[jelliclesfarm]

It’s because we are new. America doesn’t have any domainant original cultural memory. Our edifices are second hand European. Every other place from Rome or India or Caucasus have had invasions and migrations and intermingling of cultures etc that paint everything in vibrant shades.

[the-dude]

America has not been invaded?

[jelliclesfarm]

Not like ..say..the melting pot of the Caucasus, Georgia ..or ancient Rome or like..Moorish Spain/Andalusia or Moghal India.

It’s not An Invasion per se...America was colonized. The impact of invasions are different in history’s timeline.

Regardess, those who reached American shores were the Puritans and their ilk anyways.

[the-dude]

What is exactly the difference between an invasion vs a colonization?

Genuinely curious.

[jelliclesfarm]

I would imagine colonization happened for economic gain with the colonists benefiting. The colonized population were likely still governed by the locals who were controlled by the colonizers.

For example, India was a colony of Britain. All trade was diverted to Britain to benefit them. The great famine of bengal for example was because farmers had to grow and send cotton to England rather than grow food for Indians. The economic activities were controlled by the colonizers armed forces.

The British colonized India. The Moghals invaded India. Alexander, The Great...for example..tried to invade India, but had to retreat. It’s usually done with armies vs colonizations that is through trade.

An invasion is when a military moved in and took over the government. The invaded country became the de facto territory of the invaders. And the invaded people have to live by the rule of the invaders. Example: Georgia was invaded by mongols and the Turks and then Russia. Each time, it became part of the other’s empire.

[the-dude]

Like when America was part of the British empire?

[keithnoizu]

Or when the spanish invaded the aztec empire.

[wincy]

The US was colonized with entire family units being uprooted and moved, and little cultural and marriage intermingling, sometimes by law.

Mexico and Central/South America instead starting as a military venture with mostly men raping/“marrying” the native women and having children that way.

[bumbada]

I suppose the main difference is that the colonization of the US was an invasion that was so successful that native Americans living there before were almost exterminated(being today less than 1% of the US population) and as a result nobody cares about them anymore.

Usually invaders, like Alexander the Great, Tariq ibn Ziyad , Kublai Kan, Hernán Cortés or Napoleon will kill opposition(mostly males) but leave women and children and men who don't oppose them.

That means most of the society remains the same after the invaders take control of power, and grant special privileges to themselves, like owning the best land or having sex with the local women.

In the US, they never mixed with local population, they just expelled them of fertile soil until they died from starvation, illnesses or fights.

[the-dude]

A successful genocide, interesting take.

[NoRagrets]

Isn’t that interesting..it seems like: Benign genocides are all about positive eugenics.

Likely the origins of: “Make Love, Not War.”

Kill the men..keep the children and women around.

Invasions strive to strengthen and diversify gene pools while colonists dont mingle genetics as all and all about racial purity.

[cpursley]

The time that it takes

[NikolaeVarius]

The war of 1812 doesn't really count.

[ceejayoz]

The Native Americans would likely still object to the idea that the Americas were never invaded.

[NikolaeVarius]

Posturing for a completely unrelated issue wins points for the woke crowd, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand.

[AlotOfReading]

I'm not sure I understand how native Americans are unrelated to the topic at hand. They still exist, and there are still thousand year old villages in the US and Mexico.

[karatinversion]

But they are not particularly relevant in the discussion of the cultural memory of the modern United States

[pjc50]

A United States where a significant fraction of the Native population had survived, intermingled, and developed their own 20th-century culture and architecture on a significant scale would be very different.

[the-dude]

You mean to get cultural meaningful intermingling, you shouldn't wipe them out?