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Tags Germany history , Russia history

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Old 18th June 2018, 05:06 PM   #201
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
Would you accept evidence that they did not receive such treatment from Russia in the first place?
But they did.
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Old 18th June 2018, 05:07 PM   #202
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Originally Posted by ddt View Post
The book you cite and quote is about East Prussia, while we had been discussing the fate of the Baltic Germans who lived in Latvia and Estonia. Why do you change the subject?

I think it's especially gross that you mention Die Gräfin. She was the founder, editor and journalist of the liberal weekly Die Zeit and one of the great intellectual voices in post-war (West) Germany. She did come to terms and accepted the loss of East Prussia, both on a personal and on a collective level, and used her journalistic voice to argue for that.
So now the Baltic Germans are anti-Nazis, after all?
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Old 18th June 2018, 05:15 PM   #203
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Originally Posted by ddt View Post
Original settlers? Really? The land was empty when the German crusaders turned up ca. 1200 in nowadays Estonia and Latvia? That's taking the cake. I thought you previously said there were people there "living like beasts in the field" (your words)?


What about the Dutch in South Africa?

When, in 1652, Jan van Riebeeck founded Cape Town as a way station for ships of the VOC, the Dutch East India Company, the people he and his men encountered there were Hottentots and Bushmen. They were the indigenous people of South Africa, and they still lived like in the stone age, as pastoralists and hunterer-gatherers, without farming, and without concept of private property or of territories. You can truly say, per your words, that they lived like beasts in the field. Therefore, it was only right and proper that Van Riebeeck and his successors took property of the land, started farming crops - for themselves and for providing the passing ships with fresh food - and enslaved those Hottentots and Bushmen that didn't flee into the Kalahari desert, to work for them.

From 1834 onward, the Boers embarked on the Great Trek, away from the Cape Colony with its British oppressive rule, into the inland of South Africa. There, they encountered Bantu peoples like the Xhosa, the Zulu and the Ndebele. These Bantus were not indigenous to South Africa: like the Boers, they had only settled the land in modern times, and so they had no more right to the land than the Boers. Some of the Boers, like Piet Retief and his party, went East into Natal. The Zulu king Dingane invited Retief for a social party and then treacherously killed Retief and 70 of his men. It was only right and proper that Andries Pretorius and his party avenged this breach of Christian hospitality rules, massacred Dingane's men at the Battle of Blood River.

Meanwhile, king Mzilikazi had also led his Ndebele tribe northwards into the Transvaal and ultimately into nowadays Rhodesia. During this migration, he carried out marauding raids all over the Transvaal, with the result that it got totally depopulated. So, when other Boer parties that went North, like that of Hendrik Potgieter, crossed the Vaal river into the Highveld, they truly found a deserted land where no-one lived. It was theirs for the taking.

It were the Boers who settled and developed the land, it were the Boers who set up the institutions of state and held up law and order. It were also the Boers who brought the Word of God to the unwashed black masses. It's only right and proper that they possessed the land and held political privilege under the Apartheid system.

In the above, I've only used the very same arguments you've been using in your defence of the position of the Baltic Germans. The great difference is, though, that I didn't have to falsify history in order to do so.

and now I feel dirty and in need of a shower...

I have nothing but disgust for apartheid Africa. The Dutch going into the earliest regions of apartheid S Africa is not an analogy for the Baltic Germans moving a few miles north west from Germany (then the Holy Roman Empire, made up of numerous individual states, rather like early USA).

The release of Nelson Mandela was one of the greatest events of modern times, together with bringing down the Berlin wall.

However, it is not a case of 'the goodies wear white hats' and the 'baddies wear black'. I brought up the topic of Nelson Mandela with a Zulu-speaking friend of mine from Zimbabwe and she was very muted. I discovered later that her peoples were opposed to the ANC - some kind of ethnic differences.

So you can't assume "All Africans like Nelson Mandela" or that "All Europeans support Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia".

There are all sorts of cultural and political tensions going on all the time.
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Last edited by Vixen; 18th June 2018 at 05:24 PM.
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Old 18th June 2018, 05:17 PM   #204
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
Being able to get together an army of 6,000 in those days didn't mean they had a large population
Yes it did. Around 1200 - that's the period when the German crusaders conquered the Baltics - 6,000 men was a huge army. For instance, the 1288 Battle of Worringen, one of the largest battles in the European Middle Ages, which pitted several dukes, counts and bishops against each other, comprised 4,200 against 4,800 soldiers.

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
(and one reason Peter the Great abolished serfdom, apart from a fear of a peasants' revolt, was that he had his eye on the Baltic lands, then under the domain of Sweden , and he wanted the serfs as a ready supply of soldiers instead).
He didn't, and he lived around 1700 so why do you skip 500 years?

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
In fact, most armies then were made up of a rag tag of mercenaries. Sweden had 20K Scottish mercenaries,
During the 30 Years War, 1618-1648.
Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
Generals used to pay each other to buy each other's armies wholesale. For example, Tilly, De Gardie and the Vasily Russian chap.
Again, you're discussing the 30 Years War. Mercenaries only came into existence at the end of the 15th Century (especially Swiss mercenaries). Before that, local rulers (e.g., counts) had only their own vassals (knights) as cavalry and their serfs as foot soldiers. Kings relied on what their vassals, i.e., their counts and dukes, provided.

