Whatta bunch of white privilege raaysisms! Whatta 'bout the contributions of Equitorial Guinea!
Posted on 05/02/2015 2:13:23 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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.
No other empires even come close. The Muslim conquests were landbound except for island hopping. Chinese and Mongolian conquests were landbound. Even in ancient times, Greek, Roman, and Persian conquests were essentially land operations, except for river fording. Yes, they all had navies, but were not defined by them.
What separates the English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish was that these nations had vast transoceanic empires. They defined themselves by their navies, especially the English.
Portugal sent off its explorers to discover the Eastern oceanic routs to Asia -- the land routes having been closed by the Muslims. The Spanish circumnavigated the globe. The British empire was completely a naval operation; and the French, contrary to our American prejudices, were no slouches and actually a major player: Remember it was Rochambeau's fleet that prevented British reinforcement of Cornwallis at Yorktown.
Only the Japanese came close, and only for a very brief time during World War II. It remains to be seen if the Chinese will measure up. Their early maritime efforts, which reached as far as Africa, were curtailed by internal imperial demands....
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Oh yeah sure thing......and the US contributed nothing..... Why stop at 500 years?
Israel
Greece
Rome
The US
Now read it.
If you look at the politics of the last hundred years, look and see how much of it was spent cleaning up the mess left from those 4 empires. I am also surprised the Netherlands didn’t make the list.
Actually Rochambeau commanded the French land forces. It was Admiral Comte de Grasse' fleet.
In any case it's a glaring omission to leave out the USA, which is arguably #1. We may not have invented the democratic republic, but we certainly reintroduced to the world. So much that it's the default system of government in the world, at least in theory. It wouldn't be if there was no USA.
And what do they make that we want?
Some dead food, water they didn’t invent and Plueger Butter?
Fact is, we gave the world ice cubes, air conditioning, skyscrapers, Levis, Coca Cola, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, baseball and so much more.
Nike, Apple, Microsoft, Ford, Chevy, more airplanes than all other countries combined....
The article is actually about the Basques and the Celts, not the countries listed at the beginning. American Thinker must be excerpted and linked, which I did.
But, but, we must only post pro-USA propaganda on FR. There is no history before the 1770’s. And every story must start and stop with how great we were.
Greatest Generation! Yahoo!
(Purely sarcastic, but pointing out the prevailing groupthink on an aging and surprisingly ignorant FR)
Hilaire Belloc, in Europe and the Faith: Sine auctoritate nulla vita (without authority, no life) doubts the influence of genetics, but does accept linguistic coherence, the core of culture.
Well then he'd fit right in with Jared Diamond of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" who seriously proffered the notion that the inhabitants of New Guinea (who still practice cannibalism among other things) have just as much native intelligence as northern Europeans. They're just in the wrong part of the world.
Diamond argues that (favorable) geography plays the most important factor in the development of peoples and nations. You see New Guinea, despite being an island, has no access to the sea. /s
Whatta bunch of white privilege raaysisms! Whatta 'bout the contributions of Equitorial Guinea!
Left out Hanno and Himilco, Carthaginians who sailed around Africa, former discovered the Gold mines in Gold Coast; latter went to Britain for tin, 500 B.C.; settled SPAIN< establishing small cities there
Himilco was 4 months on the Atlantic ocean, 500 B.C.
IROQUOIS LEGEND 700B.C. “2200 years before the Columbus,”
“foreign people sailed
from a port unknown”
“winds drove them contrary”
“wrecked somewhere on the
southern part of the Great Island”
“them on the summit of a mountain
and remained there but a short time the hawks seemed to threaten them, and were compelled to leave the mountain. They immediately selected a place for residence and built a small fortification in order to provide against the attacks of furious beasts; if there should be any made. After many years the foreign people became numerous, and extended their settlements; but afterwards they were destroyed by the monsters that overrun the country.
“He [Hanno]sailed accordingly with sixty ships,
fifty oars each and a body of men and to the number
of thirty thousand and other necessaries” [500 B.C.]
“
500BC PUNIC CARTHAGINIANS PHONECIANS
Phoenicians too.alphabet
Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren
“Heeren’s works”: Tr. from the German, Volume 6
D.A. Talboys, 1838
p487
“V. The Voyage of Hanno commander of the Carthaginians round the parts of Libya beyond the Pillars of Hercules which he deposited in the temple of Saturn” -PP.486-487
These folks obviously spawned the glam rock of the 70’s. That’s a contribution.
AH well then I should go back and read it...I like both those peoples....thanks for the gentle chastening ;)
bkmk
Very good point, bunkerhill7. The Carthaginians had their Periplus of Hanno, which remarkably enough gave us our world "gorilla". Herodotus records the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa, commissioned by the Pharaoh.
The two Roman invasions of Britain by Julius Caesar were the largest troop landings ever made in Britain -- until that of Claudius a century later. And Claudius' numbers remain the record right up to the present day.
The Roman navy cleared the Seven Seas of piracy for 400 years. The Romans planted at least one outpost in Ireland, and like the Greeks before them sowed colonists in India and elsewhere to the east.
Also, I'd like to point out that the Netherlands went far and wide until its conquest by the Hapsburgs and a long series of other rebellions, invasions, occupations, and other wars. There, that should give some of my ancestors a good night's sleep. ;')
My Basque ancestors got out of Spain and to what is now Mexico early on-late 15th-early 16th century on a ship with other Basques running from the King’s men. Family tradition is they were at odds with the Spanish government, so it was leave or hang-they chose to leave...
I don’t know if that is true, but we do all seem to be unrepentant rebels to this day, ready for a fight. I went to college in the early 70’s with a Basque guy from Spain who was a bona fide separatist-at the end of the school year, he was called home by family, packed up and left to join the separatist movement back home...
Well, the Greeks, Romans and Jews probably borrowed a few things from Pharaonic Egypt. So let's give the Pharoahs a shout-out!
:’) Thanks Texan5.
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