they'd enslaved the natives, who were all dead within a few decades of the practice. They also explicitly discouraged slave marriage and children, in the belief this would minimise uprisings. This necessitated constant import just to maintain numbers, rather than relying on a breeding population like you saw in British colonies or the pre-Civil War USA - the latter outlawed international slave trade in 1807 alongside Britain yet obviously had a lot of slaves until the Emanicpation Proclamation some sixty years later. The collapse of merchant shipping and thus the Triangular Trade during the Napoleonic Wars made questions of resupply pretty critical to Spain, in particular, who objected most strongly (Wellington got pretty pissed about this, seeing as it had been Britain restored Ferdinand to the throne pretty much single-handedly). This being said, they acquised in 1820 under British pressure, and the swift loss of their American possessions rendered the issue a lot less important very quickly. I should also note I was wrong when I said the Netherlands had already abolished it - they did so in 1814, again under British pressure.
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Aug 21, 2015 16:31
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OwlFancier posted:I spent a while looking for the information on why Britain suddenly got it up its arse to go play world slave police, and that explains it. I know we were fond of shooting continentals for more or less any reason we could get away with but I wasn't sure why they would consent to it. I was guessing it was maybe because they were technically going after pirates or something and just wanted to nick a bunch of ships and cargo, but that explains it better. One of the main reasons to consent was that pretty much all the European principals owed Britain vast sums from the Napoleonic Wars, in which Britain had heavily bankrolled anyone who would fight Napoleon in lieu of deploying significant land forces (which it only did in Iberia - Britain was a naval power, obviously, so other than colonial skirmishes, which it won, it wasn't able to contribute on the level that, say, Austria could). Britain spent a lot of time at the Congress extending credit and reminding people that they were on said credit.
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Aug 21, 2015 16:33
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Obliterati posted:During the Congress of Vienna (the peace conference after the Napoleonic Wars), Britain attempted to force slavery abolition on the other colonial powers (Portugal, Spain, France - the Netherlands had already abolished slavery) and also demanded the right to enforce this, through the right to board, search and confiscate literally any ship on the seas they suspected of slave trading. These were what Britain called its 'maritime rights' and it threatened to pull out of the Congress several times if they weren't met. Those powers took the view that the Brits only wanted to abolish slavery now in order to solidify these advantages. Britain had a colossal pool of effective slaves whilst other powers that had actually fought the Napoleonic Wars on their soil were struggling to sufficiently populate their colonies with labour of any form. Wilburforce and co. were good people, but Britain's anti-slavery stance was primarily economic in the same way that, say, Spain's pro-slavery one was. This is a very narrow reading that explains the policy choice at that particular moment though - it doesn't really account for the Seymour Drescher argument or those that have followed about the economic disadvantages of abolition in toto, or for the other ideological domestic reasons for abolition beyond a token reference to Wilberforce.
