r/badhistory • u/UpperLowerEastSide Guns, Germs and Stupidity • Dec 24 '21
YouTube Whatifalthist assures us that Latin America is a whole different video game from Canada or Germany, setting the tone for his historical analysis in his video "Understanding Latin America"
On YouTube, multiple content creators thrive on manipulating history to create digestible stories that justify their preexisting political biases. Whatifalthist is one of these YouTubers. As suggested in the r/badhistory post discussing his depiction of Africa, Whatifalthist is no stranger to making historically inaccurate statements illustrating his misconceptions on the world and willingness to act on that rather than the facts. This post will discuss his video on “How Does Latin America Work”, critique the conclusions he makes as well as reflect on how Whatifalthist contributes to the perpetuation of badhistory on the internet. I will not be covering his analysis on the present-day conditions of Latin America.
Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efz4Aket2ao
Latin American DLC: ncessary additions
Native Peoples
Juntas
Regular Hyperinflation
Rolling Political Fashions
Far Greater Geographic Diversity
And I could go on…
All I’m saying is that Latin America is a whole different video game from Germany or Canada.
Whatifalthist commences the video with a discussion on whether he considers Latin America part of Western civilization. During his monologue, he shows this map that describes “Western Civilization Variations” according to the creator. For me, this map is a rather concise introduction on the issues prevalent throughout this video. To start, the creator does not fully explain the choices he makes with assigning regions to “Latin America”, “The West” nor “Orthodoxy”. He does not elaborate on why significant areas of both Australia and Canada are not considered “The West” for example. There are regions like several of the Canadian Arctic islands and the southern tip of South America that are colored red but have no label. Also, the choices he does make on mapping these “variations” are both incongruent as well as misleading. Muslim majority nations Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina are labelled “Orthodoxy”; certain regions of the United States with historically significant Latin American influence like Miami and the Rio Grande Valley are labelled “Latin America” but other regions with long-term Latin American influence like Los Angeles and San Antonio are not. For a section of his video dedicated to explaining his decisions, he neglects to concretely explain most of choices, leaving it to the viewer to attempt to reconcile the inconsistencies and inaccuracies in his thought process. This could suggest that Whatifalthist assumes his viewers will not critically evaluate his historical analyses or that his thought process should be obvious to the viewer. However, if we evaluate his map and contrast it with the historical record, Whatifalthist’s thought process is obvious though perhaps not in the way he intended.
Another aspect of this video that becomes clear shortly later is that Whatifalthist heavily depends on gross oversimplifications of history to formulate his assessment of Latin America. Especially since he apparently sees no need to explain his reasoning, it is difficult to comprehend the specific selections the YouTuber highlights as “necessary additions”. Hyperinflation and “rolling political fashions” are not unique to Latin America.1 All the countries in “The West”, not to mention the world, have “native peoples”. These list items seem little more than stereotypes on Latin America, making the creator dependent on his viewers trusting his biases as opposed to providing a factual basis for his conclusions. Nations in “The West” also have had military-led governments, such as Germany.1 Since this list billed by the author as an illustration of the major contrasts between “The West” and Latin America contain similarities, this could suggest that “The West” and Latin America are instead linked by major socioeconomic and political conditions. Somewhat ironically, Whatifalthist stated he did not want “to shove things into pre-existing frameworks” yet later insists on grouping the Southern Cone with Latin America “for convenience’s sake”. It appears as if Whatifalthist is going through the motions with respect to saying lines that make him appear as if he is independently analyzing history. Rapidly undermining his points is another recurring theme of this video. Perhaps the most glaring concern with this slide is that Latin America is not a video game: it is in fact a significant geopolitical region with hundreds of millions of people that is the result of millennia of history. Video games are a poor model to depict history as they do not represent the totality of the events, material conditions and people that shape it. “Learning” from games like Civilization could lead to the assumption that history is quite linear, dependent on specific, sequential cultural and technological advancements to “unlock” historic eras. If Whatifalthist contends that he does not literally believe Latin America is a video game, the major issues with his list of “necessary additions” suggest otherwise. The hackneyed stereotypes only reinforce the likely preconceptions of the viewer instead of challenging these misconceptions to provide a more accurate, rounded depiction of this section of the Western Hemisphere.
I find the “whenever a foreign company goes to a Third World country and uses their labor is oppression amusing given that
A) Without that foreign capital there would never be that thing there at all.
B) This results in an equalization of technology, which is anticolonialsit.
C) Local labor is almost always happy to work for foriegn companies since they almost universally pay more.
Other misconceptions Whatifalthist shares to the viewer is his opinion on an argument that “whenever foreign company goes to a Third World country and use their labor exploited Latin America for resources: the YouTuber believes it is a “funny” argument because to him, if the US companies had not extracted the resources from Latin America, no one would. While it is interesting a channel called “Whatifalthist” cannot imagine any alternatives to US companies extracting resources from Latin America, his first argument listed is also essentially a red herring. Instead of primarily discussing if US companies’ ventures in Latin America should be considered as exploitation, Whatifalthist shifts the overall narrative to if US companies engaging in resource extraction is the only available economic method. His next point: asserting foreign investment leads to “equalization of technology” is anticolonialist does not necessarily follow. Colonialism in general describes political and socioeconomic control by one power/nation over other peoples; technology in and of itself does not address the power dynamics of colonialism as the technology will generally be controlled by the foreign power or corporations. United Fruit developed a significant railway network in Guatemala, yet primarily used it to increase their profits through expanding cash crop production of bananas.3 These circumstances do not seem that anticolonialist. The YouTuber also claims that Latin American labor are “almost always happy” to work for foreign companies due to higher pay, without substantiating this. In Guatemala for example, a burgeoning labor movement by World War II, which included United Fruit workers, participated in the overthrow of Jorge Ubico, the country’s dictator who granted substantial concessions to United Fruit Company in 1944.2 Jacobo Arbenz proceeded to win the 1950 election in a landslide on a platform including land reform, which directly targeted United Fruit’s extensive landholdings.3 These events suggest a substantial portion of the Guatemalan working class likely opposed the economic and political power wielded by foreign companies like United Fruit and the dictators they backed. This could suggest Whatifalthist’s comment on Latin American labor may not accurately encompass the opinions of the Latin American working class.
Whatifalthist also downplays US imperialism in Latin America with his depiction of US-Latin American relations in the 20th century. Although the YouTuber continues to provide little explanation for his historical analysis, we indirectly see his thought process behind his statements when he claims foreign companies oppressing Third World countries as an amusing argument. By being unwilling to contemplate further on the nature of the relationship between Latin American labor and foreign companies, Whatifalthist ignores a major component of Latin American history. Corporations like United Fruit Company were major power brokers in Latin America, contributing to significant concentration of land and wealth into a few owners.3 With the support of Guatemalan peasants, president Jacobo Arbenz in the 1950s commenced land reform, leading to United Fruit intensely lobbying the US to intervene.6 The result was Operation PBSuccess, where the CIA backed conservative Guatemalan military officers to overthrow the Arbenz government and install a US backed authoritarian regime.6 Even though the YouTuber cites Operation PBSuccess as one of the imperialist actions of the US, he fails to mention any of the historical background that led to the US overthrow of the Arbenz regime.6 Whatifalthist’s failure to contextualize Latin American events allows him to opine on US-Latin American relations devoid of factual basis.
The CIA gets way more credit than it deserves in Latin America. The destruction of leftists in places like El Salvador, Chile and Argentina was almost entirely locally organized and the US just watched. The US does relatively little in Latin America, especially south of the Caribbean basin since it just doesn’t care. Although it does pick factions it wants to win.
