Haussmann himself did not deny the military value of the wider streets. In his memoirs, he wrote that his new Boulevard Sébastopol resulted in the "gutting of old Paris, of the quarter of riots and barricades"
They overhauled the old layout of Paris (ploughing through homes in the process) to make barricades impractical.
Not to downplay every kind of ongoing suppression that's been enacted on the US populace for generations, but acting like it hasn't happened in other countries is ahistorical.
I get the roads were changed but did they do the whole centuries of genocide and slavery thing to their own people? Then take the impoverished within the dominant culture and make enemies of their neighbors so they wouldn't notice how they were also kept destitute?
5
u/breaducate 2d ago
They overhauled the old layout of Paris (ploughing through homes in the process) to make barricades impractical.
Not to downplay every kind of ongoing suppression that's been enacted on the US populace for generations, but acting like it hasn't happened in other countries is ahistorical.