What if China found Mexico first?

Originally posted by TranHungDao ... Pinquin was essentially always on-topic.  Our discussion on the extent of the genocide against Native Americans and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade is central to the theme of brutality during the conquest of the Americas by the Europeans. ...

Edited by pinguin - 13-Jun-2007 at 16:30

Originally posted by Byzantine Emperor  Did anyone see the discussion TranHungDao and I had on page 7?  It was on topic and quite interesting.

Yes, though I was much responsible for going off-topic , I was on-topic quite a bit too. 

Pinquin was essentially always on-topic.  Our discussion on the extent of the genocide against Native Americans and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade is central to the theme of brutality during the conquest of the Americas by the Europeans.

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Byzantine Emperor,
 
You know, I think I spoke too soon in saying the Chinese might be less brutal than the Europeans to the people of the New World.  If you look at the colonial and WWII Japanese or even the Japanese of the Imjin War (late 1500's), they were quite brutal.  Indeed, downright bestial in WWII.  The culture is rooted in Chinese culture (Confucianism), just as its traditional technology was.

If we compare the WWII Japanese to the Nazi's, they're about equal.

1.  They both ran diabolical camps for human experimentation with chemical, biological agents and whatnot.  So they are about equal in this respect.

2.  The Nazi's had the concentration camps for Jews, homosexuals, dissidents, eastern Europeans.  The Japanese killed millions in in Manchuria; many other countries literally lost millions due to Japanese brutality due to indiscriminate warfare, outright genocide, famine, diseases due to famine, etc.

3.  Both used rape as a weapon of war.  However, in China, Japanese soliders were known to force sons to rape their mothers and fathers to rape their daughters.  Pretty sick stuff.

4.  (a)  Generally speaking, Japanese soldiers were more medieval than their German counterparts.  They treated their POW's like animals at the slaughter, routinely decapitating them with Samurai swords--this included their Brit and American POW's.  There was an incident where two officers held a contest for who could decapitate the most Chinese men; they lined them up and started choping.  The winner had about 150 decapitations if I recall.  It is not hard to find pics of Japanese WWII attrocities. 

The funny thing is that Brit and American soldiers generally found the Korean conscripts in the Imperial Japanese army to be the most brutal.  They hated the Koreans even more.  This was because of the culture of brutality that existed in the Japanese military training prior to WWII.  Veterans now talk of being kicked and punched several times a day by their trainers, i.e. the Japanese military leadership was intentionally created killing machines.  Koreans were treated even worse than Japanese conscripts, hence they became more violent.

(b) Cannibalism was not uncommon due to the fact that the US demolished Japanese supply lines.   It was bad enough so that an official order was issued which said that any Japanese soldier eating a fellow Japanese soldier would be sentenced to death.  Apparently, it was okay to eat European and American POW's, or the local defeated populations.

This was quite different from how the Japanese treated their POW's in WWI.  Quite a number of German POW's of the Japanese enjoyed their time in Japan and decided to remain there after they were freed.  Thus training, i.e. context, can bring out animalistic behavior.

Of course, Japanese imperialism was a combination of trying too hard to copy the European colonialists and their own then native medieval ways.

The whole point here is that it is definitely within Chinese culture, or rather it's derivatives in Japan and Korea, for things to go monsterously out of control.  The Mongols, who were not sinitic by culture, were perhaps the most brutal regime of all time.

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Two more things about the Chinese and that what if scenario:

1.  We can't underestimate that age-old theme of young men going off to war in distant lands:   Things go crazy, real fast!  Such Chinese colonies would be half a world away from the motherland.  The Portugese in Brazil were the poster children for this type of insanity.

2.  What was Chinese technology relative to the Aztecs back in the early 1400's?  Could they have even defeated the Aztecs on their own turf to begin with?  Remember, the Aztecs were fatally fatalistic due to their belief the landing of Hernan Cortes was the return of Quetzalcoatl.  The legend said the conquerors would be white.  Moreover, the conquistadors allied themselves with disgruntled factions of the Aztec empire, otherwise, I'm pretty sure Cortes could not have beaten them.