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Aug 21, 2015 16:40
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Obliterati posted:Nope, it's more a question of, and apologies for being so forthright with this horrible topic, turnover. You're right that locals would never be exported en masse. Spanish and Portuguese-style plantations were a lot less, uh, survivable than British/French counterparts - originally they'd enslaved the natives, who were all dead within a few decades of the practice. They also explicitly discouraged slave marriage and children, in the belief this would minimise uprisings. This necessitated constant import just to maintain numbers, rather than relying on a breeding population like you saw in British colonies Just the ones Britain had already lost by this point, actually, and possibly Barbados. The other British colonies in the Caribbean still needed constant replenishment; Trinidad wasn't really any better than Martinique or Cuba. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Aug 21, 2015 |
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Aug 21, 2015 16:50
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Disinterested posted:This is a very narrow reading that explains the policy choice at that particular moment though - it doesn't really account for the Seymour Drescher argument or those that have followed about the economic disadvantages of abolition in toto, or for the other ideological domestic reasons for abolition beyond a token reference to Wilberforce. I'm not claiming it's the entire story, but it's relevant context that hasn't come up. At Vienna in particular, these arrangements were being made by the Foreign Secretary in person, with minimal contact with the government until the conclusion of talks. Whether or not they were personal abolitionists is unknown, but we can be sure economics were considered relevant. You could well argue that, even if Britain abolished the trade itself for purely moral reasons, the economics of it work best if everyone does: all I'm really saying is that Britain burned a lot of its political capital on the subject and it wasn't entirely out of the goodness of its heart. feedmegin posted:Just the ones Britain had already lost by this point, actually, and possibly Barbados. The other British colonies in the Caribbean still needed constant replenishment; Trinidad wasn't really any better than Martinique or Cuba. Point conceded re: Caribbean colonies. These were still far more important to Spain's colonial prowess than Britain's were to her though. e: maybe I just love going on about the Congress of Vienna, because it's bizarre and you should all read about it e2: Disinterested posted:The Bew book on Castlereagh is always worth a pop I am going to hunt this out. I'm drawing pretty heavily on Zamoyski's Rites of Peace here, which is fantastic because he's found and translated the correspondence of all the negotiators. Obliterati fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Aug 21, 2015 |
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Aug 21, 2015 17:09
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Obliterati posted:e: maybe I just love going on about the Congress of Vienna, because it's bizarre and you should all read about it The Bew book on Castlereagh is always worth a pop
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Aug 21, 2015 17:11
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Obliterati posted:I'm not claiming it's the entire story, but it's relevant context that hasn't come up. At Vienna in particular, these arrangements were being made by the Foreign Secretary in person, with minimal contact with the government until the conclusion of talks. Whether or not they were personal abolitionists is unknown, but we can be sure economics were considered relevant. You could well argue that, even if Britain abolished the trade itself for purely moral reasons, the economics of it work best if everyone does: all I'm really saying is that Britain burned a lot of its political capital on the subject and it wasn't entirely out of the goodness of its heart. You've been talking economics, not face, though, and the sugar trade was huge. Bigger than trade with North America.
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Aug 21, 2015 17:14
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feedmegin posted:You've been talking economics, not face, though, and the sugar trade was huge. Bigger than trade with North America. Not disputing this. What I'm saying is that if Britain, for whatever reason, is giving up the slave trade, it's beneficial to them for their competitors to do so as well.
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Aug 21, 2015 17:17
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The argument strikes me as somewhat similar to Chinese arguments that attempts to enforce Labour regulations, environmental protections, etc. on the rest of the world is really the US/West is basically the winners of the economic system getting rid of practices they used to enrich themselves. Which is a true reading but it ignores that, at worst, the case is that those powers have achieved a comfortable enough position to be able to evaluate the moral/environmental cost of those practices and seek to undo them. I'd also say that slavery isn't a totally black and white thing either. I'd much prefer to be a slave in Rome half a century after the final Slave rebellion than I would wish to be in Southern American chattel slavery. There were plenty of people who preferred life as an educated slave to that of a freeman of limited means and opportunities. Now this doesn't make the systems or the societies they were in right and admirable but they were better. As to why British Imperialism is more acceptable than German/Japanese, the simple fact is that when you examine the legacies the German and Japanese Imperial history really doesn't have much in the way of any positive effects for people to point towards. Japan has the relatively good treatment of Taiwan and the anti-Communist attitude following the war that gives them a better reputation there. The pre-WWI German legacy is pretty much Qing Dao in China, which is certainly seen as a favourable legacy as they weren't there that long and were replaced by the hated Japanese. The rest of their legacy is pretty much a couple of decades of aggression and warfare that involved some quite aggressively executed crimes against humanity shortly before the end. That kind of thing is pretty hard for anyone to treat favourably. The British committed some equally heinous crimes but they did also create local elites and social structures that survived their rule and were integrated into the nations that left the Empire. These were people who owed their situation to the British system and were brought up within it. Most of the traditional Malaysian elites (usually Malays) are ardent supporters of the Empire's legacy because they got railroads, good schools and everyone learned English which gave them a great economic advantage over their neighbours. They saw the kind of chaos in ex-French and Dutch colonies and some of the stuff Thailand deals with and basically put their success down to the British colonial legacy. Rightly or wrongly, the British at least tended to handle disengagement from their colonies better than other colonial powers. There's also revisionism because history tends to be written in reaction to what came before, there's an element of pendulum shifting on topics like this as there isn't a black and white reading of the issue (usually) and so the predominant reading of academics who grew up in the 60s and 70s, that the Empire was an inhuman capitalist monster that enslaved the local polulation and destroyed their culture in service to the home island's enrichment, gave way to academics who saw this as totally ignoring the fact that were positive effects as well. The good news for you is that this will see another pendulum shift and I suspect the next generation of academics will see a new paradigm emerging, possibly focusing on the exploitation of the British working class as an Imperial tool, sent out to keep order in the Empire that never benefitted them. Possibly this will be followed by a reaction to an over focus on the effect on the British rather than their colonial subjects, and it will march on. In this sense Germany and Japan's legacies are more the historical exception. Germany's pre-WWI legacy is certainly open for revisionism, they are no longer viewed by many as a blood thirsty conquering people out to steal land from other better behaved European nations. So I think a more pertinent question might be why are the later German and Japanese Imperial projects off-limits to reinterpretation?
