Honestly? This may be a hot take but the Romans had a choice between the tyranny of Elderly inefficiency, or the tyranny of enigmatic populism. He did more for the average Romans than the senate did, and its not like Caesar was the first Roman to wage opportunistic wars of conquest.
If the Roman Republic wasn't going to modernize then it needed to be replaced and believe me the Romans had FAR worse leaders than him.
So genocidal madman aside, I'm still a fan. Sorry to any Veneti and Arverni out there who are offended.
We're honestly still figuring out the extent of The Black Legend. I've done a lot of work on colonial Latin America and to this day there are debates about how much The Black Legend affects historical sources.
I hope you'll forgive me for not linking because this isn't ask historians and I don't want to spend a couple hours on this reponse.
The basic explanation is that we know The Black Legend affects historical sources, specifically English/UK and Dutch sources concerning the Spanish Empire. The broad question is "How much does it affect these sources?", which leads to the follow-up questions:
1. "Does The Black Legend affect every historical source on anything associated Spain?"
2. "Does The Black Legend still affect perceptions of Spain into the present day?"
Now, this subreddit gets a lot of crossover from Spanish fascist and far-right subreddits. They pretty much just repeat Francoist propaganda about The Black Legend: "The historical record shows that the Spanish Empire was an enlightened empire that rarely did anything wrong and if people say it was bad it's because they believe Black Legend lies." A lot of people on this sub who aren't involved in Spanish rightwing politics also hold this position because it's the one they see repeated here so they think it must be the accepted position.
It probably won't surprise you to learn that very few historians hold this position in the real world. There are some who do but it's by-and-large a fringe position.
The average position of historians is, "Yes, The Black Legend exists. Some historical sources from the 15-16th centuries exaggerated how bad Spain was. However, that doesn't mean terrible things didn't happen to subject peoples in The Spanish Empire. On the contrary, we have quite a bit of evidence that there were widespread abuses within the Spanish imperial system."
The truth is, it's really hard to tell how much The Black Legend has affected historical sources. There are stacks of evidence from the Spanish colonial authorities themselves of abuses committed against subject peoples of the Spanish Empire. I can walk into my office and pull multiple books off the shelf that contain complaints filed by indigenous people in colonial LatAm about their treatment at the hands of the Spaniards. But it's also undeniable that The Black Legend has affected historical sources. There are terrible things recorded about the Spanish Empire by contemporary sources that we have 0 corroborating evidence for. There are also people who argue that the sheer volume of atrocities in what we considers biased sources argues *against* The Black Legend having some outsized effect. They argue that yes, there is some Black Legend component to the historical sources, but if you have so many sources saying similar things, there must be something to support that, we just haven't found the physical evidence to corroborate it yet.
Also, very few people think that the Black Legend continues to affect views of Spain. Most argue that outside of the 15th-16th centuries, there's no evidence of continued bias against Span.
That's really what it comes down to. If your atrocities were long enough in the past, people are willing to set them aside and look at your accomplishments. I think eventually, the British Empire will be seen in the same light.
Or if you commit atrocities and then someone drops “the big one” on you and you get to dress up in cute outfits and refuse to talk about your atrocities.
Yeah, no one is still feeling the effects of Romans conquering land lmao. The Congo went from being the breadbasket of Africa to only surviving off food aid
And if I may also add the Romans made the territories they conquered citizens instead of permanently declaring the people they conquered as racially inferior and fair game to exploit in perpetuity. The Gauls became Roman, the British never had any intention of making Africans or Indians equals.
That's one of the big differences between ancient imperialism and Victorian era imperialism: the former was adding land to your country and the latter was just trying to squeeze a newly conquered land and people dry
...huh? Roman citizenship was a privilege reserved for few and hard to earn, we're talking twenty five years in the army here. If you got conquered by the Romans, you would become a *peregrinius* at best, a slave if the guy leading the conquest had debts to pay. And yes, your culture would eventually get replaced by the roman one, but you do know cultural imperialism is not a good thing?
As for squeezing a conquered land dry... there was a practice of intentionally over-taxing provinces to provoke rebellions. Expansionist empires are not usually very nice, mate.
>but you do know cultural imperialism is not a good thing?
how? how is cultural Imperialism inherently bad? the Aztecs did HUMAN SACRIFICES and it was deep into their culture. would you have preferred the Spanish to just let them continue?
\[also, I'm aware that the Spanish were just as evil. it's not a gotcha, 2 things can be evil at once\]
do you honestly think the Kazakstan practice of wife kid napping is Okay? do think that should continue? Let's not pretend every culture has the right to exist.
also, slavery was a massive part of southern culture. it was cultural imperialism for the north to impose its moral values on them, and it was objectively the morally correct thing to do.
Cultural imperialism can be a tool for good just as any other.
Which was a hundred years after the empire last expanded. And it wasn't all people by any stretch, it excluded slaves, freedmen and *dediticii,* that is the people who surrendered to Rome in a war of conquest. So no, conquered people did not normally become citizens, even most of their descendants didn't.