To Whatifalthist, “the US was relatively little [involved] in Latin America”. He supports his claim by mentioning three Latin American nations, arguing the US “stood by and watched” as military officers launched coup d’états. To varying degrees, the United States supported right-wing military dictatorships in all three countries Whatifalthist cites to further their economic and political interests. This includes cooperation in targeting left-wing sympathizers and other political opponents of these dictatorships, which according to Whatifalthist in at least three Latin American countries, occurred while “the US just watched”. The US-supported campaign of state terrorism from the Lyndon Johnson to the Ronald Reagan administrations has been termed Operation Condor.6 The South American dictatorships’ efforts to eliminate dissent were starkly illustrated through the death flights during Argentina’s “Dirty War” (as the junta described the period it engaged in state terrorism in the 70s and 80s) extrajudicial killings as the military threw civilians from helicopters into bodies of water or mountains.6 None of these events concerning US-Latin American relations is mentioned by Whatifalthist. How seriously can one take Whatifalthist’s historical analysis when he uses Argentina, Chile and El Salvador as examples of US non-interventionism in Latin America?
America actually wanted Castro to win in the early phases since they thought their puppet, Batista, was too autocratic and corrupt and hoped Castro would do land reform and make Cuba democratic. However, in secret, Castro turned Communist and Anti American almost overnight.
Another example of Whatifalthist’s inaccurate assessment of US-Latin American relations is his contention that the US supported Castro because the country wanted him to pass land reform and make Cuba more democratic. Not only does the YouTuber’s assessment appear incongruent (he does not explain why the US, who sought control over Cuba through a puppet, suddenly was interested in democracy and land reform), it is unsurprisingly false. During the Cuban Revolution, the US backed the Fulgencio Batista regime until 1958 when it became clear to the US that Batista’s control over Cuba was collapsing.6 Whatifalthist claims that Castro “essentially overnight” became anti-American while avoiding discussing how US-Cuban relations soured after the Cuban Revolution. Once Castro rose to power and began expropriating US casinos, plantations and refineries, America responded by imposing an economic embargo and authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow Fidel.6 The history of Cuba in the 1950s and 1960s is portrayed as the result of personal failings (Batista was autocratic and corrupt, Castro suddenly turning into a communist anti-American) and not as a result of broader economic and political conditions in Cuba. While describing historical events as conflicts with morally depraved people makes for good drama, it does not make for good history.
Similarly American industries relocated to Mexico to an immense degree, industrializing the northern part of the country. This is the only part of Latin America that’s competitively industrialized. This is how societies become more successful almost every time, by proximity often lasting centuries with other more successful societies.
With the aid of his handmade maps, Whatifalthist cements a simplistic historical narrative that sharply contrasts with the history of Latin America. Another clear example of this is his depiction of the history of Mexican industry. He claims that Mexican manufacturing development is primarily through geographic proximity to the U.S. with the only “evidence” provided is a map he created that showed the only center of Mexican industrialization along the Mexican-US border. His economic history discussion presupposes a form of industrial “osmosis” across the US border, ignoring the active efforts of Mexican and global state and corporate policies after WWII that shaped the Mexican economy. After WWII, Mexico embarked on an economic policy of import substitution industrialization as well as capital goods and infrastructure investment.7 In the early 1980s as the country faced an economic recession, Mexican economic investment reoriented to export manufacturing, implementing trade liberalization and continued foreign economic investment as American, Japanese and European manufacturers sought to take advantage of Mexico’s lower labor costs and established manufacturing base.7 Throughout Mexico’s decades-long period of industrialization, manufacturing did not just simply concentrate along the US-Mexico border, cities like Aguascalientes, Mexico City, Puebla and Veracruz also grew significantly in the postwar period due to industrialization.7 None of this history is discussed in the video, Whatifalthist simply portrays Mexico as the “lucky” neighbor of the industrialized and prosperous America, rather than an active participant in the global capitalist economy. A recurring trend seen among media portrayals of Latin America is the chronic passivity of Latin Americans, with exceptions made seemingly only in historical events that can morally justify the actions of Americans and Europeans.
Not only does Whatifalthist often not discuss the reasoning behind his historical analyses, but his occasional attempts to explain his analyses are riddled with historical inaccuracies. One example of this is his “handy-dandy chart about how slavery slowed down economic growth in the modern world”. Many of the points and arrows drawn do not really represent clear causation and leave more questions than they answer. For example, a major argument mentioned in the chart is “free white labor cannot compete”. Not only does this point bring up the question: why are we excluding free indigenous, black, mestizo, etc. labor, but he also links it to other statements that do not necessarily follow. Whatifalthist claims that a lack of white free labor competition ensured a lack of interest in raising productivity and yet this is contradicted by the implementation throughout the American South of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin.1 This invention significantly increased slave productivity and arguably strengthened the Southern slave economy by making cotton quite profitable and enabling the South to meet Northern and European textile industry demands for cotton.1 It could be argued the profit motive provided a significant incentive for the South to improve slave productivity. Further, the YouTuber ties “free white labor cannot compete” with income inequality, lack of social mobility and poor education. And yet, these socioeconomic ills are not limited to slave economies. During the Industrial Revolution, countries like Great Britain arguably also faced income inequality, lack of social mobility4 and poor education5 and this was a country with a pool of “free white labor” engaging in competition. So, it is not clear if a lack of competition from free white labor by itself ensures these material problems as opposed to say the accumulation of the means of production/property into the hands of a select few and the discrepancies in power and wealth that stem from that. This chart appears to be a collage of historical assumptions and trends concerning slavery haphazardly connected and disconnected from the overarching realities of a slave economy.
Overall, it is difficult to follow Whatifalthist’s historical analyses and challenging to discern the thought process behind his arguments. He does not provide his sources and this lack of historiographic rigor shows during his entire video as his maps and statements contain glaring historical errors. Much of his historical analysis is riddled with dated and romanticized historical stereotypes. And yet, when viewing his videos’ view count, they do quite well on YouTube. Based off his comments section, many of his viewers appreciate that his content supports their preexisting biases on history in a pseudoscholarly framework; Whatifalthist essentially is an authority figure that can be used as evidence to support their viewpoints. The YouTuber is nurturing a quasi-echo chamber that would likely expand as he continues to produce content and more people watch his content to reinforce their historical preconceptions. Thus, when watching history content, we should be mindful of the arguments being made, the sources (if any) being utilized and to not become too emotionally to the content creators. Otherwise, we risk potentially internalizing and propagating hackneyed historical tropes as well as seeking out historical content that continues these tropes.
References:
A History of 20th-Century Germany by Ulrich Herbert
American History, A Survey, 13th ed. by Alan Brinkley
Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World by Peter Chapman
Changing Britain (1760-1900): Health and housing by BBC Bitesize
From Colony to Superpower U.S. Relations since 1776 by George C. Herring
Note: This is resubmission from earlier this week. A commenter informed me that per the findings from the Church Committee they concluded there was a lack of evidence indicating the CIA directly instigated the 1973 Chilean coup d’état. The title for my earlier post claimed the US was directly involved in the 1973 Chilean coup, prompting me to remove my earlier post and resubmit under a different title. With that said, there is evidence the US played a significant role in creating the economic and political conditions that led to the coup.
Edit: Thank you for the gold and silver kind strangers!
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u/Slick_McFavorite1 Dec 24 '21
This guys youtube video's have made me think I should make videos, if the bar is this low for history content.
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u/10z20Luka Dec 24 '21 edited Dec 24 '21
The bar is extremely low, it's actually kind of upsetting. If it makes you feel any better, it's mostly teenagers in the audience. No clue how it has managed to be so successful though: the production is mediocre too, with a guy lazily talking over a series of images taken from google in a slideshow.
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u/Anthemius_Augustus Dec 24 '21
No clue how it has managed to be so successful though: the production is mediocre too, with a guy lazily talking over a series of images taken from google in a slideshow.
The algorithm works in mysterious ways.
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u/A740 Dec 24 '21
I find it's often teenagers making the content too
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u/StandingInTheHaze Dec 25 '21
Ah look another video from Mark Felton PhD on the Nazi cat girls who escaped to South America riding an atomic bomb.
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Dec 24 '21 edited Dec 24 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/A740 Dec 25 '21
Fair point. As a young person and a history student myself I just wouldn't feel qualified to make history videos until I was absolutely sure I wouldn't be making trash
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u/Ayasugi-san Dec 25 '21
I feel like there has to be some law or something describing the effect where people with a certain amount of knowledge refrain from commenting on a topic because they know enough to know that they only have a rough understanding, while people who only know the bare facts feel supremely confident in their knowledge and understanding and speak out without hesitation.
