[Theodores]

Exactly. Much like Texan people possibly have forefathers that liberated the lebensraum from its previous occupants, and wouldn't want their work to be undone, with land returned to some tribes now banished to the poor quality land, the Russians and Prussians weren't seeing that 1772 map like you do. Different times.

[clock_tower]

So, if Hitler had successfully made the Volga into Germany's Mississippi, and then 200 years passed, it would be unjust to demand that the Third Reich give the land back to its former inhabitants? (Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, etc.)

[candiodari]

Yes. Since you seem to be a fan of hyperbole, allow me to put why in hyperbole :

The islamic conquest started in a small village near Mecca, more like a square with some tents. Big tents, but tents. This is according to their own legend. Now on the lands they conquered and massacred their way across, there is about a billion people that are very different from the original inhabitants of those lands.

Let put em back in that small village and give Saudi Arabia back to the Jews (the south) and recreate the Eastern Roman Empire and give the North to them !

The same modulo historic details is true for Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, even Africa. The group currently living there either fought or massacred it's way to control of those lands.

[clock_tower]

It surprises me that "Hitler was wrong" is hyperbole now.

The Islamic conquests are the same situation as the American conquests: numbers make it impossible to give the land back to the surviving descendants of the conquered, but they shouldn't be treated as second-class citizens of their own countries. The conquerors' descendants should stop celebrating the conquest; they should acknowledge that what their ancestors did was profoundly wrong; and they should give the conquered peoples more privileges and social prestige than the conquerors, not less.

[mc32]

Didn't Russia/USSR basically do just that to the transural part of Russia/USSR? I don't think anyone today would think of devolving that part of Russia (or for that Matter China devolve Machuria (as the Japanese were hoping to do in wwII))

Once things settle down like that it's been too long and practical assimilation into the victors has long happened.

There are a few exceptions when the people are too dissimilar and assimilation has not completed as in Turkey and the Kurds.

[jessaustin]

I'm not a fascist like others in this thread seem to be, but yeah, after 200 years everybody and their grandchildren are dead, so it's unreasonable to pick long-healed scabs, even if the other guys were real assholes back then. The only possible results are negative for most living people. We in the West didn't approve when the Serbians tried this maneuver...

[clock_tower]

Thanks for your answer, to begin with!

But looking at the American Indians' situation, I'm not entirely convinced. The descendants of the expropriated Indians are strangers in their own country just like their ancestors were -- the effects of a land grab or whatever don't end with the deaths of the perpetrators and victims. If handing the land back isn't possible (too many whites, blacks, and others for everyone to emigrate, and not nearly enough Indians to inhabit the country afterwards), then giving the dispossessed tax exemptions and other privileges is certainly a good idea.

As far as Serbia, I was going to disagree with the particulars of your example until I realized that you meant the Kosovo War, not the Yugoslav Wars. That's a related but at least equally thorny question, I think: is there a point at which facts on the ground can override historic rights? My instinct is to say no: if the Serbs can't grab the parts of Bosnia inhabited by Serbs, the Albanians can't grab the parts of Serbia inhabited by Albanians. I think that should be uncontroversial in this context, but it gets more troublesome when you try applying it further back in history...

So, I guess the smartest thing you can do when conquering a region is to allow and encourage the conquered people to join the conquerer's society, and to treat them as first-class citizens when brought on board. That worked for the Roman Empire -- and it's honestly not a bad way to treat conquered peoples.

[candiodari]

> and not nearly enough Indians to inhabit the country afterwards), then giving the dispossessed tax exemptions and other privileges is certainly a good idea.

Should we also recreate the Southern kingdom of Ancient Egypt (a country that can probably make a claim of being the first state on that piece of land), defeat Egypt, throw out all Egyptians and Sudanese, and give the land back to whomever makes a reasonable claim of descendence from the last king of the Southern Kingdom ?

You guys talk about Indians as if they're the only ones that were displaced, but they're hardly the only ones that got displaced. The truth is pretty close to that none of the ethnic groups currently in control of territories originate there.