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Aug 22, 2015 16:58
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MrNemo posted:In this sense Germany and Japan's legacies are more the historical exception. Germany's pre-WWI legacy is certainly open for revisionism, they are no longer viewed by many as a blood thirsty conquering people out to steal land from other better behaved European nations. So I think a more pertinent question might be why are the later German and Japanese Imperial projects off-limits to reinterpretation?
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Aug 22, 2015 19:03
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Sergg posted:I peeked into this thread and am absolutely astounded to hear people defending the British Empire. You're being angry more than contributing, but in case I was included in that basket due to a misunderstanding: I nitpicked a "nobody who was colonized by the British liked the British" with "ehh, a chunk of the Sri Lankan official history and a chunk of the Capital City Consensus is that the British were pretty okay by comparison with their predecessors, and equipped Ceylon relatively well compared to the loving mainlanders which can't be all bad". And other things, but you can go read it if you feel like. Although interesting side note, practically all the Sri Lankan labor movements (some of which are strong to this day, others of which got smashed when they ran up against the postcolonial government) got started fussing against the British Empire. I am good buddies with a great-granddaughter of one of the founders of the Steelworkers' Union, who spent like fifteen non-consecutive years in prison for demanding adequate treatment and wages for the folks processing vital raw material for the late-stage Glorious Empire. This is not an uncommon story, in a (~previously?) nominally socialist country.
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Aug 22, 2015 19:43
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A Buttery Pastry posted:They did conquer majority non-German territories from other European nations and then set about discriminating, oppressing, and even ethnically cleansing those territories. Okay, technically Prussia did the conquest, but it's not like Germany wasn't just Greater Prussia until after the end of WWI, and their latest conquest were deeply tied to German nationalism. Eh, like I said the facts tend to contain lots of positive and negative things and what gets highlighted shifts with time. Basically every modern nation involves oppressing or ethnically cleansing some minorities (although the level of brutality/genocidalness tends to shift so we can see some nations like Turkey that really need to make some sort of apology for their treatment and then things like the cultural oppression of Basques in France, which has definitely not elevated and celebrated the minority culture but hasn't tried to wipe them out). Germany tends to get better historical treatment because people are more willing to appreciate the political system in Europe was as much of a factor in WWI as German aggression. Now from my understanding of events I think that German leadership definitely were fairly gung ho about military adventures (until reality really set in) but that doesn't mean there weren't many factors outside their control that contributed nor that the behaviour of other European countries didn't also strongly contribute. Blame isn't a zero sum game but you tend to get better treatment if you aren't viewed as basically singlehandedly kicking off a continent spanning war because you wanted more room. That said I'd say there's an element of Japanese revisionism from the anti US whatever the cause crowd who view the US expanding their influence in the Pacific as an unignorable challenge to Japan that made Japanese Imperialism inevitable as the only viable response. It hasn't caught on in mainstream academia but then who the fucks wants to go to bat for the nation whose colonial accomplishments consist in reintroducing bubonic plague as a weapon of war, decimating and violating a major city and building a railroad on the backs of prisoners of war. I mean you can't even point to a poorly integrated, low performing school to try and redeem them.
