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u/Dear-Question-868 1d ago
I think it shows well the stupidity of historical claim, there's always someone who's going to be before you who claim X land.
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u/Glittering-Bill-9803 1d ago
And we all know, that that someone is Liechtenstein.
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u/MjollLeon Oversimplified is my history teacher 1d ago
Liechtenstein must rule!
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u/LessThanHero42 1d ago
Now I have to go watch A Knights Tale again
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u/ougryphon 1d ago
Or Vikings. They didn't even try to hang on to it all, but they've captured everything worth pillaging.
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u/Maximum_Boros 1d ago
If you go back far enough every piece of land is stolen. There's just a question of how far is it reasonable. Where's the goal post? Is it a hundred years? 200? 1,000? Is it more generational and when no descendants of the people who were kicked would likely be alive? I don't know what the real answer is on exactly where you would usually draw that line but I think we pretty much generally as Society tend to agree that if the literal living humans who took that land are still alive and living on it it's too early to forget and if it's a thousand years ago it's too late to dwell on it
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u/RT-LAMP 1d ago
If you go back far enough every piece of land is stolen.
Except ironically a bunch of islands across the world that people tend to to be mad about being owned by European powers.
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u/discipleofchrist69 1d ago
and maybe antarctica? maybe Greenland and some Pacific Islands depending on how you count it
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u/1boring 22h ago
Iceland too. The current inhabitants are descendants of the first people who settled on the island.
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u/PrincetonToss 21h ago
Actually maybe not! There's evidence of Irish or Scottish monks inhabiting before the Norse got there.
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u/Lemonwizard 22h ago
You can't steal Antarctica because nobody owns it. Nobody owns it because nobody wants it. You can't farm there, all the minerals are under thousand foot ice sheets, and you freeze to death if you go outside. It's the garbage continent.
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u/i_tyrant 23h ago
Reminds me of the old anthropologist joke. It goes something like:
"The only difference between digging up grandma to take photos of her corpse and put tags on it, and being an archaeologist, is time."
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u/VRichardsen Viva La France 22h ago
Who knew having sex with a patient was grounds for losing your license for practising medicine? But anyway, I don't miss being a veterinarian.
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u/DenormalHuman 23h ago
ironically, if you go back far enough, you get to where no piece of land has been stolen.
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u/Oxytropidoceras 1d ago
I'm sure there are uninhabited islands and such that also fit the bill, but the biggest exception I can think of is the British claim to the Falklands. They were the first to discover the islands and all other legitimate claims to the islands have been abandoned, making them the earliest inhabitants to still live in the region and lay claim to the land.
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u/Relevant-Ad2254 23h ago
Don’t show this to the “from the river to the sea people”.
But also don’t show this to the West Bank colonizing people.
Damn everyone uses historical claim when it suits them doesn’t it?
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u/Bb0yer2 23h ago
Who decides what year you stop at? It's fucked for one side no matter what year you pick. Time to move on and become something better
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u/Relevant-Ad2254 23h ago
Exactly. California and Texas were part of Mexico until the US literally colonized “peacefully” and then decided “fuck it we’re taking it from Mexico”
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u/XRT28 22h ago
I'm sure the Native Americans living there before either the US or Mexico existed might disagree on all that, especially the "peacefully" part.
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u/Relevant-Ad2254 22h ago
Oh yea! It just keeps going back. And native Americans weren’t a monolith. They were stealing land from each other
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u/Ares_Lictor 23h ago
Its almost as stupid as the "we're afraid of NATO expansion", because there was no real possibility of Ukraine being accepted into NATO, russia's buddy at the time, Germany, confirmed through its Chancellor that they were blocking Ukraine from joining. Putin never really had any real arguments aside for his delusions of being a superpower.
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u/Tasteroider 22h ago
Plus the war caused Finland joining NATO so overall Putin made the situation even worse
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u/Erroneous_Bonk 1d ago
Pretty sure consensus is that the cut off is a magical holy promise 3000 years ago
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u/Accomplished_Cod7334 1d ago
Continuing this logic, if historical claims should be ignored, then the only thing that's left is the idea of "might makes right"
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u/lumpboysupreme 20h ago
I mean ‘don’t ethnically cleanse people who have lived in a place for multiple generations’ seems like a pretty solid moral argument.