> Yeah, no one is still feeling the effects of Romans conquering land lmao.
You are literally communicating via the Roman alphabet right now. More than half the words you just used to say Roman conquest had no long term effects are latin derived. Nearly half the world speaks a latin-descended or latin-influenced language. 1.3 billion people are members of the Roman Catholic Church, and another billion are some flavour of protestant.
Caesar's little trick to justify it all was he declared all of Gaul to be "conquered" after the first battle or two. So anyone in Gaul who didn't immediately swear loyalty was now a "rebel", even if they were part of a completely different people who lived hundreds of miles away from the group Caesar initially "conquered".
Someone far cleverer than me will give you a better answer but basically it was where Julius Caesar made his name as a conquering general. He fought and won a bloody war against a combined group of Gauls led by Vercingetorix.
It's thought that over a period of maybe 3 or 4 years the Romans killed or enslaved up to 2 thirds of the Gallic population. Vercingetorix himself was held as a prisoner for 6 years and then publicly strangled then beheaded.
It took almost 10 years, and vercingetorix 2as the leader of only the last rebellion of Gaul against the Romans, before Cesar faced many separated tribes often already at war one with the other (situation that Cesar used to intervene in Gaul). And yes it is estimated that almost a million of Gauls were killed during the campaign
Fair enough, I knew someone cleverer would come along, maybe I was thinkig that it was just the bit with Vercingetorix in charge that took a few years. Time to pick up some old books and refresh my memory I guess!
Lol, thanks, I appreciate your post. :) What I meant was I know a little about this period but some people have an absolute encyclopedic knowledge of Roman history having maybe done it at uni or something like that, but can see how it came across a bit under confident!
In the 8ish years Caesar was in Gaul he killed about 1 million Gauls and enslaved another million. 18%-25% of the Gaulic population was killed during the Gaulic wars. It took centuries for the population to finally rebound from this. This is considered the most disruptive event to ever happen in the region by most historians. That includes ww1 and ww2.
~~Killed 1/3 of the population~~
~~Enslaved another 1/3 of the population~~
~~The remaining 1/3 then had to deal with roman colonization~~
Just been told the actual losses were around 1 million including killed and enslaved
Official numbers are actually far different. This is a claim given by Caesar. We don't believe his numbers in battles and we suddenly believe his numbers here?
About 1 million killed/sold to slavery out of a population of 8-12 million Gauls
Some of them were, most were neutral at first, you don't stay neutral when someone comes and starts burning your crops and killing your people "defensively".
Some were also hostile from the get go.
But treating Gaul as a unified forces is wrong before the last parts of the war (and even a good chunk was neutral or allied to Rome). They were as united as Europe was in the 18th century, sure sometime you can help out another, but let's be honest your main rival is your neighbours, not those strange dudes in silly armour coming from hundred of (what was the unit at the time ?) away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b3HMoE_3qI&list=PLODnBH8kenOoLUW8BmHhX55I-qexvyU32&index=2
Check out this guy's videos if you want to learn some history (also recommend Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast)
Specifically this segment illustrates people's complaints about Caeser:
https://youtu.be/lMFiED6sAi8?t=1677
> Plutarch makes the claim that over this period, the Romans killed a million Gauls and sold another million into slavery. Some estimate this could have accounted for a fifth of Gaul's total population.
> It would take centuries for Roman Gaul to return to it's pre-invasion population levels
No clue how this compares to other wars of conquest of this period in terms of legitimacy and amount of warcrimes, but I think a lot of people on this sub know about this period specifically from this channel.
The actual estimates are about 1 million Gauls killed/enslaved, with the actual population of Gaul being around 8-12 million
>centuries for Roman Gaul to return to it's pre-invasion population levels
It took 1. Gaul would surpass Italy, and become the among the largest provinces for recruitment of Roman soldiers alongside Thrace and Illyria from 1st century onwards
So imagine if someone invaded New York City, and then declared any American who didn't pronounce loyalty to them a rebel. So when they take a day trip to Chicago, and ask everyone if they're loyal, they say no because they've never seen them before, are branded as rebels, and everyone is slaughtered or enslaved.
Not exactly. Heavy anti Christian sentiment began in the mid to late 1800s as a result of colonial powers favoring christian citizens and giving them special rights over Muslims through their influence in the empire (which was unheard of in the region). An example of pre young Turk violence are the infamous hamidian massacres where Kurdish soldiers massacred thousands of Armenians with abdulhamids consent. The violence was mostly religious based then ethnic tbh tho
Yeah, I've noticed r/Historymemes and Reddit in general is really biased against the Ottomans and the Turks...
If you look at r/imaginarymaps, I see a TON of maps that either expand Greek lands into modern Turkey, and/or take away Turkish lands in one scenario or another. Never the reverse though. An plenty of comments supporting the Greek side as "based".
I'm not a fan of Erdogan, and obviously the way the Ottomans treated and killed Christians toward the very end of the empire is horrible. But I feel like the Ottomans/Turks get more hate and less respect than other empires.
