You will be amazed when it comes back next week. But seriously, its one of the best kinds of thread in here.

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The basic answer is no. Colonial powers were never thinking about how to get the consent and agreement of the local peoples, unless it was to legitimize a land grab, how to co-rule, etc.

However, a lot of the conversation around colonialism that goes on is cartoonish in the way it portrays colonialism. It wasn't the same process from decade to decade. Over time goals changed as technologies changed and economies changed, or as political theory changed.

Another issue is often what was though as benevolent wasn't. During the 19th century when political theory had changed enough that colonial powers did feel they had responsibilities to the people they colonized, their idea of benevolence was to send in missionaries, to destroy cultures, to separate families, etc. Under the treaty of Tordesillas, the Spanish and Portuguese thought they were being benevolent in bringing Christianity and saving pagan souls, but in reality they brought one of the largest, if not the largest, genocide in world history. The British may or may not have believed their own story about being benevolent by enslaving Africans to Christianize and civilize them, and thereby conducting the other main contender for the world's largest genocide.

Often things the colonial powers for their own benefit had actual benevolent outcomes. The British didn't build railways in India for the sake of Indians, but it turned out to reduce the impact of famines, to help the colony form a national idea, to put thinkers in touch with each other through the mail, and later through telegraphs, to build a national independence movement of a unified India. It was actually the complete opposite of what the British wanted, but achieved a huge benefit to Indian nationalists that they're loathe to admit, even today. Hong Kong is probably the best example of this. There's no question British rule was racist and discriminatory, but it helped Hong Kong build a lot of the institutions that allowed China as a whole to modernize their economy on Mao's death. That was never British intention, but that's what happened.

The other issue is the areas that were colonized may have been seen as homogenous by the colonizers, but they rarely were. Cortez didn't differentiate against the peoples of Mexico, but they sure did. And those differences allowed huge groups of peoples to fight off Mexica control of their lands. They thought it would be a benefit to them to align with Cortez against the Mexica, and it was for a short time. Cortez was a greedy, selfish, liar. He's almost cartoonishly self interested. But, to his indigenous allies he was seen as providing benevolent assistance in overthrowing the hated Mexica, until a combination of political decentralization, pandemic disease, and ruthless and blood thirsty Spanish control left them in just as poor shape as the Mexica.

I think the worst colonies were purely economic in focus.

There have been attempts at starting benevolent societies on the lands of other people, tmk it hasn't worked out. The closest thing I am aware of in American history is Pennsylvania, but even they annoyed ended up cross with the native people despite their efforts. The mindset of colonization is not productive to benevolent relationships.

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I would imagine so, albeit very few. If you converted, then you would be freed from slavery. However, you were watched to ensure that you practiced.

Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad Dracula and his brother Radu were imprisoned with their father Vald Dracul by the Ottoman Sultan, within a year Vlad Dracul was released but he supported the Hungarian King (a Catholic) during the Varna Crusades, Vlad Dracula and Radu were kept as prisoners to secure that Vlad Dracul didn't go too far in his Christian support. Eventually the boys were released Radu stayed and coverted to Islam, and Vlad Dracula went back to Wallachia and stayed an Orthodox Christian who had both Orthodox Christian and Roman Catholic allies.

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People say Frederick II might have converted to Islam, I am not one but it's muddy, but he did know Arabic and the leaders he engaged to hand over Jerusalem without a fight were impressed by his knowledge of both Islam and Arab ways that he gained from his childhood in Sicily. There was some issue when later crusaders arrived in the crusader states that they had "gone native", adopting the clothing and manners of the very hot near east rather than dying of heat stroke in traditional Frankish clothing.

It certainly happened: Robert of St. Albans being one of the more famous examples, when he joined Saladin. Leon Cazelier also famously betrayed a castle, and later converted.

The Templars even ended up with a reputation for converting to Islam, but it was mostly undeserved, since pretty much everyone had their share of traitors.

It was never a common occurrence, of course.

JFK is a good example of this. He was constantly putting his larger plans and hopes at risk for hook ups.

The Logevall biography gets at a specific instance during WWII. JFK was having an affair with a journalist, I think she was Dutch, who had had significant contacts with major Nazis before the war. The FBI was monitoring her. She doesn't seem to actually have been a spy but there were serious concerns at the time. While this was all going on JFK had an important post in naval intelligence and would have been an excellent source.