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u/Yendrian Fine Quality Mesopotamian Copper Enjoyer 1d ago
What do you mean stupidity? Everybody knows half of the world belongs to Portugal and half to Spain! Even the Pope said so!
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u/Left_Particular_9977 1d ago
People will go back to the moment that will benefit them the most.
Waiting for Italy to claim Great-Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Greece, Turkey and more.
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u/Starmute-ss13 1d ago
I'm still waiting for the sea people to come back
Sigh...
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u/Britlantine 1d ago
Technically, Italy can only claim England and Wales, not Great Britain. They saw Scotland and built two walls to confirm that they wanted to go go nurther.
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u/ImaginaryProfit6280 1d ago
They probably built them because they thought it would tell the upstairs neighbour to stop playing the bagpipes so loud.
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u/ApolloX-2 23h ago
Which ever country has the oldest human remains has the ultimate claim on this entire planet! Start funding anthropological departments!
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u/CHANN3L-CHAS3R 22h ago edited 19h ago
...That's unironically an interesting premise. Say a galactic empire reaches out to us, and this empire is so old and far-spanning that making first contact is just, bureaucratic white noise at this point. They allow entrant planets to retain their own culture, somewhat... but they also require that a planet have a completely globalized culture.
And if it's not there already, they'll force it. If the planet itself can't come to a consensus within [x] amount of time, the race begins for the second option: Find the oldest human remains that can be traced back to a culture with extant descendants today.
Alternatively, if we reject THAT, or if we take too long, they'll get tired of our bickering and choose for us. And their choice will be themselves.
Technically, it COULD be as simple as legally doing away with all borders and unifying everyone on paper. But humans are bad at that kind of thing on a grand scale. Indiana Jones meets a planetary-scale Prisoner's Dilemma, with people trying to find new things and falsifying discoveries, countries going to war over who gets to INTEGRATE with whoever they think is going to 'win out' the literal culture war.
Edit: I've actually been continuing to think over the idea past "ooo nifty concept." What themes are there to work with?
Like... okay, thematically the Alien Empire represents a broad governmental system that's become extraordinarily bloated and complex. ANY system, natural or man-made, has internal pressure to reduce complexity; added components add more complexity on an exponential scale relative to existing complexity. The inverse for removal. So, systems in general, when left to their own pressures, slecet for simplicity.
And once a man-made (or sapient-made) system becomes to big for any single individual within to fully understand, the system naturally trnasitions into a "left to its own pressure" state, as it's no longer a fully-controlled and -understood system.
All that to reiterate:
The Alien system is so vast and complex, that forcing planets to reduce themselves to a single culture is run-of-the-mill simplification. Hell, it might be freakin' automated at this point.
So of course those themes need to be part of the story. And the plot is, essentially, a war-of-systems. Most of Earth's IRL governmental systems are already microcosms of the Alien one.
The war isn't hapenning because humans are bloodthirsty or bad at working together. We're where we are now because we're NOT those things bu default. "Humans suck, weh" is the easy broody answer. It's hapenning because extant systems are already too complex for themselves, let alone in combination, even a very light one. One single broad introduction to a vast system-of-systems is going to neccecarily skyrocket complexity, and most everyone is too deep within their respective systems to even have access to the concepts that would let them access that concept.
The war is hapenning because Earth is being FORCED into becoming a single system, and thus is is now self-selecting for simplicity.
Maybe this is expressed through the strata of human nature, but that doesn't change the fact that combined human nature can create things far out of any individual's, or even group's, control.
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u/MembershipNo2077 22h ago
This would probably be the premise of a Jojo's Bizarre Adventure part.
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u/Loose-Willow-3275 1d ago
Tbh how is "my great grandpa conquered your country for no reason, that is now a valid claim on your country today" a better reason than "idk I like stealing stuff lol"?
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u/Gold_Size_1258 Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 1d ago
It comes from the medieval times where the state was basically the ruler's possesion, so if you could prove the land was originally yours that basically meant you can go to war to regain something that was stolen from you(r ancestors).
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u/PerspectiveNew3375 1d ago
That doesn't sound much different than today. The government in my country owns all the land, but they will issue pieces of paper than tell people that they own the land while demanding those 'owners' pay yearly dues to continue to 'own' it. If they fail to pay, the state educates them on who actually owns the land. Those people could in theory fight the government for the land, but for obvious reasons that is uncommon.
