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I can imagine it's harder to have a national identity when your nation is based on forced removal of indigenous people and their persecution (not to mention all the slavery), because my normal line is usually "everywhere has the same amount of history", but if the US doesn't see the history of the American Indians as theirs, or at least as something to honour and commemorate, then I can see perhaps that that might cause a mental malaise.
This is such a comically ignorant view. Most countries in the world have a similar history as the US. It's like you dingleberries think the US is the only country in history with slavery or conquest. This view shows that you have a myopic view of history.
Every single country in the New World is a product of European colonization, slavery, and erasure of Indigenous people. This is true from Canada all the down to Chile. In fact, this is actually more true in other countries because the US was a small part of the Atlantic slave trade and the Spanish and Portuguese empires made killing natives their favorite past time.
It's not just the new world, but this also applies to the old world. Countries like Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Australia, New Zealand, and the list goes on and on were had similar histories.
The reality is that this just how nation building is. Nations don't spring up out nowhere and magically gain land and sovereignty. Nations are built through conquest, hardships, exclusive sense of pride, and cultural homogeneity over time.
It makes you wonder if peaceful societies can ever exist without threat. It's almost like the most greedy and psychopathic people always endure. That's why the liberals in the US and Europe will not win against the violent right wingers. The indigenous folks in the US have a word for the white greed sickness. I think they call it watika.
The answer is no. That's why militaries exist. Peaceful countries cannot exist without them having a strong military or a strong power with a strong military backing them. We live in a reality where people have infinite desires and needs but the world only has a finite amount of resources. There will always be competition for power because of it.
Most countries in South and Central America have a less exclusionary relation with their indigenous people, and having a rebellion against their ruling classes with indigenous participation rather than switching one set of white rich property holders for another.
Part of that due to the Spanish settlers marrying and having kids with indigenous peoples, and the metizos being a large part of the population, rather than US focused pure European ancestry without one drop of black/native blood. Meaning the US has a lack of tie to pre-settler culture and history that these nations don't to the same degree.
I do agree that Canada has an issue with it too, as does Australia. New Zealand has been working to integrate Maori culture over the last decade or so and made big strides to integration.
The old world cases are also more complicated, you could say South Africa but that history of oppression and apartheid and recognised and have been integrated somewhat to self identity, though obviously a long way to go and the ANC being corrupt and infighty hasn't help one jot. Maybe the party will collapse and South Africa can finally start to move in the right direction?
Russia has had a long history of culture as well as imperial expansion. Yes, the people of Siberia and Central Asia have suffered a lot, but there's a Russian identity that goes back over 1000 years anchored to (albiet mostly western Russia places and events).
For Türkiye, Morroco, Azerbaijan, Zimbabwe, Zambia, I'm gonna need your notes to begin to comprehend what your point is with them - probably due to my own ignorance on their history. (Except Türkiye, I just think you're wrong there, but intrigued to see your logic.)
I'm Portuguese and I get the impression that the way the Portuguese were different from most European colonialist powers is that the Portuguese would fuck (in a literal sense) just about anybody, which is a huge contrast with for example the English that tended to not mix with the natives.
Brasil, the only place outside Africa which was a Portuguese "colony", is a wonderful example of racial mixing (though it has its issues).
Not saying that Portuguese colonialism was good (it was not even close to positive), just that it serms to have had this unusual higher tendency for people to mix across races, not because it was done with good intentions but it just happened to there being something in Portuguese culture (damned if I know what) that led to that.
Thank you for the insight.
Do you know if there was much space for the offspring of Portuguese settlers and native peoples?
I've heard it said that there was more space for the equivalent in Spanish than say English or French colonies, where the mixed race children generally seem to have been sidelined or else society pretending they didn't exist (as a concept as much as an individual).
As far as I know, in the countries were Portugal set colonies up, mixed race kids were just Portuguese on account of having a Portuguese parent.
When the Revolution in Portugal happened in 1974, Fascism was brought down and most of the "colonized" countries became free (Brasil had been independent for over a century by then, so it was only nations in Africa) and any Portuguese national who wanted it was repatriated, quite independently of skin color, and many were mixed race hence why I think a large proportion of the mixed race offspring just got Portuguese nationality on account of having a Portuguese parent and was in a normal Portuguese family.
That said, I vaguelly remember that during the Fascist Dictatorship the authorities didn't want mixed race people in Portugal, but after the Revolution nobody really cared.
