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Controversial Historical Opinions You Have

Monter said:
Less "failed" and more "didn't bother to", both the queue order and the foot binding ban were supposed to impose a new lifestyle on the conquered people as a sign of their submission, but foot binding only affected women, on a lower social scale than the men forced to wear the queue, so when facing fierce resistance from both facets Dorgon choose to enforce only the queue order rather than both, less risk and the same reward.
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I don't think that's incorrect, but I don't think it's the full picture either. I think it's fair to say that a large part of the reason that the ban on footbinding failed is because footbinding was an extremely private practise. The bound women were typically cloistered in their homes with very limited access to the outside world. Whereas men were much more accessible. One behaviour was done more or less exclusively within the privacy of one's home, whereas the other was a public display.

It's also just a lot harder to enforce things in people's homes as opposed to things which are public and difficult to conceal (such as one's hairstyle). I don't think it's entirely coincidental that the eradication of footbinding was something that only happened when the Chinese government had literal inspection teams that would examine women's feet for signs of footbinding.

Nyvis said:
If you want an example of country that tried the same and succeeded, just cross the Pyrenees. France may look like the model ethnonationalist wet dream but it's mostly on the back of extremely thorough education based destruction of local language. For a long time, speaking local dialects in school was ground for corporal punishment. Speaking your birth language was ground for a caning. In government schools. In a democracy.
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Honestly, I don't think the idea of a very strict imposition of an imagined national identity is particularly shocking in the 19th and 20th-century context. The concept of a unified nation with one people has frequently proven detrimental to the rights of minority peoples and their societies.

If anything, various multinational empires actually tended to be more tolerant of minority peoples, but with the very important caveat of "in exchange for loyalty". The Russian Empire gave an extraordinary amount of autonomy and tolerance to the Finnish people... while simultaneously brutally repressing even the slightest expression of nationalism and discontent in Poland.

Why the dramatic difference? One of these peoples had a long history of rebellion (largely in response to the aforementioned brutal repression) and the other didn't.

But at the end of the day, power is something of an arbitrary thing. Whether certain peoples are loyal subjects to be respected or potential threats to be suppressed can be a very arbitrary distinction at times.

Sumeragi said:
Again, there was no concept of Han Chinese until the end of the 19th century. What we now consider "Han Chinese" was a myth made up by those who adopted Western nationalism as a modern ideology to fight against the Manchu government. There was no common language, no common culture, no common belief, the only thing that allowed communication being East Asian Characters.
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I do feel the need to add that while it is indisputably true that Chinese intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th century adapted various Western ideologies, it's worth adding that a lot of these adaptions came through the lens of Japan.

So it's not a direct import of ideas from the West to China (since only the most elite people actually had the resources to fund an education in Europe) but rather from the West to Japan, and from Japan to China.

There's definitely an added complication when one considers the presence of Japanese influence in the nationalist and racialist worldviews of Chinese intellectuals of this period. And it goes a long way to explaining the rather bizarre love-hate relationship many of them had with Japan: simultaneously reviling Japan as an imperial power which tormented China and seized its territory, yet also revering it as a model Asian nation which had "modernised" (which in such parlance usually meant Westernised).
 
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PainRack said:
YEah no...... I'm not sure how you're defining this but the idea of Han Chinese can be traced back as far back as Ming dynasty and the Descendants of the Dragon being as far as back as the Han Dynasty..........
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You're confusing the cultural identity of Huaren with the modern consolidated "ethnic" identity of Hanzu.
 
Sumeragi said:
You're confusing the cultural identity of Huaren with the modern consolidated "ethnic" identity of Hanzu.
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You admit, that Ming China was a united civilization, unlike the Middle East, which is divided between the Turco-Persian civilization, to which Kurdistan belong, and the Arab civilization. The cultural heritage of Kurdistan is definitely non-Arab. Here is Mozart's tribute to the cultural heritage of Kurdistan:

(Mozart's Sarastro is however very different from the historical Zarathustra. Sarastro is an Egyptian priest of Isis and Osiris).
 