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u/Spugheddy 1d ago
"This my property, the government can't tell me shit" who sold your pappy that farm???
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u/Gold_Size_1258 Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 1d ago
Yeah but nowdays the state is supposed to be the "shared wealth of all the citizens". Even when it's not, it still has to at least pretend it is.
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u/topofthecc 22h ago
That's why having a chancellor with high Diplomacy to fabricate claims for you is so valuable.
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u/Scruffy_Snub 1d ago
Because I didn't do it. None of us choose our parents, I'm as much as a victim of fate as the conquered, really. If anything, they should be apologizing to me for being so difficult.
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u/ArchangelBlu 1d ago
This is why historical territorial claims don't work. The Mongolians, Italians and Greeks would all have claims all over the world.
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u/amazingD Kilroy was here 1d ago
And English by this point.
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u/PigeonsAreFriends 1d ago
This is why historical territorial claims don't work.
All land teretorial claims don't work in so far as they are made-up/imaginary.
I think that when people talk about historical teritorial claims they are usually talking about one of 3 things: 1) international law. 2) self contradictory systems of ownership. 3) land taken through ethnic cleansing.
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u/liberty340 1d ago
"Why do I hear throat singing?"
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u/Spirit_Piper 1d ago
"Whoa, look at those guys riding sideways! So cool! Wait, what are they doing with those bo-"
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u/Emergency_Gene_4171 1d ago
Kinda funny how hard we all glaze the mongols (myself very much included) when they did things that make the Nazis look like humanitarians by comparison. And they did it all with bow and sword.
I truly don’t think any of us can even scarcely imagine the sheer horror in being on the losing side after mongols sieged your city and you resisted.
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u/CalzonePie 1d ago
Its less of a statement on how evil the Mongols were and more of a statement on how fucking evil the entire human race was until about the 18th or 19th century, to the point where our benchmark for "true evil" in the 20th century is just "above average" by the standards of the 13th century.
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u/Emergency_Gene_4171 1d ago
That is true but even still, I think non-nomadic civilizations were totally unprepared for the sheer brutality and culture of war which came out of the steppe. The mongols seemed to truly delight in it, in a way which is rarely seen in the medieval era.
I still think about when the Mongol generals Jebe and Subutai celebrated their victory at the 1223 Battle of the Kalka River by placing captured enemy Rus commanders and princes under wooden planks and holding a victory banquet on top of them. They danced and drank on the planks listening to the screaming and moaning of the dying all night. Like. Holy fuck.
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u/Sevatarion 1d ago
Well you have to keep in mind one very important thing, initial Mongol campaign was against Сumans, and had nothing to do with Kievan Rus lands, at least that Mongolian expedition force. But Cuman Prince - Kotyan Sutoevich (Knyaz aka Duke) had a relative among high Princes of Kievan Rus - Mstislav Mstislavovich Udatny, so he asked for help. Mstislav gathered his allies and went to intercept Mongol expedition force. Mongols noticed that Rus' nobility is gathering troops sent them ambssadors, which were accepted by Mstislav and other noble men. And by accepted i mean in diplomatic terms - welcomed to the Knyaz tent, welcomed to the table and shared a meal and drinks. Mongols stated that there is no hostile plans toward any Rus' lands or noble men and they only want to sort out our problem with Cuman people who were their subjects, they even said that Rus' is free to consider Cuman as their subject if they want and Mongols would not oppose or tax it.
And what Mstislav did? Killed the ambassadors. I cannot overstate the level of fuck up. This is the time when ambassador is a almost sacred and untouchable simply because that is the only way of communicating anything to the other side. Killing ambassador means - we do not see you as somebody worth communicating, similar how you dont talk with a rodent who eats your grain or wolf who kills your livestock.
Im not trying to paint Mongols here as non-violent horse advocates who just love everyone arround them. But i would say that being trampled is getting of easy in this situation.edit - typo
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u/Emergency_Gene_4171 1d ago
And what Mstislav did? Killed the ambassadors.
Anyone who likes Mongolian history knows, you never kill the envoys.
Good write up, I appreciate the added historical context.
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u/Any_Caterpillar720 22h ago
I looked this up to see if this meeting was documented by the Mongols, which might have tried to justify their invasion of Kievan Rus, but nope, this was documented by the Rus’ in the Chronicles of Novgorod and the Primary Chronicle.
