Posted: 10/13/2004 3:32:10 PM EDT
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A friend and I were talking this weekend and had a thought. Who decides which past empires are good, and which are bad based on the same acts. Example, a (relative) few Nazi's killed 11 million outright. = Bad. Pol Pot and his men kill 2(?) million. = Bad. Mongols, kill millions = Bad. Huns, kill a very large number. = Bad There are many more, but you get the point. British kill hundreds of thousands in the Boar wars = Good. Romans kill millions. = Good Greeks kill a whole bunch. = good. All of these groups engaged in wholsale slaughter of civilians through the use of their military power in building or maintaining empires. So who decides who is good, and who is bad? Thoughts, ideas. |
The Huns and Mongols were winners yet as obershutze916 states; we think of them as bad. My take is it depends on if we can trace our roots to those empires. Basically, we as a nation and our culture are a decendent of Britian, Rome, and Greece. I think this causes us to look more favorably to their conquests. |
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Both valid points. Atencio, your line of thought was in line with what I thought. We consider them "clasical" or democratic, or progressive, and we like to think the same about ourselves, there fore we choose them as good, because we think they are like us. I never had the thought that we do trace our roots to those empires directly. I always thought that no one ever took notice that the Romans took over the known world, killing millions, and they are admired. The Germans took most of Europe, killing millions, and they are hated. I always thought this little side note was lacking from history books. |
Maybe the Huns did not write any history, but the left overs of their victims did. Wern't the Huns to nomadic to settle down and build a library? |
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I would agree that we consider those who had political beliefs which were similar to ours, and those that we are decendants of would be considered good. I think that the Nazis would be considered bad due to the fact that those events were so recent, and they did not have political ideals which were in line with ours. I think that it would be pretty much the same criteria for most any previous empire. |
I agree. The thing about history is that outside of statistical information most everything else is open to interpetation depending on which angle you are looking at it from. This open interpetation is what makes all those "what if?" scenarios so interesting to me. |