Hell, the truth is that most Indian tribes are not the original colonists of North America. Most Indian tribes are groups of people cast out (left ? it's unclear) of the Mayan empire who decided to conquer those lands North, displacing others. Should the Native Americans give privileges and land to the ones they displaced as well ?

And if the Indians themselves were not shy of displacing others when they had the means, why do they get special treatment ? Frankly, since I'll be downvoted anyway, allow me to add another politically incorrect tidbit: if the records we do have of inter-clan warfare tactics are true (they are not written by independent observers, so you can argue otherwise), then Indians were not exactly shy about using genocide-and-mass-rape tactics to expand their own tribe's influence.

I've actually visited "original" villages in Africa, and if what's happening there is anything like what has happened in America long ago, here's how displacement happens : the people in those villages do not want that life. The life civilization provides in cities is far superior, and far more reliable. As soon as enough locals know about it, those villages suddenly bleed dry. Why ? Because for instance such a village has a "beer" culture. Now native beer, well it sucks. It's slightly alcoholic, very acidic and bitter, incompletely fermented and has quite a few toxins (in other words, it's a slightly alcoholic drink that you can only drink one cup of without getting ill. Even teenagers one-upping eachother do not drink more than 3) (great curiosity for tourists, not so great as an actual drink). Then one of them finds out that 250km from there, there's a brewery. More than that: it's hiring people, which means that if you work there ~6 hours loading trucks, they'll give you enough money to buy 4-5 cases of beer. For just one day ! You have to understand that these villages have their culture centered around that bad drink they have. It's their definition of luxury, "wealth", desirability, (wo)manhood, etc. Other villages have a culture of wood sculptures (they use wood sculptures as pillows. Amazing but yes, you can make a halfway comfortable pillow out of wood. And, for women, it keeps their hair out of the dust so they can make it beautiful, and work for weeks on their hair without it turning into a dirty mess) ... and then someone brings back a plastic power rangers doll (that in 2 decades somehow made it's way into rural Africa). Well, good luck stopping the kids from going to the cities and getting more of those. Or there's a famine in the village, and there's a monastery in the city that will provide food. Well they'll move the village to right next to the monastery. Or there's an outbreak of disease and a monastery with a hospital. Or or or or or ...

Best of all, most of them will speak a language that resembles arabic, and have notions of French, so a French speaking guide is not hard to find. All government employees will speak French, for instance. So you can understand them and talk to them.

Yes there's cruelty. Yes, there's displacement. Yes, there's even killings (even though it's 99.9% village-on-village violence, 0.1% things like the government forcing them off the land for a mine). But they don't matter. Natural human population replenishment (ie. fucking and babies) will rapidly make up for those. It's the fact that civilization is vastly superior and allows them to join. I understand that "superior" is a sensitive description, but I guarantee that's how they see it. Hell, population replenishment almost makes up for the vast number of people those tribes "lose" to the cities. In some ways it's about every 80s movie teenager having the same wish: getting out of whatever "godforsaken" hole they were born into and into the cities. These villages don't have traditional parent-children relationships so it's a bit hard to tell what the fertility rate is, but a village will have 20 or so women and often close to 100 children of various ages, so probably 5 children per woman is a minimum. They essentially have a kid every year and a half starting at 14 or so until they die (which is at age 35 or 40 or so). Only two things allow for this culture to survive (perhaps better: decay only slowly): ignorance, on the part of the people stuck in those villages, and their massive population growth, producing massive numbers of new ignorant humans.

[petre]

> after 200 years everybody and their grandchildren are dead

But their culture and the memory of genocide isn't.

[jessaustin]

Speaking as someone who can't name a single ancestor from that long ago (but who presumes most of them were seeing enough of the harsh realities of life in Ireland and Scotland to inspire them to make a move), get over it. You're doing the next generation no favors, allowing your misunderstanding of eight or nine generations back to rule their lives.