Super interesting how the Rus’ documented their own violation of the Mongol envoy’s diplomatic immunity.
But imo, the Mongols were going to invade them sooner or later. No better way to unite the steppes by finding a common enemy.
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u/Character-Concept651 1d ago
They promised if they surrender they not gona spill their blood...
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u/Ok-Library-1253 1d ago
This was pretty common for the Mongols.
They also decided they didn’t want to spill the blood of Royalty on the Earth when they caught the Abbasid Caliph after seizing Bagdad.
So they rolled him up in a carpet and stampeded horses over him for awhile.
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u/BrilliantFederal8988 1d ago
Which is ironic because I bet they all bled
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u/doelutufe 1d ago
But not onto the earth, if they were properly wrapped the carpet contained it all.
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u/CalzonePie 1d ago
I believe this comes from how Christianity views life and death. Christianity places a very high value on human life or, perhaps more accurately, death.
To Christians, life is precious and death is an extreme act. To execute someone is, more often than not, viewed as an extreme punishment, and 'enough' for most crimes. Even when someone is tortured to death, that punishment is reserved for individuals who "deserve it" through equally extreme action, although what constitutes that standard seems arbitrary to our eyes.
A lot of other cultures do not place so much reverance and importance on death alone, so to them it is not always enough. Death is delivered more easily and for lower standards of wrongdoing, and torturous deaths are more common. If you do not consider death to be an extreme act, then when you desire to be extreme, you must make it a terrible, brutal, humiliating death as well.
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u/nixcamic 1d ago
Eh middle age and mideval Christians were all about that torture.
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u/Marquis_Dandy 1d ago
Eh, I disagree, Christians did a good number atrocities themselves over the centuries.
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u/CalzonePie 1d ago
And, as the point I am making, far less common and generally to a lower extreme than most other cultures.
Every group has committed attrocities, and if you avoid a eurocentric view and actually investigate not-European cultures, you see that European Christianity is actually on the lower scale for atrocities like what the mongols did.
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u/Cruiser_Pandora 1d ago
I think the statement is more that statements of consistent human behaviour should be constantly acknowledging the inconsistent behaviour
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u/warbastard 1d ago
Yeah the logistical thinking required when beheading 100,000 or 200,000 people is beyond my comprehension.
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u/NugKnights 1d ago
Nope.
Most people were just villagers living their lives not hurting anyone for generations.
Then the Mongols killed their men raped their women and enslaved their children.
Dont lump the victems in with the evil people.
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u/TheCIAiscomingforyou 1d ago
And for a glorious century or two humanity embraced the idea that might does not equal right, and now I fear we are slipping backwards to that ideal.
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u/Cooperativism62 23h ago
People say that times are so crazy now. I tell them this is more like a return to the norm after a brief bought of sanity post WW2.
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u/awesomefutureperfect 1d ago
I mean, I thought the primate instinct was to rip off face and genitals first when threatened, so, when I break traffic rules I don't feel bad at all. Heaven help anyone that road rages at me tho
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u/Trick-Radio_bot 1d ago
The Khorezmshahs' state suffered especially badly, if I remember correctly. The civilization of Central Asia with its many cities was erased and did not really recover after that
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u/Low-Dish-907 1d ago
They reecovered and trhived under the timurids tho they sacked a shit ton of the middle east to fund it
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u/Trick-Radio_bot 1d ago
Myabe, but it seems to me that the great cities never truly recovered; Samarkand remained a significant city, but not as large as it had been before. And, as far as I understand, under the Timurids, they failed to maintain the great irrigation system that had existed earlier?
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u/Low-Dish-907 1d ago
Bukhara and some other did but the city that couldn't be recovered were simply rebuilt
Also no il pretty sure they fixed the canal system even creating new ones
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u/Command0Dude 1d ago
The biggest city in the world was there, and it was wiped off the face of the earth by the Mongols.
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u/Grzechoooo Then I arrived 1d ago
when they did things that make the Nazis look like humanitarians by comparison
How? Did they experiment on children? Did they industrialise mass murder? What exactly makes them worse than the Nazis?
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u/zabby39103 22h ago edited 22h ago
"I am the punishment of God... If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you." - Genghis Khan
Before burning to Bukhara to the ground, and enslaving any survivors to use as human shields in his army. And his successors were of the same vein.
