History's greatest crime? I think your view of history is too Euro-centric, as was mine when I began reading Howard Zinn's book on US history and more of Christopher Columbus's real history. Then I discovered that the Mongolian hordes from about 1200 to 1400 explored and then massacred people all over central and western Asia, eastern Europe, and were even planning an invasion of the British isles when their last bloodthirsty and war-happy Emperor died and the hordes all began retreating back to Mongolia. They weren't very interested in planting colonies, but rather kidnapped all useful craftsmen, sent them back to Mongolia, and ignored everyone else at each city they found that surrendered to them, unless the people there refused to surrender, and then the Mongolians killed EVERYONE there and moved on to search for the next city to conquer. The European idea was to conquer, plunder, and then settle. The Mongolian paradigm did not involve making any permanent Mongolian settlements.
In my opinion, the American model of government and social rules is not wise or friendly enough to rule even itself, let alone any other cultures.
That made me laugh. Steven Pinker called it history's greatest crime, and I will agree. An entire hemisphere was depopulated. I have written on the Mongol Hordes quite a bit over the years, recently read another book on it, and am reading another. Yes, they nearly conquered all of Eurasia, and killed something like 10% of humanity:
If 50 million natives of the Western Hemisphere died in the first 150 years of the European conquest and "settling," that is also about 10% of humanity. So they were close. :) Those are relative death tolls. The British conquest occupation of India led to nearly two billion shortened lives:
and Queen Victoria has been credibly described as history's greatest mass murderer. Hitler was an amateur, compared to the British death toll in India. Ah, to debate which was worse is a macabre task. I'll agree that the Mongols were up there on the scale, and if they were not in first place, they merit no less than second place, on a relative scale. Hitler's main crime was doing it to white people in our "enlightened" age, as far as his notoriety goes. These are really grim subjects, and as an American, I will always be most concerned about those that my great nation (and its progenitors) committed, as was the case with Noam and Ed.
History's greatest crime? I think your view of history is too Euro-centric, as was mine when I began reading Howard Zinn's book on US history and more of Christopher Columbus's real history. Then I discovered that the Mongolian hordes from about 1200 to 1400 explored and then massacred people all over central and western Asia, eastern Europe, and were even planning an invasion of the British isles when their last bloodthirsty and war-happy Emperor died and the hordes all began retreating back to Mongolia. They weren't very interested in planting colonies, but rather kidnapped all useful craftsmen, sent them back to Mongolia, and ignored everyone else at each city they found that surrendered to them, unless the people there refused to surrender, and then the Mongolians killed EVERYONE there and moved on to search for the next city to conquer. The European idea was to conquer, plunder, and then settle. The Mongolian paradigm did not involve making any permanent Mongolian settlements.
In my opinion, the American model of government and social rules is not wise or friendly enough to rule even itself, let alone any other cultures.
That made me laugh. Steven Pinker called it history's greatest crime, and I will agree. An entire hemisphere was depopulated. I have written on the Mongol Hordes quite a bit over the years, recently read another book on it, and am reading another. Yes, they nearly conquered all of Eurasia, and killed something like 10% of humanity:
https://ahealedplanet.net/preview.htm#mongols
If 50 million natives of the Western Hemisphere died in the first 150 years of the European conquest and "settling," that is also about 10% of humanity. So they were close. :) Those are relative death tolls. The British conquest occupation of India led to nearly two billion shortened lives:
https://ahealedplanet.net/humanity.htm#demographic2
and Queen Victoria has been credibly described as history's greatest mass murderer. Hitler was an amateur, compared to the British death toll in India. Ah, to debate which was worse is a macabre task. I'll agree that the Mongols were up there on the scale, and if they were not in first place, they merit no less than second place, on a relative scale. Hitler's main crime was doing it to white people in our "enlightened" age, as far as his notoriety goes. These are really grim subjects, and as an American, I will always be most concerned about those that my great nation (and its progenitors) committed, as was the case with Noam and Ed.