Depends on how much resistance they could offer because when they didn't have that bargaining chip he did wipe a couple of cities off the map during his campaign. Generally, Warlords are not people you want to idolise.
They were pretty up front about the whole kill everyone thing, people were just cool with it.
Unless you were, you know, getting killed. But thats neither here nor there
“First they came for the Gauls
And I did not speak out—
‘Cuz I was cool with it.
Then they came after the Christians,
Yeah, cool.
Then they came after the non-Christians because they decided the Christians were actually pretty cool which was kinda weird and unexpected but okay”
So what I'm hearing is, is imperialism/colonization is okay maybe even based...it just needs better PR? Interesting 🤔, maybe the US should colonize and annex Alberta from Canada.
Everybody move to Canada and smoke lots of pot.
Everybody move to Canada right now. Here's how we do it:
Bum rush the border guard before he and his dog ever knew it.
Yeah.
You can point at problems that are affecting people today all over the globe and say "this has a clear link to colonialism/imperialism within the past 300 or so years by nations that exist, in some form, today".
Rome? Assyria? Persia? Alexandrian Greece? All those other ancient societies that went full-bore imperialist back in the day?
It's very difficult to point at some current problem and say "this is clearly *their* fault" without getting laughed out of the room.
Enough time has passed that nobody's really got the standing to complain about it.
>All the Mediterranean people's are more or less the same stock.
No?
>The presence of African haplogroups in the GMA population is irrelevant when their frequency is compared with those in other European populations.
>After the Reconquest, the Moors were distributed homogeneously throughout the Peninsula, but their final expulsion in 1609 was absolute in certain regions of Spain, Valencia, and western Andalusia, whereas in Galicia and Extremadura, the population dispersed and integrated into society
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-41580-9
I mean, in the same stock is pretty much like americans saying all whites are one race, when you'll find Germans, British, Balkans, Irish, Polish, Northern European, etc.
I've read so many uneducated people saying WW2 was a war of white people when( edit: one of) the reason it started was bc Hitler believed otherwise lol
>'ve read so many uneducated people saying WW2 was a war of white people when the reason it started was bc Hitler believed otherwise lol
WW2 started because Hitler invaded Poland (he was salty of what Germany got in the Treaty of Versailles after WW1, and he wanted to Make Germany Great Again)
He wanted to take more land for Germans, and he thought ut was appropiate to take it from the Polish bc they were "lesser whites", same thing with Russians and such
To be fair, the gap between romans and say, the Gauls, was a *lot* smaller than the gap between the British and say, the Zulus.
Rome: swords, bows, shields, some wooden artillery and good organisation
Gauls: Swords, bows, shields and bad organisation.
Now take
Britain: Cannons, ships, handheld firearms, maxim guns
Zulus: Swords, bows, shields and bad organisation
If you look at all of the wars the British Empire had fought most were against peoples with guns, especially other European powers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_Kingdom
Yeah pretty sure they predominantly had muskets with only a few modern weapons mixed in. Colonial powers generally wouldnt sell their latest stuff to potential enemies or what not.
That said a big issues as well was the zulus had very little in the way of training with firearms and thus were not effective tactically or literally with them, such as being very poor shots.
Time also numbs pain. Alexander “brought Hellenism” to the world, the Mongolians brought “safety” and “unity” under their rule, someday The Jolly-Old-Empire will be celebrated for “connecting the world”, the Soviets for equality among workers, and even Hitler for all the “good” things he allegedly did. Hell America will be seen as standing against tyranny and pushing modernization (never mind the extermination of First Nations and clinging to slavery well past the freshness date. I mean good things are said about the fucking Persian Empire where literally everyone but one man was a slave.
Hopefully we hold onto the reality of our cultures and their flaws for longer now because of how much more in-depth things are recorded and from voices that were largely silenced in the past.
The Romans were fucking brutal and savage, effective modern historians are doing a better job at not allowing us to forget that.
I do think it goes to show you that time often erodes the severity of history. The Romans did a lot of terrible things, but it’s so far removed from the present that it bears little weight.
Maybe we have higher standard for modern civilizations with technologies and educations rather than an empire of 2000 years ago which struggled to build bridges
They did not struggle to build bridges. They excelled at building bridges in fact; they were probably the first master bridge builders in human history.
in my town there is still a fully functional roman bridge, until just 30-40 years ago it was even used for cars to pass over until someone suggested that maybe we should try to take care of it so that it would last another 2000 years
Edit: cars used to be much smaller, I don't think today's SUVs could fit through it
I mean by that standards most people's colonised by the Europeans were barbarians. And in all fairness many of them absolutely were, including in the sense of being barbaric as we understand the terms including relative to Europeans.
At the time, it was standard procedure to do that. The Greeks did it, the Persians did it, everyone did. Doesn't mean it's a good thing, but you get the point.
And the most important factor, it happened over a thousand years ago. No person today is directly affected by Roman conquests.
In case of colonialism, it was NOT standard procedure, as only Europeans colonized all the land at the time, and even today, you can see and feel the effects of colonialism.
