Benign conquest?

Factual Questions
41

Kind of comes down to how you define benign takeover. Roman history is long enough to record plenty of oddball events. So the childless Attalus III, king of Pergamum ( a Hellenistic state in western Asia Minor and long-time Roman ally and client ), left his state to Rome in his will. Not everybody in Pergamum was thrilled and there was a revolt which was put down as brutally as any revolt. But Rome technically had inherited rather than conquered and they even shared out some of their new acquisition with neighboring client states that had supported them during the revolt.

So, benign or not in this instance? A few of the locals in Pergamum certainly weren’t pleased, but Rome hadn’t exactly barged in uninvited.

42

… Uhm… States, like individuals, act in what they believe to be the best way for their interests, but that doesn’t mean they do so intelligently. Sometimes they are missing information, sometimes they are blinded by bling, sometimes they start expanding and overshoot the point where they should have stopped (this happens to corporations quite a lot too).

A lot of the movement from Spain to the Americas wasn’t so much “push” from the “State” as from social forces the Crown didn’t even think about as any kind of problem (inheritance laws which often made it impossible for any but the lucky to make a living form whatever the family owned, for example, both in the minifundist and latifundist extremes). OTOH, the obsession of a certain Carlos de Ausburgo with being Emperor would have bled his Spanish domains dry with or without the Americas attached.

That’s just examples directly linked to an old conquest situation. Open a newspaper for samples of current cases of governments with their heads so far up their asses their breath smells like their hemorroids.

43

The English conquest of Australia was benign from the English (in England) point of view: they respected the native religion and territorial rights where those existed, they just didn’t notice that the native culture had any religion, or any idea of territorial rights.

There is an ongoing academic discussion about the use of the word “Holocaust” to describe what happened to Australian Aboriginal people. One argument is “they’ve been shot, and the culture is destroyed, that’s called a holocaust”. The other argument is, that the word holocaust was penned to describe a paticular unusual pattern, where the government decided to exterminate people, which doesn’t match what happened in Aus, where people and culture were exterminated as a result of not being noticed by the central imperial power.

There is a particular pointedness about the argument, because when you label the events as a holocaust, without noticing that difference, you are (arguably) participating in the same sort of benign indifference…

The traditional English view of the Roman Empire was that it was benign. A belief I think was assocated with the idea that the English Empire was benign. Since I came to the realisation that the Roman Empire depended on slave labor for operation, I’ve ceased to believe English Imperial view that the Roman Empire was benign.

44

Strange as it sounds, there are actually at least a few more examples of this sort of thing, even though Attalus is the most famous. Ptolemy Apion left Cyrenaica to Rome, and Nicomedes IV did the same thing with Bithynia.

I do wonder how much the kings were doing this out out the kindness of their pro-Roman hearts, and how much was arm-twisting and/or wheeling-dealing. We support you, you give us the kingdom when you die. That sort of thing.

The weirdest case is probably Ptolemy XI (and possibly Ptolemy X before that, if I’m reading this right, the story is confused as all get out), who tried to bequeath Egypt to Rome, only Rome didn’t want it. They ended up restoring Ptolemy XII Auletes, who had exiled himself to Rome to get away from rebellious countrymen, to the throne instead. Even that, BTW, is a weird story in itself. The Senate didn’t want to intervene militarily in Egypt at all, so Ptolemy bribed Aulus Gabinius, a buddy of Pompey, to go over with an army and restore him. Gabinius was actually put on trial for it when he got back. Apparently, he ended up exiled, despite a lot of bribing of judges.

BTW, I guess it’s sort of another example of what I mentioned earlier. The Senate resists going abroad looking for monsters to slay, so to speak, unless they have a good reason. However, the strongman generals, who are increasingly calling the shots at this point, will happily go out adventuring. Huh. I might be on to something here.

45

According to paul Johnson (“Modern Times”), most of these colonies were net losses for the mother country. In particular, Italy got some of the most worthless ones (Somalia, Libya, Ethiopia). So why hold on to them? i can see taking over a place, if it has valuable mineral deposits, or good agricultural exports. But why spend money to conquer a desert?

46

But it remains that we, the United States, conquered/absorbed Hawaii making it U.S. territory to the exclusion of all other, Japan, Spain (England wanted nothing to do with it), interests. And what did we do for them, or rather not do? We didn’t enslave or try to exterminate them. What we did do is give them statehood and full citizenship. They were never going to get home rule back. Not exactly the same deal that most of the other indigenous populations got.

47

This might be an example, but it’s complex enough that it could be debated.