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
If they could not afford an army,
In 1200, it was not a matter of "afford", armed service was an obligation of vassals as well as serfs.

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
Secondly, you do realise that 'parish' refers to a local church, so I expect you mean something like 'province' or 'region', not 'parish' (the onllyonllychurch which took tithes from the locals).
The word "parish" can also refer to secular divisions.

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
Of course there have been people in the Baltic lands since the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. You can't assume the population has remained constant, as people migrate all the time.
So why have you been denying that then? You called the German crusaders the "original settlers", in other words, the land was empty before they came.

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
In the dark ages, Europe was a mass of different tribes. Finland has/had at least three. A tribe is not the same as a country or a kingdom.
The "Dark Ages", an outdated term, refers to the Early Middle Ages, from ca. 500 to ca. 1000. Why do you keep jumping through history?

And no, you're lying when you claim that Europe was a mass of tribes. Western (continental) Europe had been territorially divided into gaus, the predecessors of counties, at least since the time of Charlemagne. Rincewind has explained how Estonia, at the time of the Baltic crusades, consisted of 15 counties - wiki even has a map of them - each with their own government and subdivisions. Why do you deny this?

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
Yes, man's propensity to lay claim to land which should be free for everybody and not property - an old Native American concept, and even a Saami one - is a shame. But having established land rights, then people should be compensated if unfairly and forcibly deprived of them.
So the Estonians and Latvians should be compensated for the land that the crusaders stole from them?
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Old 18th June 2018, 05:34 PM   #205
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
The comment about crusaders bring civilisation or otherwise the Nordic masses would still be worshipping Odin, Perkele or Baba Yaga, and living like beasts was - hello? - tongue-in cheek.
Given that you keep denying or disparaging the civilization of the indigenous Baltic peoples - see your response to Rincewind's post - your defence that it was some kind of joke is not credible at all.
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Old 18th June 2018, 05:36 PM   #206
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Originally Posted by ddt View Post
Yes it did. Around 1200 - that's the period when the German crusaders conquered the Baltics - 6,000 men was a huge army. For instance, the 1288 Battle of Worringen, one of the largest battles in the European Middle Ages, which pitted several dukes, counts and bishops against each other, comprised 4,200 against 4,800 soldiers.


He didn't, and he lived around 1700 so why do you skip 500 years?


During the 30 Years War, 1618-1648.

Again, you're discussing the 30 Years War. Mercenaries only came into existence at the end of the 15th Century (especially Swiss mercenaries). Before that, local rulers (e.g., counts) had only their own vassals (knights) as cavalry and their serfs as foot soldiers. Kings relied on what their vassals, i.e., their counts and dukes, provided.


In 1200, it was not a matter of "afford", armed service was an obligation of vassals as well as serfs.


The word "parish" can also refer to secular divisions.


So why have you been denying that then? You called the German crusaders the "original settlers", in other words, the land was empty before they came.


The "Dark Ages", an outdated term, refers to the Early Middle Ages, from ca. 500 to ca. 1000. Why do you keep jumping through history?

And no, you're lying when you claim that Europe was a mass of tribes. Western (continental) Europe had been territorially divided into gaus, the predecessors of counties, at least since the time of Charlemagne. Rincewind has explained how Estonia, at the time of the Baltic crusades, consisted of 15 counties - wiki even has a map of them - each with their own government and subdivisions. Why do you deny this?


So the Estonians and Latvians should be compensated for the land that the crusaders stole from them?

Those do not look like ancient names, but rather, modern names applied in retrospect. In addition, some appear to be Finnish names (Läänemaa = West Land, Saaremaa = Island land (saari= island) Harju, means 'ridge' and 'Viromaa' literally means 'Estonia Land' (viro= Finnish for Estonia).

This is truly remarkable, as Finnish did not become a written language until Mikael Agricola translated the Bible in C16.

Whoops!

In addition, if you look up what makes up the landmass of Viro Estonia, you will see that even today, like Finland, Sweden and Russia, there are large areas of nothing but copious forests.

In addition, there was no such thing as a 'civil' parish in those days, meaning, 'secular'. The whole rationale for the many wars in the region was the fight for hegemony of either Catholic or Protestant and each individual country making up the original Holy Roman Empire had to choose which they would be and if you were not of that faith you were expected to convert or leave.
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Old 18th June 2018, 05:37 PM   #207
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
So now the Baltic Germans are anti-Nazis, after all?
What complete non-sequitur. First of all, I never called the Baltic Germans Nazis. They were oppressors of the indigenous population, the Estonians and Latvians, but that does not make them Nazis. In fact, they were shafted by the Nazis because they got compensation in a part of Poland or they were interned in Germany proper. And Himmler saw to it that, after the German troops occupied the Baltics, most of them couldn't return either.

