[UpshotKnothole]

The original premise was that black marks will be overlooked. I don’t know how to break it to you, but the ones you’ve listed are infamous and hardly overlooked.

Premise: No they won't, it'll be whitewashed in textbooks and only those who study history will know. There's already so many so-called black marks that are worse and already quietly overlooked.

And you just offered a ton of support for the competing hypothesis that our period of history will be infamous along with the ones you’ve listed.

[majewsky]

> the ones you've listed are infamous and hardly overlooked

You think? Here's my experience (I went to school in Germany).

> Annihilation of local tribes by colonisers

Saw some TV documentaries on it. Not mentioned in history class.

> forced opium enslavement of China

Heard about it on a history podcast. Not mentioned in any sort of mainstream media or curriculums.

> dividing up China between France/Britain/Japan

Hearing about this for the first time now.

> pestilence from European cattle annihilating 2/3 of inland african people via starvation

Hearing about this for the first time now.

> the policy of the Holy Roman Emperor and The Pope to keep german states at war with italian states

This rings a bell, but only very distantly. So maybe I've heard about that somewhere, but no idea where.

> emperor Chin executing the whole village where any crime at all occurred

Who's emperor Chin?

> The Spanish Inquisition

Saw some TV documentaries on it. Not mentioned in history class.

> [the last three bulletpoints about communist dictatorships]

The gulags were mentioned in history class. Nothing about Mao or the Khmer Rouge. I saw some documentaries about Mao on TV, though.

In general, history education in school was infuriatingly superficial wrt the 20th century. The curriculum was basically chronological, starting with the antique Egyptian empire in 5th grade and ending with contemporary history in the 10th grade. (Then in 11th through 13th grade, the same structure, but condensed into three years.)

The obvious issue with this structure is that you always run out of time at the end of the curriculum, so you have to rush through the most recent parts of history, which IMO ought to be given the strongest emphasis of all periods.

[tezza]

you dont need to break it to me... ask a group outside of HN and they will come up with a couple if you’re lucky.

try it.

[UpshotKnothole]

No offense to this site, I like it a lot so far, but I wouldn’t favorably compare it in terms of non-technical knowledge to most of the educated population. You listed a ton of really infamous events, ones that are routinely covered in intro classes at all levels of schooling, and have entered even pop culture. If you think that most people are unaware of all, but a couple of them, you’re grossly underestimating people. I’d argue that the only two many people wouldn’t know are the actions of the pope one, and the Chin emperor. The rest are familiar to pretty much everyone who made it through high school.