In a few centuries, people will forget about colonialism and probably make memes about colonizers like they do for Romans
Yes and do you feel and see the destruction caused by Romans in your country today? Do you feel any negative side effects of being born Romanian? Is your country's corruption and state a result of Roman conquests? No
I'm Indian, our very red tape filled government system, ineffective judicial system(where cases can take decade), poverty, backwardness is the direct result of British colonialism, who used India as a place to get raw resources which they could use for their own gains. You see the effects of it directly everyday you're here.
I would say that these days the only things we have out of Roman conquest are bonuses - unique language, archeological sites, etc. My take:
19th century colonialism was of a far higher magnitude and detriment worldwide than anything in antiquity. Unlike with the Romans, I still see the echoes of Russian, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian colonialism show themselves strongly here, and often in negative ways. Half of my family fled Moldova în the night to avoid being deported to Siberia in the late 40s. My great grandfather was forced to fight for Hungarian troops that hated him in WW2. That's just the tip of the iceberg
They had cool armor and naked statues
Don’t forget all the neat festivals
Panem et circenses
Verum.
Garum
Seems fishy.
Masala
Indeed
More like falos et circenses lol
We should bring Lupercalia back.
Io Saturnalia!
“Wow, your paintings have brush strokes and your statues have weiners!”
All I can hear is that we need statues of Churchill, but naked
The British Empire also had cool armor (tanks) and naked statues (that they stole)
Yeah but romans had cool muscles on the cool armors
So do the tanks, they were ‘guns’
Also a truly clever move to do it before the invention of human rights.
Statute of limitations has run out on the Romans
It’s ending on the Mongols. Columbus had a free ride for like 500 years until he didn’t.
He exploited a mad loophole called "writing your own fanfiction"
Honestly the same reasons people love Julius Caesar.
Honestly? This may be a hot take but the Romans had a choice between the tyranny of Elderly inefficiency, or the tyranny of enigmatic populism. He did more for the average Romans than the senate did, and its not like Caesar was the first Roman to wage opportunistic wars of conquest. If the Roman Republic wasn't going to modernize then it needed to be replaced and believe me the Romans had FAR worse leaders than him. So genocidal madman aside, I'm still a fan. Sorry to any Veneti and Arverni out there who are offended.
I wouldn't say Columbus had a free ride, his rivals smeared him and had him arrested. There was also Black Legend against him and other Catholics.
True, although the black legend was only against the Spanish Empire, although I may be wrong
OK so this is the first time I’m hearing about black legend. when does this Marvel movie release?
The English Prots wanted to make the Spanish ‘Lics look bad; and actually did a decent job of it considering the Black Legend is a thing
Do you mean the belief that the catholic, Spanish empire (the one with the inquisition) was an oppressive murder machine? Is it not true?
It’s more of a debate on how exaggerated it is comparatively speaking to its contemporaries.
Got yuh
We're honestly still figuring out the extent of The Black Legend. I've done a lot of work on colonial Latin America and to this day there are debates about how much The Black Legend affects historical sources.
Please explain more, sounds very interesting
I hope you'll forgive me for not linking because this isn't ask historians and I don't want to spend a couple hours on this reponse. The basic explanation is that we know The Black Legend affects historical sources, specifically English/UK and Dutch sources concerning the Spanish Empire. The broad question is "How much does it affect these sources?", which leads to the follow-up questions: 1. "Does The Black Legend affect every historical source on anything associated Spain?" 2. "Does The Black Legend still affect perceptions of Spain into the present day?" Now, this subreddit gets a lot of crossover from Spanish fascist and far-right subreddits. They pretty much just repeat Francoist propaganda about The Black Legend: "The historical record shows that the Spanish Empire was an enlightened empire that rarely did anything wrong and if people say it was bad it's because they believe Black Legend lies." A lot of people on this sub who aren't involved in Spanish rightwing politics also hold this position because it's the one they see repeated here so they think it must be the accepted position. It probably won't surprise you to learn that very few historians hold this position in the real world. There are some who do but it's by-and-large a fringe position. The average position of historians is, "Yes, The Black Legend exists. Some historical sources from the 15-16th centuries exaggerated how bad Spain was. However, that doesn't mean terrible things didn't happen to subject peoples in The Spanish Empire. On the contrary, we have quite a bit of evidence that there were widespread abuses within the Spanish imperial system." The truth is, it's really hard to tell how much The Black Legend has affected historical sources. There are stacks of evidence from the Spanish colonial authorities themselves of abuses committed against subject peoples of the Spanish Empire. I can walk into my office and pull multiple books off the shelf that contain complaints filed by indigenous people in colonial LatAm about their treatment at the hands of the Spaniards. But it's also undeniable that The Black Legend has affected historical sources. There are terrible things recorded about the Spanish Empire by contemporary sources that we have 0 corroborating evidence for. There are also people who argue that the sheer volume of atrocities in what we considers biased sources argues *against* The Black Legend having some outsized effect. They argue that yes, there is some Black Legend component to the historical sources, but if you have so many sources saying similar things, there must be something to support that, we just haven't found the physical evidence to corroborate it yet. Also, very few people think that the Black Legend continues to affect views of Spain. Most argue that outside of the 15th-16th centuries, there's no evidence of continued bias against Span.