And the fact that one lady from East Prussia - not a Baltic German as we're discussing here - was outspokenly anti-Nazi does not translate to all of them either.
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Old 18th June 2018, 05:52 PM   #208
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
Those do not look like ancient names, but rather, modern names applied in retrospect. In addition, some appear to be Finnish names (Läänemaa = West Land, Saaremaa = Island land (saari= island) Harju, means 'ridge' and 'Viromaa' literally means 'Estonia Land' (viro= Finnish for Estonia).

This is truly remarkable, as Finnish did not become a written language until Mikael Agricola translated the Bible in C16.

Whoops!
There's nothing remarkable about that:
Quote:
Estonian belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family, along with Finnish, Karelian, and other nearby languages.
So, similarities in words are actually to be expected. And as to Virumaa / Viro, you have it exactly backward. Finns have adopted the name of that one region for the whole of Estonia, not the other way round.

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
In addition, if you look up what makes up the landmass of Viro Estonia, you will see that even today, like Finland, Sweden and Russia, there are large areas of nothing but copious forests.
So what? Is there some special injunction against owning forests or some such?

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
In addition, there was no such thing as a 'civil' parish in those days, meaning, 'secular'.
They obviously were called differently in Estonian:
Quote:
In the 1st centuries AD political and administrative subdivisions began to emerge in Estonia. Two larger subdivisions appeared: the parish (kihelkond) and the county (maakond). The parish consisted of several villages. Nearly all parishes had at least one fortress. The defense of the local area was directed by the highest official, the parish elder. The county was composed of several parishes, also headed by an elder. By the 13th century the following major counties had developed in Estonia: Saaremaa (Osilia), Läänemaa (Rotalia or Maritima), Harjumaa (Harria), Rävala (Revalia), Virumaa (Vironia), Järvamaa (Jervia), Sakala (Saccala), and Ugandi (Ugaunia).[19]
Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
The whole rationale for the many wars in the region was the fight for hegemony of either Catholic or Protestant and each individual country making up the original Holy Roman Empire had to choose which they would be and if you were not of that faith you were expected to convert or leave.
Stop lying and stop jumping through history. The conquest of the Baltics occurred in the early 1200s, the Protestant Reformation didn't occur until 1517.
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Old 18th June 2018, 06:02 PM   #209
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Originally Posted by ddt View Post
There's nothing remarkable about that:

So, similarities in words are actually to be expected. And as to Virumaa / Viro, you have it exactly backward. Finns have adopted the name of that one region for the whole of Estonia, not the other way round.


So what? Is there some special injunction against owning forests or some such?


They obviously were called differently in Estonian:



Stop lying and stop jumping through history. The conquest of the Baltics occurred in the early 1200s, the Protestant Reformation didn't occur until 1517.

The Normans arrived in England in 1066. So, if we were to throw out all those of Norman origin (perhaps a French name, or their ancestor was one of William the Conqueror's* barons) does that make it OK if we refuse to compensate them or give them their land back? Of course not. In 1066 there were many communities in Britain already.


But once the Normans settled, would it have been fair to have kicked them out 800 years later? Or say, no, you have to compensate the original Britons and Celts, first?

However, the Baltic Germans were kicked out in living memory, not >1,000 years ago.

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Old 18th June 2018, 06:20 PM   #210
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
The Normans arrived in England in 1066. So, if we were to throw out all those of Norman origin (perhaps a French name, or their ancestor was one of William the Conqueror's* barons) does that make it OK if we refuse to compensate them or give them their land back? Of course not. In 1066 there were many communities in Britain already.


But once the Normans settled, would it have been fair to have kicked them out 800 years later? Or say, no, you have to compensate the original Britons and Celts, first?

However, the Baltic Germans were kicked out in living memory, not >1,000 years ago.

*"William "the Conqueror", king of England is your 28th great uncle." - geni.com
That does not address my post.

Why did you smirk about the names of those Estonian counties? Did you really not know that Estonian and Finnish are related languages?

Why did you make that remark about large forests?

And why did you again jump through centuries to try make a failed point? For someone who calls themselves "informed", you really make a hash of history.
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Old 18th June 2018, 06:22 PM   #211
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
It is rather strange that history doesn't seem to go back much beyond 7K-8K years ago (the ancient Egyptians and Chinese)
No it doesn't. History starts when there are written records, so goes back at most to ca 3,500BC in Mesopotamia where the earliest script was developed. In my country, history only starts when the Romans arrived. Everything before that is prehistory.
Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
and yet humans have roamed the earth for at least 250m years, according to the archaeologists (from carbon dating).
Studying ancient human remains is the job of paleontologists, not archaeologists (who study ancient culture), and carbon dating is unsuited for anything older than ca. 30Ka.

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
So I do often wonder, what happened to all these ancient peoples. They obviously can't all have been completely illiterate, and when you consider how tiny the earth's population used to be even 1,000 years ago, one has to wonder, what happened to all these people. What happened to the Neanderthals. Well, we know in their case, they either became extinct or they were genocided.
The Neanderthals went extinct ca. 30Ka. What has that to do with what happened 1,000 years ago?

