[jowdones]

>> Finland never participated in the colonial era except as a dirt poor third world economy to be exploited.

A lot of this, I think, is the result of geography rather than the Finns (or rather, their leaders) being different / special.

Romania never participated in the colonial era as well but it's not they wouldn't have liked to. Only neighboring Habsburgs, Russia and the Ottomans there was little direction to go. By the sea, they'd have to cross Bosphorus and Gibraltar straits to reach the open ocean so forget it either.

But once the opportunity present, there was no hesitation to jump and snatch. Took Dobrudja from Bulgaria after they got beaten shitless in the Balkan Wars by a coalition of Turkey, Greece and Serbia. Invaded Hungary opportunistically in WW1 after posing neutral for a couple years and managed to shoot a few poor unsuspecting border guards before being pushed back and nearly wiped out by German troops (lead by a young Erwin Rommel), after which sign an armistice with the Central Powers and invade Moldova to "secure" some space. Then 12 hours before the end of WW1 declare war to Central Powers again and be technically on the winning side. Invade Hungary again and "secure" Transylvania.

>> There is xenophobia and racism as elsewhere, but there is no historical past we should be particularly ashamed off.

The past is mostly presented as "special military operation" :P

[prepend]

> A lot of this, I think, is the result of geography rather than the Finns (or rather, their leaders) being different / special. Romania never participated in the colonial era as well but it's not they wouldn't have liked to.

Doesn’t this apply to everywhere though. I’m sure every country would have loved to colonize places but didn’t for various reasons.

I don’t think there are “evil” countries that colonized because they are evil. All countries that could, did.

Fortunately, recently people became more moral and have worked to limit this. Although cynically, I think it’s because the less evil way is no more lucrative.

[badpun]

Poland wasn’t into colonizing. The country wasn’t overpopulated yet and the elites were very rich from grain exports anyway, so why bother competing with other European powers for the New World?

[prepend]

Same reason why Germany didn’t colonize much, they didn’t exist.

[hef19898]

Poland as a nation didn't exist until the end of WW1. Difficult to colonize when you don't exist as a nation.

[badpun]

I’m speaking about Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which existed during the first stages of colonisation, and in which Poland played the dominant role.

[paganel]

Am Romanian, probably shouldn't have entered this conversation, but it's the first such attempt that I see on this website at hitting at the people under which I'm labeled in my passport so I feel like probably I should enter the conversation after all.

First, about the Bulgaria thing. I grew up in a Romanian city just north of the Danube, Bulgaria was 11 km away (12-13, if you include the width of the Danube itself). In my home-town's central park there was (still is, afaik, I left that town ~20 years ago) a monument devoted to the Romanian soldiers who had died in the Second Balkan War, i.e. the war that you mentioned. They died when their boat had sunk while crossing the Danube. The majority of the Romanian deaths in that war (and there were a few) were the result of typhus (if I remember rightly), either way, what I do remember is my dad telling kid-me how stupid it was for us to get into that war whenever we were walking in front of that monument, how stupid our deaths had been. Of course, those deaths and that war were not mentioned in our history books.

What was also not mentioned were the atrocities committed by the Bulgarian soldiers once they invaded back, around 1917. It was really eye-opening to see photos of naked, dead, raped women in a Carnegie-report written just after WW1, a report that was mentioning places a few kilometers away from the village where my grand-parents had lived. I stumbled upon that report in an antiques-shop here in Bucharest a few years ago, again, no mention of those atrocities had been made in our history classes.

> after which sign an armistice with the Central Powers and invade Moldova to "secure" some space.

That was not an invasion, if you had read something, almost anything, on that subject you would have known that. Granted, I don't fault you for that, even here, in Romania, that event is seen in the wrong light, i.e. as a celebration of Romanians coming together after 100 years of Russian occupation. There was a coming back together of Romanians but there was nothing celebratory about it, as people who were alive back then and who were witnessing the whole thing actually said. It was a thing that the Germans wanted us, Romanians, to have, as compensation for the losses they had been inflicting on us (the union happened in March 1918, the Buftea peace treaty was signed in May 1918).

I will not go into the can of worms you opened about Transylvania because it's just not worth it, but the truth is I had expected better from HN readers/writers in here, no matter their nationality and ideological affinities.

[fsloth]

>>>> Finland never participated in the colonial era except as a dirt poor third world economy to be exploited.

>>A lot of this, I think, is the result of geography rather than the Finns (or rather, their leaders) being different / special.

My intent was not to signal virtue, merely the lack of historical action resulting in a system that could be economically or politically identified as colonization

Why? Geography, demographics and economy. Everyone was dirt poor - no economic elite to speak of. And the population was and is tiny.

[brigandish]

I thought the point of their post was that no society, civilisation, "race" - whatever little circle could be drawn around a group - is special, by providing an obvious counter to the "white people are inherently bad" nonsense going on the US, so I'm not sure what you're attempting to refute.