I guess that during Fascism the Portuguese authorities were fine with people having mixed race kids as long as the whole thing happened in the "colonies" and stayed there.
Certainly the stories I've heard from that time don't really include in the "colonies" the level of segregation I've heard about with for example the English in places like India, though in the "Homeland" it was different.
Not to say Portugal was or is some kind of Racism-free paradise. It's probably culturally just a bit less elitist and relaxed about "enforcing rules" on people than many other European nations who had their own "colonization" projects.
And then of course there is the example of Brasil were there are all skin tones possible, so clearly for many generations a large percentage of people haven't really cared about keeping races segregated since originally there were only white Portuguese, black African slaves and the natives, with the latter actually being the smaller fraction of the population. I see it as an indication that the dominant original culture (the Portuguese one of the XVI and XVII century), didn't care much about stopping people from having sex across races.
Turkey traces it's modern identity to the late Ottoman Empire. The Turks aren't native to the region, they're originally from central Asia. Before the formation of the empire in the 15th century by about 400 years, the Turks came into the area uninvited and started colonized Anatolia. They formed little principalities and implemented islam as their law, and the locals, who were mostly Christian at the time, weren't too happy about it.
You see, islam is a very brutal ideology. It instructs it's followers to conquer all non muslims, force them to either convert or live as oppressed second class citizens under islam, and if they resist massacre them. In case of the latter, islam instructs that the men be beheaded, the women and girls taken as sex slaves, their property looted and distributed to muslims soldiers as spoils of war, and to destroy their culture entirely. It was so bad that Christians actually organized multiple crusades against them. The point of me telling you this, is that these were the predecessors to the Ottoman Empire, and when the Empire formed to unite the Turks, they used the same methods to rule and conquer.
Everywhere the Ottoman Empire went, they committed atrocities. From the fall of Constantinople to the end of the empire around WWI, they committed massacres, ethnic cleansing, genocides, cultural erasure, wide scale slavery, and oppression. It was so bad that virtually all of the countries surrounding modern day Turkey have their identities formed from how they survived the Ottoman onslaught.
While the Turks slowly expanded over time in Anatolia and they ruled areas far beyond it, they mostly inhabited central Anatolia. The areas around the Black sea and Mediterranean sea were mostly Greek, the areas to west in and around the Armenian highlands were inhabited by Armenians, the areas around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were Assyrian, and the areas to the south east were Kurdish, who were a part of Persia at the time. That means Anatolia was a very diverse places compared to today. So what happened?
Well, before WWI, the Ottoman Empire knew it was on it's last legs, and all the oppressed minorities in the empire wanted freedom and independence so they started making deals with foreign powers and started separatist movements. The Ottoman Empire's response was to straight up genocide them all. Between 1910 and 1925, the Ottoman empire started the Armenian genocide, the Greek genocide, and the Assyrian genocide. These were some of the worst atrocities in human history. They are so bad that they literally inspired Hitler. The Armenian genocide in particular was so bad that it was one of the two events that inspired Raphael Lemkin to coin the word "genocide" (the Holocaust was the other).
Notice, how I said the Ottoman empire "started" the genocides instead of just "committed"? This is because while these genocides were happening, the empire collapsed and was replaced a Turkish nationalist movement called The Young Turks. This movement was secular, liberal, democratic, and very genocidal because they continued the genocides with a passion. The reason for this was that the same people who ruled in the Ottoman Empire migrated over to The Young Turks.
The end results? The Greeks were genocided and ethnically cleansed out of Thrace and western Anatolia. The Armenians were genocided and ethnically cleansed out of eastern Anatolia, the Assyrians were genocided and ethnically cleansed out of southern Anatolia, and as a bonus, Turkey started oppressing and genociding the Kurds. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were killed in things like the Dersim and Zilan massacres. Not only that, but they also tried, and are still trying to culturally erase the Kurds.
Did you know it was illegal for Kurds to speak Kurdish, wear Kurdish clothes, have Kurdish names, or express Kurdish folklore until the 1980s? It was even illegal for them to call themselves Kurds, Turkey forced the name "mountain Turks" upon them. Even to this day, Kurdish is still illegal to be taught in schools and universities, it is still illegal to be spoken or used in the Turkish government, Kurdish celebrations and holidays are still banned, Kurdish political parties are still firmly banned. You think things got better since the 80s? Think again, because Turkey from the 90s to the current day has destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages, displaced millions of Kurds, imposed "food embargoes" (read: engineered famines) on Kurdish areas, and they're going out of their way to occupy, destabilize, and destroy the Kurds in Iraq, Iran, and Syria to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state.