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
The other day another poster said we have no idea who the people populating Ireland and Scotland were as we have no records and the 'picts' are a fanciful myth. Isn't that odd?
That's not what Craig said. He said that those old king lists are fanciful myths.

No records beyond circa AD900, and for most people, the Vikings represent something ancient an exotic, yet, hello? they only go back to AD900 for pete's sake.

So what was happening on earth 1,500 years ago? Was it all destroyed? Or did it never exist, anyway?
Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
We are taught that Columbus and Cook discovered various parts of the world, and Scott the Antarctic,
Amundsen actually was first on the Southpole. And returned to tell it.

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
and Hilary was first to achieve Mt Everest, and we swallow all this obvious ********.
Why do you call that all BS?

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
AFAIK the Native Americans lived as nomadic tribes.
Some did, others lived sedentary. You can't just treat all Native Americans as one group. That you do that is another sign of the racism underlying your arguments.

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
From Ancient DNA studies, we know they crossed from Asia over the Bering Strait and into North America. They share the same DNA as Asian people today.
They did so ca. 14 Ka. What has that to do with their lifestyle ca. 1500?
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Old 18th June 2018, 06:23 PM   #212
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
That they did anything to deserve such treatment.
Which treatment by whom?
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Old 18th June 2018, 06:35 PM   #213
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
But they were not. They were re-peopled by ethnic Russians. Many ethnic Estonians and Latvians were taken to the concentration camps as dissidents.

(Stettin.)
Why do you keep lying? The expropriation took place in 1918-1920, right at the beginning of the independent Latvian and Estonian republics. Stalin wouldn't conquer them until 1940 and only after that start his Russification policies.
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Old 18th June 2018, 07:05 PM   #214
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
This is truly remarkable, as Finnish did not become a written language until Mikael Agricola translated the Bible in C16.
There you give another reason that Finland should just be given back to either Sweden or Russia. Its population are only country bumpkins. Even the guy who devised the first orthography was a farmer.
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Old 19th June 2018, 02:29 AM   #215
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
It is rather strange that history doesn't seem to go back much beyond 7K-8K years ago (the ancient Egyptians and Chinese) and yet humans have roamed the earth for at least 250m years, according to the archaeologists (from carbon dating). So I do often wonder, what happened to all these ancient peoples. They obviously can't all have been completely illiterate ...
The people's of 7K+ years ago were literally illiterate.
We have no evidence of writing prior to about 5.5k years ago.
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Old 19th June 2018, 02:35 AM   #216
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
Stalin's motto, wasn't it, "the end justifies the means".

Is that your motto, too?
That's a proverb going back to Ovid, "exitus acta probat". It's somewhat erromeously attributed to Machiavelli (whom I believe Stalin read). Machiavelli said in The Prince that when evaluating a prince's actions, no higher authority exists, and therefore "si guarda al fine", "one must consider the result".

Machiavelli actually used a closer paraphrase in 'Livy', "Though the act condemn the doer ... when the end is good, the act may be excused", though this is in a very specific context (viz., establishing a constitution).
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Old 19th June 2018, 02:47 AM   #217
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
Being able to get together an army of 6,000 in those days didn't mean they had a large population (and one reason Peter the Great abolished serfdom, apart from a fear of a peasants' revolt, was that he had his eye on the Baltic lands, then under the domain of Sweden , and he wanted the serfs as a ready supply of soldiers instead). In fact, most armies then were made up of a rag tag of mercenaries. Sweden had 20K Scottish mercenaries, which is why you see remnants of a Scottish presence in Finland today (e.g., the Finlayson textile company). This is because these Scots soldiers were well-rewarded for their part in Sweden's victories. One used to own my grandparents' estate, Sir Hans Ramsay. Came from the Douglas clan, crest a black raven.
Ragtag? AFAIKScottish Gallowglass mercenaries were considered some of the finest troops money could buy.

Mercenary is a bit misleading here: the typical "man-at-arms" could be anything from a foreign mercenary to a nobleman or well-off commoner owing service as tribute to his liege.
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Old 19th June 2018, 05:00 AM   #218
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
Being able to get together an army of 6,000 in those days didn't mean they had a large population (and one reason Peter the Great abolished serfdom, apart from a fear of a peasants' revolt, was that he had his eye on the Baltic lands, then under the domain of Sweden , and he wanted the serfs as a ready supply of soldiers instead). In fact, most armies then were made up of a rag tag of mercenaries. Sweden had 20K Scottish mercenaries, which is why you see remnants of a Scottish presence in Finland today (e.g., the Finlayson textile company). This is because these Scots soldiers were well-rewarded for their part in Sweden's victories. One used to own my grandparents' estate, Sir Hans Ramsay. Came from the Douglas clan, crest a black raven.

Generals used to pay each other to buy each other's armies wholesale. For example, Tilly, De Gardie and the Vasily Russian chap. If they could not afford an army, then they were not able to build a naval port and a navy. So having a large army, being rich enough to sustain it and having naval power was key.

