And the people who attacked us you blinkered fuckwit were Arab Mujahideen who weren’t even FROM FUCKING AFGHANISTAN!
Your standards for the success of imperialism are hokey at best. No Empire lasts forever, but they leave behind a cultural legacy that fundamentally alters the occupied territories forever. Your standard that if an Empire doesn’t last forever, it’s pointless is not a standard that is even worth considering as valid. It’s a meaningless construct designed to narrow the criteria so that your point of view is considered to be obviously correct.
I believe sir that you are asking me to make a point that requires a counter-factual so that you can scream, ‘racist paternalist’, and cease to have to actually give any thought to the discussion. I see your bait and I’m not biting. The Indians DIDN’T form a modern nation-state without British influence, and when they did it was precisely along the lines laid out for them by the British. Those countries DIDN’T form modern nation-states without European influence. In fact NO SINGLE COUNTRY ON EARTH formed a modern nation-state without European influence because the MODERN NATION STATE is a European INVENTION from the AGE OF COLONIALISM. The entire world was irrevocably changed by European Imperialism, so no, I do not think that history would have turned out similarly without European meddling. Just like the makeup of Eurasia and North Africa was irrevocably altered by the Alexandrian Empire, and later by the Roman Empire, and in between those by the Persian Empires, and later on by the Mongol Empire.
And yet the US is in there bombing the locals alongside the mujahediin. How is that not supposed to anger the locals, again?
Not my standard at all. My standard is that imperialism does not benefit the development of the colonized countries insofar as:[ul]
[li]the resources and/or infrastructure of that country are controlled by the empire for the home country’s development, not the colony’s; and[/li][li]the colony’s domestic affairs are controlled by the empire to assure smooth operation for the home country’s benefit, not the colony’s.[/li][/ul]Since control over the country is effectively taken out of the hands of the population of that country, there is always going to be grounds for resistance, violent or otherwise. The home country will always need to look for compliant local leaders to support, but they’re never going to get rid of the friction generated by their ultimate control over the local population. Sooner or later the local leaders are going to be pressured into taking a stand and fighting back (or get overthrown) and the cycle starts all over again. So in Africa, so in India, so in Iraq and Afghanistan - at least until the home country is decisively booted out.
Explain, then, the existence of empires in Africa that arose before the age of colonialism and lasted several hundred years into the age of imperialism, or similar empires in India. If non-European peoples were incapable of forming nation-states (and the “it wasn’t modern” argument is a meaningless quibble), how’d they manage to do so during an era when Europeans were still fighting amongst themselves over whether Catholics or Protestants would ascend various thrones?
But would it have been an island of European enlightenment in a vast haze of pre-civilization?
Because that’s where their training camps are. No one said it’s not supposed to anger the locals. Keeping the locals happy isn’t our entire priority.
[quote]
Not my standard at all. My standard is that imperialism does not benefit the development of the colonized countries insofar as:[ul]
[li]the resources and/or infrastructure of that country are controlled by the empire for the home country’s development, not the colony’s; and[/li][li]the colony’s domestic affairs are controlled by the empire to assure smooth operation for the home country’s benefit, not the colony’s.[/ul][/li][/quote]
And yet, if building up a modern state is your goal, Imperialism gives the colony a better shot. You are ignoring the cultural training that goes into building a colony as it impacts the foundations of a modern nation state. In your rush to whine, “racist paternalist”, you completely ignore reality. In reality colonies are left behind with advances left by the more advanced empire, as I demonstrated with India. Whether or not you think that’s worth the cost is one thing, but you cannot argue that there are no benefits to the colony because that simply isn’t true.
You have a fallacy here, you give us the idea that the foreign empires take away what was a previously sovereign existance, that’s not true. The European colonial powers took power away from the local imperialist oppressors. In India they took the power from the waning Mughals. In Central America they took the power from the Aztecs. I guess in Mexico people lament that they no longer have to give their hearts at the top of a pyramid so that the pyramid can be red soaked with blood. That bastard Cortes, what an evil fuck that guy was right? If only they’d retained the power to be ruled by Montezuma.
