This is totally wrong* as written in that it sloppily mixes two timelines. I rushed it & went out to dinner and then spent dinner thinking about this and rushing back – showing that I am spending way too much time on this and taking it far too seriously – kidding but not joking. I won’t punk out and will keep going with this thread. But dang – I wonder about me sometimes.
*
[e.g. Most of the Japan stuff was 1680 but by then the War in Korea was almost 80 years old and they had been exposed to printing presses there & the China stuff is all over the board earlier. So it is just a mess of a post.]
I guesss what I am ultimately saying here – once it was pointed out to me Not only the 20th Century - at which any SANE person would have said “OK, I guess I misunderstood” is: from Homo Halibis until about 1700ish China was more advanced than Japan *in business, Technology, economics etc. *There was a period of apporx 150ish years when they were about equal, then from about the mid-1850’s on Japan began to pull away from China. After WWII it began to pull away from the rest of the World in ways other than Military (which it had already done before).
I just got babystepped in like Vietnam/Iraq and can’t get out
What about New Zealand? Stable, prosperous, first world country, colonised in every sense of the word by Europeans, who, by and large, got on pretty well with the natives.
Ah yes. I can alway spot a scholar when they quote the kisha system. This separates them from the newbies. Of course, you’re going to have to take points off the rant for not mentioning the bad teeth which you see over here. Of course, you don’t see as much of that as you did 25 years ago, when I was first over, but this poster was likely still quite young, so we’ll not knock that many points off.
No mention of a national sport of nearly naked men slapping each other around a ring, or school teachers getting busted for taking pictures of their students’ underwear or parking fine which are outragous. Trains which are too crowded and gas bills which are too high.
/highjack.
So, we’re so, so impressed Steel, you actually found someting wrong with Japan. How long did it take you? It takes most newbies two or three weeks. I presume you’be been here at least that long, maybe more. Four weeks?
Where does Singapore fit in? It’s certainly not a democracy, at least when you scratch below the surface. Yet the standard of living and GDP is very high?
Of course it’s also a small city state rather than a big country.
So I often hear from people on Teh Intarweb. However, according to the Wikipedia articles on Maori (as well as all the stuff I learnt and read up on whilst living in New Zealand), there was no “Aboriginal” population in NZ prior to the arrival of the Maori.
The whole “The Maoris ate the original inhabitants of NZ!” thing comes from an incident in 1835 when a charted ship full of armed Maori warriors arrived in the Chatham Islands and proceeded to do all sorts of rather nasty and unpleasant things to the Moriori, the Native inhabitants of the Chatham Islands.
New Zealand isn’t an especially wide country- you can drive from one side of the South Island to the other (say, from Christchurch to Greymouth) in about three hours. I think the Maori had several factors running in their favour, including a willingness to adopt European weapons and tools (there are several reports from British Soldiers during the Maori Land Wars expressing surprise that the Natives could shoot as well as they!) and the fact that New Zealand was a long, long, long way from anywhere, with no notable natural resources except Timber, and there was no real reason to oppress the locals if they could be traded with instead. Basically, aside from some unpleasantness in the North Island in the 1860s, the Maori and the British got on pretty well, in part because the Maori wanted European goods, and the British Settlers respected the Maori as “Noble Savages” and basically, as fellow people.
It’s a bit hard to reconcile what happened in Australia (deliberate attempts to wipe out the natives) with what happened in New Zealand (treaties, trading, generally living peacefully with the natives), though…
@Martini Enfield
It is hard to believe that there were no aboriginals, but your Chatham Islands stuff is interesting.
Three hours drive on a decent road is quite a trek by foot.
I appreciate what you say about the Aboriginals in Australia, not pleasant, certainly not by our current standards, my limited understanding is that they did not understand that a sheep was private property and the settlers imposed harsh rules.
Oz is a place I’ve never been to, so I really don’t know the current situation.
Possibly you’ll be amused by this, in South Africa, deserters and general absconders nipped into the interior and intermarried with various tribes, one of which was the Griquas. They rode horses, used guns and wore leather trousers. When the Matabele attacked them (a semi renegade branch of Zulus) they kicked jack sh/t out of their impis.
It has always amused me, an example of synergy rather than domination or genocide.