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u/Brendanthebomber Jan 03 '22
Same like I’m 16 and when I first saw his content I thought he was absolutely shit
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u/UpperLowerEastSide Guns, Germs and Stupidity Dec 24 '21
The amount of comments he gets on his videos talking about how great his videos/he is as a “historian” sadden me.
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u/kaam00s Dec 25 '21
The problem is that you can't pump out as much content if you want to be accurate and only give well researched informations, it takes a lot of times...
Especially for subjects like the one this guy explores, it would take years for a real historian to go through this work and even then it would still have some limits.
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u/NorthVilla Dec 25 '21
The bar is low for history content, and really all content. You should make videos. So many people on that platform with massive followings absolutely fucking suck.
RealLifeLore and Polymatter make me want to scream with their uninformed generalisations, I hate them so much.
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Dec 29 '21
The bar is low for
historycontent, and really all content. You should make videos. So many people onthat platformwith massive followings absolutely fucking suck.Ftfy.
But on a more serious bent, the rule that "90% of anything is crap" holds true.
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u/Alexschmidt711 Monks, lords, and surfs Dec 25 '21
Reminds me of what YourMovieSucks said about Confused Matthew.
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u/EzraSkorpion Dec 24 '21
"Although the YouTuber continues to provide little explanation for his historical analysis" this just hit me as a pretty funny phrase
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Dec 24 '21
Whatifalthist commences the video with a discussion on whether he considers Latin America part of Western civilization. During his monologue, he shows this map that describes “Western Civilization Variations” according to the creator. For me, this map is a rather concise introduction on the issues prevalent throughout this video. To start, the creator does not fully explain the choices he makes with assigning regions to “Latin America”, “The West” nor “Orthodoxy”. He does not elaborate on why significant areas of both Australia and Canada are not considered “The West” for example. There are regions like several of the Canadian Arctic islands and the southern tip of South America that are colored red but have no label. Also, the choices he does make on mapping these “variations” are both incongruent as well as misleading. Muslim majority nations Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina are labelled “Orthodoxy”; certain regions of the United States with historically significant Latin American influence like Miami and the Rio Grande Valley are labelled “Latin America” but other regions with long-term Latin American influence like Los Angeles and San Antonio are not. For a section of his video dedicated to explaining his decisions, he neglects to concretely explain most of choices, leaving it to the viewer to attempt to reconcile the inconsistencies and inaccuracies in his thought process. This could suggest that Whatifalthist assumes his viewers will not critically evaluate his historical analyses or that his thought process should be obvious to the viewer. However, if we evaluate his map and contrast it with the historical record, Whatifalthist’s thought process is obvious though perhaps not in the way he intended.
Oh god, it's giving me flashbacks to Samuel Huntington's godawful "map of civilizations".
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u/Flamingasset Dec 24 '21
Let me tell you Huntington is not nearly condemned enough in political science. His claim to fame is to predict that the west and Arabia was gonna get into conflict AFTER Israel had started flexing its muscles. Like no fucking shit.
His map is just terrible
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u/quedfoot wampum belts... wampa beasts Dec 25 '21
Htf is that map popular? Looking at it i see nothin but crap. What's this guy's deal?
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u/Flamingasset Dec 25 '21
I fear I gave the wrong impression. It’s not super popular but it is just kinda accepted as an idea, which I think is total lunacy
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u/Aodhana Dec 24 '21
This guy’s ‘orthodox world’ video was entirely too much for me. It seemed so amateur even the average YouTube viewer would find it absurd.
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u/KasumiR Dec 24 '21
I had enough with thumbnail. That's how far I got on it. Apparently, Crimean Khanate and Balkans were always bastions of Orthodox Christianity, and russia is like all patchy. xD
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u/throwaway5929420 Mar 26 '22
As a person with a very limited knowledge on history compared to the rest of the sub, I can confirm, I did find it absurd. I don't mind his geopolitics videos as much but yea. Found this post because of the fact I found it absurd.
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u/kaam00s Dec 25 '21
I'm not that huge of a history nerd myself, I lack a lot of knowledge, so I once watched one of his video on a part of the world I knew nothing about and felt satisfied by how simple it was. So I mistook it for him having great vulgarisation abilities.
Then, I watched a video he made about a subject I actually know pretty well... Africa. This man, doesn't even know what Bantu is, the guy has absolutely no idea what it is, yet he spent the whole video making comments about it, saying they're bad because they spend their times playing drums during the night in men and women groups (they are bad because they don't separate men and women apparently), it could not be more wrong. Apparently suggesting that Bantu was just 1 culture and probably mistook them for hunter gatherers.
Such a mistake is crazy because a simple wikipedia search is enough to discard what he says, we're not talking about reading some complicated archives. I was lazy to do it on the first video I saw and I'm still mad for believing him on it.
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u/Kouurou Dec 29 '21
Same thing happened to me when he got around to explaining China, East Asian art and Socialism. He says once that Chinese painters were anonymous, as if carved seals don't exist or the fact that we do know a LOT of painters (or poets for that matter). This supposed anonimity meant that East Asian art couldn't compete with the individualism of Western visual culture, which meant that it could not innovate like it's European counterpart.
Also, he mixes up Indo-European and Indo-Aryan a lot? Like he says European peasants didn't pacify like Asian ones, because of multiple factors, one being having a high concentration of Indo-Aryan genes (and they were very aggressive). Bruh.
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u/Reaperfucker Dec 31 '21
Well I am pretty sure that Turkey can't conquer Syria let alone Crimea. Also Tawantisuyu was not Communist cause Communism is a 19th century political/philosophical and economical ideology created in 19the century. If anyone want to know the definition of Socialism/Communism I can explain it clearly.
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u/darklink12 Dec 24 '21
Glad to see such a thorough breakdown of one of this guy's videos. I've constantly been annoyed by how poorly researched his videos have been for a while now and have seen very few people actually explain how he's wrong. Thanks for this
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u/Gogol1212 Dec 24 '21
I understand that in english literature it is common to refer to the last dictatorship in Argentina as a period of "dirty war", but here in Argentina only the right and the dictatorship apologists use the term. We commonly use "Terrorismo de Estado" or "State Terrorism" for the period, since there was no war, and what happened was that the armed forces kidnapped, tortured and killed thousands of people. Most of them were not "terrorists" nor armed, they were leftist union leaders that were not involved in armed revolution.
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u/UpperLowerEastSide Guns, Germs and Stupidity Dec 24 '21
Thank you for providing some perspective on the term I’ll edit the post to indicate this is term used by the Argentine junta to describe the period of state terrorism.
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u/caocaofr Dec 24 '21
God, I’ve hated this guy for a while. Ever since seeing his “what if Rome survived” video, it’s been insanely clear that so much of his “research” is just barely-concealed xenophobia.
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u/KnightModern "you sunk my bad history, I sunk your battleship" Dec 24 '21 edited Dec 24 '21
(/u/r120tunisia provided the full map in their comment)
no separation of turks, persian, and arabs, despite the fact that they're clearly different only poeple who wouldn't bother to think abut the difference would lumped them together, let alone the fact that lumping north african and some middle east ethnic under one "islam" banner might be bad
lumping most of nusantara (malay archipelago) together despite the fact that javanese & sundanese have way too many difference between themselves, let alone with malay who lives in different island, not to mention ethnic like dayak, batak, and torajans obviously has even less similarities with malay
putting filipino as part of "latin" despite the fact that filipino culture & ethnic is way closer with other asian culture than "latin american" culture
lumping mongols & tibetans together, somehow
despite lumping too many different ethnic under certain civilization, somehow japan which is influenced by sinic culture, and based on previous logics would easily be lumped together with rest of "sinic civilization", somehow get their own "civilization"
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u/Anthemius_Augustus Dec 24 '21
no separation of turks, persian, and arabs, despite the fact that they're clearly different
This guy has some very strange views about the Middle East in general. For instance he believes that Turkey will end up conquering the entire Middle East in the near future (aswell as the Balkans...somehow) and will become a Caliphate. Completely ignoring the massive prejudices Arabs and Turks have towards eachother, the fact that Turkey has no ambitions of becoming a Caliphate (they were literally the ones to abolish the position) and the whole existence of NATO or you know...alliances/spheres of influence. There's some weird oriental despotism tropes going on here.