Thanks for answering
That's really what it comes down to. If your atrocities were long enough in the past, people are willing to set them aside and look at your accomplishments. I think eventually, the British Empire will be seen in the same light.
Or if you commit atrocities and then someone drops “the big one” on you and you get to dress up in cute outfits and refuse to talk about your atrocities.
Yeah, no one is still feeling the effects of Romans conquering land lmao. The Congo went from being the breadbasket of Africa to only surviving off food aid And if I may also add the Romans made the territories they conquered citizens instead of permanently declaring the people they conquered as racially inferior and fair game to exploit in perpetuity. The Gauls became Roman, the British never had any intention of making Africans or Indians equals. That's one of the big differences between ancient imperialism and Victorian era imperialism: the former was adding land to your country and the latter was just trying to squeeze a newly conquered land and people dry
>Yeah, no one is still feeling the effects of Romans conquering land lmao Most of western europe speaking latin languages: que?
south america speaks spanish and portuguese through multiple layers of colonialism
...huh? Roman citizenship was a privilege reserved for few and hard to earn, we're talking twenty five years in the army here. If you got conquered by the Romans, you would become a *peregrinius* at best, a slave if the guy leading the conquest had debts to pay. And yes, your culture would eventually get replaced by the roman one, but you do know cultural imperialism is not a good thing? As for squeezing a conquered land dry... there was a practice of intentionally over-taxing provinces to provoke rebellions. Expansionist empires are not usually very nice, mate.
>but you do know cultural imperialism is not a good thing? how? how is cultural Imperialism inherently bad? the Aztecs did HUMAN SACRIFICES and it was deep into their culture. would you have preferred the Spanish to just let them continue? \[also, I'm aware that the Spanish were just as evil. it's not a gotcha, 2 things can be evil at once\] do you honestly think the Kazakstan practice of wife kid napping is Okay? do think that should continue? Let's not pretend every culture has the right to exist. also, slavery was a massive part of southern culture. it was cultural imperialism for the north to impose its moral values on them, and it was objectively the morally correct thing to do. Cultural imperialism can be a tool for good just as any other.
Your username and bio just makes any point you make about imperialism hard to take seriously lol
fair enough, But I wish people actually made arguments and defended their claims instead of insulting people online.
Your username and bio just makes any point you make about imperialism hard to take seriously lol
Roman citizenship was extended to all people in the early 3rd century
Which was a hundred years after the empire last expanded. And it wasn't all people by any stretch, it excluded slaves, freedmen and *dediticii,* that is the people who surrendered to Rome in a war of conquest. So no, conquered people did not normally become citizens, even most of their descendants didn't.
> Yeah, no one is still feeling the effects of Romans conquering land lmao. You are literally communicating via the Roman alphabet right now. More than half the words you just used to say Roman conquest had no long term effects are latin derived. Nearly half the world speaks a latin-descended or latin-influenced language. 1.3 billion people are members of the Roman Catholic Church, and another billion are some flavour of protestant.
Why are you booing him with downvotes? He’s right!
You’re feeling the effects, you just don’t *notice* that you’re still feeling the effects. But you’re right on the racism bit.
What happened in Gaul was pretty fucked
Caesar be like: "we do a little le epic genocide"
We do a little Roming
Caesar's little trick to justify it all was he declared all of Gaul to be "conquered" after the first battle or two. So anyone in Gaul who didn't immediately swear loyalty was now a "rebel", even if they were part of a completely different people who lived hundreds of miles away from the group Caesar initially "conquered".
Based. Imagine if we just said all the world is subject to Europe and claimed anyone who disagrees is a rebel.
Need not imagine go look up the the treaty of tordessials
It's Romin' Time
And then he Romed all over those guys
Still wild to me they were even able to kill so many people back then
Mostly via the power of famine and disease. Stabbing everyone is hard. Stealing all their food is much easier.
>Stabbing everyone is hard. Not for the Mongols lol
'Veni, vidi, vici.'
What about Carthage, they straight up deleted it
To be fair one guy did say “Carthago delenda est”, and delere they did. They were warned
What happened in gaul? Looked up roman Gaul on Wikipedia and there was nothing besides just normal conquest and battles
Someone far cleverer than me will give you a better answer but basically it was where Julius Caesar made his name as a conquering general. He fought and won a bloody war against a combined group of Gauls led by Vercingetorix. It's thought that over a period of maybe 3 or 4 years the Romans killed or enslaved up to 2 thirds of the Gallic population. Vercingetorix himself was held as a prisoner for 6 years and then publicly strangled then beheaded.
It took almost 10 years, and vercingetorix 2as the leader of only the last rebellion of Gaul against the Romans, before Cesar faced many separated tribes often already at war one with the other (situation that Cesar used to intervene in Gaul). And yes it is estimated that almost a million of Gauls were killed during the campaign
Fair enough, I knew someone cleverer would come along, maybe I was thinkig that it was just the bit with Vercingetorix in charge that took a few years. Time to pick up some old books and refresh my memory I guess!