He was transferred to the PT boats partially b/c he was high profile and some serious backers wanted to highlight the boat and his stature would raise the boats profile, partially b/c it was seen as a good recruitment tool for the Navy to have Joe Kennedy's son serving in the Pacific on these boats, and partially b/c the Navy was sketched out by JFK's inability to keep it in his pants.

Kings have abdicated for love. Whole wars started over infidelity. Presidents and ministers disgraced over affairs.

I can't think of a region or era that doesn't have examples.

Depends how much do you want see "having a relationship" view as get laid. One British monarch abdicated so he could live with women he did love. Franz Ferdinand greatly ruined his position in Austria-Hungary so that he could marry his future wife.

One could say modern sex scandals in politics come to mind, think perhaps of famously Bill Clinton.

You'll find older examples, too. However, often they are more up for debate due to the context. Case in point, the case of the French king Philip I (1060-1108), who was put under Interdict by the pope (multiple times) for taking another (married) woman as his own. Whilst Philip repudiated his former wife, the Reform Papacy retaliated on moral grounds. The whole affair lasted years, and while Philip made it seem as if he broke of his second marriage, he stayed with his new woman. It went so far that the former husband (the Count of Anjou) of his new wife retracted his allegiance to the house of Capet & placed Anjou under the suzerainity of the Papacy... Clerical writers on the side of the Papacy couched this affair in terms of weakness of the flesh.

The reality was, however, more prosaic.

Philip's former wife was eventually barren, and with only one male heir, the king had his dynastic duty to consider and ensure more offspring. The feelings he might have held for his new woman we will never truly know. It is important to consider that in early medieval Europe, marriage as a singular concept was not yet established, and various forms of matching existed. Basically, noble and clerical values clashed as both sides were in the process of establishing social norms that in this regard, conflicted.

So the Pope and his cronies would say it was weakness of the flesh, but king Philip arguably had other things on his mind.

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The name of the nobleman escapes me but there was once a Prince-Bishop who as a Catholic Cleric was committed to Clerical Celibacy but as he was in charge of some small minor German speaking state (this was well before Lutheranism) but when his I believe father died he became the ruler of the Principality and due to heredity and maintaining the power of that position the Pope actually released him from Bishop duites and allowed him to marry so that he could rule his state, marry and produce an heir which he did. Technically he didn't jeopardize his position in so much that fate forced him into the position of being a ruling Prince. If memory serves me he wasn't the original ruling Prince's first son I believe he was the third son which is why he originally chose a career in the Church.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)

The term was coined by the late medieval/early Renaissance scholar and poet, Francesco Petrarca, better known to Anglophones as Petrarch.

He viewed 14th century Italy as a corrupt and ignorant time and place in comparison to his (a bit overly rosy) view of Classical Antiquity. To be fair to him, 14th century Italy was not a particularly fun place to be, as it was wracked with internal political divisions, economic decline, and the threat of foreign invasion and it was about to get even worse when plague hit in the 1340s.

Iirc, it's because of Petrarch, who was frustrated with the lack of written sources from the period. The term was also used by Voltaire for the same reason. It wasn't that dark, at least the people living during it didn't seem to think so. It's important to remember that all of those "invasions" tended to be more incremental, but by putting hard bounds on it, in our minds it comes across as German apocalypse. If you look at the sources, you find that it was even more a case of migration and attempted assimilation, hence why Germans were commanding Roman armies against other Teutonic forces. Not to stir up shit, but you can look at the current migrant issue around the world and see how people describe a rather prosaic event, with headlines like "Invasion" being popular a popular way to frame the scenario, it wasn't that different back then. No, it wasn't some collective trauma that is being referred to by "Dark Ages", just a current lack of sources. Those sources are being discovered and analyzed now and an interesting picture of an ingenious adaptation to circumstance is being developed.

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When the (Western) Roman empire fell apart, it led to a precipitous economic, cultural and scientific decline in Europe. Hence the "Dark Ages". This is also why the end of the medieval period is called the "Renaissance" (rebirth), a "rebirth" of the values etc of Rome.

Later historians have tried to nuance the story of the post-Roman period, but the fact remains that there was a great decline.

Kind of.

The Marine Corps always struggles with how to justify itself as a separate force. The Army does the land fighting and the Navy does the ship fighting and where does that leave the Corps? In other militaries "marines" are just Army soldiers assigned to ships. Plus, you have the issue of it being a component of the Department of the Navy--it's not called the Department of the Navy because the Marines are top dog over there. So, there is a lot of pressure behind the idea of folding the Marines into the Army.