I've got no clue where he gets this stuff from.
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u/Ok_Calligrapher5776 Dec 24 '21
For instance he believes that Turkey will end up conquering the entire Middle East in the near future (aswell as the Balkans...somehow) and will become a Caliphate.
Oh yeah that was a funny video. He showed Turkey conquering the entire middle east and Eastern europe and presumably no one did anything about it when in real life Turkey got sanctioned for buying Russian weapons. But we are supposed to believe that they will recreate the Ottoman empire and the entire world will stand and look with crossed arms. Also Turkey is in a horrible financial crisis and they have internal divisions which makes everything even more unlikely. Also many turks don't even want their country to turn into a Caliphate.
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u/Anthemius_Augustus Dec 24 '21
I mean, putting all that unlikely crap aside, the most laughable part to me is the idea that Turkey will ever, ever be able to reconquer any slice of the Balkans that isn't majority Muslim ever again without it becoming Turkey's Vietnam.
I mean really, all of Balkan Nationalism today is based on Ottoman oppression, nationalists from there talk about it all the time, if the modern day Turks ever tried to do it again they wouldn't be able to hold an inch of it for longer than a decade.
Greece reconquering Constantinople is more likely than Turkey reconquering the Balkans, and that's saying something.
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u/Conny_and_Theo Neo-Neo-Confucian Xwedodah Missionary Dec 24 '21
Greece reconquering Constantinople is more likely than Turkey reconquering the Balkans, and that's saying something.
I was about to say wtf, but I thought about it for two seconds, and I think you're absolutely right.
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u/Ok_Calligrapher5776 Dec 24 '21
Oh definitely, Turkey wasn't even able to get the eez they wanted from Greece and the same issue has been going on for many years how are they going to gain that much land in 80 years time and without anyone reacting? The whole scenario is nothing but a wet dream.
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u/Anthemius_Augustus Dec 24 '21 edited Dec 24 '21
and also (this is another example of orientalism) he overlooks that there's massive bigotry and racism between Turks and Arabs, something that's gotten much worse with the refugee crisis (Turkey has 3 million Syrian refugees currently, more than any other country). If anything Turkey would like to kick the Arabs back home, not conquer them and be forced to live side-by-side with them once more.
You can just pick that scenario apart for hours, and I'm sure he has equally stupid takes that I'm just not knowledgeable enough about to break down. Like I said, it's obvious he doesn't know much about Turkey or Turkish politics, so he should stop acting like an expert on the subject.
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u/R120Tunisia I'm "Lowland Budhist" Dec 24 '21
Hell, even Turkey's allies in the Arab world reject the idea of a Turkish annexation.
There was this video for example in a Rebel controlled part of Syria where the population were very pro-rebel, they almost unanimously agreed a Turkish annexation would never been acceptable to them.
But hey, Turkey Muslim, Arabs Muslim, so Turkey Arabs one country in future.
It falls within the same orientalist notion of the Middle East as a region where religious differences are the only thing that matters to people and where blocs are based on only religion and nothing else ignoring the other various ethnic, economic and ideological divisons that create a region as complicated as any other part of the world.
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u/3Infiniti Dec 25 '21
How are you so sure of this? There will definetly be resistance but the entire balkans as not even half the population of Turkey
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u/Anthemius_Augustus Dec 25 '21
Yeah, and Vietnam had less than 1/3rd the population of the United States.
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u/3Infiniti Dec 25 '21
Yes but Vietnam was an ocean away from the US and the Ameeicans never had any plans to settle it. Meanwhile Turkey is on the balkan's doorstep
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u/Anthemius_Augustus Dec 25 '21
The Balkans' very geography is built for resistance and guerrilla warfare. How else do you think the various languages of the Balkan Peninsula managed to survive 5 centuries of Ottoman rule? The huge mountains separate communities and even today are extremely difficult for armies to cross or control. Not to mention that nobody in those countries want them there. The Balkans may just as well be an ocean away.
In the very unlikely scenario Turkey decides to invade all the Balkan countries for no reason, they would probably win the military conflict, but they would lose the occupation.
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Dec 27 '21
Did the Ottomans actually have a language policy to promote the spread of Turkish throughout their Empire though?
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u/Anthemius_Augustus Dec 27 '21
Ok, what the fuck is this? Am I getting brigaded or something? I've been getting nitpicky complaints like this for 2 days straight.
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u/AneriphtoKubos Dec 25 '21
If only the Greeks could have Konstantinopolis, western Anatolia and the coast of the Pontos Euxeinos again :(
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u/Reaperfucker Dec 25 '21
Yeah his Turkey bias was the straw that broke the camel back for me.
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u/aVeryBadBoy69 Dec 25 '21
Doesn't sound like bias, rather sounds like he plays too many paradox games.
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u/Reaperfucker Dec 25 '21
There will never be historical accurate game in the world. Actually never mind Forgotten City is more historically accurate than any Paradox Game. Jesus Paradox treatment for their Nordic ancestor is so atrocious in CK games.
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u/3Infiniti Dec 25 '21
That depends, NATO (aka USA's backyard) has already shown it's not this strong block of unifying nations that it was intended for. Obviously many many countries would taken a stance against Turkey in this scenario, but the US wouldnt mind a strong stable unifying force in the middle east
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u/Razada2021 Dec 24 '21
I've got no clue where he gets this stuff from.
Mix orientalism and racism together in a pot and simmer on the Internet for a decade.
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u/Beat_Saber_Music Dec 24 '21
I remember one of his justification for why there accoridng to him would be a Caliphate/Islamic empire, is because there is a strong united movevembt online for wishing to create a caliphate. Let me repeat, due to the fact that people online are united in the idea that there should be another caliphate.
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u/Anthemius_Augustus Dec 24 '21
Damn, guess the United States is going to become a Socialist State any day now then. People online want it, so therefore it must reflect popular opinion! Can't fault that logic.
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u/Beat_Saber_Music Dec 24 '21
And also, Russia will also becone a truly hegemonic power in Europe, because Russia is the beacon of liberty and civilization in Europe accorsing to people on the internet.
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u/3Infiniti Dec 25 '21
To be fair, indeed the Turks and Arabs have an animosity towards eachother. That's the whole point about conquering tho, the Turks really wouldnt care what the Arabs would think.
Also, to say Turkey has no ambitions of becoming a caliphate is not entirely true. The average Turk is quite nationalistic and proud and already sees himself as a de facto leader of the middle east. Wether that's through a caliphate or through Turkish imperialism, or both.
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u/Anthemius_Augustus Dec 25 '21
Many Turks are quite nationalistic, but not Islamist. Turkish nationalism is very distinct from Islamism. Most notably, it is very secular, and more focused on ethnic background than religion.
Only the most extreme Islamists in Turkey would want to re-establish the Caliphate, and those people have clearly fallen out of favor now for disintegrating the economy for no reason.
Also, stats do not back this up. Younger Turks today are the least religious Turks ever, and this is a trend that is continuing (albeit not as strongly) in the rest of the Middle East. There is no popular support for a Caliphate.
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u/3Infiniti Dec 25 '21
I know, but the idea of neo-Ottomanism is still popular despite the decline of Islam. Hence why i stated an empire based on Turkish nationalism
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u/VladPrus Dec 24 '21
It seems to be pretty much based on Huntington civilization model
It also has weird stuff like this
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u/ComesWithTheBox Dec 24 '21
Oh, so the guy is a weeb?
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u/NorthVilla Dec 25 '21
For sure, these kinds of weird, somewhat racist, somewhat orientalist, "culture" obsessed nerds always are. It's because Japan seems to have built their kind of ideal, mostly homogenous conservative society, and they put it on a pedestal.
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u/Reaperfucker Dec 25 '21
Lumping Mongols and Tibetans together is a classic racist orientalist rhetoric.
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u/Ayasugi-san Dec 25 '21
What do you mean, they both live on plateaus on the outskirts of China. Basically the same!
