Talking about history... Another assumed historical fact is that Colombo discovered the Americas but the truth is that were the vikings the first to arrive there and then the Portuguese who arrived in what is today Canada. Not to mention Colombo was Portuguese(born in Alentejo, in a small village called Cuba, name he would later give to the island he discovered..), like many other names he gave to caribian islands all based in saints from lands in Alentejo/Portugal...and he was a spy hired by the Portuguese king... Colombo true history (in Portuguese) --» http://amigosdacuba.no.sapo.pt/paginas/p14-cristovaocolombo.htm#QUEM%20DESCOBRIU%20AS%20AMÉRICAS
BTW, China annexed Tibet in the 1700's. The key learning about the Chinese experience is that their centralized administration overruled inidividual initiative. If an emperor decided to again explore overseas it would have happened. Who is to say that an emperor would not have decided that? How much of Japanese isolationism was a response to European contact? If that contact had not happened it is certainly conceivable that Japan would have opened up. And don't forget that the Aztecs were a relatively young civilization who had been happily conquering their neighbors. Since 90% of them died from measles or smallpox, we can not conceive of how powerful their civilization would have turned out.
America annexed Texas in 1800's. Get off your high horse. What's your point? Japanese isolationism? LOL. If they hadn't driven their tanks all over Asia .................. The Aztecs, maybe you're right, maybe not. We'll never know I guess.
It is all the fault of the Turks. If they hadn't allowed the Mongols to take over their trading routes to India, then perhaps the Western Europeans would not have had the need to go west accross the Atlantic, or to go around Africa, looking for new routes so they could get their tea and spices. Then perhaps we would not have had all the evils of European colonialism. Then most of us would not even have been born. Well, looking at it that way, maybe we should thank the Turks.
It was a direct response to the European contact with the Far East. The Shogunate saw Christian missionaries and open trading as a threat to their power (probably correctly). They still saw enough value in trade, but limited it to the Dutch (whom they saw as more secular than the Portugese and thus less dangerous) and the Chinese, and confined all foreigners to a port city far from the capital. Japan went the exactly opposite direction of course, ditching isolationism for imperialism, a shift largely driven by the fear of being colonized themselves.
Exactly. Japanese "isolationism" is overstated - they never removed all foreigners from the country, they just kicked out the Catholics because they were tired of attempts to convert them to Christianity. Foreigners were, however, confined to the area around Nagasaki, which brought about one of the great ironies of World War II - at the time it was bombed, Nagasaki was one of the most Westernized places in Japan and had a large Christian population.
his point is that no one should be on a high horse, because if Europeans hadn't conquered the world, others would have. I don't think that was the point of this thread, but I do think he's right. Envisioning the world without European colonization is pretty much impossible, since this entire hemisphere would be totally different, and most major European events since the 1400's have involved colonies.
Thinking about it, I'm not so sure its fair to characterize European colonialism as a European invention... the earliest and most relentless European colonial-empire-builders were the Iberians who had basically just recovered half their home territories from what could reasonably be described as Almohadean colonization... they were kinda just looking for others to do unto as had been done to them...
Piper Cub!!! You underestimate the power, intelligence and technological superiority of the Persian Empire! If Spartacus had gotten any plane from the Persians, it would've been an F22 Advanced Tactical Fighter. - * * - actually, it would've been a 1/32nd scale model, but the aerolons, elevators and rudder would've moved if you pushed on 'em. But that would've been enough to convince the Romans to surrender.