But, the Marines have always found a mission that they will excel at and that requires a different force composition, or mindset, or just particular brand of crazy than the Army--amphibious assault, guarding nuclear weapons on a carrier, or the first reaction force into a conflict zone. They also have done a very good job at building a very strong esprit. You can say that it makes sense from a bureaucratic perspective to do away with the Corps, but from a "winning wars" perspective they keep serving vital functions, so it's not likely they'll ever be disbanded.

You might be thinking of the time - When the Revolution ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the Marines, like the Navy, were disbanded. It wasn't until 15 years later, on July 11, 1798, that President John Adams signed into law a congressional act which created—or re-created, depending how you're counting—the United States Marine Corps. But if I remember correctly, so too the Army was disbanded, because there was no central miliary under the Articles of Confederation and only local states militias were supposed to make up the military forces until we got the Constitution in 1789 - BTW The USMC is not part of the Army, It has always been part of the US Navy - It is a Military Armed Naval force that fights on Navy Vessals (to repel enemy boarding parties) and is also used for naval invasions to occupy ports or strastigic landings for later (to arrive and occupy) other US armed forces. The most famous of this type of thing was the battle of Derma Tripoli 1805 when 8 US marines with 400-500 Arab-Greek mercenaries over threw the Tripoli Barbary Pirates. Other famous Marine events are, Halls of Montazuma (refers to the Battle of Chapultepec, during the Mexican-American War, where a force of Marines stormed Chapultepec Castle) and Iwo Jima (1945).

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No. The Marine Corps is still a major service organized with the Navy. They have about 180,000 active service.

Since the formation of this nation the United States Marine Corps has had a few people throughout the history of the United States who have tried to either disband them completely or roll them and their mission into the Army. George Washington didn't want any standing fighting force after the Revolution and we can debate as to why, personally I think he saw a standing military as a threat that potentially could overthrow him. To that end he did disband the Navy, sent sailors home, transferred the officers and ships to the Army. Then he was trying to disband the Army when he was convinced that shrinking it and keeping its mission limited was a better idea which he agreed and did and also tried to disband the Marines. The Marines saved themselves by becoming the military force specifically tasked with protecting the Nation's Capital in so much that they also had to police the streets and assist fire brigades if a fire broke out, all in the name of protecting the Capital.

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Mohammed or Jesus, depending on what level of historicity do you put on Jesus name.

Caesar Augustus, aka Octavian. The first Roman Emperor.

Muhammad. Marx may be a close second, if he hasn't already overtaken first.

As a non-religious example, Columbus: while someone else would have done the same eventually, it was his accidental discovery of gold in the "New World" that dramatically changed the nature of Spain's interest. In general, a slower exploration of America would be likely, shifting the fortunes of Spain at a minimum, which would in turn massively shift events in the early modern world.

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Onion hat = Suleiman the Magnificent in my mind. Hope it’s what you’re looking for!

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Regular hessian mercenaries wore blue uniform coats, Jaeger rifle units wore green coats.

In the American Revolution, the British also hired mercenaries from Brunswick and other German states. Some other uniform differences could have come that way too.

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They don't cover the same era really. The Creation of the American Republic is pre Constitution and Empire of Liberty is post Constitution.

That's a big shift. The first book focuses on the problems of fighting the Revolutionary War and the development of a national government, and that failure. It deals with the rural uprisings, the depression, paper money issues, and ratification.

The second book deals with the development of the federal government and the associated institutions, the Barbary Wars, and the War of 1812.

Personally, I'd recommend Pauline Maier's books over Wood's, but that's my opinion.

I haven't read them, but I was curious if it was an academic vs casual deal as that's fairly common and you can usually tell with the publishers.

However, just looking them up quickly to check that I see one is subtitled "1776-1787" and the other "1789-1815" so while close in area, one seems to be a continuation of the other chronologically.

An American Historian might have to fact check me here, but 1776 to 87 would cover the American Revolution and the Articles of Confederation (the first US Constitution) up until around the Constitutional Convention in 1787 which set to revise the Articles (but in reality started writing the new Constitution) while the second book would begin in 1789 when the US Constitution (the one presently used) was put in effect up until the end of the war of 1812, a period which saw a lot of early ideas of US Government get tested and altered with experience -- such as the creation of a standing military. So both, in my mind, would show the reasons for how both constitutions were created, and how they evolved and discussions around them continued in each one's early years.

So unless those subtitles are very misleading, I imagine that's what Wood is doing there.