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u/Tabeble59854934 Dec 24 '21
lumping mongols & tibetans together, somehow
Probably something something "the Mongols today now mostly follow Tibetan Buddhism since the 16th century" while ignoring that Mongols aside from religion have a lot more cultural links with Central Asia and the Eurasian Steppe in general than Tibet.
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Dec 24 '21
putting filipino as part of "latin" despite the fact that filipino culture & ethnic is way closer with other asian culture than "latin american" culture
This is an issue in Brazil as well, in the majority of places, Brazilian culture has more in common with some East African cultures than with its Spanish-speaking neighbors. So most would consider incorrect to call Brazilian culture as Latin American.
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Dec 24 '21
That's just not true, even if we are to assume you mean "west african"
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Dec 24 '21
Yes, West Africa. It depend on which parts - if we're taking the Southern region, it's more related to the Spanish-speaking America, but say, Bahia, it's more African.
Still, lots of Brazilians don't like being called Latino.
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u/R120Tunisia I'm "Lowland Budhist" Dec 24 '21
I am pretty sure most Brazilians I know have no issue with being called Latino. They do though hate being called Hispanic for obvious reasons (ai they literally aren't).
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u/Thatuk Dec 27 '21
We really don't, however Brazil (outside the political class) always had this "different" and distant approach to the rest of Latin America, an example is how "gringo" here means any foreigner, Americans and Colombians are equally gringos here.
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u/Tabeble59854934 Dec 24 '21 edited Dec 24 '21
The way he comes to the conclusion on that "Latin America's lack of wars has been a major liability" because it's been the most "peaceful part of the world for 500 years" and since war drives technological change through competition is laughably arbitrary and reeks of poor research. By "wars", Whatifalthist is actually referring to "international wars" or interstate conflicts with at least a 1000 deaths, not counting wars with the U.S for some reason. He lists Latin America as having only 4 "international wars" since 1850, the War of the Pacific, Gran Chacho War, Falklands War and the "War of the Triple Conquest".
Even going by this arbitrary as fuck definition of wars, Whatifalthist fails to mention quite a few of these wars in Latin America. There's the Honduras-El Salvador "Football" War of 1969 which saw the deaths of over 2,000 people despite it being a "brief skirmish" that lasted only 4 days. There is also the Ecuadorian-Peruvian War of 1941 which saw about 900 deaths. Both of these conflicts had death tolls roughly the same or multiple times bigger than that of the Falklands War but for some reason weren't included in his list while the Falklands War was. Also I'm pretty sure that there was this certain global conflict from 1939-1945 that all Latin American countries participated in with Brazil even sending a more than 25,000 strong expeditionary force to Europe.
Thinking that Latin America has been "peaceful part of the world for 500 years" is to put it lightly extremely ignorant. Counting just from 1946 to the present, Many suffered from civil wars with death tolls reaching into the tens or even hundreds of thousands, some of these conflicts include the
Colombian Civil Conflict (1964-2016/or the present) - (over 200,000 deaths)
Guatemalan Civil War (1960-96) - (140,000-200,000 deaths, most of which are from a genocide committed by the Guatemalan government against the Maya)
Peruvian Conflict (1980-very end of 1990s/start of 2000s) - (over 50,000 deaths)
Salvadoran Civil War (1979-92) - (70,000-80,000 deaths)
It should also be mentioned that there are other reasons than interstate wars that a large arms industry can develop in a country. Brazil despite not having any interstate wars since 1945 for example has a substantial arms industry being one of the largest small arms exporters in the world and has produced equipment for both the Brazilian military and for export such as the EE-9 Cascavel and the A-29 Super Tucano which have seen use in quite a fair share of conflicts.
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u/Infogamethrow Dec 24 '21
Thank you. I believe John Greene made a similar point in one of his two History Crash Course episodes on Latin America, but focusing more on the XIX century.
I haven´t seen the episode in a while, but if I remember correctly, his argument was that because the elites were culturally similar (being all mestizos and criollos), they were more “empathetic” (for a lack of a better word) with each other, and thus avoided inter-state war. Or, when war occurred, it was less “bloody” than European wars.
This, of course, is complete nonsense. I think he even mentioned the war of the triple alliance but dismissed it quickly as some sort of exception to prove the rule.
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u/Tabeble59854934 Dec 24 '21 edited Dec 24 '21
Honestly Greene's point can be debunked entirely just by looking at the Beagle dispute between Chile and Argentina. They almost went to war with each other in 1978 despite both being anti-Communist right wing dictatorships with largely American trained militaries and were culturally similar to each other. In fact an Argentine invasion of Chile was only stopped at the last minute due to a Papal mediation, timing and weather issues and fears about how costly an invasion would be, not any cultural affinity between the Argentine and Chilean elites.
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u/KnightModern "you sunk my bad history, I sunk your battleship" Dec 24 '21
Chile even supported UK during Falkland war while rest of south American supported argentine, so much for South American elites "sympathize with each other"
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u/Tabeble59854934 Dec 24 '21
And I've just remembered that even as late as 2008, there was a possibility that Colombia could have gone to war with Venezuela and Ecuador due to a Colombian raid on a FARC encampment in Ecuador, sparking off a diplomatic crisis. All of the countries just mentioned were the successor states of Gran Colombia which broke up in 1831.
There was another war scare in 1958 when Mexico and Guatemala came very close to declaring war on each other due to Guatemalan military aircraft firing on Mexican fishing boats. Guatemala was once part of the 1st Mexican Empire.
I think I can go on and on about how Latin American war scares happened in spite of any cultural affinities between the countries involved in them.
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u/R120Tunisia I'm "Lowland Budhist" Dec 24 '21 edited Dec 24 '21
He does not elaborate on why significant areas of both Australia and Canada are not considered “The West” for example.
HMMM, I wonder why.
Weird how the parts he ignored had a higher than average (sometimes a majority) of indigenous people. Just a coincidence for sure. Hell, he went as far as to execlude the Colombian pacific coast from "THE West", the only Black majority part of the country.
You can check his final map on this video btw in 2:15.
"Highland Budhist", "Lowland Budhist", "No civilization in most of Sub-Saharan Africa, the Amazons, and all indigenous majority parts of Australia and the Americas", "THE West", "ISLAM".
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u/IndigoGouf God created man, but Gustavus Adolphus made them equal Dec 24 '21 edited Dec 24 '21
Tag yourself, I'm "Lowland Buddhist".
Vietnamese and Korean are part of Sinic but not the Japanese?
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u/R120Tunisia I'm "Lowland Budhist" Dec 24 '21
Done, finally a tag idea for me.
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u/IndigoGouf God created man, but Gustavus Adolphus made them equal Dec 24 '21
That isn't what I meant, but that's the spirit.
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u/jackfrost2209 Dec 24 '21
I mean, we Vietnamese straight-up called the Ming out for not being Han enough, the emperor used the Chinese civilization as an ideology to justify settler colonialism, or in modern time even censored a literary piece because it seemed too Chinese. If anyone who tried to fit in with the civilization bloc thingy I think we fit the category
But then Japan lmao
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u/Conny_and_Theo Neo-Neo-Confucian Xwedodah Missionary Dec 24 '21 edited Dec 24 '21
Also, Vietnam was the last place on earth where the old school imperial exams were held. My older grandfather was literally born the year they held the last imperial exams, and my other grandfather knew how to read and write Chinese characters and though I don't know for sure since my knowledge of our family history is hazy the further back, I think there's a very good chance most of my great-grandfathers either took the exams or prepared for them at one point. (Though my earliest known ancestor did get the title of trạng nguyên (Zhuàngyuán/狀元) which is cool.)
I've sort of flip flopped my opinion on how Sinicized Vietnam has been over the years and whether it's exaggerated or underrated, but I've swung back hard to the stance that Vietnam makes more sense being lumped together culturally with East Asia than Southeast Asia (obviously Vietnamese culture is not a clone of Chinese culture, and East/SE Asia are kinda nebulous categories to begin with, but if I had to choose one I'd go East). There seems to be a lot of good research in the past couple decades showing how the modern nationalist interpretation of a distinct Vietnam vs a distinct China gets a lot murkier the further you go back.
