Election 2020
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
well, that's definitely not a practice I would encourage outside of existential or financial (such as to be existential) exigency
or really anything to do with what I'm talking about - I'm not saying anyone should tolerate terrible things
I'm saying you can't condemn everyone as equally morally bereft because of terrible things that have happened
sus
Moderator
The "internal sickness" of America is largely the result of 1) the South's British-derived culture, and 2) the economic dependence of the South on slavery. The legacy of slavery is horrific but still short of e.g. what Belgium carried out in Africa, or Japan carried out in China, etc during similar time periods.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
ask her about Devshirme, i.e. the forcible recruiting of Christian children as slave soldiers
or the widespread practice of sexual slavery in harems
or etc
nilprenia
Well-known member
Well that's the sort of thing I'm talking about. People in this country just believe in nonsense ideas. You get shamed for being normal and caring about other people
sus
Moderator
Yeah but in general religious persecution among Arab empires is much less than Christian empires, yeah? That at least is the narrative I regularly encountered from profs in college, granted it was a very post-colonial campus, there was a lot of "correcting" previous narratives of American exceptionalism, a lot of ah downplaying the violence of non-American or non-white empires.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
sure (tho Japan in China was the next century - 19th was still the British, Opium Wars etc - but whatever, larger point still holds)
as I said these other places didn't have that internal sickness because they outsourced it
tho Russian serfdom is kind of comparable
sus
Moderator
Important to remember that empire-building often looks like empires eating other empires, and the victims ("losers") of one conflict are the oppressors ("winners") of another. Not much grace, and having the technological capacity to conquer gets you further in historical explanation than something like "moral depravity" does.
nilprenia
Well-known member
I think it's more complicated than that. A lot of it originates in the Northeast. Massachusetts is insane
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
Muslim empires were relatively more benign in their treatment of other People of the Book, that's true
that's not to say they treated subject Jews and Christians well, just not as badly as Christian Europe tended to treat Jews
I think it's a reach to say that Muslim empires were overall more "morally upright", given for example their general reliance on chattel slavery
tbh you need more expertise in the area than I have to make that kind of sweeping judgment
but it also seems like the kind of judgement that a relatively neutral historian would be suspicious of
nilprenia
Well-known member
Well I think you could group in Connecticut as well but that area of the country is a haven for the 1% and white collar crime. Lot of old-fashioned racism there as well
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
he's talking about why the North and South developed the respective ways that they did
the point isn't that the North was, to go back to the term, morally upright
slavery wasn't outlawed in the most of the North til the 1780s and 90s
and even after that plenty of Northern merchants etc profited on the Triangular Atlantic slave trade
there's a song in 1776 devoted to that very thing!
sus
Moderator
North US abolished slavery half a century before Britain, not that it's a competition, but putting into perspective. Sometimes I meet Brits who think the US was lagging way behind and morally regressive on the issue. They weren't. Slavery was dying out in the States in the early 19th C, and without the cotton gin may well have been abolished across the colonies at a similar point in time—not that such centralized, federal measures were very common antebellum.