Two Underrated Peoples

American Thinker ^ | May 2, 2015 | Mike Konrad

[Mercat]

I’m a girl so I totally know who their father is. LOL Before that, no clear idea.

[Colorado Doug]

LOL. I certainly waltzed right into that without thinking, didn’t I? Cheers Mercat!

[VanShuyten]

And I was surprised that nobody told you that the Brits kicked the Dutch ass three times in a row in the 1600’s

[Mack the knife]

But how did Britain get its navy??

The book “Coal: a human history” points out that as England’s population grew, they cut down almost all the trees for firewood to keep warm in the winter. People froze.

In desperation, they turned to coal for heat. It was mined in Manchester hills, taken down on rails to the harbor where it was loaded into ships.

It took 300 ships per day to supply coal to London alone. When England needed a navy, they had both men and ship building assets to draw on.

[Cronos]

In looking over the history of the past 500 years, four nations stand out for having completely and massively altered world civilization in a way that no others have, before or after: England, Spain, France, and Portugal

Since 1510, well, they are correct about these 4 but forget some others like:

• Muscowy - Moscow expanded from a small Duchy to Alaska, they absorbed much of the Finnic peoples, many Tungusic and Turkic peoples and the rest of the East Slavic peoples (Belarusyni and Ruthenians)
  
• the Manchu Empire -- they slaughtered the Dzungaria (1 million killed in a genocide), slaughtered Han Chinese and weakened China so badly that it led to the century of humiliation starting from the 1800s
  
• The Mughal Empire - this changed the composition of the Indian sub-continent, creating a unity that hadn't existed before and yet also due to Aurangzeb creating the very forces that allowed Europeans to gain a foothold in the Indian continent

Then the article compares Empires before 1510 AD and it fails there in multiple places

• Vikings -- these were never an "empire" in any sense except for Cnut's brief reign -- they were groups of warriors fighting. the Norman, Varangians, Danes etc. were separate groups
  
• The Dutch - they started the Protestant fights against Spain and Portugal and due to the Dutch specifically, Indonesia was not converted to Christianity. But they allied themselves first to the English and then perfidious Albion turned on them in the Anglo-Dutch wars, destroying any chance for a long-term influence
  
• Germany effectively colonised the USA -- there are more Americans of Germanic extraction than any other ethnic group

The article tries to talk of Spain, forgetting that Christopher Columbus was a Genovan Italian.

Modern Western Civilisation is based on Greco-Roman ideals with Germanic warrior individuality. The Celtic anarchy was subsumed under this

[Cronos]

Actually, Basque language like Sumerian and Elamite and probably Kartveli are related to Dravidian --> here -- agglutinative languages

[SunkenCiv]

Those wooden shoes didn’t do them any good at all.