North Korea has a very Asian form of despotism. It has divine kingship.
DOGFACE: You mean the USA has dropped out? Oh Bugger!
And don’t forget law and order. Used to be terrible around here until the Romans came …
Citey-poo?
While Dogface’s knwoeldge of hisotry in general is abysmal (more on that)), he is spot on in regard to North Korea’s leadership.
The founder of the North Korean state, Kim Il-Sung, created a cult of personality that rivaled that of the Egyptian pharoahs. From the North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA):
Despite North Korea’s suppression of religion in general, the North Korean leadership established veneration of Kim Il-Sung as a semi-divine personage, replete with tales of miracles and superhuman achievements, and has propagandized him as the heir to Tanggun, the legendary divine founder of the Korean nation who supposedly lived 5,000 years ago.
The same goes for his heir, the Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il, who has been lauded as the second greatest genius the world has ever known (no points in guessing who number one is.) Among Junior’s stunning achievements are writing 6 operas in two years and designing the Juche (the name for North Korea’rs ruling philosophy) tower. His birth was supposedly announced in the heavens by a double rainbow and a flying white horse (a traditional sign of Korean royalty dating back to Unified Silla ).
Dunno about this, Rex. The height of European imperialism came * after * the Enlightenment, not before. Millions died needlessly on the battlefields of the First World War, and even more horribly tens of millions of unarmed civilians died needlessly in the Stalinist and Hitlerite death camps. Europe fought two of the bloodiest wars in world history both in one century, and managed to drage the United States into both of them. The Euros don’t seem to be able to maintain political stability without tens of thousands of American troops on their soil (and at one time tens of thousands of Soviet troops as well). The Euros stood around with their thumbs up their butts while the Serbs ran wild in former Yugoslavia; apparently they were waiting for American political leadership and military muscle to solve the problem for them.
I don’t mean to suggest that Europe is somehow more evil and less humane than the rest of the world. If Shaka Zulu and Genghis Khan didn’t rack up body counts as impressive as those of Hitler and Stalin, it was only because they lacked machine guns, poison gas and railroads and not out of any humanitarian sentiments. The bloodiest war in history was a religious war fought in China in the nineteenth century. The Muslims who invaded India fought wars of extermination against the Hindus and Buddhists, and the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople ended in more or less the extermination the of the non-Muslim population. Someone else has already mentioned the Aztecs’ lovely little habit of sacrificing tens of thousands of war captives a year to their bloodthirsty gods. But let’s not get cocky here. Even after the Enlightenment, the West still had its dark side.
I think it is perfectly natural to be biased in favor of one’s own kind. When you identify strongly with a nation, a religion, an ethnicity or race, a political movement, etc., you naturally tend to see it as superior to all the others or at least better than most. It comes as no surprise that pre-Enlightenment Europeans would be biased in favor of their own culture, and by no means was that bias limited to the pre-Enlightenment era. In the 19th and early 20th century, even hard core radicals believed Europe was leading the world boldly into the future. I think perhaps you are being much too hard on the pre-Enlightenment Christians.
This is absolutely ridiculous if he’s talking about pre-Communist China. Chinese history and the hierarchical social structure of Confucianist government is significantly more complicated than that, although if he’s talking about the Shang or Xia dynasties he might have a point.
You’re thinking of the Flowery Wars of the Mexica (wrongly termed “Aztecs”), who were in Central Mexico, not South America. South American peoples, like the Moche and the Inca, did practice human sacrifice, but they did not “hack” their victims to death.
I would recommend the OP read Jared Diamond’s excellent discussion of the factors that led to Europe’s pre-eminence in world civilization, Guns, Germs, and Steel. In any event, posters are not necessarily “sniping” at Europe, but simply seeking to establish that other cultures had valuable contributions to make as well. Disck Teresi’s Lost Discoveries : The Ancient Roots of Modern Science–from the Babylonians to the Maya discusses the many important scientific discoveries of ancient, non-Western peoples. Although he does not prove all his sometimes farfetched claims (“many ancient cultures had inklings of quantum theory”), Teresi does point out that that Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Oceania made many important offering sto nascent scientific knowledge, from the Babylonian discovery of pi to ancient Mayan astronomy.
Europe was a bit late because our climate is not is not as frugal as it is in most of the other civilisation centers such as the one in S-East Asia and Central America. Incidentally the only place in Europe that is really naturally frugal is the Po valley just North of Rome. Europe doesnt really seem to be able to muster any real progress until after the invention of the plow which made farming in North Europe much more productice and black death also made life somewhat easier for the survivors. After that the road is paved for incredible technological advances building on technology aquired via the European merchant fleet.
The 18th and 19th century saw two of the bloodiest wars within the borders of the US along with the genocidal treatment of native Americans and the US was a willing partner in the WW1. The WW2 was just the WW1 continued and was predicted by Keynes in 1918. Teach us barbaric Europeans how to make peace will you?