But we're not done yet, because there's another remnant of the Ottoman Empire that's relevant today. During Ottoman times, the island of Cyprus was occupied, colonized, and ruled by the Turks. When the Ottoman empire fell, the island was occupied by the British. The British decided to grand the island its independence, and along with Greece and Turkey, they signed an agreement saying that all 3 countries will be protectors of Cyprus that will help preserve it's sovereignty and territorial integrity. The reason why Greece was included was because most of the island's population was Greek and the island was Greek for most of history.
Regardless, during the 1970s, there was a fascist takeover that sought to get rid of Turkish influence on the island. As a response, Turkey invoked the agreement that they singed before and got rid of the fascists... but they never left. Instead, they illegal created a puppet state, that nobody but Turkey recognizes, that occupies around 40% of the island in clear violation of the treaty. The Turkish speaking Cypriots were against this and wanted reunification, and so Turkey decides to send Turks from Turkey to colonize the island. They've been increasing in numbers over the years, and now Turkey has basically annexed a part of another country.
We're still not done because Turkey isn't done with the Armenians because they officially deny the genocide, and they're still actively seeking to destroy Armenia as a country. They're THE biggest backer of the Azerbaijani dictator and his quest to complete the Armenian genocide. Ilham Aliyev has invaded Armenia multiple times, literally built racist anti-Armenian parks for children in the country, and has very recently ethnically cleansed 100k Armenians out of their lands. Azerbaijan, like Turkey, also denies the Armenian genocide but they are also proud of it.
People nowadays love complaining about Israel or China or whatever, but Turkey is far worse than all of them but nobody seems to care, but I digress. Why am I telling you all of this? It's because what I just told you IS the Turkish identity. All these atrocities that I told you? That's the core part of the Turkish identity. Turks are very proud of the conquests that the Ottoman Empire did and a big portion of the population want to see it restored. They are proud of the occupations, they are proud of the oppression, and they are VERY proud of the genocides they committed. If you talk to a Turk about the Armenian genocide or any other genocide they'll either flip out and either victim blame about those people brought genocide upon themselves or they'll just straight up say they're glad it happened.
This is obviously an oversimplification of Turkish history, but this is how Turkey came to be. The bloody and dark history is a part of the Turkish identity, and it is how the country came to be. It's still on going, and Turks are proud of it. But its not just them, this is how a lot of countries came to be and they all have similar nationalist mentalities. Atrocities just happen to be a big part of nation building.
Bearing in mind:
So you stating a long lasting Turkish cultural heritage going back to pre-Ottoman times does actually make my point for me. Even if I do want to slightly brighten that Ottoman culture:
As we both agree, imperial expansion and nation building tends to be built on a foundation of blood and bones, and generally involves at least a bit of light genocide. The establishment of the Ottoman Empire, did those same killings and warring that has seen nations rise and carve out territory across history.
However the Ottomans, as well as their Turkic antesscents, Seljuk and Orguz, were less bloodthirsty and murderous than your large post mostly about the atrocities committed at the end of the First World War as the Ottoman Empire fell. The area that they governed was, and despite the massacres and ethnic cleansing attempts of the 19th through 21st centuries remains, an area of huge religious and ethnic diversity.
Zoroastrians, Jews, a multitude of Christian (and indeed Islamic) denominations cover the region. And in fact, outside of the bloody establishment (as you tell us all nations are) and collapse of the Ottoman Empire for centuries it was a land of religious and ethnic tolerance, and many Jews and Dissenting Christians would flee to it for sanctuary from central Europe. Even the modern target if Turkish hate, the Kurds, had autonomy and self governance within the Ottoman Empire into the 19th century.
It is a shame that that part of Ottoman culture, respect, tolerance, and multiculturalism, has slipped away from modern Türkish culture and identity; as nationalism, alas, not a uniquely Türkish problem, has risen to take its place. The interplay of nationalism, nation building-butressing, and racism, is intriguing and perhaps has a lot of interesting and useful ideas to be explored to help solve modern problems around the world.
This highly depends on the country. The Spanish Empire had an entire racial caste system that put races into a hierarchy of superiority. Just because it didn't work the same way as the American system, that doesn't mean it wasn't there. Latin America has a lot of racism going on and it isn't talked about enough. But that's besides the point, we're not talking about the cultural continuity or racial purity of new world countries, but rather how they came to be. All these countries exist as a result of colonialism, slavery, and genocide. They were all formed by the same 3-4 European empires during the same time.
