Stop celebrating Columbus!!!

[Algona]

Lessee, in FoE you adventure to and discover new lands, you fight and conquer those lands, you raid. fight. and, steal from neighbors and have fun doing so.

Ya know, even if you dislike what Columbus did how could you think that he is anything less than the perfect role model for this game?

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Stumbled across a funny today. The 33rd Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque just announced the winner of a beauty contest, Her title, "Miss Indian World".

Can anyone find a count of Indian Nations that have officially condemned Columbus?

 

[DeletedUser25952]

So we need to stop looking at things from our time period and understand things were MUCH different then.

By today's standards, Abraham Lincoln would be a racist. In truth, he was, but he also believed that all men were created by God to be free. He stood up to declare that belief (along with thousands of freemen) and many thousands willingly gave their lives to win that freedom for the down trodden. What difference did slavery make to the cobbler working 14 hour days in his tiny shop in Foster Rhode Island? Why should he care? And yet tiny men from all over this great nation answered the call and gave their lives so that others might live and die free.

I will not seek to teach you. Read about Eugene Victor Debs. He was a selfless giant of a man. He saw a flawed world and sought to change it. I disagree with most of his beliefs, but he was a hero who dedicated his life to bettering the lives of others.

The big question is not about who was right or wrong in the past, but it is what can I learn from this past? How can my knowledge make me a better person? What service can I perform to improve the lives of others? Most of our heroes are flawed. Accept those flaws, and look instead to the parts that made them great; the parts of them that improved the world in which we live.

 

[DeletedUser8420]

We need to learn the complete history and not just those parts that fill our agenda in some form or fashion.

In the beginning ...the first slaves in the 1600s, in America, were white. The nobility of England thought to clean up the homeless problems oft he times by taking even children and shipping them out of the country. They weren't free to say no I wont go. They were kidnapped, chained and boarded onto ships (yes great numbers died on the way) and forced to live in a strange land - live or die situation. Just as Australia was colonialized by those marked as criminals in England.

The 1st ships to Africa was Hispanic...Portuguese and Spanish not English.

Remember that the African tribes raided villages and brought the captives to the coast to be sold to the Europeans, without the African tribes assistance there would have been no slavery at all. The crews of those ships didn't go inland because they were outnumbered and could have been slaughtered easily. The Africans were the ones that carried out the raids not the Europeans. And check to see who guarded the slaves in the Caribbean Islands, most often they were overseen by blacks.

Most people don't know that some of the largest plantations owned in the south, were black owned and operated. Yes, they owned black slaves.


On the plus side and still not readily known...
The FIRST self made woman millionaire was Sarah Breedlove (December 23, 1867 – May 25, 1919), known as Madam C. J. Walker, was an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and the first female self-made millionaire in America. But she wasn't the only one. Check to see how many black millionaires there were in the 1800-1900s. Yes they did exist especially in America. Which is a major reason the KKK Came into being ...OH BTW did you know that - KKK was started by Democrats...Republicans were anti slavery. But in the telling it has been twisted around.

In fact you might want to find out out who Margret Sanger really was and what she really stood for...

Do you know who the Buffalo Soldiers - Tuskegee were?- Both were celebrated for their bravery and skills.


STOP rewriting history...STOP trying to fit history into an agenda and just learn it. Dig and find out what really happened. It can be a real eye opener. The truth of the saying "if we don't learn we are bound to repeat it" sadly can be so very true.

 

[DeletedUser8420]

All that said remember Africans from before Ancient Egyptians utilized slavery. It was accepted...It took millenniums before the idea of slavery started to be thought as evil. Unfortunately, even today, there are still forced slavery today. The practice is still happening especially in Africa, Mid East and other various parts of the world.

The evil of the stronger enslaving the weaker is still in the world. So how about we learn the history but, focus on those that need help NOW!

 

[DeletedUser25952]

We need to learn the complete history and not just those parts that fill our agenda in some form or fashion...

STOP rewriting history...STOP trying to fit history into an agenda and just learn it. Dig and find out what really happened. It can be a real eye opener. The truth of the saying "if we don't learn we are bound to repeat it" sadly can be so very true.

No votes for Hillary here!

 

[DeletedUser23123]

No Hillary vote here either. "They were not slaves. They're called "Hard Workers" Quote by MSNBC. Hum?

 

[DeletedUser]

There are a great many real problems in the world. This isn't one of them.

 

[DeletedUser11463]

By today's standards, Abraham Lincoln would be a racist. In truth, he was, but he also believed that all men were created by God to be free. He stood up to declare that belief (along with thousands of freemen) and many thousands willingly gave their lives to win that freedom for the down trodden. What difference did slavery make to the cobbler working 14 hour days in his tiny shop in Foster Rhode Island? Why should he care? And yet tiny men from all over this great nation answered the call and gave their lives so that others might live and die free.

Most people mis-interpret what Lincoln wrote and what he did. He thought whites were better than blacks. His wife came from a family of slave owners. The Emancipation Proclamation did not free all blacks, only those who were slaves in rebellious states. Read it carefully if you don't believe it. Later in life, he evolved into a man who had a more current view and worked toward helping minorities. Should we not celebrate Lincoln's birthday? What about George Washington? He owned slaves. Should we no longer respect him? This is the problem with looking at history through our eyes and current mores. Our values are different than the values of those in that time. Slavery was common, the poor were treated like dirt, women generally had no say in anything and often couldn't own anything. If you look at many of our ancestors, we probably have slave blood and royal blood in our veins.
Just some thoughts on history and "liking" or "hating" those who came before us.

 

[DeletedUser26154]

Gosh Newt, I didn't know you played!