On the Yougoslavian conflict. It was the US that urged Bosnia to seceede from Yugoslavia and helped it along with shipments of arms facilitated by muslim extremists (Guardian). Bosnia did count on the US to continue its support but the US stuck its thumb up its ass, as the Serb’s who were 33% of the population and didnt want to be merged into a mostly muslim state revolted. Croatians who amounted to almost 11% also revolted and havoc ensued. Europe was hoping for a peacefull solution which would have been only 10 years of with the advent of greater European integration. The muslim majority and their US allies made that solution impossible. Many European countries were of the opinion that this was the US fault to begin with so they should be the ones to fix it.
Of course this is just one more war that the US dragged Europe into. Lonesome Polecat is especially funny in present context now that the European countries are helping mop up after not one but two stupid wars that the US started. :smack:
I think you mean fertile, not frugal. 
Well, there were only three wars in the borders of the US in history - War of Independence, War of 1812, the Civil War. And only the Civil War could really be called one of the bloodiest wars in history.
The US was hardly a willing partner in WW1 in terms of actual fighting, at least not until the war was winding down. I suppose the lend-lease could sort of be used as justification for that statement.
And of course, had Wilson’s suggestions been implemented instead of the British and French desires, WWII becomes more unlikely. Blame Europeans for that one. Had you listend to Wilson in making peace, things would have been a lot better.
Turnabout is fair play. Europe’s score on dragging the US into wars is still much higher.
Yowza!
I simply did a drive by posting without doing any preliminary fact checking, in a thread based mostly on opinion and the OP’s view, and just revisited it again to find out that I have been flamed since I posted it.
True, I didn’t check all of my facts, but the ones that I posted were staight out of my public educated memory of text books and book reports, and projects. So I am sure that if someone double checks my statements, they will hold water - for the most part.
Also, this is a totally subjective, uh, well, subject. Nothing here can be said without an ounce of speculation.
Well, I don’t know about the bloodiest ( WW II probably trumps it ), but I agree the T’ai P’ing rebellion is pretty far up there. However…
This is inaccurate. It simply wasn’t possible to fight a "war of extermination"against Hindus in India ( and there were relatively few Buddhists by then ). Muslim polities quickly ( almost immediately ) took the pragmatic approach and figured out ways to incorporate Hinduism into the Islamic system, often by re-defining Hindus from pagan to “Peoples of the Book” and then taxing them as if they were Christians or Zoroastrians. In point of fact you quickly see synergies emerge between the Muslim rulers and the Hindu ruling classes ( particularly the Brahmanic classes incorporated into the administrative machinery and Kshatriyas like the Rajputs, subsumed as military vassals ). Indeed if we look at the areas where Islam took root most strongly, they are in inverse proportion to Muslim political power in northern India ( i.e. the greatest Muslim populations arose in Bengal and the Punjab, both rather peripheral to the Muslim center of gravity at Delhi or Agra ), the opposite of what you’d expect from conquest-imposed faith.
This is also inaccurate. Constantinople, largely depopulated by 1453, was subject to a bloody sack, as was the custom of the time. However the Sultans were interested in repopulating and revitalizing the city and by no means limited themselves to Muslim subjects to do so. Greeks and Armenians in particular both poured in - both on their own as the city’s economic fortunes revived and were forcibly imported from newly pacified areas ( i.e. Trebizond ) and large numbers of Jews, considered both economically productive and politically reliable ( or at least stable ) were also brought in by decree, almost denuding some cities in the Balkans and Anatolia ( this was standard Ottoman practice by the way, as it had been by the Byzantines before them and Muslim peasants were also subject to emigration/immigration by decree - as an example after the fall of Cyprus in 1571 the Ottoman decree called for the importation of pastoral Turcoman nomads to provide stockraising and have a supply of food safely in Muslim hands and in 1576 “1000 rich and prosperous Jews…with their properties and effects and with their families” ). By 1477 out of 16,326 households in Istanbul; 9,517 were Muslim, 5,162 were Christian, and 1,647 were Jewish. With the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal the Jewish population in Istanbul boomed to over 8,000 households by 1535 ( this was part of a general population boom, so the proportion didn’t necessarily increase by the same margin ).
Cites for the details above from Runciman’s The Fall of Constantinople, 1453 and Lewis’ *The Jews of Islam.
Neither of the above nitpicks should be construed as making the Ottoman or Delhi Sultans or whoever out as great humanists nor necessarily superior to pre-Enlightenment Europeans. Just to point out they were pragmatic than fanatic when it came to the usefulness of their non-Muslim subjects.
- Tamerlane
“…more pragmatic than fanatic…”
- Tamerlane
Tamarlane, it may not have been physicallly possible for the Muslims to have waged a war of extermination against the Hindus, but I think it’s very clear that the Muslims fully * intended * to uproot and destroy Hinduism. You are right to point out that, once the invaders had secured their own power, they tended to let up on the persecutions of non-Muslims for pragmatic political, economic and/or military reasons; I’d say they tended to adjust the religious ideology to the military and political needs of the moment. But again, that doesn’t change the fact that at various points during the waves of Islamic invasions that swept through India, the invaders were quite clearly intent on turning the conquered regions into Islamic societies. Look, I’m aware there are all sorts of complexities and subtleties here (as there are in any such situation), and I realize we should be careful about retroactive morality, i.e. projecting modern standards of morality into the past. But I still think it’s fair to say that wars of extermination were waged in India against the native religions.
