| > 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 |
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?