[GuardianCaveman]

The Portuguese owned it for what, 500 years? At what point does something become someone else's? Modern China was created through invasion and bloodshed by various political groups just like every single country in the world.

[boyter]

I have often wondered about the answer to that. Especially when people start raising the idea of returning things to the historical owners.

[antihipocrat]

I wonder the same. There doesn't seem to be as much controversy in areas where a historical owner ceded the land through a 'fairer' conflict (by that I mean each side had resources and technology that was comparable).

Perhaps there's a sense that land claimed through overwhelming advantage was not a fair fight and thus any gains should be returned?

[GuardianCaveman]

I believe that’s how people perceive it. The imbalance of power and the sense of injustice. But a lot of times those people conquered by the more powerful group just committed an atrocity to get that land. But it was more evenly matched? It’s bizarre.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

History is a series of brutal, often genocidal, wars.

All of them sucked, for someone or another, but ended up making us who we are, today, for better or worse.

In the US, we celebrate the War of Independence (American Revolution), where we threw off the yoke of British tyranny.

But there are some black folks, and native Americans, that maybe didn't get too much benefit from the war.

The Romans probably did more for diversifying the genetics and cultures of Europe and Western Asia, than anyone, from their brutality. The Chinese feudal system was so vicious, that it made the European one look like a day at Disneyland, but they also developed some important technological advancements.

The Aztecs and Incas were ... not exactly gentle ... to their neighbors, but established some pretty significant civilizations (that the Spanish then took apart). They didn't even have horses.

We have flamenco music, because the Moors conquered Spain.

... and so on ...

I'm really hoping that we may finally be seeing an end to one nation just reaching out and grabbing another one. Ukraine may be the last gasp of that. It may not be the end, however, of nations splitting into smaller ones.