Not many realize that Newt Gingrich is also a respected, published author of good books.
The last one I read by Gingrich [co-authored by William R. Forstchen] is titled "Pearl Harbor".

 

[DeletedUser26154]

The Emancipation Proclamation did not free all blacks,

I heard through the grapevine that the Emancipation Proclamation's main purpose was to cripple the South's economic base as well as providing more manpower for the increasingly bloody Civil War. Armies on both sides we're sustaining massive casualties.

Lincoln was more concerned with keeping the Union intact, than in abolishing slavery. It should also be noted that the Free Soil Republican party, which Lincoln was a part, was founded on abolishing slavery.

When it came down to choosing either abolishing slavery, or keeping the Union intact, Lincoln chose to save the Union.

 

[Mustapha00]

Academia has long perpetrated a fraud on students by contending that what would become "the Americas" were, prior to Columbus (or Erik the Red, Zeng He or whoever really discovered the Americas), a veritable Utopia, with peoples living peacefully with each other and with nature, taking from the land only what they needed and giving back even more.

That is, of course, utter Bravo Sierra.

Little that the Europeans did to the indigenous peoples here were not already being done by the indigenous peoples to each other. The difference was one of degree but only because Europeans had access to technologies that the indigenous peoples did not. There is little doubt that, had indigenous people had firearms, they would have managed to kill far more of each other than they actually did (and that total was staggering, given the primitive nature- comparatively- of their weapons).

 

[DeletedUser8152]

Reference? Can't say I've heard an academic say anything like that.

 

[Mustapha00]

Not many realize that Newt Gingrich is also a respected, published author of good books.
The last one I read by Gingrich [co-authored by William R. Forstchen] is titled "Pearl Harbor".

I'm a fan of Gingrich, the politician, the pundit and the author.

But I had the opportunity to see an interview with William Forstchen on one of the CSPANs. Let's just say that the only reason Newt's name is on the book's masthead above Forstchen's is that more people know who Newt is and thus they can sell more books that way.

There is a sequel to Pearl Harborcalled "Days of Infamy". They also wrote three books on an alternative Gettysburg called "Gettysburg", "Grant Comes East" and "Never Call Retreat". I'm a huge fan of Counterfactuals/ Alternative History and those all are pretty good examples of the genre.

 

[Mustapha00]

I heard through the grapevine that the Emancipation Proclamation's main purpose was to cripple the South's economic base as well as providing more manpower for the increasingly bloody Civil War. Armies on both sides we're sustaining massive casualties.

Lincoln was more concerned with keeping the Union intact, than in abolishing slavery. It should also be noted that the Free Soil Republican party, which Lincoln was a part, was founded on abolishing slavery.

When it came down to choosing either abolishing slavery, or keeping the Union intact, Lincoln chose to save the Union.

That is true.

The Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves only in the South or those areas Lincoln deemed as being "in rebellion". It would have done nothing for slaves in states that had no seceded from the Union (and slavery was legal, if largely moribund, in several Northern states (Maryland, Delaware and Missouri among them). The hope, in part, was that slaves in the South would flee North in even greater numbers, thus denying to the South its principle labor force.

Lincoln wrote, in a letter to Horace Greeley, the memorable phrase "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union."

 

[Algona]

Little that the Europeans did to the indigenous peoples here were not already being done by the indigenous peoples to each other.

Little is the operative word. Smallpox virus is very little in size.

Look on the bright side folk! No Columbus Event this year! I doubt INNO will repeat any of the historical events!

Although I stand by my earlier comment that given the nature of this game that Columbus is a near perfect role model for the game.

 

[DeletedUser26154]

I'm a fan of Gingrich, the politician, the pundit and the author.

Try the book "Power Plays" by Dick Morris. You can find Lincoln's aforementioned letter in there, as well as many others.

 

[Mustapha00]

Little is the operative word. Smallpox virus is very little in size.

Look on the bright side folk! No Columbus Event this year! I doubt INNO will repeat any of the historical events!

Although I stand by my earlier comment that given the nature of this game that Columbus is a near perfect role model for the game.

And, it appears, indigenous peoples in the Americas left marauding European mercenaries, particularly the Spanish, a little present of their own: syphilis.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/03/native-americans-didnt-wipe-europeans-diseases/

 

[Algona]

Yeah, how dare those folk living here cause any problems for invaders....

 

[Mustapha00]

Yeah, how dare those folk living here cause any problems for invaders....

Again, my point was to debunk the fairy tale that all was Sweetness and Light here in the New World before those evil, privileged white European males arrived here bent on genocide and exploitation. The indigenous peoples, by all accounts, were doing an excellent job of that on each other already. If they had had more advanced military technology, they would ahve done an even better job of exploiting each other than they historically did.

 

[Algona]

"hey. boss, here's the latest status report. We killed 90% of the people who lived here through war and disease and took 99% of their land."

"That's OK, they were fighting each other when we got here."

"Yeah, but we managed to do it in a few centuries while their efforts at mutual annihilation got almost nowhere in 12000 years!"

"Woohoo! We're number one!"

Of course it wasn't all sweetness and light. And just as of course, in 12,000 years there were probably a lot of wars of eradication. But even after that time, there were a lot of people still running around the two continents.

China had gunpowder hundreds of years before Europe. They had the means to move around the world at around the same time. China managed to not wipe out / conquer every one within reach.

There are a lot of ways Western European Technological Society is unique. many positive. Two that are relevant here:

1) We have a rapacious enjoyment of deploying technology to crush people. It's not xenophobia, we'll just as happily crush our neighbor as the tribe over the hill.

2)Oddly enough we often feel sorry. After the crushing.

Please give up the horrifying immoral notion that it's OK to do something nasty to someone because they might do it to themselves anyway.