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Aug 22, 2015 21:01
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Typo posted:The Qing ironically wasn't very oppressive towards minority population, it was quite the opposite if anything where minorities such as the manchus and mongols gave themselves a leg up over the majority ethnic Han population. You're talking about a state that engaged in colonialism, wars of expansion, and genocide and transformed Chinese society with strict and repressive sumptuary laws. Modern Beijing is laid out the way it is because the Qing ghettoized the Han population in their own city. You think every Han man in China shaved half his head every day because it was convenient or fashionable? You think the largest rebellion in history happened in China in the mid-19th century because of some foreigners fighting minor actions on the coast? The Qing state does not deserve to be lamented. Life in China in the 19th century was awful for the poor, women, and I mean if the Chinese state was good and the British rule was bad why have Mainland Chinese been desperate to get into Hong Kong for well over 100 years? Guavanaut posted:Even at the time scholars were aware of what effect the prohibitions were having, increasingly harsh punishments for users and merchants increased the amount of opium being smoked and the amount of harm being done "the more severe the interdicts against it are made, the more widely do the evils arising therefrom spread," or in modern terms "we're beating them harder and they still use this potent natural painkiller," and sanctions on imports caused rampant smuggling. As there were obviously no controls on what the smugglers would trade for, this caused an imbalance between the values of silver and coined money. The massive and sustained increase in the value of silver against cash was a big cashflow problem for the Qing government, but for the people who actually constituted the unelected and unaccountable government who held large quantities of silver it was fantastic. Funny how the Qing government decided to deal with the silver deflation problem by burning foreign property and killing the poor, and never made a more direct move to devalue silver. Truly one of history's mysteries. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Aug 23, 2015 |
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Aug 23, 2015 01:55
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Arglebargle III posted:You're talking about a state that engaged in colonialism, wars of expansion, and genocide and transformed Chinese society with strict and repressive sumptuary laws. Modern Beijing is laid out the way it is because the Qing ghettoized the Han population in their own city. You think every Han man in China shaved half his head every day because it was convenient or fashionable? You think the largest rebellion in history happened in China in the mid-19th century because of some foreigners fighting minor actions on the coast? That's my point though: the Qing wasn't very oppressive towards -minorities-, they were an apartheid elite who were oppressive towards majorities.
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Aug 23, 2015 04:12
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About the British Empire, I am surprised no one brought Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa to the table. They are both successor states of the Empire's colonies and encapsulate well its attitude towards non-white. Although, I don't know anything about how they were run when they were actual colonies, but I doubt it was all that different. I can only speak about Canada, which became a WASP colony after the American Revolution. Notable very British moments were had like the Métis Rebellion (French half breeds) and the subsequent Riel trial. MacDonald, founding father of the Confederation, was an Orangist. To give you an idea of how Orangists viewed different ethnicities in a supposedly binational country, here is an excerpt from the Toronto News: ‘’Strangle Riel with the French flag! That is the only use that rag can have in this country.’’ Keep in mind we are talking about whites/almost whites in 1885. TLDR: In the British Empire, anything that is not WASP can gently caress themselves, and hosed they were if there’s a buck to make.
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Aug 23, 2015 06:36
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Typo posted:That's my point though: the Qing wasn't very oppressive towards -minorities-, they were an apartheid elite who were oppressive towards majorities. Except for the native Taiwanese, and a bunch of people on the periphery of the empire. I'm sorry but you're wrong, the Qing wiped minority groups that weren't Manchu out all the time. Political Whores fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Aug 23, 2015 |
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Aug 23, 2015 06:58
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Its that time posted:About the British Empire, I am surprised no one brought Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa to the table. They are both successor states of the Empire's colonies and encapsulate well its attitude towards non-white. Although, I don't know anything about how they were run when they were actual colonies, but I doubt it was all that different. Yep that's definitely why Riel was hanged. It certainly wasn't due to his armed insurrection or anything, it was just racism.