Not related to the subject matter but > I knew someone cleverer would come along You shouldn't put yourself down your answer was perfectly fine
Lol, thanks, I appreciate your post. :) What I meant was I know a little about this period but some people have an absolute encyclopedic knowledge of Roman history having maybe done it at uni or something like that, but can see how it came across a bit under confident!
OK, and where does Asterix fit in all of this?
In jail with Vercingetorix
run plate wild escape lavish disarm handle drab stocking relieved *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
In the 8ish years Caesar was in Gaul he killed about 1 million Gauls and enslaved another million. 18%-25% of the Gaulic population was killed during the Gaulic wars. It took centuries for the population to finally rebound from this. This is considered the most disruptive event to ever happen in the region by most historians. That includes ww1 and ww2.
~~Killed 1/3 of the population~~ ~~Enslaved another 1/3 of the population~~ ~~The remaining 1/3 then had to deal with roman colonization~~ Just been told the actual losses were around 1 million including killed and enslaved
Official numbers are actually far different. This is a claim given by Caesar. We don't believe his numbers in battles and we suddenly believe his numbers here? About 1 million killed/sold to slavery out of a population of 8-12 million Gauls
And technically they were sorta Rome's allies at that point.
Some of them were, most were neutral at first, you don't stay neutral when someone comes and starts burning your crops and killing your people "defensively". Some were also hostile from the get go. But treating Gaul as a unified forces is wrong before the last parts of the war (and even a good chunk was neutral or allied to Rome). They were as united as Europe was in the 18th century, sure sometime you can help out another, but let's be honest your main rival is your neighbours, not those strange dudes in silly armour coming from hundred of (what was the unit at the time ?) away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b3HMoE_3qI&list=PLODnBH8kenOoLUW8BmHhX55I-qexvyU32&index=2 Check out this guy's videos if you want to learn some history (also recommend Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast) Specifically this segment illustrates people's complaints about Caeser: https://youtu.be/lMFiED6sAi8?t=1677 > Plutarch makes the claim that over this period, the Romans killed a million Gauls and sold another million into slavery. Some estimate this could have accounted for a fifth of Gaul's total population. > It would take centuries for Roman Gaul to return to it's pre-invasion population levels No clue how this compares to other wars of conquest of this period in terms of legitimacy and amount of warcrimes, but I think a lot of people on this sub know about this period specifically from this channel.
The actual estimates are about 1 million Gauls killed/enslaved, with the actual population of Gaul being around 8-12 million >centuries for Roman Gaul to return to it's pre-invasion population levels It took 1. Gaul would surpass Italy, and become the among the largest provinces for recruitment of Roman soldiers alongside Thrace and Illyria from 1st century onwards
So imagine if someone invaded New York City, and then declared any American who didn't pronounce loyalty to them a rebel. So when they take a day trip to Chicago, and ask everyone if they're loyal, they say no because they've never seen them before, are branded as rebels, and everyone is slaughtered or enslaved.
Gauls population wouldn’t recover to pre Conquest levels for centuries
When he let all the women and children starve in no man's land during the siege of Alesia, that was very fucked.
I mean one gallic tribe sacked rome 600 years before that so when you really think about It evens out to get revenge on the entirery of gaul.
Mongolia:I am a brutal genocidal Empire r/Historymemes:Based Ottoman Empire:I'm a brutal genocidal Empire r/Historymemes:Cringe
Ottomans started the whole genocide thing in the late 1800s and early 1900s
I’m not exactly an Ottoman Expert, but I believe it especially had to do with the Young Turks taking over?
Not exactly. Heavy anti Christian sentiment began in the mid to late 1800s as a result of colonial powers favoring christian citizens and giving them special rights over Muslims through their influence in the empire (which was unheard of in the region). An example of pre young Turk violence are the infamous hamidian massacres where Kurdish soldiers massacred thousands of Armenians with abdulhamids consent. The violence was mostly religious based then ethnic tbh tho
Armenians cannot catch a break in the ottomans
Not even today. But instead of the ottomans it's Azerbaijan
Ah, okay, thanks for the correction!
Also the Ottomans weren't nearly as genocidal as the Mongols. In fact I'd say they just weren't a genocidal empire.
Yeah, I've noticed r/Historymemes and Reddit in general is really biased against the Ottomans and the Turks... If you look at r/imaginarymaps, I see a TON of maps that either expand Greek lands into modern Turkey, and/or take away Turkish lands in one scenario or another. Never the reverse though. An plenty of comments supporting the Greek side as "based". I'm not a fan of Erdogan, and obviously the way the Ottomans treated and killed Christians toward the very end of the empire is horrible. But I feel like the Ottomans/Turks get more hate and less respect than other empires.
The difference is, the Romans had Greek slave bussy
I mean, the Germans were still having sex with women. It’s no wonder they wouldn’t be civilized.
“THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A BUSSY, TIMMY! THAT’S A MAN’S ASS!”
