One important element to remember is that white cultures often were built at least in the colonies like North and South America on the backs of black and brown people forced into slavery. Not to mention when Cortez conquered Mexico millions of natives died from illnesses brought over by the Spanish rather than dying purely by more advanced tech. There are a lot of factors involved with which culture is dominant, the success of a culture can depend on anything from geography, access to and control of resources, cultural diffusion,resistance to disease, worldview, religion, and numerous other factors not related to the color of your skin or the shape of your face.
White People are... Better?
- Thread starter Clearing the Eye
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I'm not saying that what they said wasn't awful or cruel, that wasn't ever my point. It WAS incredibly cruel and no doubt left many countries crippled by their actions (Just looked up the conditions, it looks pretty bad, but it's not showing anything I didn't already know was the case. It is unsettling how they look like they're being treated as animals rather than people though)TheIronRuler said:
I actually stumbled upon this while looking at slavery a couple minutes ago.
One part mentions that "Despite more than a dozen international conventions banning slavery in the past 150 years, there are more slaves today than at any point in human history"
Not entirely relevant, but I just felt like it was something interesting to mention
.The Almighty Aardvark said:
It's more about the sex industry than labor. There are regulations, but these countries have massive land borders and then can't patrol all of them.
Us Europeans were simply lucky that China wasn't interested in colonization, otherwise they would've colonized the shit outta this place. Then again, they're kinda doing that now anyway by buying up everything.
I think the whole white man's position in the world is simply a case of 'we got to them (non-whites) first'.
I think the whole white man's position in the world is simply a case of 'we got to them (non-whites) first'.
This is a very ignorant view of history. Many technologies that made it to Europe CAME from Asia Minor, Egypt, etc. In fact for many years while Europe dwindled other regions flourished and still were improving on technologies that spawned in the Roman Empire and Byzantium. The OP also ignores the Turks who went and conquered most of Spain for quite a while. The history is much more compicated then "white people developed faster and conquered everything", which isn't really true anyways.
I was starting to plunge into a full length essay, but decided not to post it...
I just have to say, the white people come up with inventions and discoveries.
The Japanese fine tune it and make it better.
The Chinese mass produce that and make it affordable for the lay man around the world.
The Middle East provide the oil.
On top of that, the Europeans are the philosophers, the Latinos provide love and passion.
Seriously, think of the world as a RPG party.
You have the hero, the magician, the healer etc.
Usually you can fit a country stereotype to each role.
I just can't figure out where the Africans fit in...
Also, i am yet to be convinced that the Egyptians and Mayans really made those pyramids by themselves...
I find that european and asian architecture looks humane, but pyramids... I dunno.
I just have to say, the white people come up with inventions and discoveries.
The Japanese fine tune it and make it better.
The Chinese mass produce that and make it affordable for the lay man around the world.
The Middle East provide the oil.
On top of that, the Europeans are the philosophers, the Latinos provide love and passion.
Seriously, think of the world as a RPG party.
You have the hero, the magician, the healer etc.
Usually you can fit a country stereotype to each role.
I just can't figure out where the Africans fit in...
Also, i am yet to be convinced that the Egyptians and Mayans really made those pyramids by themselves...
I find that european and asian architecture looks humane, but pyramids... I dunno.
Not actually reading the thread, just the OP.
One of the issues with the African issue is that they had advanced technology and culture at one point. Great Zimbabwe proves it. It's just that they fell into a Dark Ages time, just like Europe did. The problem is that they didn't have a subsequent "Renaissance" afterwards, and the tribes stayed fractured, rather than uniting again. If Europe had kept to themselves, there may have been an "African Renaissance" later.
One of the issues with the African issue is that they had advanced technology and culture at one point. Great Zimbabwe proves it. It's just that they fell into a Dark Ages time, just like Europe did. The problem is that they didn't have a subsequent "Renaissance" afterwards, and the tribes stayed fractured, rather than uniting again. If Europe had kept to themselves, there may have been an "African Renaissance" later.
This topic is not racist, talking about the history behind European Imperialism is a worthwhile discussion to have. Though the OP talks about ethnicity the topic is really about how the aggressive Imperialist expansion happened the way it did.8-Bit_Jack said:
Out of curiosity, how do you feel about Tokyo and Dresden? I'm just curious because those bombings caused at least as much if not more death and destruction as the two atom bombs, they just weren't nuclear.TopazFusion said:
Apologies to OP for continuing derailment.The Almighty Aardvark said:
The argument that the US nuked Japan in order to save the lives of millions of US soldiers or Japanese civilians is ridiculous.