The British Raj had two basic components: (a) territories directly ruled by the Raj, and (b) princely states, which were independent kingdoms under British suzerainty. When the British left India (and gave India and Pakistan independence), British suzerainty over the princely states lapsed, and these kingdoms were free to do whatever they wanted to.

So, India and Pakistan then went and tried to negotiate with each and every one of these kingdoms to join up with one or the other country. And in the vast majority of cases, negotiations were successful and the kingdoms were peacefully annexed by the new countries.

But, there were a few holdouts, and in those cases, either India or Pakistan annexed by force. Obviously, when force is used, atrocities are going to happen, but none of these kingdoms were in any position to defend themselves, so the annexations happened quickly. There was some concern that Hyderabad would be able to put up a fight, but they completely buckled as soon as India invaded.

I’m going to push Kashmir off to the side here for purposes of this discussion, because that’s a weird case that doesn’t follow the story I laid out above. And there were a lot of nasty atrocities committed by all sides in re: to Kashmir, so what I’m saying here doesn’t apply to that particular princely state.

So, leaving aside Kashmir, were these conquests benign? That’s somewhat debatable, but neither country annexed these kingdoms with the goal of subjugating or oppressing the local populations. And from this point on, I’m going to focus on India, since I’m more familiar with its history than Pakistan’s post-independence history.

But in the case of India, the country is so diverse, that it doesn’t really go around purposely destroying local cultures. It could certainly protect local cultures better than it does (or has done), and there are certainly legitimate grievances, but India didn’t go into Hyderabad and start wiping out people or surpress the local languages or anything like that. The people in the annexed kingdoms were given equal Indian citizenship.

Now, post-independence, India undertook a pretty massive property/land reform to break up the tenant farming system and re-design the economy along more centrally managed lines. And during this process, a lot of wealthy people were forced to sell off property for less than it was worth (or could have been worth), and in some cases, the Indian government outright confiscated property. So, India did muck around with property rights in the newly acquired kingdoms. But again, here, the intent wasn’t to be exploitative, but rather to undo what were viewed as opressive economic systems.

So, I’d rate most of the annexations by India of the princely states as relatively benign.

There’s also the annexation of Goa by India. This follows a similar model to the annexation of the princely states. It was annexed to put an end to colonialism on the subcontinent and India viewed Goa as Indian territory. And once the annexation happened, the Goans seemed largely okay with it (unless you want to spend three hours listening to my uncle rant about how Goa should be independent). But the annexation wasn’t undertaken to exploit resources or the local population or anything along those lines.

So, take that for what it’s worth. There are plenty of people in India who have legitimate grievances against the Indian government, so if you don’t want to consider the annexations benign, I’m not going to argue the point (unless there are factual errors that need to be corrected).

48

BTW, Flyer: I want to make another comment about Rome’s Social War. I said earlier:

There is a third hand (yes, I have more than two, I’m a Martian). As I said, there is some argument over what exactly the Social War even was. Mary Beard, who seems to enjoy being a contrarian sometimes, suggests that it *was *a war of independence. Of course, independence wouldn’t be much benefit for the allies either, because it would just screw up the entire Mediterranean hegemony thing for everyone. It’s worth noting, though, that when it eventually comes down the allies telling Rome “fine, then, we declare that we no longer have any obligations to you, see how well you get on without us”, Rome does have a third option, in addition to a) beat the crap out of the allies until they drop all demands, which is what they try at first, or b) get them back on board by granting concessions, which is what they end up doing. Rome could say c): “Fine, whatever, it’s not like we rule you. Go take your ball and do whatever you want.”

That option isn’t ever even considered. Again, in a situation where Roman allies want to go do their own thing, Rome simply won’t let them. And if the Italians aren’t subjects, in some form or other, why does “independence” even come up in this discussion?

I noticed our friend Madden say somewhere that “Rome isn’t a bully”. Yeah, no. That claim just makes me choke on my coffee.

49

Roman conquest of the Nabatean Kingdom (basically Jordan and NW Saudi Arabia) is an example. The King died, they just marched in and took over.

50

Not to the natives in the Cape Province, they weren’t. Of course, that’s relative to the previous Dutch colonists, so there’s that.

51

No one’s mentioned Persia (except in the context of Alexander’s conquests). My impression was that Persia’s conquests, at least under Cyrus the Great, were relatively benevolent.

52

I have a hard time picturing the culture that invented scaphism as being benevolent, somehow.

Plus the descriptions of other Persian’s conquests include little details like this:

53

Sorry, forgot, that comes from Wiki.

And Babylon revolted under Darius precisely because he was too busy putting down other revolts in the East…

54

[minor hijack]

What, this again?

Huh. Apparently so. Egypt: So nice, they had to annex it twice.

Anyway, sorry. Carry on.

[/minor hijack]