Well, Ibn Warraq in * Why I Am Not a Muslim * (and, yes, I am aware this is a highly polemical book) cites Sir Steven Runciman’s * The Fall of Constantinople * as follows: " Sulton Mehmet [allowed] his soldiers the three days of pillage to which they were entitled. They poured into the city … They slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women and children without discrimination. The blood ran in rivers down the steep streets … But soon the lust for slaughter was assuaged. The soldiers realized that the captives and precious objects would bring them greater profits." And while Constantinople may have been somewhat depopulated by the time of its conquest, there still seems to have been a substantial population there. Again, I think it’s fair to say there was a general slaughter of non-Muslims. In any case, my purpose was not to demonize Muslims (most of the examples on my short list weren’t Muslim) but merely to illustrate the fact that Westerners were not unique or unusual in waging ruthless wars of conquest or engaging in what would today be considered atrocities.
Copernicus may have been a clergyman. However, he waited until his deathbed to have his life’s work published, because he was afraid of being persecuted by the church.
A major propaganda disadvantage the U.S. has compared to most other societies is that our nation was established relatively recently, and the brutishness necessary in any such conquest is still relatively fresh in the world’s memory. The barbarities your ancestors committed to set up your societies are for the most part centuries past and easier to ignore. And, no, the U.S. was * not * a willing participant in the First World War; we were very much dragged into it against our will. While President Roosvelt may have been eager to have a go at Hitler, the American people were most anxious to stay out of the European war–it took a direct attack by the Japanese to change public opinion in America, and even then Hitler had to declare war on the the U.S. first before the U.S. went to war with Germany.
And everybody in Yugoslavia was living in perfect love, peace and brotherhood before the US–you know, us cowboys with the horns on our heads and cloven hooves–decided that we wanted Bosnia to secede? Sweet bleeding Jesus, can anybody seriously believe the mess in the Balkans was * our * fault?
“Just one more war that the US dragged Europe into?” Say, tell me, how many wars has the US “dragged” Europe into? Viet Nam? I seem to recall that started when the French demanded their Asian colonies back. Korea? That started with naked agression by North Korea against South Korea. The war against the terror network? The terrorists had been making terror strikes on the West for more a quarter of a century before it hit American shores in a big way. You think the US is solely or primarily responsible for Yugoslavia? Your own article concedes the shooting had been going on for quite some time before the US supposedly began arms smuggling operations, and I don’t see that the Euros were doing much to put a stop to it.
Old Europe has been hiding behind American military might since the end of the Second World War, basically expecting the US to expend blood and treasure in their defense should they ever be seriously threatened. I suspect we’d be seeing more of a “cowboy” attitude among the Euros if they had to provide for their own security.
Oh, I agree originally that was a goal ( simple raiding and plundering being a more practical motivator ) and for certain elements in the Muslim society (some of the more orthodox ulema for example ), that was always an issue.
Agreed.
Well, I guess my point is that IMHO ( hopefully informed ) systematic pogroms designed to completely eliminate Hinduism were relatively rare ( and examples of the reverse can actually be found, with Mughul officials deliberately impeding conversion in Bengal for example ). Otherwise I don’t think we are that far apart.
An accurate quote, but as I noted that describes the three-day sack, one very similar to the Latin sack in 1204. Your post seemed to imply that the Ottomans systematically moved to eliminate and exclude non-Muslim elements from Istanbul, when the opposite is actually the case. My apologies if I misunderstood your point.
Oh, yes. I should have been more careful with my wording. Though greatly declined it was still an impressive city, with perhaps somewhat shy of 100,000 people.
About 4,000 in the sack, plus some officials in the aftermath. Much more significant were the huge numbers of captives, some redeemed, many, probably most, not.
Quite agree and I didn’t think you were demonizing or singling anyone out. Just nitpicking, as is my wont :).
- Tamerlane
Blatantly untrue. Copernicus’s ideas had been partly published for more than a decade before his death. His theories were fairly popular in the Church and even the Pope attended a lecture. Indeed, it was several high ranking Church officials like Archbishop Schonberg who finally convinced Copernicus to publish his entire works.
The Church held no official position on Copernican theories until the Galileo mess, preferring to let the academic crowd fight it out (which they did).
The Church during that time was one of the largest boosters of science and funded several universities, not to mention the contributions of their own clergy. The Church received Galileo’s work on dynamics quite well (at least, that section that cared), among other scholastic advances at that time.
Even though he didn’t publish De revolutionibus orbium coelestium till near his death he did start distributing his “Little Commentary” as early as 1514, where he asserted the heliocentric theory (and he did dedicate De revolutionibus to the Pope)
Also, Widmanstadt explained Copernicus’s theories to Pope Clement as early as 1533, and he was well received. (and as Neurotik mentioned, both Cardinal Schoenberg and the Bishop of Culm pushed Copernicus to publish his theory.
So I don’t think it was a fear of religious persecution that drove Copernicus to hold off, but more a general dislike for controversy.