The ‘it wasn’t modern’ argument isn’t a meaningless quibble, it’s the only valid answer. That you think it’s not valid shows the ideological blinders you put on before opening up a history book. Please read, “On Power”, and “The Rise and Decline of the State”, so you can understand what separates a modern state from previous incarnations of civil power structures. I promise you, they will even give you fodder for your ideological underpinnings, but you are clearly ignorant of the differences. The idea that these empires were more advanced than Europe just because Europe was in a civil war is laughable. Europe was largely united as an Empire around the birth of Christ. The Roman Empire started by Julius Caesar and expanded by the next few generations covered largely what is today considered the boundaries of Europe. “Christendom”, ie, the lands ruled by the Catholic and Orthodox churches followed pretty much the lines of the old Roman Empire sans the parts that were seized by the Muslim conquests. If you think that those Indian and African empires didn’t have feudalistic tendencies within them then you are even more deluded than I thought. You need very desperately to do more reading about empires that were not European in origin so that you can start to see the differences between them and get past, “European empires bad, other people empires good.”
The modern state is a very specific thing and has to do with how people view themselves as a bloc entity. Hint: If they don’t view themselves as nationalists of their state, then they aren’t a modern state. For instance Afghanistan is not a modern state because it’s people view themselves as Pushtun first, or Balochi first or Uzbeki first. In Germany they developed a pan-Germanic consciousness that led to all sorts of weird shit in the early half of the 20th and the late 19th. That pan-Germanic consciousness ultimately overrode the consciousness of the individual principalities within Germany, thus creating the modern, “German”. That is a primary criteria of a nation-state in the modern context. China is probably the oldest example of a national consciousness in the modern sense. India’s national consciousness is newly found within the last century but they are finding it. Pakistan and Afghanistan haven’t found it yet though Pakistan is further along than Afghanistan.
And yet in this very same post you say that Western civilization coming in and running things is good for the locals. How do you reconcile these two statements?
We’ll return to this in a moment.
And yet India has grinding poverty and a pollution problem that’s arguably one of the worst in the world. Is this a leftover from pre-imperialist days or a legacy of imperialism?
If power resides in the hands of the locals, how is that not sovereignty?
I make no claims that the local sovereigns were ideal. But you might want to read up a lot more on Spanish treatment of the native Americans before you start casting aspersions on the cruelty of any particular leader.
I made no claims regarding the advancement of any empire in comparison with others, but the fact that folks in the Middle East and India were coming up with the bases for modern mathematics and law and almost everything else regarded as the cornerstones of civilization while Europe was deep in the Iron Age - to say nothing of preserving that knowledge while Europe was in the Dark Ages - speaks volumes for the argument’s “laughability”.
And by 500 AD that had all fallen apart, splitting and dividing as the Dark Ages began (and civilization carried on elsewhere). Not to mention that the history of the Roman Empire is as filled with revolts and rebellions by the locals as the history of any other empire.
I never held that attitude in the first place. Imperialism is bloody business, and Western imperialism is no exception to that.
How do the Kurds in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey fit into that schema? If they succeed in breaking off from any of those countries, are they not a nation-state? Actually, same question for the Pashtun, Balochi, and Uzbeks in Afghanistan.
Here’s where we return to your “imperialism is a country’s best shot” argument. The Roman Empire had been dead and gone for some 1400 years by the time of German unification. Any and all sociopolitical vestiges of Roman imperialism had been wiped out. The principalities and kingdoms and duchies that became Germany were most decidedly not colonies of another empire, European or otherwise. According to your argument that being subjected to imperialism helps unify a country and build a modern state, and your argument that not viewing oneself as a nationalist of a state is an active impediment to the development of a nation-state, how did the existence of the German nation-state become possible?
If it is possible for a nation-state to arise without the prior condition of being a colony in an empire, then it follows that nation-states could have arisen (and can arise) in places like India and Afghanistan without them being subject to colonialism and imperialism.
Unless you hold the rise of European nation-states to be an exception, which means that you see the peoples of Europe as somehow able to overcome an obstacle no other people in the world can. Which falls right back onto the “white man’s burden” of civilizing the rest of the world because they’re too damn backwards to figure it out themselves.