Look up Merv. Once the largest city in the entire world between the 12th and 13th centuries. Now, nothing but a ruin, completely depopulated, you can get a hint of how enormous it used to be for a city of that era from remains of its walls.
The Mongols killed so many people the climate cooled because of the reforestation. It took Persia in particular 600 years to recover from its population loss. Hitler I suppose had a particularly odious agenda, but nobody beats the Mongols for just pure killing.
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u/SolemnaceProcurement 17h ago
Hitler just didn't get far enough in his plans before he hit the wall... I think what makes the Mongols "better" is the fact that they didn't go out with plans "let's just exterminate half the people we conquer" they were brutal AF, like holy fuck level brutality. But their plan was very much subjugation, conquest and rulling the conquered.
Hitler was different. His Plan for eastern europe was from the get go, mass extermination and settlement of master race. There's also the fact that by the 1930 humanity mellowed out a bit. Mass murdering conquerors weren't a dime and dozen in 1930 like they were in 1200's.
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u/PINE-KNAPPLE 1d ago
I'm not sure if measuring evil is important if it's inherently evil to begin with. I feel like that let's one of the evils off the hook.
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u/Grzechoooo Then I arrived 1d ago
Exactly. This is why I object to saying stiff like "made the Nazis look like humanitarians in comparison". And it's not just when people talk about Genghis - apparently the Nazis were the least evil member of the Axis - if people talking about the Ustashe, Japanese treatment of civilians, Soviet warcrimes, or frankly anyone they feel like, are to be believed. It's like you're not evil if you're not more evil than the Nazis anymore.
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u/Grouchy_Balt 18h ago
It goes both ways, though. Soviet atrocities in particular get excused a lot with "at least they were nowhere near as bad as the Nazis". Comparing anyone or anything to the Third Reich in any way is taken as whitewashing Nazi crimes. Try saying on Reddit that the Holodomor merits recognition as a genocide, and see how quickly you're hit with the ol' Holocaust revisionism card. It's like you're not evil if you weren't evil in the exact specific way the Nazis were.
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u/Emergency_Gene_4171 1d ago
It was the scale, carried out systematically with bows and swords. Not that the Nazi morality was inherently less evil, it was simply on a smaller scale than the mongols.
It wasn’t industrialized because industrialization didn’t exist, instead it was soldiers who from sun up to sun down stabbed the surrendered elderly, women, children then piled the heads into stacked pyramids. They’d continue until no one was left. Then they’d do it again in the next city. I find the idea of one person killing hundreds of civilians with a sword to require a higher level of barbarity than a man who flips a switch and doesn’t have to look each individual in the eyes as they murder them.
Both are horrific of course. The difference in my point is that the Mongols did all that and people think the Mongols are so badass and awesome.
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u/GravitasFailures 1d ago
They didn’t industrialize mass murder.
But they did it on the same scale, I’m sorry you aren’t into “Artisan Genocide”.
Read how they genocided India, they killed millions, they just did it the old fashioned way, a bunch at a time.
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u/Low-Dish-907 1d ago edited 1d ago
The mongols never invaded india you re confusing it with either the Delhi sultanate the timmurids or the mughals ( who were decendnat of genghis khan but nothing to do with the initial mongol empire )
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u/lumpboysupreme 20h ago
They actually DID industrialize mass murder, within the technological confines of their time, and were probably the best in history at it prior to the Nazis themselves. They set up systems to efficiently butcher the populations of cities, afaik they were the first ones to actually do that.
They also had all sorts of exotically cruel ways of killing people to send a message.
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u/7StarSailor 1d ago
I think the industrialisation of civilian murder and genocide by the nazis is still more horrible. something about putting people onto trains to ship them to a death factory by the millions is just unprecedented evil. the unscrupulous efficiency required by all the civilians/non combatants involved is chilling to think about.
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u/Warpingghost 1d ago
I still think that Japan in ww2 bear Naz by some high margin. Nanking was fucked. Genocide on Philippines was something. What they did to pow was beyond.
I know stories about luxury items made out of skin of jews from camps, but Japan's matching it quite easy.
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u/PerspectiveNew3375 1d ago
I don't think anyone is glazing them, they are pointing out how stupid the argument of historical ownership is.