3.  The Taiping rebellion was the biggest war on the planet until WWI, or even WWII.  I can't recall the actual numbers but it was staggering in its scale and violence.  (But then again, it was a civil war which was in turn ultimately the result of European meddling/colonialism.)

Originally posted by pinguin I don't get you guys. What do I say it wrong? What political agendas?, or just I miss the point? Why to get irritated? If you are just playing, I leave and come later.   Pinguin

No. No. 

1.  red_clay was saying we've gone way off topic.  He was too polite to say that it was really me.  I plead guilty anyway...

2.  The "political agenda accusation" was directed at Voyager by me.  I said so explicitly. No one's pointing that at you.    BTW, Voyager himself accused Flyingzone of a political agenda.

Originally posted by Voyager That attitude of your only makes me suspect that you have a political motivation for that. Also, don't play the victim in order to get from the others more sympathy.

3.  Lastly, in my previous post--yes I was playing, but being serious too:  I was explicitly acknowledging that you're probably correct about your assertions on the survival of Native American genes amongst whites.  However, this doesn't not change the fact that MASSIVE genocide did take place.  We're merely arguing over the extent of it.

Originally posted by pinguin To Red Clay and TranHungDao:

Arrgh!  I said you were right and I was wrong several times now, didn't I?

To Red Clay and TranHungDao:

When you think in this topic you guys inevitable have a North American, more clearly, an U.S. point of view. My comments are more continental-wise, considering regions like the Caribbean, Brazil, Canada and Hispanic America.

If you allow me to say it, and follow me a second, you will notice that since the arrival of the Spaniards intermarriage was mainly European and Indigenous, rather than African and Indigenous. All the hierarchies, and the largest group of the Americas were made mainly of European-Indigenous people that become "dilluted" after the large waves of European immigrants that never stopped to come.

Pinguin wrote-

Originally posted by Byzantine Emperor  It has always remained a mystery to me why China lagged behind by the 15th century in gunpowder technology.  Since they invented gunpowder weapons you would think that there would be continuity in their development.  Was it that Europe had made advances independently that surpassed anything that Ming China was producing?

Easy.  This is easy to explain. 

One Word:  Confucianism

Confucianism emphasizes regurgitation, whereas with the West, which inherits its intellectual tradition from the Greeks emphasizes innovation.  This is why traditional Chinese science was never more than about creating nifty tinker toys (early/primitive printing press, basic gunpowder, and the magnetic compass...) rather than abstract mathematics and the natural sciences (Newtonian Mechanics, computers, general relativity...).  The West wast constantly innovating whereas East Asia was constantly copying the Chinese classics.

For centuries, even millenia, those ultra competitive civil service exams tested ambitious students on their ability to regurgitate the classics.  Japan, Korea and Vietnam are also Confucian.
 
Even nowadays if you look at those math, computer science (IOI), biology, chemistry, Robocon, physics, etc. olympiads, China, Vietnam, S. Korea, and Japan are dominant.  China, mostly by virtue of it sheer size, almost always wins the math olympiads.  Vietnam, with the exception of the last two years, often creams both S. Korea and Japan.  S. Korea is doing strong now, and so is Japan.   Western European countries, including France and Britain, are almost never on the radar; the Scandinavian countries and Israel are too small to compete effectively; Russia and former East block contries are often very strong.  Lol, wealthy countries like UK, France, US, Japan, have kids who'd rather go to rock or rap concerts than do math.

However, when you look at Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the Confucian countries are pathetic underachievers, including the wealthy Japanese who industrialized, via Western technology, way back in the 1850's.   Think about it:  The Japanese are good at improving the sh*t out of  everything that America invents.

The point here is the best test takers are generally not the most brilliant minds.  James Joyce was lousy at math so he turned to literature where his only peer is no less than Shakespeare himself.  The amazing actor Ed Norton couldn't pass his physics courses at Yale.  The vast majority of olympiad gold medalists go on to have mediocre careers in their respective fields.  Prior to the twentieth century, China's most brilliant mathmatician (I forget his name) couldn't pass the his madarinate exams.  We can safely assume that despite their earth-shattering brilliance Shakespeare, Kant, Newton, Gauss and Einstein could not have passed the equivalent of the Confucian civil service exams if it were written in their respective languages and the topics were on their respective histories and literature.