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Napoleon's conquests west of the Rhine were sustainable had he not caused a grand coalition against him and decided to make one of the most ill considered military campaigns in history that to this date has produced military aphorisms.
 
Estro said:
Napoleon's conquests west of the Rhine were sustainable had he not caused a grand coalition against him and decided to make one of the most ill considered military campaigns in history that to this date has produced military aphorisms.
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On the other hand, the borders were fucking ugly.
 
Estro said:
Napoleon's conquests west of the Rhine were sustainable had he not caused a grand coalition against him and decided to make one of the most ill considered military campaigns in history that to this date has produced military aphorisms.
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Do you mean the invasion of Spain?

If so I agree, because it settled his reputation as a back-stabbing usurpator once and for all.

It would have made his acceptance as a legitimate monarch much more likely in the future if he hadn't felt the need to give a crown to his big brother and attack his ally.

(though there were logical grounds for a more pliable regime in Spain, if it wasn't done as such a blatant power grab)

Things like dynastical marriages with e.g. the Hasburg and Marie-Louise could have generated much more legitimacy.

It could have ended with most of Europe accepting the Bonapartes as the legitimate ruling dynasty of France, leaving Britain as the lone isolated great power that no one would join in a coalition.
 
Mopman43 said:
What does Mozart have to do with anything?
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"Es lebe Sarastro" from "The Magic Flute" is about a character called Sarastro, who is inspired by Zarathustra. Mozart's Sarastro is however an inaccurate portrayal of Zarathustra, because Sarastro is an Egyptian priest of Isis and Osiris. I used it as an example of the cultural heritage of Kurdistan, which is Iranic, is decidedly non-Arab and which has Zoroastrian roots.
 
azadi said:
"Es lebe Sarastro" from "The Magic Flute" is about a character called Sarastro, who is inspired by Zarathustra. Mozart's Sarastro is however an inaccurate portrayal of Zarathustra, because Sarastro is an Egyptian priest of Isis and Osiris. I used it as an example of the cultural heritage of Kurdistan, which is Iranic, is decidedly non-Arab and which has Zoroastrian roots.
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Okay.

So? How's that related to China? Also, Zoroastrian is a religion.
 
Sulemain said:
Okay.

So? How's that related to China? Also, Zoroastrian is a religion.
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@Sumeragi claimed, that China is at least as diverse as the Middle East, and that the Middle East is united by the Arabic language. Of course Zoroastrianism is a religion, but a cultural heritage can have religious roots, similar to cultural Christianity in Europe. A lot of Europeans cherish the Christian cultural heritage of their country despite not sharing the religious faith of Christianity. Despite the fact, that the majority of the Kurds are Muslims, Kurdish culture has Zoroastrian roots (Zoroastrianism as a religious faith is however growing among Kurds presently).
 
azadi said:
@Sumeragi claimed, that China is at least as diverse as the Middle East, and that the Middle East is united by the Arabic language. Of course Zoroastrianism is a religion, but a cultural heritage can have religious roots, similar to cultural Christianity in Europe. A lot of Europeans cherish the Christian cultural heritage of their country despite not sharing the religious faith of Christianity. Despite the fact, that the majority of the Kurds are Muslims, Kurdish culture has Zoroastrian roots (Zoroastrianism as a religious faith is however growing among Kurds presently).
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This is a complete non-sequitor. I have no idea what you're trying to prove with this.
 
The Laurent said:
Medieval Europe was diverse, and yet in some ways united, at least in large parts of it, by the use of Latin as the language of learning/etc among many of the elites.
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This is true, but there was and is a large divide between Germanic North Europe and Romance Southern Europe. Anything comparable has never existed in China. Europe is far more comparable to India than to China.
 
The Laurent said:
...no, that is incorrect.

Even Wikipedia knows this.