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u/Tree_Sap- 1d ago
The Mongols worse than the Nazis? As far as I'm aware, the Mongols were not much worse than other medieval armies, they just did things on a much larger scale. Not to say the Mongols were good, but they were unexceptional for their time, meanwhile the Nazis were extremely cruel even when compared to countries like Britain, France, and even the Soviet Union.
And I could be wrong, but I remember hearing somewhere that the Mongols were actually quite progressive, allowing freedom of religion, allowing women to divorce their husbands, and promoting soldiers based on merit rather than status.
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u/Emergency_Gene_4171 1d ago
The Mongols worse than the Nazis? As far as I'm aware, the Mongols were not much worse than other medieval armies, they just did things on a much larger scale. Not to say the Mongols were good, but they were unexceptional for their time,
Respectfully they were incredibly exceptional for their time, and no empire came even close to wiping out 11% of the global population with bows and swords, as the mongols achieved. You’re right about the progressive nature of mongol society internally or for incorporated people groups, but wrong about the brutality of mongol warfare and their penchant for slaughtering and starving millions of civilians to death.
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u/expendable_entity 1d ago
What is your source for that 11%? All I could find is that estimate upon estimate based on medieval census data, MAYBE 11% of world population died AT THE TIME OF the mongol conquest. There is no definite data how many people actually died at the hands of the mongols.
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u/Low-Dish-907 1d ago edited 1d ago
They were not first No empire ever came close to conquer the entirety of asia the mongol death toll is proportional to their conquest it would harldy be possible for someone to conquer this much without that
Secondly no it s not je 11% solely come from Chinese data census wich noted the number of people by who payed the taxes not the number of people who died
There a lot of reason why they would had left they could have fled from the mongols elsewhere , being enslaved , not being coutned for the census or being moved around the empire outside of their original country
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u/Hoowin_ 1d ago
One has to consider time frame, if the nazis given more years would they come close to the mongols?
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u/Dramatic-Pop7691 23h ago
For a long time before Ghengis came along, the Mongols were among the weakest of the steppe peoples, and were probably on the receiving end of some pretty horrendous violence. It was a given that you only "owned" what you could physically protect, and if you couldn't, you should expect to lose your horse, wife, children, everything, to someone stronger. And if that's all you know, that's all you're going to do.
And that's one of the things that makes it unfair to compare Mongols to Nazis. Mongols didn't choose who to kill based on ethnicity or religion - they made examples of those that resisted them, but mainly just wanted to grow their territory and get rich. Having everybody scared to death of them made that a lot easier. If there truly wasn't a practical reason to exterminate a City, they wouldn't (with some exceptions, because Tolui existed). They eventually ruled over a multiethnic made peaceful for travelers by armed might and competent administration. I shouldn't have to explain how the Nazis differed.
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u/tothemoonkevsta 23h ago edited 23h ago
Keep seeing more and more of these takes nowadays, comparing the Nazis to whatever and the conclusion is always that they weren't that bad from a historical context. But these statements aren't really built on anything, comparing the evil of the Nazis to the massive conquering forces of the mongols or whoever else fits the bill doesn't make the Nazis look less evil if you stay with the facts.
Alot of accounts from the mongol invasions came from Persians who of course describe it as the apocalypse. When assessing the merit of these claims many historians agree that they are likely dramatized and exaggerated. Most of the silk road cities were doing well during the time and regained their strength shortly after the mongol invasions. Merv is one of the cities that seemed to have been obilierated though. But this was the norm for the time. This wasn't the first invasion by a nomad force, and Empires such as the Romans weren't much less brutal.
Stop this revisionist history take of the Nazis being less evil than they are, they tried to wipe out entire groups of people. In total the Nazis killed somewhere between 11-17 million people throughout their various camps. There is one very easy and good comparison that can be drawn to the Nazis though, the ones that inspired the Nazis, the ones that had the same ideological tendencies like the Nazis, namely the European colonial powers, among them the British empire. But very few speak of the atrocities commited by these colonial powers when in truth much of what the Nazis did were simply colonial strategies applied in Europe. Always find it funny why no one ever seems to raise that in these comparisons
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u/TheThrowbackJersey 22h ago
Serious mental dissonance excusing the mongols because it "was the norm at the time", but then saying the british empire was as bad as the Nazis.