Secondly, you do realise that 'parish' refers to a local church, so I expect you mean something like 'province' or 'region', not 'parish' (the church which took tithes from the locals).

Of course there have been people in the Baltic lands since the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. You can't assume the population has remained constant, as people migrate all the time.

In the dark ages, Europe was a mass of different tribes. Finland has/had at least three. A tribe is not the same as a country or a kingdom.

Yes, man's propensity to lay claim to land which should be free for everybody and not property - an old Native American concept, and even a Saami one - is a shame. But having established land rights, then people should be compensated if unfairly and forcibly deprived of them.
Hi Vixen,

Nothing you mention here justifies the crusaders stealing the land from it's owners.

And - as DDT has so eloquently mentioned - Most of your data is from a long time after so isn't relevant.

Also, I agree with your comment - the Estonians and Livonians already had land rights...

Oh - and what I hope is a helpful correction - the Nazi Party abbreviation in German was NSDAP. NSPD kinda sounds like the New Smyrna Police Department.
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Old 19th June 2018, 06:33 AM   #219
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
I have nothing but disgust for apartheid Africa. The Dutch going into the earliest regions of apartheid S Africa is not an analogy for the Baltic Germans moving a few miles north west from Germany (then the Holy Roman Empire, made up of numerous individual states, rather like early USA).
I have no idea what you mean with that.

Is distance really your only argument here? The German merchants who founded Riga came from Bremen, that's over 1,000 km as the crow flies, much longer if you sail (around Jutland). By comparison, the distance from Amsterdam to Cape Town is 9,700 km as the crow flies.

The Dutch settlers of Cape Town came there to set up a way station for ships passing on their way to the East Indies. What is different about that than the German merchants who founded Riga? Is the difference in distance all you've got? If you can't give a sound argument why one is different than another, your claimed "disgust" for apartheid South Africa sounds quite hollow.

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
The release of Nelson Mandela was one of the greatest events of modern times,
Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. He founded uMkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, which carried out many attacks against the legitimate government of South Africa. That's what got him in prison.
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Old 19th June 2018, 06:38 AM   #220
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Originally Posted by Rincewind View Post
Oh - and what I hope is a helpful correction - the Nazi Party abbreviation in German was NSDAP. NSPD kinda sounds like the New Smyrna Police Department.
Are you setting up for another irredentist discussion: should Greece reconquer the West coast of Turkey, which has been populated by Greeks going back to the times of Homer?
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Old 19th June 2018, 06:50 AM   #221
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Originally Posted by TubbaBlubba View Post
That's a proverb going back to Ovid, "exitus acta probat". It's somewhat erromeously attributed to Machiavelli (whom I believe Stalin read). Machiavelli said in The Prince that when evaluating a prince's actions, no higher authority exists, and therefore "si guarda al fine", "one must consider the result".

Machiavelli actually used a closer paraphrase in 'Livy', "Though the act condemn the doer ... when the end is good, the act may be excused", though this is in a very specific context (viz., establishing a constitution).
I have read a couple of different translations of The Prince. The first one I read agrees with you and sates that "The ends justifies the means" is a lazy translation. It also points out that translating renaissance era Italian political jargon is not a straight forward task.

The other one I read just gives the lazy translation.
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Old 19th June 2018, 06:58 AM   #222
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
It is rather strange that history doesn't seem to go back much beyond 7K-8K years ago (the ancient Egyptians and Chinese) and yet humans have roamed the earth for at least 250m years, according to the archaeologists (from carbon dating).
Literally everything in this sentence is factually incorrect.

1. Writing developed about 3000 bce, so about 5000 years ago. History didn't develop before then because, well, no writing = no history.
2. Australopithecines, the earliest bipedal hominid that we know of, go back about 3.5 million - 5 million years ago. 250 million years ago is dinosaur territory.
3. Carbon dating is useless beyond a couple tens of thousands of years.
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Old 19th June 2018, 07:11 AM   #223
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Originally Posted by Tolls View Post
The people's of 7K+ years ago were literally illiterate.
We have no evidence of writing prior to about 5.5k years ago.

Damn, I missed that one.

Tip for Vixen: look up the meaning of words before you use them.

Originally Posted by Rincewind View Post
And - as DDT has so eloquently mentioned - Most of your data is from a long time after so isn't relevant.
Thank you for the compliment!

And yes, Vixen's chronology is more messed up than that of Anatoly Fomenko, Herbert Illiig or Albert Delahaye. Each of those at least formed something internally consistent.

Another tip to Vixen: look up the date of each and every historical fact you mention.

I'll henceforth assume every jump through the centuries is deliberate and intentional. After all, you claim yourself to be "informed" and you've done "research" after this and that. And yet you can't even produce correctly the name of the Nazi Party.
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Old 19th June 2018, 07:39 AM   #224
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Originally Posted by Rincewind View Post
Nothing you mention here justifies the crusaders stealing the land from it's owners.