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Aug 23, 2015 07:16
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feedmegin posted:You've been talking economics, not face, though, and the sugar trade was huge. Bigger than trade with North America. Wasn't the importance of the sugar colonies already declining by the start of the 19th century, though? Or did they go so far into later decline due to the abolition of the slave trade? This whole topic seems to be an academic bone of contention. Also, I think the source of many disagreements in this thread stems from the fact that the British Empire was a violent, destructive colonialist empire, but there was nothing at all special or unique about its colonialist violence and destruction that wasn't shared with every other empire during the time period.
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Aug 23, 2015 07:59
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MrNemo posted:Eh, like I said the facts tend to contain lots of positive and negative things and what gets highlighted shifts with time. Basically every modern nation involves oppressing or ethnically cleansing some minorities (although the level of brutality/genocidalness tends to shift so we can see some nations like Turkey that really need to make some sort of apology for their treatment and then things like the cultural oppression of Basques in France, which has definitely not elevated and celebrated the minority culture but hasn't tried to wipe them out). Germany tends to get better historical treatment because people are more willing to appreciate the political system in Europe was as much of a factor in WWI as German aggression. Not pre-WWI, seeing as it happened during the war, but Austria-Hungary of course should also get a special mention for their genocidal campaign in the Balkans.
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Aug 23, 2015 08:11
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Fojar38 posted:Yep that's definitely why Riel was hanged. It certainly wasn't due to his armed insurrection or anything, it was just racism. Considering the legal status, land status and long term situation for Metis and Aboriginal peoples in Canada was profoundly hosed over by the Canadian government in that time period and beyond, go get hosed. On February 25 2016 I'm gonna toast in memory of Riel even if Louis Riel Day is only a holiday in Manitoba. Weird BIAS fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Aug 23, 2015 |
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Aug 23, 2015 08:27
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Weird BIAS posted:Considering the legal status, land status and long term situation for Metis and Aboriginal peoples in Canada was profoundly hosed over by the Canadian government in that time period and beyond, go get hosed. Except the Canadian government was perfectly willing to sort things out peacefully until Riel decided to execute someone under his own authority for spurious reasons. And even then it didn't actually come to violence until he came back from his self-imposed US exile literally claiming to be a biblical prophet.
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Aug 23, 2015 08:59
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I'm sorry but the narrative and understanding of Louis Riel has changed. The first Rebellion and the execution of Scott were largely to show that they were not to be treated lightly, that they had a right to self determination of their lands. Scott was also an abrasive man who threatened to murder Riel and refused to recognize any non white authority. It was a mistake because it turned Ontario against Riel entirely. It had almost no effect on negotiations with Ottawa for Manitoba. Others speculate that having shown his seriousness the Canadian Government gave better deals than they might have otherwise. He made the mistake of trying to confront the Canadian government again with the same tactic after Ontario had been radicalized into despising the Metis' combined French and Aboriginal heritage because of the execution, and new NWMP were formed of these Orangemen, and the rebellion lost fighting for the rights of his people in Saskatchewan. He is widely considered a hero for fighting for a people who were being trampled on by frontier culture trying to take their useful land and give them poo poo land and disrupt their way of life. His 'revelations' were largely because the Catholic Church refused to support rebellion and he died having reconciled with the church. His history is not pretty but it's more complicated than just being a rebel.
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Aug 23, 2015 10:05
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China would have been way better off under Zhou Enlai and he probably would have established friendly relations with the West in the 1950s and gone through the same pragmatic reforms that Deng Xiaoping did but several decades earlier. Dude did everything in his power to mitigate Mao's fuckups but always managed to stay in Mao's good graces because he knew that he wouldn't be able to moderate the system if he got purged.