Look at the situation in Japan:
1) The economy was in shambles; transportation and commincations were a mess, there were massive shortages in fuel, food, and medical supplies, the US navy had blockaded all of the Japanese mainland by sea thereby preventing any movement of supplies.
2) They had been utterly crushed militarily; the Japanese Navy was completely destroyed, the Japanese Airforce was decimated, the remnents of the Japanese Army were demoralised and severely lacking in any meaningful leadership, the US airforce could flatten any industrial or military target virtually unopposed.
3) The government was already going to surrender; Germany, their last ally, had already surrendered to the Allies, intercepted communications revealed the Emperor and the Japanese government were already seeking a peace strategy (some say as early as late February 1945), a militarist coup d'etat opposed to any sort of peace negotiations was rejected and crushed by the Japanese army leaving very little opposition to surrender.
The Americans simply could had waited out the Japanese, eventually the general public would have been too hungry, sick, sleep-deprived and disillusioned to continue any sort of resistance. The Emperor wanted peace, the hardliners had been largely swept aside, the Army was quite literally starving to death, the civilian population was suffering the worst of all...yeah Japan really needed to be nuked.
The USA nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they did not have the time to wait out Japan. The Soviet Union had 1.6 million men marching through East-Asia headed straight towards Japan. They would not tolerate a Soviet invasion of Southern China, Korea and possibly Japan. They would not tolerate the Japanese surrendering to the Soviets. They needed a quick victory so they could divert men and resources to Korea and China. By surrendering to the US, it would be ensured that the Japanese were firmly under the sphere of Western influence. Had the Soviets successfully invaded all of China and Korea, and quite possibly mainland Japan, they all most likely would have become Socialist Republics (Chinese Civil War ends in`45 in favour of the Communists, Korean War never occurs as the entire nation would be united by Soviet influence in `45, People`s Republic of Japan?). Thus, the Americans used the A-Bomb to secure immediate and total victory, quickly occupy Japan and gain a foothold in China and Korea.
It was a time of Total War and the beginning of the Cold War, the atomic bombings were a politcal decision, anti-communism, you decide if that is right or wrong. But, it had absolutely nothing to do with saving the lives of American soldiers.
Replying to the OP since I haven't taken the time to read the whole thread
One of the big reasons European nations were so much more advanced technologically was because of the higher population density. Not population amount mind you, but density, meaning more people in a smaller space..
More people in a smaller area of land means fewer resources per person and more needs to be met. People have to get creative to solve those problems, which leads to social structures, laws and inventions. When the countries in this already cramped space start fighting amongst themselves, it leads to better weapons. High population density also means people living in this area have a slightly better immune system due to sicknesses.
So overall the European nations developed faster than many of the non-european nations and when the Eruopeans went to the other countries (like the Americas), they were advanced enough that they could more or less do what they want.
One of the big reasons European nations were so much more advanced technologically was because of the higher population density. Not population amount mind you, but density, meaning more people in a smaller space..
More people in a smaller area of land means fewer resources per person and more needs to be met. People have to get creative to solve those problems, which leads to social structures, laws and inventions. When the countries in this already cramped space start fighting amongst themselves, it leads to better weapons. High population density also means people living in this area have a slightly better immune system due to sicknesses.
So overall the European nations developed faster than many of the non-european nations and when the Eruopeans went to the other countries (like the Americas), they were advanced enough that they could more or less do what they want.
Well there WERE great civilisations in Africa:Clearing the Eye said:
It's not like Africa was such a basket case that white Europeans could just waltz in there and grab millions of black people to export as slaves. No. The general case was that African Empires THEMSELVES captured slaves and sold them to white Europeans to be taken to the Americas:
And of course South America had great and advanced empires more well known such as the Mayans and Aztecs though it suffered under bad circumstance:
Biology note on the Columbian Exchange (i.e. white Europeans colonising Africa, bringing technology and animals like Horses sending home crops like Maize and Potatoes) it was like the worst act of unintended biological warfare in the history of Humanity.
Now this has nothing to do with white people being inherently racially superior, though it IS to do with their genes.
