Why do you hate France?

[Count Drew]

Re: Muslim Faith and Christian Faith

Perhaps being openminded during the invasion of Europe was ideal for the Muslims. Better to intergrate then attempt to destroy your Christian Brethren. When at this point they're on the defensive they feel that preservation as we did at the time being the primary goal.

We're the openminded ones attempting to incorporate the Muslims into our modern society. Then they were the openminded ones incorporating us into their society. Though failure on both ends. Christians fought hard enough to drive the infidels out of Europe and even but a century ago "Turk," was a word used in England to scare children. "we'll let the Turks get ya!" Preservation of Religion, Culture, and self ultimately? No... We reign supreme, all the Christian Nations in Europe and N.America, Australia<aside from Japan> are the Primary Wealth-Enlightened hub of the world. The Muslims attend our Unverisities, experience culture, gain our wealth and go back to their own countries and teach intolerance

They're attempting to reverse the roles and perhaps in another Millenia it will be reversed, hopefully by then mankind will have grown out of simple pitiful religious indifference<and cultural as well>

 

[Lucius Sulla]

This is starting to go through dangerous waters...

 

[unmerged(5161)]

Lucius, you are right that the English and French did some bad things. I agree, as I said in the post you quoted; they were definitely not lilly white princesses.

However, the idea that because the Spanish didnt kill everyone, they were better, is totally bogus. First of all, there were too many to kill. That is like saying, "I didnt beat up Bruce Lee because I am a nice person." No, you didnt beat up Bruce Lee because you CANT. The Spanish couldnt have killed all those people if they wanted to.

Secondly, where the Spanish could kill everyone, they did. Hispaniola was completely depopulated in just under fifty years. Anthropologists and historians have estimated that over one million people lived on Hispaniola before the spanish arrived. The Carribean is named after the Caribe tribe of natives; which no longer exist. The Spanish did succeed in killing millions of natives in Mexico and Peru through violence over a couple hundred years. Not to mention all those killed by disease. There were over twenty million Aztecs when Cortez arrived. Most of them died. The current number of native-decendent Mexicans is much larger than the number at independence when the Spanish left because of natural growth.

Thirdly, the English did not follow a policy of extermination, despite the fact that extermination occured. The English (and to a lesser extent the French) merely pushed the Indians off their land. They pushed the Delaware out of Delaware, for example. Because of disease, native populations in the hinterlands were artifically lowered by indians fleeing the European areas, but the interior tribes also acted as refugee camps. A delaware indian might have been pushed out of Delaware, but he went inland and joined another tribe as a refugee. Im not saying that is such a great thing, just not as morally abhorrent as cutting people's hands off for failing to pay a tax in gold when there is no gold around to pay the tax in (an actual policy of Columbus on Hispaniola and copied by various colonial viceroys).

It wasnt until the formation of the United States that a policy of extermination and reservations was set up. Remember, the Europeans didnt kill the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Iriquois, Shawnee, etc. It was the United States. Andrew Jackson was the 5th president and there were still Cherokee owning large plots of land before he forced them to march the trail of tears (forced marches are considered genocide by the Genocide Convention).

The English and French had Indian allies. The Spanish never tolerated independent indian nations. The Seven Years was is called the French and Indian war in the United States because the British Colonists were fighting the French and their Indian allies. Hardly an extermination policy.

 

[arcorelli]

Originally posted by ryoken69
. The Spanish did succeed in killing millions of natives in Mexico and Peru through violence over a couple hundred years. Not to mention all those killed by disease.

It is generally agreed that, by far, disease was the more important cause of death between natives.

The spanish were very violent (the use of dogs for example) but as far as I know they were as violent as everyone else, and they certainly were as violent against other spanish than against natives (the civil wars in Peru after the conquest were very nasty business).

BTW, the crown policy on indians was not that bad, but local colonists were known to disobey every regulation that they do not liked. At least in my country, in the time of the independence wars, indians actually fought for the king against colonists.

 

[Damocles]

Originally posted by arcorelli


BTW, the crown policy on indians was not that bad, but local colonists were known to disobey every regulation that they do not liked.

A very true, yet often ignored fact.

Broad colonial policy can not compete with the greed and brutality of individual adventurers trying to make a buck in the New World from the 16th-18th centuries.

Though, the United States and it's manifest destiny to spread from the east coast to the west, is really the only nation who made it an official policy to relocate and exterminate on a grand scale, wherever an Indian tribe could be found. The indians were often allies of the French against the British/Colonials, and later, allies of the British against the colonials...Something the Americans of the 19th century never forgot.

 

[Count Drew]

Yeah, obviously the American Indians weren't cut out to endure our diseases<I am guessing that S.America suited a larger population IMHO why they still have a stronger presence there. They had more time to build immunities and it was harder to complete genocide on them all. It was easier to adapt to the harsher climate following the locals way of life then the more European Soil of Eastern USA> Still are some untouched tribes now in the Amazon. Read this Month's National Geographic. Conquorors go back for eons. This isn't the first nor last case of stone age tribes being pushed off their lands, decimated and dominated by another. It's not over... Still fighting over rights to perserve culture and it just doesn't fit very easily with progress, with the need for more more more

Can anyone imagine if China-Scandanavia had traded with the Indians on full scale centuries before and brought them at least into a basic iron age the difference then?