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Aug 23, 2015 12:15
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Sucrose posted:Wasn't the importance of the sugar colonies already declining by the start of the 19th century, though? Or did they go so far into later decline due to the abolition of the slave trade? This whole topic seems to be an academic bone of contention. It's been conclusively shown now that the argument that slavery was diminishingly profitable is totally bunk. Slavery was abolished as its profitability was peaking and growing. As for special and unique, the main accusation capable of being levelled at the British Empire is that it was the biggest ever. Nobody seems to have substantiated or really made a claim it was exceptionally malevolent and malicious compared to other historical empires, but it did have an unprecedentedly large canvas to paint on both in terms of space and access to modern methods for doing so. To me, though, the question is somewhat strange: it's not German imperialism that people primarily take issue with in its history.
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Aug 23, 2015 12:25
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A Buttery Pastry posted:We're talking about pre-WWI Germany though, which proved it had no respect for other European nations in its conduct leading up to the war. Obviously the others also mistreated their minorities, but Germany stands out by mistreating minorities of territories they conquered from other still-independent states who had been an integral part of the European political scene for centuries. That's Germany failing to live up to even the hypocritical standards of the day, and a good indicator of Germany as a nation desiring to overturn the existing order, dominate its neighbors through force, and unify any conquered territories culturally through oppression. Like I said, view on these subjects in history tend to pendulum shift between generations until the subject becomes distant enough that people aren't focusing on it and either settle into camps no-one pays that much attention to or becomes the purview of super specialists. There was definitely a period where Germany was seen as near victim in WWI and, especially after WWII, it was seen as more a symptom of German national character. I think that view has been softened by a realisation of the inequity and problems inherent in the Great Power system and finally I think we've come to a point where people are starting to point out that it wasn't just the system that caused these problems but Germany itself precipitated a lot of it.
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Aug 23, 2015 13:12
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MrNemo posted:Like I said, view on these subjects in history tend to pendulum shift between generations until the subject becomes distant enough that people aren't focusing on it and either settle into camps no-one pays that much attention to or becomes the purview of super specialists. There was definitely a period where Germany was seen as near victim in WWI and, especially after WWII, it was seen as more a symptom of German national character. I think that view has been softened by a realisation of the inequity and problems inherent in the Great Power system and finally I think we've come to a point where people are starting to point out that it wasn't just the system that caused these problems but Germany itself precipitated a lot of it. But nonetheless a sonderweg history is definitely an outdated history.
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Aug 23, 2015 13:14
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Yeah, certain historical readings certainly are revised in light of later evidence or a serious shift in the paradigms of how we understand human societies.
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Aug 23, 2015 13:35
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Sergg posted:I peeked into this thread and am absolutely astounded to hear people defending the British Empire. Whoa whoa whoa, selling drugs? Britain should be praised for forcing progressive policies of drug legalization on the Chinese.
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Aug 23, 2015 15:08
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Sergg posted:China would have been way better off under Zhou Enlai and he probably would have established friendly relations with the West in the 1950s and gone through the same pragmatic reforms that Deng Xiaoping did but several decades earlier. Dude did everything in his power to mitigate Mao's fuckups but always managed to stay in Mao's good graces because he knew that he wouldn't be able to moderate the system if he got purged. He did rule for quite a while (he officially did from the mid 50s to the mid 60s), and his death basically ended the Cultural Revolution because it was the largest unauthorized gathering of people since the PRC was founded.
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Aug 23, 2015 15:33
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Disinterested posted:It's been conclusively shown now that the argument that slavery was diminishingly profitable is totally bunk. Slavery was abolished as its profitability was peaking and growing. By that you mean the abolition of the slave trade right? The importance of the sugar colonies to the British Empire (and even to the overall global production of sugar, which was shifting to sugar beets) had definitely declined by the 1830s, unless everything I've read about the subject has been wrong. The way I heard it, it was the inability to import more slaves after 1806 that seriously reduced profitability in the Caribbean, as that form of slavery basically required a steady new supply of slaves to replace dead ones, since slave populations on sugar cane plantations had negative growth rates. Sucrose fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Aug 23, 2015 |
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Aug 23, 2015 16:53
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