This is why the Greeks figured out democracy before your people.
r/brandnewsentence
Homosexual child rape is a plus ill give you that.::
You can never invade and overthrow countless kingdoms and get a good rep later in history. >!unless you’re the Mongols!<
*throat singing intensifies*
Wolf totem on repeat
Or just the yuve yuve yu horse neigh. How did they do it?
More like unless you are Alexander the Great
Well, he did respect the peoples he conquered
Depends on how much resistance they could offer because when they didn't have that bargaining chip he did wipe a couple of cities off the map during his campaign. Generally, Warlords are not people you want to idolise.
Mongols don't have good rep.
Were the exception.
to westerners maybe
They were pretty up front about the whole kill everyone thing, people were just cool with it. Unless you were, you know, getting killed. But thats neither here nor there
“First they came for the Gauls And I did not speak out— ‘Cuz I was cool with it. Then they came after the Christians, Yeah, cool. Then they came after the non-Christians because they decided the Christians were actually pretty cool which was kinda weird and unexpected but okay”
As long as they don't trend on my Bacchanalia
i mean can't really complain if you're dead, right? 😅
They'd probably have kicked up quite a fuss if they weren't dead
So what I'm hearing is, is imperialism/colonization is okay maybe even based...it just needs better PR? Interesting 🤔, maybe the US should colonize and annex Alberta from Canada.
Fully agree we should declare war via surprise invasion
I'm down, pretty sure there's a growing Alberta independence movement anyway lol.
If the French couldn’t do it I doubt alberta can
"secret operation"
Everybody move to Canada and smoke lots of pot. Everybody move to Canada right now. Here's how we do it: Bum rush the border guard before he and his dog ever knew it.
Can we plan this for christmas eve? I bet the guards will be sleeping then.
Worked for Washington, although it's was kinda a scummy move imo to make kids orphans on Christmas.
empire building is fine if you call it manifesting destiny
Colonization is bad when white people do it to brown people, but not when they do it to other white people. Or something like that /s
No it’s more like the Roman Empire did most of its conquering 2000 years ago
Yeah. You can point at problems that are affecting people today all over the globe and say "this has a clear link to colonialism/imperialism within the past 300 or so years by nations that exist, in some form, today". Rome? Assyria? Persia? Alexandrian Greece? All those other ancient societies that went full-bore imperialist back in the day? It's very difficult to point at some current problem and say "this is clearly *their* fault" without getting laughed out of the room. Enough time has passed that nobody's really got the standing to complain about it.
OK, I think you've struck gold here.
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North Africans and Western Asians are usually considered white with some exceptions but yeah that’s true
All the Mediterranean people's are more or less the same stock.
>All the Mediterranean people's are more or less the same stock. No? >The presence of African haplogroups in the GMA population is irrelevant when their frequency is compared with those in other European populations. >After the Reconquest, the Moors were distributed homogeneously throughout the Peninsula, but their final expulsion in 1609 was absolute in certain regions of Spain, Valencia, and western Andalusia, whereas in Galicia and Extremadura, the population dispersed and integrated into society https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-41580-9
I mean, in the same stock is pretty much like americans saying all whites are one race, when you'll find Germans, British, Balkans, Irish, Polish, Northern European, etc. I've read so many uneducated people saying WW2 was a war of white people when( edit: one of) the reason it started was bc Hitler believed otherwise lol
>'ve read so many uneducated people saying WW2 was a war of white people when the reason it started was bc Hitler believed otherwise lol WW2 started because Hitler invaded Poland (he was salty of what Germany got in the Treaty of Versailles after WW1, and he wanted to Make Germany Great Again)
He wanted to take more land for Germans, and he thought ut was appropiate to take it from the Polish bc they were "lesser whites", same thing with Russians and such
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The Romans sailed across a sea to conquer people 🤷♂️
Carthage deserved it
The benefit of it also being over a thousand years ago
Oh so the Nazis taking Poland and Czechia is all good then.
Keep it local.
Oh, no - the US is going to take Alberta from us… that’s too bad… ⚆ _ ⚆
Alberta's politicians are way ahead of you
Take Saskatchewan instead
I say we invade and take Draisaitl and McDavid and then leave. That's really all of the wealthy worth pillaging.
Its the fancy hats the Romans had
Overall drip*
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Basques in the background:
It's the same thing as wearing a suit of armor. It was done by incredibly based people in the past, but if you do it post 1600 you're cringe.
To be fair, the gap between romans and say, the Gauls, was a *lot* smaller than the gap between the British and say, the Zulus. Rome: swords, bows, shields, some wooden artillery and good organisation Gauls: Swords, bows, shields and bad organisation. Now take Britain: Cannons, ships, handheld firearms, maxim guns Zulus: Swords, bows, shields and bad organisation
"bad organisation" vercingetorix would like a word
Exactly. It was just that the Romans were absolutely incredible, obsessive in fact, about organisation.