Not to mention what seems to be the unspoken assumption that a Western nation-state is the “most developed” and therefore “best” form of government. Because everyone knows that civilization “develops,” i.e., “improves”–what comes later must always be better because, well, it’s later!
I am not going to argue with you point by point. You’re going to have to reach deep inside of yourself and decide whether or not false dichotomies are the only way you are capable of thinking about world history. So every time you ask for an ‘either/or’ and it’s not possible to say it’s one or the other I am just going to point that out and not argue further. If you want to argue you are going to have to reach to a higher level of discourse and recognize the complexity of factors that go into creating a situation. I’m not sure you’re capable.
Quite simple, I didn’t make any comment that simplistic.
Another overly simplistic generalization. If you won’t accept, “both”, as a valid answer then there isn’t anything to say.
Define ‘locals’, were the Muslim Mughal overlords the ‘locals’?
I
Again you must define, locals, what is the maximum distance away that you can be considered a ‘local’. Were the Aztec invaders that came and ripped whole tribes from their local areas hundreds and even thousands of miles from Tenochtitlan and made as slaves for the Aztec rulers until such a time as which tens of thousands of them would be lined up to have their hearts cut out, ‘the locals’?
Europe was deep in the ‘Iron Age’ huh? So you mean those Middle-Eastern empires that were studying the same Hellenic scholars that people in Europe were studying? Who are you referring to when you say developing mathematics? Avicenna? So Muslim imperialism is A-Ok but European Imperialism is not? Your argument makes no sense. Is your problem Imperial subjugation, or is it just whitey?
If you’d read anything about history whatsoever beyond pop history, you’d know that the European ‘Dark Ages’ are a bit of a misnomer. The Western Empire fell apart but the Eastern Empire didn’t. You’d also know that during the ‘Dark Ages’, the Western Europeans were developing such advanced technology as the flying buttress, a feat of mathematical brilliance that revolutionized architecture.
Then what IS your point? Because no one argued that western imperialism wasn’t bloody.
No they are not nation-states, but they have strong tribal-nationalist undercurrents providing for some pretty power separatist movements within the nation-states they inhabit.
That is incorrect as the Catholic church built itself on the sociopolitical vestiges of Roman Imperialism. The sociopolitical vestiges of Roman Imperialism persist today in Europe. They never went away.
Well it was built in part within the rubric of Europe and to a great extent formed around the Protestant separatism that occurred in Europe, when they separated from the Catholic church.
But they didn’t. Your argument for a hypothetical history that never occurred has no basis.
Right, I know that you aren’t actually arguing with me, you cannot separate yourself from the stereotypes that you have prepared to argue against, so you are incapable of the flexibility of thought required to discuss history in any rational way. Your ‘White Man’s Burden’ argument isn’t even a response to any of the words I’ve actually spoken.
No, just the way it actually happened in real reality, not in Olentzero fantasy counter-factual world.
I don’t think you know what the term paternalist means, because not once in my whole argument here did I say that the modern nation state is the ideal form for the colonized peoples. I just pointed out that your argument that they received zero benefit from being colonized is irrational nonsense. If I were a paternalist bigot I would say that they owed a debt for lifting them up to a superior governmental system. As I am not that big a fan of the nation-state in general, and don’t see nationalism as any sort of ideal I guess you’re just not asking the right questions.
But understanding isn’t your goal, pigeon-holing is. Forcing people to fit into your neatly supplied categories is your goal.
Besides, I thought you said you weren’t going to argue further if I hit you with another one of those ‘either/or’ situations you didn’t like. I’m sorely disappointed.
Holy reading incomprehension Batman! I wasn’t going to argue YOUR individual points when you presented me with a question where I have to choose A or B and both are wrong.
Or to be more precise…Troll.
Now, now, none of these comments were posted solely to get a rise out of you (or anyone else for that matter). It would be wise to remember the words of Ed Zotti stuck up at the top of this forum:
If you’re unable to take getting called on your bullshit in a graceful manner, I’m sure there are ways of putting me from your troubled mind that are no skin off my nose whatsoever.
Mods: That last sentence was posted in full sincerity after having researched the Pit rules as best I am able and therefore in the belief than I am not in violation thereof.
