[getgoingnow]

Great point. Nordic countries and other rich European countries owe large part of their success to colonization in the past. For example, Belgium performed mass genocide in Congo, enslaved the people and stole the natural resources in the country. So, today people in Belgium live comfortably, since the modern Belgium is built on top of African slaves' pile of bones.

About half of GDP of Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France, Austria is taxes. It's easy to talk about redistribution after you've pillaged the entire world.

[cplanas]

> Nordic countries [...] owe large part of their success to colonization in the past.

The Nordic countries had no (or negligible) colonies. The Nordic countries are Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Norway.

[fleitz]

lol. Please tell me more about how Nordic people never established any colonies. The countries that made all the colonies are Nordic colonies in and of themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normans

[dalke]

Sweden had colonies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_overseas_colonies . Sweden also had slave trade. Denmark/Norway had colonies as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_colonial_empire . Greenland and the Faroe Islands are what remain of the Danish colonial empire.

Finland is another Nordic country, though not a Scandinavian country. Finland has never had an empire. It was too busy being controlled by Sweden and Russia. This means the Finns are Nordic people. Hence getgoingnow's statement cannot be true for all Nordic countries.

That said, cplanas is correct. Finland had no colonies, and for the other Nordic countries the colonies provided only a small revenue source. They surely did not "owe large part of their success to colonization in the past" as getgoingnow claims. Eg, Sweden's wealth historically comes from copper and iron, and Sweden was a poor country. Norway's w

I see you switched from "Nordic countries" to "Nordic people" and then to "Normans", to then imply that successful Norman conquests and colonization lead to a significant economic gain to the Nordic countries. I do not think that's a meaningful connection for the current discussion.

First, I do not like how you imply there is only one type of colonization. There's settler colonialism, like how the Bantu migrations displaced the Pygmy populations in early Congo history, or how the Norse/Danes controlled the region known as the Danelaw, or how the Norse settled in France, and assimilated (switched to Catholicism and to the French language), or how the Norse colonized Iceland.

There's also exploitation colonialism, which England and Spain are two of the best known examples. But the Norse conquest of England, which might have enriched some of the Norse in France, never went back to "the Nordic countries". Where then is the source of the revenue stream that getgoingnow implied was a basis for the success of the modern Nordic countries?

Second, the connection from "Normans" to "Nordic countries" doesn't work that way. The term "Nordic" is a relatively recent term that refers to a list of modern countries and territories; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_countries . It does not refer to Brittany, where the Normans lived, nor to Britain or southern Italy, which the Normans conquered.

Third, "Nordic people" has a variety of meanings (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_people ). It can refer to the Germanic people as a whole, or the people who live in the specific Nordic countries, or a term from scientific racism from the late 1800s, or the Norse, or more specifically the Vikings. I think your introduction of that term confuses the topic more than it helps. Which definition do you mean to use, and why not stay with "Nordic countries"?

Fourth, the Normans are only one link in history. Why stop with them? The Normans come from the Norse. The Norse are Germans. Why not simply say it's all due to German colonization?

Then again, you wrote "The countries that made all the colonies are Nordic colonies". I must have missed that part of history where they covered how the Normans colonized the Islamic Iberian Peninsula and lead to the Portuguese colonies.

[fleitz]

> Fourth, the Normans are only one link in history. Why stop with them? The Normans come from the Norse. The Norse are Germans. Why not simply say it's all due to German colonization?

You could well say that... but I'm not sure how it makes the assertion true that nordic countries/people didn't have colonies. It's actually something that I've picked up on from my studies of history that many colonizers derive from Germanic roots. (My hunch which I can't prove / haven't investigate much is that the germans picked up on it from the romans)

I didn't mean to suggest that there's only one kind of colonization, I'm actually a huge fan of the idea that there are many types, and that some of them were beneficial.

Also, I don't really buy into the idea that colonization was responsible for the success of the nations that did the colonizing. I think that the exploitative type of colonization was harmful to development of the economy just as slavery in the Southern US lead to widespread poverty when compared to the North.

Yes, that was an absolute statement which you disproved handily, not all colonies were created by nordic / germanic peoples.

The very language we are communicating in is a testament to the colonization of England (or whatever the fuck it was called before it was colonized) by Nordic/Germanic people/countries. It's a colonization similar to America by Britain, where the colonists decided to give the middle finger to the motherland, similar to the way the English just gave the finger to their original colonizers in Denmark.

https://www.englishclub.com/english-language-history.htm

[dalke]

> "Yes, that was an absolute statement"

And there was no need for you to introduce a absolute statement as the previous nuanced statement was correct.

> the colonization of England

There have been many waves of colonization of England: Celts, Romans, Angles and Saxons, Norse, and the Norman French come quickly to mind. The colonization of England is far different from the combination of English, French, and Spanish colonization of the Americas.

I think you overemphasize bloodlines when you focus on immigration and "people". The Romans were a diverse set of peoples from across the Roman Empire, with people as far away as Africa living in England. The Christianization of England, or the spread of the concept of the divine right of kings, or of democracy, was not due to immigration of bodies but to an immigration of ideas. The rise of Sweden as an invading superpower in the 1600s was due in part to the Reformation, which let the Swedish king confiscate money from church land, and not simply from some intrinsic nature of the people.

"England" comes from the Angels. In modern use it refers to the area in the southern part of Great Britian, and corresponds mostly to where the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were, ie, not Wales and not Scotland. There was no name before the Angles as there was no reason to highlight that specific area.

England as a short-hand for Great Britain was called Britannia by the Romans, and Albion, from a Celtic language through the Roman.

> "I think that the exploitative type of colonization was harmful to development of the economy..."

Which brings the topic back to the original discussion. getgoingnow wrote "Nordic countries and other rich European countries owe large part of their success to colonization in the past".

Do you think it's true that the Nordic countries (modern Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland) owe their success to colonization? If so, which colonization, and what was the return which lead to modern success?

[okreallywtf]

Not sure why this got downvoted, its a reasonable point if cynical.

You could say the same thing about America though, there are still many wealthy families that can trace wealth back to slave ownership. In addition we massacred the Native Americans and took control of a massive wealth of natural resources. None of us came into life on a level playing field. We aren't necessarily responsible for the actions of our ancestors but I think we have to acknowledge the cumulative effect that they had on our world.

We will just go in blame circles forever as long as we cling to the notion that we are particularly responsible for our good or bad fortune (beyond on average minor changes based on personal choices - and I say minor once you average it out over the entire population, some people might experience drastic changes by making a fortuitous decision but many other people made significant efforts that do not result in large gains).

If we can get over this notion and agree that everyone should have equal access to food, water, housing, security, and education no matter what, then we can put all this who did what to who bullshit behind us. Even if there are cumulative cultural issues related to past discrimination they would be so much easier to deal with once the brunt of inequality has been dealt with.

I am not particularly optimistic for this though because people who either by ability or a lucky roll of the dice become wealthy (or already were already) have such a massive psychological hurdle to overcome to accept that what happened to them simply cannot happen to anyone, regardless of ability or work ethic.

[douche]

If you want to talk about pillaging the world, you have to talk about Spain, whose mines in Mexico and Peru supplied the bullion that powered the entire world economy for hundreds of years.

Leopold II's ineffective and bloody adventures in a part of Africa everyone else had already ignored hardly rate.