This is why confucianist Asians are so good at test taking, but mediocre when it comes to achieving major scientific innovations, such as general relativity or string theory. 

The funny thing is that many Chinese want to throw the baby out with the bath water:  For about 100 years now, many Chinese as well as other confucians, have blamed confucianism for China's backwardness relative to the West--particularly since the Chinese invented gunpowder over 2000 years ago but failed to take full advantage of it.  This is a mistake.  Why?  Because Confucianism strength over the West is that it has a stronger work ethic than the West's Protestant Work Ethic/Calvinism:  Hence there us a stereoytpe that Asians are hard working and good at math--that is they get good grades in highschool and college, and own restaurants.

Nearly all of the Asians who've won Noble Prizes and Fields Medals were trained and/or worked their entire careers in the West, where they were taught to think outside the box, rather than to constantly regurgitate what their profs told them.  (Vietnam and S. Korea only have Nobel Peace prizes, so I'm really talking about the 1.3 billion Chinese and the very rich and technologically advanced Japanese.)  Even now it is incredible that in Asian universities, students dare not question the authority of their professors.  Oh, by the way, authoritarianism is a key aspect of Confucianism, which is very anti-thetical to innovative thinking. 

If you haven't noticed, Jews, who've lived in Europe for 1000 or even 2000 years, have the best of both worlds.  They can match the "Confucian work ethic" and possess the Western penchant for creative thinking, which is why they win way too many Nobels and Fields medals.  I guess we should all strive to be like them, but without that silly penchant for oppressing Palestinians. 

I suspect it will take another 100 to 200 years before East Asians can match the West in innovative thinking.  It will happen, but it will take a giant cultural paradigm shift.  But mind you, Japan, S. Korea, and Taiwan are economic powerhouses despite having yet to go thru this shift.  This should inform you as to what the "Asian century" will be like.   China will make Japan look like nothing.  China has about twice the population of Europe, America, Canada and Austrailia combined!

Better start learning Chinese! 

For the West to keep up, it better strengthen the Calvinist work ethic. 

Note:  When it comes to this kind of stuff, think in terms of centuries and not decades.  However, the solely economic aspect should be viewed in terms of decades.

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There are people who believe in that "geography is destiny" hypothesis:  Where you live, you're environment, determines what you become.  They claim the Greeks became individualistic, i.e. innovative, because of their maritime merchant political economy.   And they say that East Asians who grew rice needed to think collectively, i.e. rice growing required massive the irrigation schemes which in turn required collectivisation:  Social Conformity.  Social conformity is the opposite of individuality, or innovation.

On a tangential note, I think the "geography is destiny" hypothesis can explain why the Mongols and Vikings, among others, became so violent in their hey-day.  They both lived in very unforgiving climates, so that when the population density increased exhausting the respective lands' ability to support them with their then primitive farming/pastoral technologies, constant warfare was all but inevitable to break out.  And sooner rather than later, the law of the jungle took over:  Kill or be killed.  Hence they became extremely violent.

Originally posted by Byzantine Emperor You mentioned the European conquest of India.  It seems that Indians had cannon and firearms of a quality that measured up to what Europe had.  Did they eventually become antiquated sometime in the 15th century?  There is a good book on the subject:   Iqtidar Alam Khan, Gunpowder and Firearms: Warfare in Medieval India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Sorry, don't know anything about India.  But thanks for the comparisons with India and the Ottomans.

Originally posted by TranHungDao ... No offence, but I'd still need to see some sources for your assertions on the Tainos of the Carribean and the the Native American's of the US.

Originally posted by pinguin Now, for the myth of the extinction of Amerindians, thanks God, that genetical research is showing light to what really happens. It seems that White Americans have more Amerindian blood in them that they want to admite.

They have more black blood in them then they want to admit too. 

According to the Jim Crow era's one drop rule, this makes America not 12.5% black, but probably about 50% black. 

I wouldn't be the least bit suprised if there are plenty of Klansmen and Neo Nazi skinheads who are categorically "black" according to the one drop rule.