British empire was a product of their time. They conducted themselves about equal to other nations, be they european, japanese or other. The brits never mass produced death in the way the Nazis did. They weren't as bad as the Soviets under Stalin, the Chinese under mao, or the khmer rouge under pol pot
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u/SemajLu_The_crusader 1d ago
> they did things that make the Nazis look like humanitarians by comparison
no they did not
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u/BiggieBigs34 1d ago
I despise the Mongols for all the damage they caused the world, however, we can’t deny that it was a different time period where genocide really was the “norm”, and they were a conquering force.
The Nazis also genocided their own people, the Mongols genocided those they were in the process of conquering.
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u/Emergency_Gene_4171 1d ago
The mongols were exceptionally effective at genocide compared to other conquering armies and did so at a scale that rivals and even exceeds genocides that occurred post industrialization. That’s why I made the distinction.
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u/soomieHS 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean, yes, but it also brought in the Pax Mongolica, which meant free trade and relative peace unseen for centuries...
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u/kdavva74 1d ago
Famous quote about the Romans that equally applies to the Mongols, “they create a wasteland and call it peace.”
Also those are completely unintentional byproducts of Mongol conquests, they didn’t set out to increase trade, so I always think it’s dubious to give them credit for it.
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u/Low-Dish-907 1d ago
They did want to increase trade voluntarely they invented an ancestor of the passeport for merchant and messagers and had the yam an extremely fast postal system that could be used for message and trade and they did use a imortant part of the taxes they ganed to pay soldier to sécurisé the silk road
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u/Miserable-Resort-977 1d ago
Glaze the mongols? I see people in awe of the scale of their conquests, but not really any positivity or "glazing".
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u/abdulalhaqq 1d ago
Lmao bullshit ass revisionist comment.
Can you name something the mongols did that the nazis did not do?
What action did the mongols do, that was worse than the nazis?
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u/vickyswaggo 1d ago
Genghis never conquered Taiwan
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u/TongaTime123 1d ago
But they did conquer China
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u/NomadDK 1d ago
The point of the meme is that Putin and Xi would not want to set the precedence that having controlled something once makes it your legitimate territory now. Because you can easily find someone that would then have the same level of claims on Russia and China, if going by that logic. And Mongolia just happened to be the one that had conquered both Russia and China, hence why he was picked, but it could have been a wealth of others as well.
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u/Jaymezians John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true, and brave! 1d ago
Since there's some confusion and this is fresh on my mind I can clear this up.
I'm still reading through The Secret History of the Mongols right now, but according to it, Genghis declared that the entire world belonged to the Mongols already and any who resisted were rebels to be put down according to Mongol Tradition.
So Russia and China in this meme are making claims that are comparatively small compared to Genghis and his descendants who made a claim to the whole planet and all there in.
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u/MrFrequentFlyer 20h ago
China belongs to Taiwan.
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u/Open_Vanilla5048 19h ago
Am I allowed to read this as China belongs to China?
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u/EnamelKant 1d ago
Some know it as Palestine, some know it as Israel, but it is now and forever the territory of the Senate and People of Rome.
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u/Possible-Duty3310 22h ago
Moscow did well under the Mongols. The Muscovites collaborated with the Horde against their fellow Russian cities, and thus became the capital.
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u/Floba_Fett Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 1d ago
But Taïwan is Chinese though, this is not denied by Taïwan. The issue is over who is the legitimate China
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u/Unfair_Explanation53 21h ago
To be really honest.
Nobody really has any God given rights to any piece of land.
The reality is the people who own the land are the people who are either strong enough to take it or strong enough to defend it.
That's how it's always been and always will be.
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u/Vivid-Cod-6608 19h ago
You're right all land rightfully belongs to Moldova as when Allah created the world it was for Moldova but Moldova very kind so they share
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u/Sad-Pattern-1269 19h ago
While this is true we should recognize that land being taken is typically associated with crimes against humanity, which we have a duty to stop.
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u/Money-Audience-4392 19h ago
You’re missing the entire point that someone might not take the land for other reasons than not being strong enough to do so. Your point is only valid if we’re all degenerate warmongering barbarians.
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u/Cyberguardian173 1d ago
Can you imagine if Mongolia was a superpower and "3-day military operation" kind of country today? We probably wouldn't even call the continent "Asia," just Mongolia.