The thing was the Mediterranean itself and contrast in goods and regional capabilities lead to a lot of trade. Mediterranean conditioned civilisations to make boats and there was continuous rewards all the way to make better and better boats till eventually you have boats that can cross entire oceans, which made the Colonisation of Americas by Europe a possibility. This is Geography. If you wound back the clock and put Black people in Europe and White people in North and South America then the same things would likely happen. Circumstance.
Another came from all this trade around Europe, as sailors do they spread diseases. Oh boy, Europe was a melting pot for diseases to an amazing extent and it was horribly ravaged by the, Black Death killed over half of the population of Europe. But this was manageable as the Black death decimated their population when they were not being colonised. What this did in the long term was lead to two things:
1. White Europeans had a high resistance to a lot of diseases in their population (passing from person to person) that people of the Americas did not have.
2. These diseases were conditioned to be extra virulent by evolution so they can survive at all.
Now these European sailors coming to the Americas with these diseases, the local American Indians were just as human as the White Europeans and these diseases had evolved to be extremely aggressive to survive but unlike the Europeans they had not lived for many generations in Europe to build up resistance they were decimated. So many died at JUST THE TIME when a bunch of new guys arrived on the continent with guns and ships and saying they knew exactly how to run things.
Yes, the Americas gave some diseases in return, Syphilis being one but that did not decimate Europe quite like smallpox decimated Pre-Columbian American civilisations.
All quite true, but how much of this did President Truman and Curtis Le May know early August 1945?Higgs303 said:
Did they KNOW how effective the blockade was working? They had experience with blockades on the European Front and found they alone did not work that well, they had memories of Britain under blockade and how they resisted to the extreme.
Did they know how crushed and demoralised the Japanese military was? They were still fighting tooth and nail where they were fighting. Allied Troops were being quickly ferried from Europe to the Pacific, clearly large parts of the military deemed that the war was far from over. The instrument of surrender to Admiral Mountbatten in September who was in charge of just South East Asia Command took over 100'000 Japanese troops who needed great endorsement from their central command to surrender without a fight. The Japanese air-force was entering its most deadly stage of widespread use of Kamikaze bombing tactics. They were of limited use for how with no aircraft carriers such planes had a short range but any landing operation on Japan would have had huge casualties as it would be a short hop from Japanese mainland to the troop transport ships.
And realise, while the Japanese were starving, Allied POWs were starving at an even faster rate. Realise HUGE NUMBERS of allies were captured in Japan's swift advance across the Pacific and had been in horrific conditions for years now, the Allies knew if they tried to starve the Japanese out then there wouldn't be any Prisoners left at all. Waiting was NOT on the agenda. Not least of which how do you tell a multi-trillion dollar war-machine built on the largest Debt-to-GDP ratio America has ever had to "just wait"? They needed this war over and SOLIDLY over soon and get these soldiers off government pay and back in the economy.
Also they did not want Japan to completely implode, if the food and vital resources completely ran out and it descended into famine conditions then the country would be impossible to accept a surrender from. What they needed was the Japanese government to stay there and agree to surrender and keep in line the radicals who refused. But if everything collapsed then it would be like Mogadishu or something.
And the Japanese Government were extremely bullish in their interaction with the allies, they gave no outside indication of surrender even if there was a lot of talk inside. Germany had not been much of an ally on the other side of the world. After all, Japan had not helped Germany at all in dealing with the Soviet Union and Germany had not helped Japan. The only way Germany had helped Japan was by fighting US forces and drawing British forces out of the Malay Archipelago.
Yes there were intercepted talks of a peace treaty in early 1945, but the allies did not want a "peace treaty" which would nothing but an armistice, with no disarmament and no occupation of Japanese home islands and the allies could not accept anything less than complete unconditional surrender as that would leave a waiting game that the allies with supply lines literally stretched AROUND EACH SIDE OF THE GLOBE! British forces right around under the Indian Ocean and USA right over the Pacific, the Allies would lose and Japan could strike back again. No, Japan needed to be completely detoothed and SOON so that the Allies could wind down as you know what, they were on the brink of economic collapse. This war was eating vast amounts of money and they were playing a dangerous game with vast debts, very soon they wouldn't be able to pay people back home any more. Makes the 2008 economic collapse look like a doozy, similar thing happened the Germany in 1918-19.
