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Two Underrated Peoples
American Thinker ^
| May 2, 2015
| Mike Konrad
Posted on 05/03/2015 9:48:49 AM PDT by Aria
In looking over the history of the past 500 years, four nations stand out for having completely and massively altered world civilization in a way that no others have, before or after: England, Spain, France, and Portugal.
No other empires even come close. The Muslim conquests were landbound except for island hopping. Chinese and Mongolian conquests were landbound. Even in ancient times, Greek, Roman, and Persian conquests were essentially land operations, except for river fording. Yes, they all had navies, but were not defined by them.
What separates the English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish was that these nations had vast transoceanic empires. They defined themselves by their navies, especially the English.
Portugal sent off its explorers to discover the Eastern oceanic routs to Asia -- the land routes having been closed by the Muslims. The Spanish circumnavigated the globe. The British empire was completely a naval operation; and the French, contrary to our American prejudices, were no slouches and actually a major player: Remember it was Rochambeau's fleet that prevented British reinforcement of Cornwallis at Yorktown.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: ageofsail; basques; belgium; celts; conservatism; epigraphyandlanguage; equality; france; godsgravesglyphs; greece; liberalism; liberty; netherlands; persianempire; phoenicians; portugal; romanempire; spain; unitedkingdom
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To: Colorado Doug
I’m a girl so I totally know who their father is. LOL Before that, no clear idea.
21
posted on
05/03/2015 4:29:49 PM PDT
by
Mercat
(Release the HildeKraken)
To: Mercat
LOL. I certainly waltzed right into that without thinking, didn’t I? Cheers Mercat!
22
posted on
05/03/2015 6:23:54 PM PDT
by
Colorado Doug
(Now I know how the Indians felt to be sold out for a few beads and trinkets)
To: SunkenCiv
And I was surprised that nobody told you that the Brits kicked the Dutch ass three times in a row in the 1600’s
23
posted on
05/03/2015 9:06:03 PM PDT
by
VanShuyten
("a shadow...draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence.")
To: Aria
But how did Britain get its navy??
The book “Coal: a human history” points out that as England’s population grew, they cut down almost all the trees for firewood to keep warm in the winter. People froze.
In desperation, they turned to coal for heat. It was mined in Manchester hills, taken down on rails to the harbor where it was loaded into ships.
It took 300 ships per day to supply coal to London alone. When England needed a navy, they had both men and ship building assets to draw on.
To: Aria
In looking over the history of the past 500 years, four nations stand out for having completely and massively altered world civilization in a way that no others have, before or after: England, Spain, France, and PortugalSince 1510, well, they are correct about these 4 but forget some others like:
- Muscowy - Moscow expanded from a small Duchy to Alaska, they absorbed much of the Finnic peoples, many Tungusic and Turkic peoples and the rest of the East Slavic peoples (Belarusyni and Ruthenians)
- the Manchu Empire -- they slaughtered the Dzungaria (1 million killed in a genocide), slaughtered Han Chinese and weakened China so badly that it led to the century of humiliation starting from the 1800s
- The Mughal Empire - this changed the composition of the Indian sub-continent, creating a unity that hadn't existed before and yet also due to Aurangzeb creating the very forces that allowed Europeans to gain a foothold in the Indian continent
Then the article compares Empires before 1510 AD and it fails there in multiple places
- Vikings -- these were never an "empire" in any sense except for Cnut's brief reign -- they were groups of warriors fighting. the Norman, Varangians, Danes etc. were separate groups
- The Dutch - they started the Protestant fights against Spain and Portugal and due to the Dutch specifically, Indonesia was not converted to Christianity. But they allied themselves first to the English and then perfidious Albion turned on them in the Anglo-Dutch wars, destroying any chance for a long-term influence
- Germany effectively colonised the USA -- there are more Americans of Germanic extraction than any other ethnic group
The article tries to talk of Spain, forgetting that Christopher Columbus was a Genovan Italian.
Modern Western Civilisation is based on Greco-Roman ideals with Germanic warrior individuality. The Celtic anarchy was subsumed under this
25
posted on
05/04/2015 12:50:02 AM PDT
by
Cronos
(ObamaÂ’s dislike of Assad is not based on AssadÂ’s brutality but that he isn't a jihadi Moslem)
To: Aria; blam
Actually, Basque language like Sumerian and Elamite and probably Kartveli are related to Dravidian -->
here -- agglutinative languages
26
posted on
05/04/2015 12:51:59 AM PDT
by
Cronos
(ObamaÂ’s dislike of Assad is not based on AssadÂ’s brutality but that he isn't a jihadi Moslem)
To: VanShuyten
Those wooden shoes didn’t do them any good at all.
27
posted on
05/04/2015 6:05:08 AM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(What do we want? REGIME CHANGE! When do we want it? NOW!)
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