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The Ottoman empire's embassies were first established in the 1830s.

You might want to have a look at the dispute about the border between Germany and the Netherlands in the Ems Dollart estuary. Basically Germany claims the whole river and estuary, the Netherlands claim the border is in the middle of the river. This goes back to a dispute about a deed of enfeoffment granting the whole river and estaury to East Frysia. At the time this was a dispute inside the Holy Roman Emperor and the main dispute is about the deed being backdated and forged. That border later became an international border when the Netherlands became independent, but the dispiute remained the same. There are various treaties regulating who can do what where, whose police is responsible where etc., with an emphasis on friendship and cooperation, but always with the caveat that nothing in those treaties can be constructed as either side giving up their claims...

If you are into 84 page treatises about bizarre border disputes, I'd recommend The Ems-Dollart Predicament

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Well problem is that its very complicated. Slovakia used to be part of Great Moravia and then it was conquered by Hungarians and was part of Hungary for more than 1000 years before it became part of independent Czechoslovakia. I would recommend to read through Slovakian National Revival, where true Slovakian national identity was born.

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Imperialism doesn't always require the actual taking or claiming of land. US Imperialism can include things like McDonalds and Starbucks on every street (cultural imperialism). It can include things like bringing a region of countries under your political control so they'll be more likely to support your wider positions in things like the UN (think the Cold War and the First and Second World countries). Throwing your weight around to expand your own personal power in the global world falls under this.

Of course this can absolutely be achieved directly through expansionism, colonialism, invasion, coups, etc. So there are wavelengths where these things do match up in some sort of evil Venn Diagram, but there are still distinct factors which can separate the concepts to keep them from being one-to-one synonyms.

If I were to put it as briefly as possible: Expansionism is the means, Imperialism is the effect that is had on the affected people, the culture, etc. and the benefits given to the driving-power after the fact.

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The easiest way would be to view imperialism as an ideology, or policy of a country, and expansionism as more vague, but with the simple goal of increasing one's territory, however that may be.

Imperialism is viewed by most historians in this field as both a verb, the actions or forces of imperialism, and a noun, the Imperial state or project. In this understanding you have more nuance and can then see that many subjects of imperialism actually end up assisting in the Imperial Project or are affected by it in unseen ways in the verb sense. While in the noun sense an Imperial state or project has the metropole or the center, that is the imperialist, and the periphery, the colonies, or outer sphere of influence the metropole exercises hegemony over.

An example. India was an Imperial project of GB. As a project, GB is the metropole and India its periphery, the purpose being the exploitation of cash crops, and with the advent of globalism a cheap labor force for goods to send back to the center. Imperialism in action was done via trade companies asserting influence that were then nationalized by the British government. The agents of imperialism being in many cases sepoys of India itself to maintain control. The very population being exploited was part of that exploitation process. This was due to imperialism in action having many unforseen affects on Indian culture, mainly the regimented caste system the British used to organize Indian society benefiting the Indians on top who then had a vested interest in propelling the Imperial project forward.

In this case the British hardly expanded their natural territorial boundaries, but did so in a grand Imperial sense by having a massive area firmly under their exclusive sphere of influence.

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"Is it possible?" Sure, why not. But possible doesn't mean likely.

There's absolutely no way for a historian to answer what if questions. I've seen it best explained through an example of going to the grocery store.

Say you need groceries, you realise this at 7 o clock at night after getting home from a long day at work. You've got enough to last you til tomorrow, but not ideally. You could go to the store tonight, or you could wait until tomorrow. It's a scenario every adult has experienced.

So what happens if you go tonight, versus going tomorrow? In 99.9999% of the scenarios there's absolutely no difference maybe other than a bit of annoyance. But, for those small chances there are people that go out and get in a life changing car accident, or get food poisoning from stock that would have been replaced overnight, or run into an ex, or meet the person of their dreams in the queue, or a million different highly unlikely but entirely possible scenarios.

If you play that game for just ONE person it's highly unlikely that anything will change. But if you play that game with an entire population for hundreds of years, you're going to hit a lot of crazy odds.

So when we play the game of "what would happen if this entire group of people and this entire group of people combined with this entire group of people matched up differently..." we get into an absolutely unimaginable amount of scenarios and probabilities. Expand that over many generations and it's even more so. What if one of those people who would have been a great leader never existed because their parent died, etc. etc.

It may be fun to imagine, but there's no academic way of answering it. There is /r/HistoryWhatIf where they have a bit more fun with this, but again, take every answer with a dumptruck of salt.