True that the USSR were charging through Manchuria but the bombing of Hiroshia and Nagasaki and Japanese surrender shortly after did nothing to affect the outcome. China STILL came under a communist sphere of influence from the Soviet forces and became a communist state in 1949. The USSR had no capability to invade the Home islands of Japan in 1945 or even 1946. They had none of the shipping in the region needed to cross the Sea of Japan like the western allies did. Remember, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was not some big surprise that forced the hand of the Western Allies, President Truman agreed for Stalin to do this at the Potsdam conference where they agreed for the USSR to stop at the 38-th Parallel of Korea, which they did without the need of US or British troops there to stop them. Remember, don't look at World War Alliance through the goggles of Cold War Paranoia. In 1945 "Uncle Joe" Stalin was America's best friend, like Saddam Hessian in the 1980's who Rush Limbaugh defended vociferously from allegations of gassing Kurds though 5 years later would be champing at the bit for invasion, 10 years after that for regime change. McCarthy Communist Witch hunts did not begin till the 1950's.
Soviet Union was in no position - with or without those atomic bombing - to put Japanese mainland under its sphere of influence. No, the Cold War did not begin in 1945, the Allies worked together openly, America let the USSR take China and North Korea under its sphere of influence and USSR didn't over-step its bounds by trying to take South Korea. The areas of Europe and Asia were not decided by which armies advanced the most and wherever they meet that is the extent of their influence, no, they were decided in conferences drawing on maps. Yes there was mistrust but there was also great cooperation, the USSR and US/UK moved their troops back variously to occupy the pre-arranged zones of occupation, but not before they'd raided an
Cold War came later, when it became apparent that Soviets were so badly abusing their Sphere of influence in Eastern Europe to refuse the governments in exile and install communist puppet governments, and the western opposition to communist revolution like the bloody fighting that kept going in Greece that almost became a communist state.
It's just not fitting the facts to say Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was about keeping Japan from the Soviet Union. You have to look past the 40 years of cold war paranoia and fear of Nuclear Armageddon and see things through the eyes of men who as far as they were concerned were right in the middle of a war that was far from done with Japan. They had hundred of thousands of your comrades in the most inhuman conditions, and they were dying every day. And invasion, X-Day, was looking to be a disaster in the making. You've already lost so many men and this Bomb, it can't effectively be used any other way than on a very large wide target like a city.
Part of understanding history is trying to put yourself in those people's position, what they were thinking. Was Truman more concerned about whether China was under communist sphere of influence? He didn't care much in Potsdam. Or was he more concerned with an economic war machine stretched to breaking point, and the thousands of Americans still languishing in Japanese prison camps?
While there are people much more qualified than me that can speak on the matter, it basically comes down to connectivity.Clearing the Eye said:
Think of it this way: You have 1,000 people living together, a percentage of which invent or discover things as time goes on. When one person discovers or invents something, he tells everyone else and shares his knowledge with the rest of the group, and over time, the group's knowledge and technology grows.
Now imagine you have 100,000 people living together, just as smart as the last group and with the same percentage of innovators. But because the group has more people, there are more people to innovate, and because each person shares his knowledge with the whole group, their knowledge and technology will grow at a much faster rate. It's the "two heads are better than one" principle.
Basically, this happened on a much larger scale. Various geographic and societal circumstances allowed Europe to have a much larger interconnected population than other areas, allowing them to share their knowledge with each other and develop technology at a faster rate. It doesn't make them any smarter or better than other areas, just larger and more connected.
This is why people from Europe (or "white people" if you insist) dominated the world for a pretty long period of time. It's why small, secluded island societies discovered as late as the 20th century often had stone age level technology. It's why our current society with billions of interconnected people has progressed so much from generation to generation. Ect, ect...
You DO realize that the gun is basically how Europeans took over all the other civilizations, and the gun powder for those guns came from a country called China.
So yeah, if not for a Chinese innovation white folks would still be in the middle ages.
Flash forward to today, in the USA we have been outsourcing our manufacturing jobs to other countries, and importing people from India China and Japan to do our white collar jobs.
So yeah..... Sorry dude white folks have found ways of manipulating other races for generations, but as far as moving things forward go, yeah...... they (we I should say) have had our fair share of innovations, the internet for example... but we are far from superior.
So yeah, if not for a Chinese innovation white folks would still be in the middle ages.
Flash forward to today, in the USA we have been outsourcing our manufacturing jobs to other countries, and importing people from India China and Japan to do our white collar jobs.
So yeah..... Sorry dude white folks have found ways of manipulating other races for generations, but as far as moving things forward go, yeah...... they (we I should say) have had our fair share of innovations, the internet for example... but we are far from superior.