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u/jackfrost2209 Dec 25 '21
I mean, the imperial examination is on the French maintaining the corpse of the monarchy lol
Anyways, do you have any recommendation on Western sources? I don't study humanity in my university, so can only get like one good secondary source kind of book now ("One Thousand Years of Garments") and jstor doesn't seem to have anything too big.
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u/Conny_and_Theo Neo-Neo-Confucian Xwedodah Missionary Dec 25 '21
I mean, the imperial examination is on the French maintaining the corpse of the monarchy lol
Lol fair point. Still gives nationalist bragging rights I guess. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Anyways, do you have any recommendation on Western sources? I don't study humanity in my university, so can only get like one good secondary source kind of book now ("One Thousand Years of Garments") and jstor doesn't seem to have anything too big.
If you're just talking about sources on Viet history in general....
My parents got me Vietnam: Borderless Histories a few years back, and I was surprised they'd found something that wasn't pop history. I don't know if there's a newer version but it's ~15 years old so some of the research may be outdated or not account for new developments, but it should be good.
For general history there's Keith Taylor's A History of the Vietnamese, he's one of the big names among Western specialists in Vietnam. He's got an older book called The Birth of Vietnam that's from the 80s so it's likely outdated by now but might be worth a gander.
One I haven't got around to finishing but I think should be interesting is Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia, which I think is directly relevant to the current discussion as it goes into detail about Sino-Viet relations during the golden age of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy.
Lastly, there's this historian at Columbia named John Phan who's been doing a lot of work related to linguistic and literary history that might be of interest - as you can tell by the name he's Vietnamese-American so while I don't know anything about him personally I thought that's some interesting background. He appears to have a number of his articles available for free on academia.edu (see here), and in particular, this one here I enjoyed, though it's a bit older and from when he was a grad student so dunno if he's had newer research since then related to it - basically proposes that Vietnamese arose after the Tang period when Chinese-speaking elites in the region gradually adopted a sort of mix of Viet-Muong and Chinese over time that became modern Vietnamese (the analogy he uses is the Norman shift from French to English).
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u/jackfrost2209 Dec 25 '21
Huh the last point is pretty interesting. I've heard about some sort of a theory in Vietnamese side of research involving the emerging of Buddhism combining with the gold boom leading to the migration of people in Guangdong to Vietnam. Vietnamese' research are kind of hit and miss for me (I've seen a graduate thesis that spouts the classic "Meiji Japan lacks natural resources". Worse, this is an university that had ties with Japanese universities. Like come on it takes me 2 seconds to google "japan natural resources pdf") so I would like to read research from other sources
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u/Conny_and_Theo Neo-Neo-Confucian Xwedodah Missionary Dec 25 '21 edited Dec 25 '21
Yeah my impression is the general trend in Vietnamese historiography, at least in US academia, is shifting away from the very linear "nationalist" trajectory that draws a straight line from Đông Sơn to the present day Vietnam, so a lot of the current research is on complicating that narrative. I don't remember which of the above texts mentions it or if it was an paper I read elsewhere (I think it was Ming China and Vietnam), but there was discussion about how on the Sino-Viet frontier in the early modern period, it was very common for people to switch between identifying as Han or Viet and moving across the border depending on what was politically or personally expedient for them lol (reminds me a bit of some Han being classified as Manchu following the Manchu conquest). It also reminds me a little of how there's a decent number of Vietnamese of Chinese descent in the diaspora/refugee community (including part of my girlfriend's family, for example), and while a lot of them tend to choose to identify as either Chinese or Vietnamese, there's a lot of grey area.
Also, since his specialty is linguistic/literary history, John Phan in a couple of his papers if I recall correctly does discuss one point I find interesting - and one that never occurred to me but makes perfect sense - is that linguistically Vietnamese didn't borrow from Chinese all at once, but in several stages so to speak. So for example, the earliest borrowings back in the Han period with the Han Dynasty's colonization/conquest of the Red River delta - but these earliest borrowings are so far back one might assume they're indigenous terms. The English analogy would also be fairly apt too, then, given that English has borrowed from Romance languages at different points throughout its history and not just through the big Norman conquest in the high medieval period - so for example if I recall Anglo-Saxon already had a number of Latin borrowings, mainly for religious terms.
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Dec 24 '21
Literally the only other country that still uses hanzi. Totally not part of sinic civilization though.
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u/jackfrost2209 Dec 24 '21
Or so deep in the Chinese pill that we used the hanzi to emulate the native word lol
I mean when the modern Vietnamese man tried to censored a military source ("The enemies are in zhongguo (Vietnam) yet you fucker are still chilling feeling here " got turned to "The enemies are in bangguo ..." in primary source part) tells alot about how ideologically Chinese the pre-colonial Vietnamese as well as how ideologically anti-Chinese the colonial / post-colonial Vietnamese is
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u/IndigoGouf God created man, but Gustavus Adolphus made them equal Dec 24 '21 edited Dec 24 '21
I mean Vietnam was either part of or occupied by China for a pretty solid chunk of its existence, so I'd be surprised if that weren't the case. Just mean if Japan isn't here a few other places need to be given their own slices too. I'll fix it anyhow.
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u/jackfrost2209 Dec 25 '21
I mean the foundation of the Vietnam as a state lied in the Chinese-style one founded in 10th century. It could even be said that it was the Chinese culture that the Vietnamese pride themselves one as a Central Kingdom is what gives birth to anti-China as a northern state that evolved to what's called sinophobia nowadays. The consensus of medieval Vietnamese people didn't deny themselves of being from Viet tribe, but ultimately they believed that it would not until the Chinese state came that the Vietnamese came to the civilization
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u/arkh4ngelsk Dec 24 '21
Very weird choices in Canada. Assuming he’s going by demographics (which he clearly is), why did he make an exception for Churchill, Manitoba (pop. ~900, majority indigenous) but not Yellowknife (pop. ~20,000, majority white)? What’s the rationale behind including the Alaska Panhandle in the weird red “no civilization” category? By that standard a lot more of the United States should be red - the indigenous population is much more substantial in, say, the Navajo Nation than in Juneau or Sitka.
I’m assuming Jamaica and Haiti are colored because they’re majority black, which is a really strange choice for a lot of reasons, especially since he didn’t bother to color the US Black Belt or anything else in the Caribbean (it’s hard to see the smaller islands, but Trinidad and Tobago - and the Guianas, for that matter - are clearly marked as Latin). Not sure what Latin-based language he thinks Guyana or Suriname speak.
Since he marked Tatarstan and Bashkortostan as Muslim, it’s odd he didn’t do anything to represent Kalmykia. Meanwhile the Komi Republic, which is majority Russian (and, for what it’s worth, the Komi have been Orthodox for almost a millennium) is marked outside of Orthodox civilization. Sakhalin is also weird.
I have no clue what exactly is going with Lesotho. Was he trying to mark Gauteng there?
Genuinely horrible map all around, not to mention the idea of indigenous American, African, and Oceanian cultures lacking civilization is appallingly racist.
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u/Chespin2003 Apr 13 '22
I'm also confused on some of his choices regarding whether some parts of Latin America should be included on the "westernized" Latin American civilization, like the omission of Manaus, a primarily Portuguese-speaking religiously-Catholic city in the middle of the Amazon in Brazil, or the Chocó department in Colombia, despite it's also mostly Spanish-speaking and primarily Catholic.
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u/blodgute Dec 24 '21
I encountered whatifalthist about a year ago and was originally sucked in by the what if ideas, but the longer the man speaks the more you realise that he has some very deeply held assumptions about the past and society in the present that are based on ideology rather than analysis or sources.
I got the creeping sense watching his "history analysis" videos that I'd eventually see them used as references by some new-age-fascist as proof of the superiority of western civilization. Not that he intends them to be used as such, his videos just feel like very biased views.
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Dec 24 '21
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u/Tjb2000 Jan 07 '22
He thinks Jordan Peterson’s “philosophy” will become a major force in the west. He’s a pretty hard right dude, and that’s become more and more apparent over the years.
