Quote:
Originally Posted by Swish
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Add in that the Ottoman Empire took white Christian slaves (Slavic ones) from around modern day Serbia/Bosnia/Croatia who served as janissaries.
Barbary pirates enslaving Europeans before all of what's been mentioned.
The history of slavery is quite complex and of course, still exists in parts of the world. Nobody is jumping up and down trying to end that though, right? I'd expect African Americans to be all over trying to free child labor slaves, or the Chinese on cheap wages who make iPhones for the west.
Easier to blame whitey though, while buying 10 pairs of slave created sneakers (yes I know I'm generalizing)
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History is a complicated topic and we are discovering new things or coming up with different opinions all the time. A lot of times their isn't a coherent agenda in historical translation -- its just what happens to be popular when History Majors went to school.
Currently -- there is a lot coming out about the Crusades. This myth that their was 1 big battle between Muslims and Christians in the Levant. Often portraying the Crusaders as aberrations of Christianity rather than realistic representatives for their age. Muslims by contrast are viewed as at their peak during this era -- ideal representatives of what the religion
could be today.
The truth is...the Crusades were mostly about Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Barbarians. There were hundreds of different "crusades" during this era, we just hear about the
Kingdom of Heaven scene basically. The Muslims kind of kicked our ass over Jerusalem, and were totally not hung up with the Crusades until a bunch of Historical revisionism to fan the flames of colonial resentment came along.
The entire violent terrorist wing of Islam started with colonialism. They told their conservatives this story about how we are continuing the crusades to this day -- and thanks to the conduct of Israel -- a lot of people buy that shit.
One thing that Professors are finally starting to admit from what I've seen (I was sitting in a class the other day for Politics of the War on Terror) -- is that colonialism isn't any worse than just letting a country figure it out for themselves. We paid our price for modernization in blood. Everyone must -- except colonial peoples can fast forward time by basically "working for" the modern countries. Not that we deserve a medal for it -- we do it because we get net gains from the trade.
There is a argument to made that neo-colonialism is a lot worse than good ol' fashion "we run shit here now brownie" colonialism. Because the latter actually takes more responsibility for the country the the former. Modern colonialism generally consists of giving the right guys military intelligence and weapons to ensure we get a good price on rubber or diamonds or whatever. It was better for the natives when we set up shop and opened schools -- despite all the racism and abuse.
Not saying we need more colonialism...just saying I think neo-colonialism actually is worse and we are doing that atm.