I'm not sure I agree, unless you're counting things like Wahhabi jurisprudence as Arabization for some reason. Almost every Wahhabi critique of non-Arabs I've seen criticizes the way others practice Islam rather than for not being "Arab enough". Modesty practices, for instance, are often focused...
It's easy to make this misconception, since Wahhabism is inextricably tied up with the government of Saudi Arabia these days. But in and of itself, Wahhabism is not a racial supremacist ideology, but a solely religious one.
With that being said, Arab supremacism does dovetail rather neatly...
A fortuitous question, Johnny P.! I wrote some of my (rambling) thoughts on a French 'discovery' recently.
To save my poor fingers, longish quote below.
Alright then, I'll give it a go. This is going to be a long, rambling ride through my thoughts, so be prepared.
France in the late 1400s is in many ways unique in Europe. It is at the time one of the most populated areas in Europe--13 million in 1483 according to Wikipedia--and has just come...
Quite frankly, no. We can't necessarily know that there weren't ancient, advanced civilizations, not for certain. History is based off of piecing together what we can from records and archaeology, and filling in the blanks with hopefully reasonable conjecture. It often isn't so much about a...
That's true, if French monarchs are as bad at managing their wealth as IOTL, there could certainly be an earlier revolution, especially if more wealth to the crown means an earlier absolutism.
I disagree on the social structure point though: American colonies catapulted Spain into a position...
There's a bar underneath each banned person's name that says "Banned"...but I wasn't really criticizing, just joshin' ya.
Another thought: this could eventually lead to the development of a French navy that's actually a serious contender rather than--quite frankly--an afterthought. Which...
Bit of a necro, phx, and responding to a conversation between two banned people, no less? Bold move, youngling.
I'll throw my hat in the ring, though; the main reason that French colonization was "desultory" was because they favored trading colonialism over settler colonialism. If France...
Indentured servitude becoming slavery-in-all-but-name would most likely be the go-to solution here. As has been previously stated, European countries pre-industrialization did in fact rely heavily on forced labor (serfdom, for instance) and were quite used to the idea of unfree labor (as were...
I have recently stepped out of my historical comfort zone and begun exploring areas outside of my usual purview. One of my recent interests has been early India. I am especially fascinated by the Maurya due to their impact, size, and sheer longevity.
It's my understanding that the empire's...
It is vastly different from chattel slavery, but it remains a recognized form of slavery (which I'm not entirely sure you were disagreeing with), just like debt bondage. Having a contract doesn't make it any less a form of temporary enslavement, and even if it did, many were coerced or...
They weren't legally slaves, no, but I would argue that indentured servitude was close to indistinguishable from debt bondage as practiced by many ancient and medieval cultures (and incidentally the most common form of modern slavery). The Irish (and other groups, but they're not directly...
Took the words right out of my mouth, compadre. It boggles my mind sometimes how the Norman Conquest is so often treated as "just another war", when it was a brutal and genocidal conflict that spanned decades (arguably longer if you include later rebellions by non-Normans).
As for Varangians...