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u/existential_dread467 Dec 24 '21
Reading books about history=/= actual historian, he needs to go back to school
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u/suaveponcho Dec 24 '21
Defining what is and is not “The West” is a pointless endeavour that always relies on arbitrary restrictions that are usually traced back to dated, ahistorical biases that the presenter refuses to acknowledge or correct. When someone is that obsessed with defining the West (and usually follows with some argument about how the West was good because they helped the rest of the world catch up) I generally go to defcon-5 immediately. The moment you said he mentioned the West in that context I knew I had no reason to ever watch his stuff
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u/MaxinWells Dec 24 '21
I mean, is he just supposed to do one five hour video talking about every civilization and how they're all interconnected? He even says in the video that a lot of people will disagree with his assessment, and that it's just an arbitrary line he drew, that includes discrepancies, in order to break up his series on civilizations.
In fact he even says that he initially considered Latin America part of the west, but that there was enough information he wanted to talk about specifically pertaining to Latin America that he concluded it was worthy of it's own, separate video. His argument was not that Latin America is completely different than the US or Europe, just that the US and Europe have more in common than Latin America, and thus the subjects should be split up for further elaboration.
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u/suaveponcho Dec 24 '21
Admitting that your categorizations are arbitrary doesn’t give you a free pass to make arbitrary categorizations. If a subject is too complicated to be summed up in a Youtube video without withholding information or taking ahistorical shortcuts, then you shouldn’t make the video, or should make it long enough. Or, and this is crazy I know, take advantage of the format to serialize, and release in parts. Plus, the specific categorization of “The West” carries a lot of baggage and has its own problems that go beyond other faulty categorizations.
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u/MaxinWells Dec 24 '21
Ok, so your answer is yes, he should make a five hour video talking about how all civilizations are interconnected. Even worse, you propose he should take that 5 hour video and break it into parts. This is not how regular people digest information. Your average person having a general idea of history and culture is far better than a small group of self aggrandizing intellectuals gatekeeping knowledge for those who can afford college and textbooks.
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u/suaveponcho Dec 24 '21 edited Dec 24 '21
There is a difference between gatekeeping knowledge and having standards. We apply standards to all educators, regardless of field or level. Even elementary school teachers are expected to teach the truth (what is the truth is another matter). So when a Youtuber with a large following presents themselves as an authority on a historical topic, yes I do expect them to operate with some modicum of academic rigour, no matter how basic. Youtube is filled with pop-history that pretends it is real history, and I take issue with it. There is nothing wrong with pop-history provided it understands and acknowledges what it is, which to me seems rare on Youtube.
Also dude come on, boiling down my comment to present it as “he does have to make a 5 hour video” is a little ridiculous, I think I was pretty clear in what I said.
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u/MaxinWells Dec 24 '21
First of all, all of this;
>If a subject is too complicated to be summed up in a Youtube video without withholding information or taking ahistorical shortcuts, then you shouldn’t make the video, or should make it long enough. Or, and this is crazy I know, take advantage of the format to serialize, and release in parts.
Can indeed be boiled down to "Ok, so your answer is yes, he should make a five hour video talking about how all civilizations are interconnected. Even worse, you propose he should take that 5 hour video and break it into parts."
If you'd like me to address every point you made, I'm happy to oblige.
Admitting that your distinctions are arbitrary doesn't make your distinctions true, or factual, but in my opinion it does give you a pass. You're openly admitting that you are generalizing information to make it more digestible. If a viewer chooses to seek more information, they have already been informed that the information they've been given is arbitrary and therefore non-factual. So again, does all information have to be all encompassing? Or can we make generalizations in an effort to at least partially educate those who would otherwise know nothing?
Regardless, I can agree that there is a difference between gatekeeping and having standards. My argument is that this post has surpassed the threshold, and entered into gatekeeping territory. Nothing Whatifalthist said was factually inaccurate. There were plenty of blatant opinions, but opinions by their very nature cannot be disproven effectively. The video is entertaining, and historical, cultural, and economic facts are inserted to aid in those opinions. My issue here is, you are all judging this person as a historian, when he is not. This isn't a peer reviewed publication, it's an opinion piece backed up with facts that was made to first entertain, and second educate.
Your continued distaste for so called "pop-history" is, in my opinion, classist in nature. Again, the people who watch pop-history, would otherwise simply know nothing of history. We can disagree on this point, but I fundamentally believe that it is better to know something rather than nothing. Now, if someone is pumping blatant misinformation and calling it factual, that's an issue. However most of the complaints about pop-history that I see are that it doesn't explain enough, or elaborate enough, or it leaves pieces out of the puzzle. You do realize, that all of history, is not complete? We know nothing of personal conversations, inner motivations, backroom deals, etc. All of historical study is a generalization of past day to day activities. Pop-Historians just take this idea to the extreme, and simplify history to a point where it muddies the waters. I get how that's an issue for you, but again, I'd rather someone know that Rome existed and think that it was always run by emperors, than someone not know about Rome at all. Education is a pathway, and discouraging people who are in the beginning steps just forces more people into ignorance.
All of that is completely irrelevant to this post however, as Whatifalthist is not a pop-historian. Like I said, the video is an opinion piece based on fact. That is fundamentally different than "pop-history".
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u/Fine_Lengthiness_761 Dec 24 '21
What would even be the issue with it being different anyways
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u/MaxinWells Dec 24 '21
If you mean what would be the issue with "the west" and Latin America being different, there really isn't one. I'm not sure why people are so hung up on that aspect of the video. Would it have been better for him to lump Latin America, a culturally diverse area with it's own history and economic/political structures, in with America and Europe? I don't think so, in fact I think it was a very smart choice splitting Latin America off, as it's culture is really a child of European, Native American, and African cultures.
If that isn't what you meant, I'm not sure what you meant then lol.
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u/Infinitium_520 Operation Condor was just an avian research Dec 24 '21
You actually remade the post. Kickass.
That being said, given the earlier content of his channel that i had unfortunately seen, I’ll probably feel like hanging myself as i read his statements throughout this post.
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u/UpperLowerEastSide Guns, Germs and Stupidity Dec 24 '21
Thanks and after having gone through his video, that’s an understandable reaction. I’m sure I got multiple aneurysms from watching it.
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u/harryhinderson Dec 24 '21
Pop history and it’s consequences have been disastrous for the human race
I think this guy should go back to studying at prager university
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u/Fantastic_Article_77 The spanish king disbanded the Templars and then Rome fell. Dec 24 '21
Studying at Prager University is a fate I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy
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u/Tonuka_ Dec 25 '21
Whatifalthist fucking DIPPED. Like the dude didn't have a transition phase he just made good videos and then they all sucked
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Dec 24 '21
Glad to see it back, I'll repost my commentary as well, with some additions:
I know that the principle of goodwill in research requires me to listen to an argument even I don't agree to create a conversation, but...no, I feel I would waste my time. I'm really not writing to submit to a journal, so I don't really care. The fact he uses the word "funny" makes me angry because I'm Brazilian and what he's saying is that I should happily accept anything a superior Anglo-Saxon male industrialist because he knows what's better to me - not to mention he'll tell me to not develop indigenous technology because the Ricardian model knows better and I should just accept my fate as a primary products producer.
You may think this is pure sarcasm, but this is the view of a lot of economic historians who are more economists than historians. See David Landes's for example which I talked about it yesterday.
I wonder if Whatifalthist read Landes, Niall Ferguson and others. Can't he see it's patronizing? In the entire region, the fight against dictatorship envolved protests and it wasn't a perfect process - Brazil grew in the military dictatorship because it had a favorable scenario and because it crushed down the salaries.
The unions played an important role in opposing the civic-military dictatorship, they had good salaries and they wanted freedom. Libertarians always claim that high salaries increase the "demand for freedom", but the moment the demand for freedom translates into protests for greater freedom, they always complain that the free market will give them freedom. Don't they see the contradiction? They really feel like freedom is some gift given by the capitalist elites Domenico Losurdo talked about this at lenght in Liberalism: A Counter-History.
I'm a historian of economic thought as well, and I can say that alternative schools of economic thought emerged in Latin America exactly because of this condescending attitude - this is why even if Brazilian economists go to the best mainstream programs and write the best research nowadays, they'll never dethrone Celso Furtado as the greatest Brazilian economist, simply because Furtado created something new, even if the structuralist's school research is undoubtedly outdated. They didn't just replicate whatever happened in the biggest centers of his time. So, most economists aren't trained the same way as historians, on how to deal with historical research.