You misunderstand Russian history. The modern Russian identity doesn't extend back 1000 years. The Kievan Rus isn't the start of the modern Russian identity, it's the start of the Eastern Slavic identity as a whole. Ukraine and Belarus also trace their roots back to the Kievan Rus. The modern Russian identity started with the formation of the Grand Duchy of Moscow in the 13th century, which on to occupy the northern half of what we today consider to be the Russian heartland.
Russia didn't began it's expansion until became the Russian Tsardom in the 16th century, which is interestingly around the same time as the age of exploration kicked off in Western Europe. From the 1500s to the 1700s, Russia expanded to it's borders to more or less match the current borders of the Russian federation. The places it conquered weren't Russian. Russia enacted campaigns of Russification where they would suppress, ban, and marginalize the native cultures and impose the Russian language, laws, version of Christianity, and customs on the people they conquered. They would then put Russians in charge of administration and have them oversee a settler colonialism campaign to shift the demographics to make it majority Russian. If a group is too big or too resistant they would genocide them through "deportations". This method was inherited by the next iterations of the Russian state such as the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and now the Russian Federation.
Russia has done conquered, massacred, genocided, deported, and oppressed the following groups of people since the creation of the Russian Tsardom:
Do you even begin to comprehend how comically long this list is? The absurd thing is that this isn't even the full list. You don't even hear about most of these people because Russia has mostly wiped them out or is still trying to. Also these atrocities didn't take place 1000 years ago, most of them happened within the past 200 years.
Countries like Zambia and Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) had a very similar history to South Africa. They were all colonized by the British and had other European settlers in them who implemented a system of apartheid, displaced the natives, and implemented a certain degree of slavery. These eras ended similarly in all these countries, and they're even suffering from similar problems today.
Morocco is an interesting example. You see Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia were not originally Arab, they were Berber/Amazigh. These people had their own language, religion, culture, and everything. The Arabs came in, started massacring them, enslaving them, erasing their culture, pushing them off their lands, and forcing islam and Arabic on to them. This process started long ago, but it is still on going to this day. These people are still persecuted. When the French came in to colonize the region, these people ended up being double colonized. The modern Arab states in the Maghreb region are built on the oppression, enslavement, colonization, and genocide of these people.
This deserves it's own comment, so I'll write my explanation there.
I'll get to Türkiye soon, that's a lot to respond to. But I'll start here:
I think this is the biggest issue, we've been talking at cross purposes. The point this dingbat has been trying to make the whole time has been the cultural continuity. The US doesn't have it because it put the break with Britain and monarchy, and the denigration of American Indian culture at its core.
I kept talking about Central and South American nations to highlight the difference. Maybe I could've been cleared, but go back and reread my posts with that in mind.
That I mean cultural continuity and heritage is also why I'd trace Russia back to Kievan Rus and the shared Slavic origins. Yes, all the genocide and imperialism against all the other people are bad, and also a part of Russian national heritage at this point. It's also very grim and beyond the scope of this conversation, so I'll acknowledge it, agree it is and continues to be an atrocity.
And In fact, that the disagreement comes from my failing to clearly articulate that I meant cultural continuity and heritage. Not modern carving out of the land that makes up modern borders.
You've seemed to have left out the part about the plagues brought by the Spanish that wiped out entire civilizations in South America before any Europeans had any chance to even come in contact with them.
Let's not sugar coat the fact that the origins of Latino culture is no better than what happened to the natives of North America. The Spanish are well known to have completely destroyed indigenous cultures and their history in the name of Christianity.
Origins, sure.
Colombus was such a racist dick he was recalled by the King of Spain for poor treatment of indigenous people.
But I also mentioned the integration and how there is less of a divide. Obviously still a divide when you look at racism, discrimination, the likelyhood of indigenous people to have joined a guerilla movement such as FARC or the Zapatista.
But that's more than the US generally gives, and it was starting to change... But Trump terms 1 and 2 have certainly put up roadblocks.
The way that indigenous identity and partisan politics in South America also doesn't help and may well be putting their causes back as the right and left continue to coalesce about USAian talking points.
And yes, the destruction and loss of central American cultures due to the Spanish conquest and destruction is terrible, as is the loss of any culture and it's artefacts and legacy.