Also, I agree with your comment - the Estonians and Livonians already had land rights...
Can we wager on Vixen's reply to this? (*)

The answers we got thus far varied between:

1) the Germans were the original settlers. IOW, there were no Balts.
2) the Balts were "living like beasts in the field". IOW, they were subhuman and you may subjugate and enslave them like you corral cattle.
3) the Balts worshipped heathen gods like Odin, Perkele and Baba. IOW, the Germans brought the right religion and thus were in the right to enslave them and take away their land.
4) the Balts were only living in tribes. IOW, the Germans brought law and order and it was right and proper to enslave them and take away their land.

Oh, and all those answers are wrong.

I wonder, though, why it wasn't okay for the Dutch settlers of the Cape to take uninhabited land and to bring law and order and the right word of God to the unwashed negroes living there?

(*) I know we can't. Some of us, including me, did so with another poster years ago and those threads got sent to Deep Storage.
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Old 19th June 2018, 11:24 AM   #225
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Originally Posted by Tolls View Post
I just wonder what V thinks will happen?
What is the goal?

Is she expecting the descendants of those who left in 40/44 to go back?
What the hell am I going to do with a farmhouse in Koivisto? I work in IT!
There are those who still remember 1944-46.

There is a Karelian who married into my family. He did well in Finland as a CEO of a hotel chain, and living in a salubrious part of Helsinki. But yet his heart yearns for his childhood home, and he is still bitter about being made to leave. Another dear family friend told me although she left as a child, she still dreams of what she considers home.

The descendants are Finns, so they probably have no great ambition to 'return' one way or another.

People do not realise that losing your home land is like a bereavement.
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Old 19th June 2018, 12:13 PM   #226
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Originally Posted by ddt View Post
That does not address my post.

Why did you smirk about the names of those Estonian counties? Did you really not know that Estonian and Finnish are related languages?

Why did you make that remark about large forests?

And why did you again jump through centuries to try make a failed point? For someone who calls themselves "informed", you really make a hash of history.
The Baltic Germans likely never displaced anyone. They probably cleared swathes of forest, on which to build their estates.
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Old 19th June 2018, 12:53 PM   #227
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
It is rather strange that history doesn't seem to go back much beyond 7K-8K years ago (the ancient Egyptians and Chinese) and yet humans have roamed the earth for at least 250m years, according to the archaeologists (from carbon dating). So I do often wonder, what happened to all these ancient peoples. They obviously can't all have been completely illiterate, and when you consider how tiny the earth's population used to be even 1,000 years ago, one has to wonder, what happened to all these people. What happened to the Neanderthals. Well, we know in their case, they either became extinct or they were genocided.

The other day another poster said we have no idea who the people populating Ireland and Scotland were as we have no records and the 'picts' are a fanciful myth. Isn't that odd? No records beyond circa AD900, and for most people, the Vikings represent something ancient an exotic, yet, hello? they only go back to AD900 for pete's sake.
I never said anything of the sort. I said that the genealogies of Pictish and Gaelic kings were largely fictional, or at all events weren't historically verifiable. Picts and Gaels are not, however, mythical, and I have never said they were.

Now it's my turn to correct you. Modern humans have not roamed the earth for 250 millions of years, but for somewhat less than a thousandth of that time. 250 million years ago our ancestors were reptiles.

For much or most of their existence, modern humans - the ones like the people who live now - were confined to sub Saharan Africa, and didn't roam the rest of the earth. They had no written languages, and didn't practice agriculture until much more recently.

Please also note, from Radiocarbon datingWP
... the oldest dates that can be reliably measured by this process date to around 50,000 years ago, although special preparation methods occasionally permit accurate analysis of older samples
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Old 19th June 2018, 01:02 PM   #228
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Originally Posted by Craig B View Post
I never said anything of the sort. I said that the genealogies of Pictish and Gaelic kings were largely fictional, or at all events weren't historically verifiable. Picts and Gaels are not, however, mythical, and I have never said they were.

Now it's my turn to correct you. Modern humans have not roamed the earth for 250 millions of years, but for somewhat less than a thousandth of that time. 250 million years ago our ancestors were reptiles.

For much or most of their existence, modern humans - the ones like the people who live now - were confined to sub Saharan Africa, and didn't roam the rest of the earth. They had no written languages, and didn't practice agriculture until much more recently.

Please also note, from Radiocarbon datingWP
... the oldest dates that can be reliably measured by this process date to around 50,000 years ago, although special preparation methods occasionally permit accurate analysis of older samples
I see my error. That should read 250K, not 250m.

When I point out to fanatical Darwinists that radio carbon dating only goes back 40K years with any accuracy, I am in the wrong. If I mention a 250K human history on earth, I am wrong again. <Shrug>.
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Old 19th June 2018, 01:04 PM   #229
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Originally Posted by Tolls View Post
The people's of 7K+ years ago were literally illiterate.
We have no evidence of writing prior to about 5.5k years ago.
So you are saying that the people who introduced reading and writing were culturally advanced and more civilised than the illiterate masses...?
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Old 19th June 2018, 01:13 PM   #230
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
So you are saying that the people who introduced reading and writing were culturally advanced and more civilised than the illiterate masses...?
No, he's saying you got your dates wrong.