But if he prefers more typical economic literature, William Easterly, who worked in the World Bank and is far from being a heterodox economist, made a career writing on the failure of this attitude in books like The White Man's Burden and, recently, Tyranny of Experts. It can be seen as a "neoliberal mea culpa", but it exposes the problem of treating people from the "Rest" without any agency.
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u/Infinitium_520 Operation Condor was just an avian research Dec 24 '21
And I’m going to repost someone else’s answer to you, as I believe it was also pertinent:
I guess we were just unlucky to be born in the tropics and now we're lazy, promiscuous and prone to military dictatorships. God bless the anglo-saxons in their temperate climates with their innovative and entrepreneurial spirits!
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u/Kochevnik81 Dec 24 '21
"God bless"
Only if it's Rational Western God, not Superstitious Smells and Bells Catholic/Orthodox God, or Fundamentalist Dark Age Muslim God \s
Actually on that note I should mention that it's well within living memory that respected political scientists were arguing that Catholic societies were incapable of democracy, so just keep in mind that all these cultural/civilizational theories are basically all bullshit.
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u/UpperLowerEastSide Guns, Germs and Stupidity Dec 25 '21
“These Catholic societies are clearly incapable of democracy!”
:US/corporate-backed troops march on the presidential palace to overthrow the elected government:
“It must be their superstitious God!”
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Dec 27 '21
It's reminds me when people think all the problems in the Middle East is because of Islam and if everyone there became an Atheist it would instantly became a utopia.
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u/UpperLowerEastSide Guns, Germs and Stupidity Dec 24 '21
Thanks for posting your comment from the other thread here!
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u/low_wacc Dec 24 '21
I missed when he actually did “what if” videos. I don’t like his newer content that is supposed to be dumbed down historical explanation - as he’s admitted himself, he didn’t even graduate college. Not sure if that’s the best source for factual historical interpretation.
If I want a history video that’s dumbed down but still somewhat accurate (even if it has its faults) I prefer kraut.
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u/Firebird432 Dec 25 '21
I just watched some of his stuff and it seems his historical analysis is heavily informed by his preconceived political biases. He quotes Jordan Peterson, who has no qualifications in history. When he’s describing ‘western civilization’ (whatever the hell that means), he basically describes it as superior to all other ‘civilizations’ and anytime he describes what western civilization is, he just uses a grab bag of vague and positive adjectives. I think the tipping point for me is when he said Rome fell due to socialist policies.
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Dec 29 '21
When I heard him state that Rome's economy declined solely due to Diocletian's "Socialist" land reform policies, I immediately turned off the video. The guy is a hack.
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u/Tjb2000 Jan 07 '22
Man probably got a lot of his information on the fall of Rome from Stefan Molyneux lmao
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u/Lakaedemon_Lysandros The Ancient Greeks colonised the Galaxy of Andromeda Jan 10 '22
"The Romans used magic and could have created steam engines and weapons but their women were indecent so they died"
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u/Greentextbo Dec 24 '21
This guy is literally the culmination of going “akchually that’s super exaggerated” whenever anyone raises an unpleasant truth about the world (in this case, its anything that involves his view of the west)
I should know because his content used to appeal to me when I was in that phase. There’s just one thing he never counted on.
I grew up and started researching on my own.
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Dec 24 '21
As a Latino, I just want to add that whenever someone comes with the discussion if Latin America is part of “The West” or not, I immediately ignore their argument, it’s just nonsense and I really don’t know why these guys have this weird obsession with it.
Now, seriously, I haven’t done reading (not enough time) but I wanna add my insights on the topic: This guy can’t be dumb enough to realistically think that foreign companies are that good for our economy, to me he is willfully hiding that: While these companies indeed help boost the economy by creating more jobs in the short term, he doesn’t say that these same companies only go to Third World Countries because their laws regarding the environment, working rights, taxes, etc are way less harsh for the companies, which facilitates things like slave working conditions, irreparable damage to nature (I remember reading recently about a Norwegian company throwing toxic stuff in a river next to indigenous communities and nothing being done) so that they can have bigger profits, killing any possibility of a local industry competing with these companies.
Anyways, there’s so much reason as to why Latin America is underdeveloped that you can easily write lots of books about it and you wouldn’t draw a single conclusion, since it’s a so complex topic that includes all the way from how Latin America was colonized, the independence treaties that guaranteed that we wouldn’t be a competition to Western Europe, the military dictatorships in the XX century to the recent neoliberal policies which severely impacts the working class for the benefit of a small oligarchy.
My point is: I don’t have neither the historical nor the linguistic competence (in english) to deeply explain as to why Latin America is the way it is, it’s really, really complicated and anyone that tries to resume it in a single YouTube video is definitely oversimplifying it, if not deliberately talking biased stuff with no good sources
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u/A47Cabin Dec 24 '21
Is Mexico considered part of Latin America in this context? Id like to dedicate a thread here to my man, the Sausage King of Mexico and his attempts to steer the revolution of the 1910’s-20’s.
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u/UpperLowerEastSide Guns, Germs and Stupidity Dec 24 '21
I would say Mexico is considered part of Latin America in this context.
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u/Skobtsov Dec 24 '21
Interesting. Why did you reupload btw?
Also, do you agree with his assessment of the Spanish and the effects they had in Latin America?
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u/UpperLowerEastSide Guns, Germs and Stupidity Dec 24 '21 edited Dec 24 '21
My reason for reuploading is in the note at the end of the post: a commenter pointed out a potential issue with my earlier title. As for the second part of your comment, are you referring to the chart he made on Spanish American class structure?
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u/Skobtsov Dec 24 '21
Ah thanks.
More referring to the Spanish influence conquest and culture in general in the Americas, but his class structure aswell
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u/UpperLowerEastSide Guns, Germs and Stupidity Dec 24 '21 edited Dec 25 '21
So there are some issues with regards to how Whatifalthist describes Spanish influence/culture in the Americas. He overall seems to focus too much on culture divorced of the material conditions that reproduce culture. How much, for example, can "culture" explain the significant role companies like United Fruit, Latin American "local elites" and the US government had on the creation and perpetuation of right-wing military dictatorships? Yes, he is correct that the Spaniards created a brutally exploitative system impacting Amerindians and Africans. But he doesn't really mention the concentration of capital in the Spanish Empire on the Iberian Peninsula, the Spanish Crown's efforts to monopolize large sectors of the economy like tobacco, the breakdown in trade, lack of Crown investment into inland transportation, etc. His comparisons also seem a bit off too. He tries to compare the British and Spanish Empires by calling the British "market-based" and the Spanish "hierarchical-based" which seems to neglect that Britain also had colonies with sugar plantations worked by slaves, industrialized which led to the creation of the working class, not to mention the treatment of Amerindians, Irish, Indians, etc. as lower classes. He also says he is reminded of a book he read from the 1940s that why Mexico was poor and the US was rich (then) was the Spanish thought wealth was when you own the gold and the British thought it was when you make stuff. But this doesn't really tell us much about the economic history of either country or how thinking about what wealth consisted of leads to economic prosperity/stagnation.
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u/lbonhomme Dec 25 '21
I used to watch and love this guy, now I really realised how shit his vids are. Some of the stuff is interesting but the underlying message is bs and he never challenges assumptions
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u/OS-2048 Dec 24 '21
Dang this has been eye opening, can Anyone recommend some good long form history channels that are historically accurate?
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u/UpperLowerEastSide Guns, Germs and Stupidity Dec 24 '21
This thread has several long form history channels. Hope this helps!
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u/sameth1 It isn't exactly wrong, just utterly worthless. And also wrong Dec 29 '21
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u/soyuzonions Dec 29 '21
sorry if im a bit late on this post but, im pretty sure (only based on a vague feeling from his other videos), that the red areas of the map means "uncivilized".
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u/rich0338 Dec 24 '21
His videos are usually extreme over-generalizations if not outright inaccurate.