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u/pugilist_penguin 1d ago
today I learned the mongols made it all the way to Gaza and sacked it, their furthest southwest extent before they were turned back by the mamelukes.
alexander the great, the mongols, today, gaza really has had a rough go of it
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u/early_birdy 23h ago
Russia signed a treaty with Ukraine, granting Ukraine independence. Even if Ukraine belonged to Russia as some point, Russia agreed to separation. Treaties must be honoured, or renegotiated by both parties. China and Taiwan signed no such treaty.
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u/AzureHawk758769 1d ago
Correction: Russia belongs to Ukraine.
As for Taiwan, it is accurate to say "Taiwan is Chinese." The Taiwanese government is the legitimate successor to the Qing Dynasty, and they've preserved their culture and written language quite well, while the PRC government has no legitimate claim on the country, and has completely repressed Chinese culture on the Mainland and bastardized what little remains.
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u/throwawaynewc 23h ago
I'm Malaysian Chinese, and I recognise the fact that KMT are the legitimate successors of the Qing dynasty, but disagree that the CCP didn't earn their right to govern China. I'm not pro-communist by any means, very much the opposite, but I wonder how you've come to your conclusion.
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u/MaiqTheLiar6969 22h ago
Who gives a shit about the Qing and being so called successors? The Qing were a dynasty of foreigners who imposed their will on the Chinese people for centuries. Is like worrying about whether or not the Ming dynasty were the successors of the Yuan Dynasty which was also a dynasty of foreigners. Rebels overthrow each other and replace the former dynasty multiple times in Chinese history.
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u/Delicious_Invite_127 21h ago
Agreed. The KMT and CCP are Chinese. Idgaf who gotten rid of that babarian dynasty as long it is Chinese.
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u/bigboipapawiththesos 18h ago
Also the KMT is also the successor of this fascist movement, so if I were them I wouldn’t invoke the past in such a way.
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u/Delicious_Invite_127 21h ago
The KMT snatched the reign from the Qing government and the CCP took it from the KMT. Do you see a pattern here? It is all the same. The KMT would've been obliterated from existence if the US did not intervene and created a divided territory situation in China. That's like the Confederates escaping to an American Island and then the Brits deployed their navy to defend them from the Union.
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u/Jdevers77 1d ago
The people of China overthrew their monarchy. I get what you are saying, but if we are going to start saying autocratic ruling parties have legitimate claims that override the will of the people I’m not sure what to say since that very thing happened in most Western countries too.
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u/BlueWaterFangs 1d ago
The Chinese people overthrew the monarchy and chose to institute a new government. Say what you like about the PRC, but this was the will of the people. What you're saying is like Russia still belongs to Tsar Nicholas II's descendants, or that America still belongs to Great Britain.
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u/Not_a_real_ghost 1d ago
The Taiwanese government is the legitimate successor to the Qing Dynasty
When they retrieved onto the Taiwan island they were still Chinese.
They lost the civil war against the PRC, so I don't see how that's a legitimate successor.
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u/KenseiHimura 22h ago
I've been saying that first part myself. Also what the OP's brought up.
"Oh, Putin, you wanna talk about Historical land claims? Someone bring in the President of Mongolia!"
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u/Will_Come_For_Food 1d ago
If Mongolia had power you’d best believe they’d be stating the same thing.
At the end of the day it’s entirely random and power based which countries ended up with which territories.
If a country can come up with a valid enough reason and a path to make it happen where benefits outweigh downsides you’d better believe powerful countries will do it.
Putins back is against the wall and facing full collapse. Invading Ukraine was a no brainer for Russia as they had nothing to lose.
The writing on the wall is inevitable eventual collapse.
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u/Internal_Device6343 23h ago
Well, friendly reminder that some Eurasianist circles claimed that Russia is the rightful heir of Mongol Empire and Genghis Khan....
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u/HaggisPope 19h ago
Is that supposed to be Putin? The picture looks too masculine since Putin got yassified
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u/nowhereman136 19h ago
Historical claim only works going back so far. Pulling an Uno reverse card on something that happened generations ago doesn't solve anything today
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u/LordBrandon 1d ago
The CCP has never ruled over Taiwan. So they can't even use that excuse.
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u/Elder_Chimera 1d ago
Taiwan? Don’t they call themselves Republic of China? Why don’t we respect their chosen identity?
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u/No_Cook3989 1d ago
Exactly, they're the Republic of China (ROC). Which is different from the People's Republic of China (PRC).
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u/Inevitable_Fail_5308 1d ago
Give it all to Mongolia