And really. Were the Gauls more civilized than the Inca? How would you even measure that?
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Old 19th June 2018, 02:06 PM   #231
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
I see my error. That should read 250K, not 250m.

When I point out to fanatical Darwinists that radio carbon dating only goes back 40K years with any accuracy, I am in the wrong. If I mention a 250K human history on earth, I am wrong again. <Shrug>.
What point are you trying to make to "fanatical Darwinists" in arguing that radio carbon dating only gives accurate figures for a few tens of millennia? Do they respond to you by correctly stating that there are other procedures which can date things back to the beginning of the solar system?

But yes you are frequently in the wrong, and dismissive shrugs will not make you more correct, I am afraid. The fact that the earliest modern human remains are too remote in time to be dated by radioactive carbon ... why is that a problem for Darwinists, whether fanatical or otherwise?
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Old 19th June 2018, 02:27 PM   #232
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
The Baltic Germans likely never displaced anyone. They probably cleared swathes of forest, on which to build their estates.
Both ddt and I have given you data that confirms this is nonsense.

However, should you have real data of your own to back up your guesses, I'm sure we'll be delighted to read it...
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Old 19th June 2018, 08:22 PM   #233
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
I see my error. That should read 250K, not 250m.

When I point out to fanatical Darwinists that radio carbon dating only goes back 40K years with any accuracy, I am in the wrong. If I mention a 250K human history on earth, I am wrong again. <Shrug>.
Accepting, for the moment, that that "m" instead of "k" was indeed a typo, and that you're being truthful in knowing that radiocarbon dating goes back only a few tens of thousands of years, why did you claim that the age of mankind (i.e., of homo sapiens sapiens) had been established by radiocarbon dating?

The bigger issue, though, is that you completely ignore the issue that you misrepresented Craig's post about Pictish royal lineages, an issue that Craig and earlier me raised. I think you owe him an apology for that.
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Old 19th June 2018, 08:23 PM   #234
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
So you are saying that the people who introduced reading and writing were culturally advanced and more civilised than the illiterate masses...?
No, Tolls his saying that you should consult a dictionary on the meaning of the word "illiterate".
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Old 19th June 2018, 08:24 PM   #235
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
There are those who still remember 1944-46.

There is a Karelian who married into my family. He did well in Finland as a CEO of a hotel chain, and living in a salubrious part of Helsinki. But yet his heart yearns for his childhood home, and he is still bitter about being made to leave. Another dear family friend told me although she left as a child, she still dreams of what she considers home.

The descendants are Finns, so they probably have no great ambition to 'return' one way or another.

People do not realise that losing your home land is like a bereavement.
Cool story.

And I want a pony.
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Old 20th June 2018, 12:03 AM   #236
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Originally Posted by dudalb View Post
For the Tsar, I agree. The cold blooded murder of his whole family, though...is another story. I think that is where a lot of people..including me..condemn the Bolsheviks.

Alexandra IMHO was just as culpable. The "kids" - well, the two youngest were minors. The three oldest were the same age as the kids who were sent off to die in the trenches, i.e., young adults. Their mother - again IMHO - infantalized them, but they were not children. IIRC, early on in the revolution Alexandra and her children were offered the chance to leave Russia, but declined.
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Old 20th June 2018, 12:29 AM   #237
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
It is rather strange that history doesn't seem to go back much beyond 7K-8K years ago (the ancient Egyptians and Chinese) and yet humans have roamed the earth for at least 250m years, according to the archaeologists (from carbon dating).So I do often wonder, what happened to all these ancient peoples. They obviously can't all have been completely illiterate, and when you consider how tiny the earth's population used to be even 1,000 years ago, one has to wonder, what happened to all these people.
The US southwest and west has an abundance of pre-Columbian pictoglyphs in the desert areas - it seems the people who lived there hundreds of years ago wanted to make their marks.


Quote:
AFAIK the Native Americans lived as nomadic tribes.
It varied. There were large settlements in places like Cahokia along the Mississippi, and even in post-contact times peoples such as the Iroquois, the Cherokee, and Choctaw had good-sized towns, as did many Southwestern tribes.

Quote:
The early settler suffered regular raids by the Native Americans and they fought back with guns. It all got very bloody. However, apart from the tribes of Native Americans, North America wasn't 'settled' per se. I admit it is rather odd that US history only seems to start in 1624.
In other words, aside from the people who lived there nobody lived there. Or at least nobody important, i.e., European.

Even if one defines "history" as "what's been recorded", US history does go back further then that, back to the Spanish settlements in Florida (and if you count Puerto Rico, even earlier). There's a building in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that's been used as a government building almost continuously since 1608 (there was this thing called the Pueblo Uprising in the late 1600s).


If you can find a copy where you live, I recommend Charles Mann's book 1491 for a glimpse of current thinking on the pre-contact Americas.
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Old 20th June 2018, 02:34 AM   #238
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
There are those who still remember 1944-46.
Precious few now.
The youngest (who really won't remember it) are in their 70s.

Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
There is a Karelian who married into my family. He did well in Finland as a CEO of a hotel chain, and living in a salubrious part of Helsinki. But yet his heart yearns for his childhood home, and he is still bitter about being made to leave. Another dear family friend told me although she left as a child, she still dreams of what she considers home.

The descendants are Finns, so they probably have no great ambition to 'return' one way or another.

People do not realise that losing your home land is like a bereavement.
And so, for the sake of the few who perceive Karelia et al as their home, you would displace a million people for whom it is their home, and has been for several generations.

Sorry...no. That is how to get into a situation where this crap never ends.
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Old 20th June 2018, 04:41 AM   #239
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Originally Posted by Vixen View Post
The other day another poster said we have no idea who the people populating Ireland and Scotland were as we have no records and the 'picts' are a fanciful myth. Isn't that odd? No records beyond circa AD900, and for most people, the Vikings represent something ancient an exotic, yet, hello? they only go back to AD900 for pete's sake.
I believe that what I said was that we have no records other than the oral histories past a certain point and that most of the kings of Ireland and Scotland always traced their ancestry back to a hero of myth or a god.

translation for those who don't wish argue against a strawman - we can't be certain of the ancestry of anyone when there are no records.

Second there are historical records that exist prior to 900 in the British Isles - what we do not have are complete records.

Literacy outside of the clergy was not common and not every petty king was the patron of a monastic settlement who would record all the births and deaths.

Quote:
So what was happening on earth 1,500 years ago? Was it all destroyed? Or did it never exist, anyway?
The decay of the Western Roman Empire was happening 1,500 years ago. Large scale migrations were happening. Record keeping ending up being prioritized lower than before as the social system became less stable.

Your lack of basic historical knowledge is quire troubling.

Quote:
We are taught that Columbus and Cook discovered various parts of the world, and Scott the Antarctic, and Hilary was first to achieve Mt Everest, and we swallow all this obvious ********.
Yes, we were taught that - and do you know why?

Quote:
AFAIK the Native Americans lived as nomadic tribes. From Ancient DNA studies, we know they crossed from Asia over the Bering Strait and into North America. They share the same DNA as Asian people today.
Actually, its more a sharing with the Siberians than with other Asian ethnic groups.

And there were actually quite a few First Nations that lived in permanent settlements with agriculture. We can start with the Iroquois and Hurons, then there were the Ohio River cultures, Anazai, Haida, Tlingit, Nootka, Inca, and the Central American cultures. In fact, the majority of First Nation (population wise) were living in permanent settlements at the time of first contact with Europeans.

By depicting the First Nations as nomadic savages Europeans were able to justify dispossessing them of their lands.

Much like you've done with the Germans bring civilization to the Balts....

Quote:
When the early settlers arrived in the USA circa 1600's (and the Spanish in the south in the 1400's) they were either religious dissidents who were forced to leave Britain or they were political dissidents, such as the Levellers or supporters of Catholic King Charles II after he was deposed and beheaded. Others were convicts transported to the New World as punishment.
You really are historically ignorant, aren't you?

We'll start with the Spanish settlers. They were neither political or religious dissidents - they were considered to be loyal Spaniards, given that they were part of the new aristocracy supplanting the ruling classes of the first nations that were conquered. This was how the Spanish got people to come over - be a landowner and experience social mobility.

Now the American settlers - given that the first colonies in North America were set up in hopes of finding gold like the Spanish did in Central America the British certainly weren't going to send political dissidents. While colonies such as Virginia and Maryland were notoriously Royalist after the Civil War, they did not get a large influx of Royalist immigrants - simply because it was a long trip by boat - Royalist refugees had a much shorter trip to France if they needed to get out of England.

The Puritans who had come to N. America to practice that unique form of religious freedom known as "We want the freedom to practice our own faith in the way we see fit and to make sure that everyone else can practice their faith in the way that we see fit." About 1/6th of the male population went back to England during the Civil War and a significant portion of them stayed to take advantage of England under Puritan rule.

Those sent to the Americas as punishment didn't get sent to North America - they got sent to the Barbados, Jamaica and Bermuda to work the sugar plantations. Which was quite often a death sentence.
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Old 20th June 2018, 04:53 AM   #240
Border Reiver
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Originally Posted by TubbaBlubba View Post
No, he's saying you got your dates wrong.

And really. Were the Gauls more civilized than the Inca? How would you even measure that?
Measuring civilization relative to other civilization is challenging. And realistically is dependant on the value of the person doing the evaluating.

Both the Gauls and the Inca had well established population centres, high levels of agriculture, and well developed artistic sensitivities. The Gauls were iron workers, however, that is more due to the ease of getting iron in NW Europe relative to the Andes than to technical ability (given the level of metalwork displayed with gold and silver). Both were non-literate cultures. The Incans did have a higher level of social organization than the Gauls did - as demonstrated by a unified political structure and the system of labour used to develop high altitude agriculture, travel and trade, as compared to the far less cohesive political/social structure of the Gauls.

Realistically, the Incan culture was probably on a higher level than the Gauls.
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