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Many of the natives tried to build exactly the kind of alliance you're talking about, but practically, such a cause was always doomed: steel tools and gunpowder were simply too powerful as force multipliers to ignore, and weaker tribes saw no practical diffrence in being evicted from their land by a rival tribe instead of the Europeans.

And once a tribe takes to using gunpowder weapons and steel, it's stuck: killing all the Europeans is the same as signing one's own death warrant, because the skills needed to be independent are lost. Even if they accept that, all that changes is that the French take over instead.

How's your Italian?

Historians don't pick "good guys" or "bad guys" in fact, we're trained to purposefully avoid doing that.

And we have a lot of evidence from the German side of WWII, you can buy Mein Kampf in many bookstores (some country's don't allow it, but it's easy enough to find if you do). Our archives are also full of Nazi Germany plans, journals, manuscripts, etc. We really couldn't ask for more when it comes to WWII.

As for how to do we identify propaganda? Well, that's a huge part of what historians do. We don't just look at a source and say "well it says here that.." we need to take what the source is arguing, and investigate it. We need to compare it with other works, we need to compare it with other sciences and approaches. We can then analyse the data and produce an argument with that evidence. It's a process, but it's why there's so much training and credentials that historians need to acquire and why there's systems in place to make sure historians have followed the proper steps and didn't get caught up or tricked.

They teach about the rise of then NAZI party and the holocaust in German schools. It is mandatory. They were not the victors yet they have determined never to let such things happen again.

Because history isn't written by only the winners (see also the bot reply, it is quite informative). Have you never heard of for example Lost Causers or Wehraboos?

And who says we never see war 'from the other side'? Plenty of ego-documents left by people from all sides in historical events like for example, WW II. If you haven't seen it, it is not because it does not exist, it is because you haven't read it.

And as others have said, the study of history requires one to be very circumspect, and this is the focus of aby historian in training.

Hi!

It seems like you are talking about the popular but ultimately flawed and false "winners write history" trope!

While the expression is sometimes true in one sense (we'll get to that in a bit), it is rarely if ever an absolute truth, and particularly not in the way that the concept has found itself commonly expressed in popular history discourse. When discussing history, and why some events have found their way into the history books when others have not, simply dismissing those events as the imposed narrative of 'victors' actually harms our ability to understand history.

You could say that is in fact a somewhat "lazy" way to introduce the concept of bias which this is ultimately about. Because whoever writes history is the one introducing their biases to history.

A somewhat better, but absolutely not perfect, approach that works better than 'winners writing history' is to say 'writers write history'.

This is more useful than it initially seems. Until fairly recently the literate were a minority, and those with enough literary training to actually write historical narratives formed an even smaller and more distinct class within that.

To give a few examples, Genghis Khan must surely go down as one of the great victors in all history, but he is generally viewed quite unfavorably in practically all sources, because his conquests tended to harm the literary classes.
Similarly the Norsemen historically have been portrayed as uncivilized barbarians as the people that wrote about them were the "losers" whose monasteries got burned down.

Of course, writers are a diverse set, and so this is far from a magical solution to solving the problems of bias. The painful truth is, each source simply needs to be evaluated on its own merits.
This evaluation is something that is done by historians and part of what makes history and why insights about historical events can shift over time.

This is possibly best exemplified by those examples where victors did unambiguously write the historical sources.

The Spanish absolutely wrote the history of the conquest of Central America from 1532, and the reports and diaries of various conquistadores and priests are still important primary documents for researchers of the period.

But 'victors write the history' presupposes that we still use those histories as they intended, which is simply not the case. It both overlooks the fundamental nature of modern historical methodology, and ignores the fact that, while victors have often proven to be predominant voices, they have rarely proven to be the only voices.

Archaeology, numismatics, works in translation, and other records all allow us at least some insight into the 'losers' viewpoint, as does careful analysis of the 'winner's' records.
We know far more about Rome than we do about Phoenician Carthage. There is still vital research into Carthage, as its being a daily topic of conversation on this subreddit testifies to.

So while it's true that the balance between the voices can be disparate that doesn't mean that the winners are the only voice or even the most interesting.
Which is why stating that history is 'written by the victors' and leaving it at that is harmful to the understanding of history and the process of studying history.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Is that why all the books on the Vietnam War are written in Vietnamese?

You could spend five minutes searching the internet and find out this isn't true. So. Why not give that a try?

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