TLs on Muslim Colonisation?

EnvarKadri

RGB said:
People keep repeating this tripe like it's a real thing and yet there's never any objective reasons to distinguish the two. "Traditional conquest and assimilation" involves everything you can think of about colonization a-la America. Disruption and suppression of local culture, genocides, settler and slave influx, economic reorientation towards new centres, an imposition of rigid new hierarchies with the conquerors strictly at the top. Literally every bad thing applies to both situations.

The only additional "meanings" are dishonest special pleadings of the "it's not colonization if we/people we like do it" kind.
Click to expand...
I actually agree with you on the last part, but thats exactly why I mention it, people tend to associate the term colonization with modern instances of settler colonialism or modern colonialism, generally associated with phisical elimination of the native population in the first case and massive human rights violation in the second case. So calling the arabization of the middle east colonization is a little dishonest when we dont do the same with the romans or other premodern empires, or should we talk about latin colonization of iberia and france? To a lot of people this would suggest phisical removal. Or we us the more neutral term of conquest for everyone or we start accuse medieval people of colonialism?
 

RGB

EnvarKadri said:
So calling the arabization of the middle east colonization is a little dishonest when we dont do the same with the romans or other premodern empires, or should we talk about latin colonization of iberia and france?
Click to expand...

I'm all for calling Roman colonization just that since the Romans came up with that term themselves. Same for all other classical and medieval politites. It might not be colonialism but it certainly is colonization. Colonization is also a better operative term than colonialism because it was an actual thing and not a meaningless rhetorical flourish.

I'm also flummoxed to hear that the Arab expansion did not involve physical removal or that all Atlantic colonization always did or that Arab conquest and colonization is necessarily medieval when it was in fact still ongoing in the 19th and 20th c. Sometimes concurrently with Second Imperialism. Or that the nasty slaver Empires that this resulted in were somehow less human-rights-violating than modern ones.
 
Last edited:

EnvarKadri

RGB said:
I'm all for calling Roman colonization just that since the Romans came up with that term themselves. Same for all other classical and medieval politites. It might not be colonialism but it certainly is colonization. Colonization is also a better operative term than colonialism because it was an actual thing and not a meaningless rhetorical flourish.

I'm also flummoxed to hear that the Arab expansion did not involve physical removal or that all Atlantic colonization always did or that Arab conquest and colonization is necessarily medieval when it was in fact still ongoing in the 19th and 20th c. Sometimes concurrently with Second Imperialism. Or that the nasty slaver Empires that this resulted in were somehow less human-rights-violating than modern ones.
Click to expand...
I would treat arabization in the context of modern nation states, and arabization in premodern times as diferent events. If not its like treating french conquest of algeria a continuation of the crusades, historical context matters.
 

EnvarKadri

RGB said:
I'm all for calling Roman colonization just that since the Romans came up with that term themselves. Same for all other classical and medieval politites. It might not be colonialism but it certainly is colonization. Colonization is also a better operative term than colonialism because it was an actual thing and not a meaningless rhetorical flourish.

I'm also flummoxed to hear that the Arab expansion did not involve physical removal or that all Atlantic colonization always did or that Arab conquest and colonization is necessarily medieval when it was in fact still ongoing in the 19th and 20th c. Sometimes concurrently with Second Imperialism. Or that the nasty slaver Empires that this resulted in were somehow less human-rights-violating than modern ones.
Click to expand...
Also I am not saying that pre modern empires were more respectful of human life than modern ones, but we should we aware that our historical perspective its radically diferent than people from the past. I am not saying we cant judge them, its just that I thing it would be an exercise in futility. They are radically diferent feom us, the past its not a foreing country its an alien world.
 

EnvarKadri

RGB said:
I'm all for calling Roman colonization just that since the Romans came up with that term themselves. Same for all other classical and medieval politites. It might not be colonialism but it certainly is colonization. Colonization is also a better operative term than colonialism because it was an actual thing and not a meaningless rhetorical flourish.

I'm also flummoxed to hear that the Arab expansion did not involve physical removal or that all Atlantic colonization always did or that Arab conquest and colonization is necessarily medieval when it was in fact still ongoing in the 19th and 20th c. Sometimes concurrently with Second Imperialism. Or that the nasty slaver Empires that this resulted in were somehow less human-rights-violating than modern ones.
Click to expand...
Also what massive physical removal happened during the medieval middle east?
 
KarneeKarnay

KarneeKarnay

RGB said:
People keep repeating this tripe like it's a real thing and yet there's never any objective reasons to distinguish the two. "Traditional conquest and assimilation" involves everything you can think of about colonization a-la America. Disruption and suppression of local culture, genocides, settler and slave influx, economic reorientation towards new centres, an imposition of rigid new hierarchies with the conquerors strictly at the top. Literally every bad thing applies to both situations.

The only additional "meanings" are dishonest special pleadings of the "it's not colonization if we/people we like do it" kind.
Click to expand...

While I agree with the similarities the process of assimilation was somewhat different between Roman expansion and the colonisation of the Americas. The Romans preferred strategy of assimilation was to absorb local power structures and mold them into a system that could be used by Rome. Local nobles and chiefs would be offered incentives to adapt to Roman culture. While I am sure this occurred in some place in the Americas, this defiantly did not occur in the same scope. I'm sure the same also occurred with Rome, but it's the scope and how often it occurred.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top