Northern and southern China - Wikipedia
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I know about the divide between North China and South China, but it is far less pronounced than the divide between Germanic and Romance in Europe and the divide between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian in India. The north-south divide in China is more similar to the north-south divide in countries like Italy and Germany.
 
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azadi said:
I know about the divide between North China and South China, but it is far less pronounced than the divide between Germanic and Romance in Europe and the divide between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian in India. The north-south divide in China is more similar to the north-south divide in countries like Italy and Germany.
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Let me say that I absolutely don't think you have even 1/10th of the expertise to be trusted in that judgement without citation.
 
The Laurent said:
Let me say that I absolutely don't think you have even 1/10th of the expertise to be trusted in that judgement without citation.
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I admit, that I'm not an expert on East Asia. My main reasons for being interested in East Asia are, that I consider Juche and the Japanese monarchy fascinating.
 
Sumeragi said:
You're confusing the cultural identity of Huaren with the modern consolidated "ethnic" identity of Hanzu.
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Hua ren is actually more modern than Han ren..
Again. The ethnic idea is modern and came about during the Qing and contact with Westerners.
But the Ming already began using Han as definition of Chinese so as to differentiate Han Chinese from the barbarians, and Han dynasty itself differentiated the barbarians from the Han. The five barbarians existed as a clear ethnic difference.


I must apologize though. Descendants of the dragon is a much more modern interpretation , although I was using the Han Liu Bang cultural motiff, since dragons were linked to the emperors, my saying that is definitely wrong.


I guess what I saying is, just how are you defining this ?
 
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Rule No.2
  • Staff Post
    • Sumeragi said:
    That is not the case even now, or ever the case in history.

    Really, shut up with your utterly wrong and cursed view of history. You don't even know your own Kurdish heritage, what makes you think you have any authority on Chinese or East Asian history?
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    rule no.2 This is right on the line of acceptable.
     
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  • Staff Post
    • Staff Notice: In the future, try your best to keep N&P content in the N&P thread, okay?
    Are recent events permitted? If so, then here's one that bugs me.
    Yelling at Putin for interfering in the 2016 American elections is extremely hypocritical, seeing as how the USA interferes massively in other countries politics to this day. From the Latin American banana republics to the 1993 American-backed military cup in Russia, America has not stopped interfering in internal affairs elsewhere in the world. To take a few examples from the history I'm most familiar with, Israeli history, we have Rabin's victory which was only due to Bill Clinton's intense backing, Obama's attempts to get Netanyahu out, Trump's attempts to keep him in, and some more debated ones (the two Bushes, for instance). How "right" all of these were is debatable, but their existence is beyond a shadow of a doubt.
    If America has the right to interfere in other nations political affairs, they have the right to interfere in hers. To say otherwise is hypocritical.
     
    yaitz331 said:
    Are recent events permitted? If so, then here's one that bugs me.
    Yelling at Putin for interfering in the 2016 American elections is extremely hypocritical, seeing as how the USA interferes massively in other countries politics to this day. From the Latin American banana republics to the 1993 American-backed military cup in Russia, America has not stopped interfering in internal affairs elsewhere in the world. To take a few examples from the history I'm most familiar with, Israeli history, we have Rabin's victory which was only due to Bill Clinton's intense backing, Obama's attempts to get Netanyahu out, Trump's attempts to keep him in, and some more debated ones (the two Bushes, for instance). How "right" all of these were is debatable, but their existence is beyond a shadow of a doubt.
    If America has the right to interfere in other nations political affairs, they have the right to interfere in hers. To say otherwise is hypocritical.
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    America doesn't have that right. There is no hypocrisy in generally disliking it when a country interferes in another country's elections.
     
    yaitz331 said:
    If America has the right to interfere in other nations political affairs, they have the right to interfere in hers. To say otherwise is hypocritical.
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    But it isn't about rights. Why should Americans accept other nations meddling in their affairs? Why should they accept one of their candidates selling out to a foreign power? Those are actions that hurt the USA, after all, and so of course Americans will expect their government to defend them against that.
     
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