 

[unmerged(5161)]

Attention: This is not your Captain speaking. This thread has been hijacked! Flight 184 will not be heading to France, but to the Americas to meet up "Mi Pero es Grande", a Mayan terrorist organization. Thank you, and have a nice day.

BEWARE THE HIJACK!

 

[Lucius Sulla]

I rather think you hijacked your own thread, when you offered such a blatant, extreme and prejudiced vision of the history of Spain... Perhaps when you had no more arguments to critizice ingame Spain left? Specially when at the beggining was not referring to what you said, as Damocles posted:

Also, I don't think Lucius was referring to 'black' as in having done bad things, but in the decay of the Spanish Empire from 1714 to 1814. He argued that many British and French historians greatly exaggerated how archaic or impotent the Spanish Empire became in the 18th century. I feel the truth is somewhere in the middle. If only by comparing it to the heights from which the Spanish Empire had fallen from while under Bourbon leadership to the swiftly rising stars of England and France. The Ottoman Empire suffered from the same bad press, even though they were still able to suprise the European powers in the 19th century again and again with how resilient they proved. In both cases, the rot came from within, and that cannot be denied.

And still, as it has been pointed out your interpretation of history as your interpretation of the game is as single-minded as ever.

So, if I'm speaking about the real state compared to possible propaganda about the Spanish decline in the XVIII century (with the aims of translating it to proposed game balance - events - etc...), and you start ranting about how Columbus was worse than Charles Manson and how horribly bad, worse than any other people in the world the Spanish were... hey... don't complain if you have your thread hijacked in that way. That will bring out reactions, and not good ones.

 

[unmerged(5161)]

The Black Legend has as far as I know never been used to describe anything but the loathesome human atrocities of the Spanish colonial policies. Open any internet search engine and search for "Spanish Black Legend" and you will find hundreds of hits all describing the Black Legend as a term for Spanish atrocities in the New World. Denying the Spanish atrocities using The Black Legend is akin to denying the Holocaust. Both are total crap and we have reliable sources to prove the truth.

While English and French historians may claim the Spanish became more weak and impotent than they really did, is up for debate. I certainly lack the credentials to debate how exactly the economic decline of Spain happened over a specific time period.

Meanwhile, being from Spain, you are inherently biased by your nationalist sentiment to justify or deny the evils commited by your country in the past. No country is perfect, every great power commits atrocities sometimes, and the world is not a field of lillies. Still, denying the truth is just a sign of your ignorance of your own country's history.

Spanish history is some of the blackest in Europe. Not only did they brutalize and decimate people in the New World, they brutalized their own people at home. Torquemada was the inventor of the "book burning". The Spanish Inquisition is one of the most horrific acts of evil commited by mankind. Nazi Germany tortured fewer people than the Spanish during the inquisition. I would rather just be gassed to death than tortured until I confessed to being a "heretic" and then drawn-and-quartered.

So I am terribly sorry if you are so ignorant that you dont know what the Black Legend is. I would have responded the same way to someone who denies the Holocaust.

 

[Lucius Sulla]

Where have I denied that the spanish colonial policy was not utterly abusive, rapacious, etc. etc...? Are you deaf? blind? Or you just want to throw shit?

What I am critizicing really is that you seem to put apart the Spanish as some kind of devils directly from hell, comparred to the gentleness of the other collonizing nations. Everyone made abuses, and all of them were wrong by today's moral standard.

And what worries me most, is the way you are completely abusive, insulting and try to degrade other posters, no matter the place or the way. For example, you have only brought up this theme when you have actually ran out of arguments with the rest of the people here.

About IGNORANCE...

... you don't know a fuck about Spanish history. If the Spanish inquisition, about which I have studied extensively, survived so long, it's because it was better organized, better structured and BY FAR, fairer and more legal in it's proceedings than any of the massacres carried on by the very same people of most of the countries, including the infamous witch burns in the USA.

For example, if somebody was accused by the inquisition, he could write (i think it was 15) some names of who would have accused them. If the name of the accuser would appear between them (the paper was called "el pean de descarga"), he was released without charges.

But, of course, being fairer was in the long term for the worse of Spanish society itself. Being better organized and fairer only made it last far longer than any other organization of its kind, and thus, in all, exerted far more damage.

Spanish history is the blackest? Don't make me laugh...

And still I can't help but look at this thread and LAUGH, specially at the announcement that this thread is hijacked... so the only one who can throw OT shit at the others is you? So the only who can call ignorants to other people is you?

By the way, moderators, it is right for somebody to insult other countries RL like this? To insult other posters calling them ignorant like this?

 

[Bobby Shaftoe]

I was to write exactly the same, Lucius. I am reading a book on spanish history, written by Joseph Pérez (ops... he's french), and he says that the Spanish Inquisition was the worst of Europe, but NOT with as much margin as one could think.

For example, the Spanish Inquisition was the one that punished less "witches" (I think one, or maybe two cases in all his history).