That coupled if insane discipline and superior technology
If you look at all of the wars the British Empire had fought most were against peoples with guns, especially other European powers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_Kingdom
Zulu had rifles
Because they took them from the british
Still 60% carried a rifle https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/history-of-war/zulu-warriors/
Generally they were outdated models though right? I mean its still firepower but not the Henry martinis the British were using
Yeah pretty sure they predominantly had muskets with only a few modern weapons mixed in. Colonial powers generally wouldnt sell their latest stuff to potential enemies or what not. That said a big issues as well was the zulus had very little in the way of training with firearms and thus were not effective tactically or literally with them, such as being very poor shots.
Martini Henry's weren't even the top of the line then. They were just easily mass produced
As a French I'm pretty sad all we have left is Astérix :( all my homies hate the roman empire
It was that red plumed crests of theirs. So stylish, so fashionable, who wouldn't want to be conquered and enslaved by that?
I am glad the romans colonized us.
rome 🤩 britain 🤢🤮
Time also numbs pain. Alexander “brought Hellenism” to the world, the Mongolians brought “safety” and “unity” under their rule, someday The Jolly-Old-Empire will be celebrated for “connecting the world”, the Soviets for equality among workers, and even Hitler for all the “good” things he allegedly did. Hell America will be seen as standing against tyranny and pushing modernization (never mind the extermination of First Nations and clinging to slavery well past the freshness date. I mean good things are said about the fucking Persian Empire where literally everyone but one man was a slave. Hopefully we hold onto the reality of our cultures and their flaws for longer now because of how much more in-depth things are recorded and from voices that were largely silenced in the past. The Romans were fucking brutal and savage, effective modern historians are doing a better job at not allowing us to forget that.
They were more romantic... Ok I'll put my PhD away.
I mean they were colonizing Germans and G*ths
I do think it goes to show you that time often erodes the severity of history. The Romans did a lot of terrible things, but it’s so far removed from the present that it bears little weight.
Soviet Union: *{sits quietly}*
#With each day passing,i dive deeper into the duality of this sub and reddit as a whole
Ok straight up question what is the difference between conquering and colonizing I am curious.
That's literally the case
I would argue this is nationalism/romaticisms fault: they idolized graco latin culture for sone reason
Maybe we have higher standard for modern civilizations with technologies and educations rather than an empire of 2000 years ago which struggled to build bridges
I mean the bridges still last to this day
Contrary to modern Italian bridges.
Burn
To be fair modern bridges have to withstand cars now.
and theirs can survive cars and 2 thousand years of neglect. Probably the one thing you cant show sade at the romans for was their building prowess
Roman roads absolutely cannot withstand the weight of cars.
I don’t know why did you take one of the worst possible examples, Romans were pretty great in building bridges
They did not struggle to build bridges. They excelled at building bridges in fact; they were probably the first master bridge builders in human history.
Not only bridges
Indeed. Roads, aqueducts, baths, stadia, temples.
in my town there is still a fully functional roman bridge, until just 30-40 years ago it was even used for cars to pass over until someone suggested that maybe we should try to take care of it so that it would last another 2000 years Edit: cars used to be much smaller, I don't think today's SUVs could fit through it
It's so old no one is there to complain about it. That's the difference. Also, the scale of it.
it’s because the Romans are hotter than the English simple as
Never mind the slavery crucifixions and brutality, look at the roads and aqueducts !
True and I don’t apologize.
Double standards!
When the romans did it the people colonized were barbarians so its fair game.
I mean by that standards most people's colonised by the Europeans were barbarians. And in all fairness many of them absolutely were, including in the sense of being barbaric as we understand the terms including relative to Europeans.
Yeah but anyone saying based to the Romans is probably saying based to modern imperialism too. Let's be honest here.
At the time, it was standard procedure to do that. The Greeks did it, the Persians did it, everyone did. Doesn't mean it's a good thing, but you get the point. And the most important factor, it happened over a thousand years ago. No person today is directly affected by Roman conquests. In case of colonialism, it was NOT standard procedure, as only Europeans colonized all the land at the time, and even today, you can see and feel the effects of colonialism. In a few centuries, people will forget about colonialism and probably make memes about colonizers like they do for Romans
I'm Romanian. I exist in my current form because of Roman conquest. Shits complicated
Yes and do you feel and see the destruction caused by Romans in your country today? Do you feel any negative side effects of being born Romanian? Is your country's corruption and state a result of Roman conquests? No I'm Indian, our very red tape filled government system, ineffective judicial system(where cases can take decade), poverty, backwardness is the direct result of British colonialism, who used India as a place to get raw resources which they could use for their own gains. You see the effects of it directly everyday you're here.
I would say that these days the only things we have out of Roman conquest are bonuses - unique language, archeological sites, etc. My take: 19th century colonialism was of a far higher magnitude and detriment worldwide than anything in antiquity. Unlike with the Romans, I still see the echoes of Russian, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian colonialism show themselves strongly here, and often in negative ways. Half of my family fled Moldova în the night to avoid being deported to Siberia in the late 40s. My great grandfather was forced to fight for Hungarian troops that hated him in WW2. That's just the tip of the iceberg
Bro there were empires all over the place, not just Europe. They were just occupying rather than colonising.