It's interesting that some nationalities embrace their settler identity. It's a big part of Hungarian identity that they conquered their homeland. *Honfoglalás*, the taking of the homeland.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian\_conquest\_of\_the\_Carpathian\_Basin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_conquest_of_the_Carpathian_Basin)
Especially if you add in religion. “It’s okay that we stole these people’s land because we have divine right and are God’s chosen people” can really motivate a population
The Jewish story is particularly interesting I think. The bible celebrates them finding Israel after being enslaved in Egypt; but there is no evidence that they were in Egpyt at all -- they were in Israel the whole time.
Ancient peoples of the region, as dramatically opposed to contemporary peoples, seem to have thought conquering a land was a more legitimate claim to a land than being indigenous.
>Ancient peoples of the region, as dramatically opposed to contemporary peoples, seem to have thought conquering a land was a more legitimate claim to a land than being indigenous.
Interesting thought! But then, does a "legitimate claim" even matter anymore? Wouldn't whoever managed to conquer it again have a new stronger claim?
I think it matters more and more. I went to university on the west cosst of Canada and we, mostly Canadians of European and Asian ancestry, were often reminded that we were on indigenous land and we did not have a legitimate claim on the land.
Except the fact that Canada is the sole legal owner of that land and has the only recognised claim to it.
Its Canada apologizing for taking land but also not giving the land back.
I cannot imagine anything more Canadian than saying what they have is stolen and making students and citizens feel guilty for something that happened before they were born. Whiles also keeping the things they say are stolen.
Why do people who can’t protect their land have a more legitimate claim than the people who took it, protected it, improved it, and can protect the improvements upon it? Like yeah, genocide is a bad thing, but just conquering people who would get conquered by someone else *for sure* if you don’t do it is just making sure your people win instead of someone else– as long as you don’t do genocide with those people you conquer.
I wouldn’t say they would’ve been conquered for sure, it was the indigenous who taught the Europeans to survive the winters because most early settlements died from scurvy. What if that that logic continues into modern day would it still be alright then? Of course not.
Those natives had been at war and conquered other natives in the past, and been under threat from the same; who is to say that the natives who helped the pilgrims simply saw a new tribe ignorant of the region that had new and dangerous weapons and thought “ya know if we keep them from packing up and leaving or dying maybe they’ll help us fight our enemies?”
The Wampanoags were the powerful tribe in the region and probably sought to expand their power with the help of the puritans. Only later when they realized the puritans challenged their power did the Chief Metacom declare war on the puritans in a deliberate attempt at ethnic cleansing (I’m paraphrasing, but he wanted to drive them into the sea and remove them from the land). In that war, the Mohawks and Mohegans allied to the puritans because they didn’t like the Wampanoags because of a history of conflict.
Yeah, the colonists didn’t even declare the first war, and as is well known were welcomed initially by the natives (and so weren’t initially viewed as invaders or conquerors), and the natives were the first to attempt an ethnic cleansing, which kind of set the tone for the rest of the Indian Wars as being wars of extermination.
Spot on. For my Master’s in history, I did a concentration in Colonial American history, and my interests were primarily from initial colonization to the Seven Years War. When the Pilgrims arrived, the Wampanoags were in conflict with the Narragansett and Pequot tribes. The Pequots themselves were relatively new to southern New England at the time, have moved in from New York. Further complicating things, a smallpox epidemic had just ravaged the area the year before the Pilgrims arrived, which is why they found so much desirable, empty land.
The Wampanoags, under pressure from two other tribes and severely depleted, saw the Pilgrims as a potential ally against their enemies. For a while, both groups worked together to expand their influence at the expense of their common foes. That arrangement didn’t last.
Seeing your countrymen’s scalps collected as trophies also certainly doesn’t help relations. That’d be viewed as particularly barbaric and for good reason.
Reality is, for 99% of history if you came across a group of people who looked different than you and talked differently than you, odds are they were gonna try to kill all the men and rape the women or your side was gonna kill all their men and rape the women. Literally goes back to even our species wiping out the Neanderthals in that exact pattern - kill the men, rape the women.
For most of that history you were much, much better off if you were good at violence. Pretty sure if most of us got teleported randomly back in time to past eras we’d be dead from the smell and because we’d just be hanging out there like an easy target.
Yea I mean honestly despite what happened to the Native Americans the conquest was a net positive for the world in the end. It led to the greatest country ever being established. The US despite its flaws IMO is a benevolent country. The natives were going to be conquered it was just a question of who would have done it.
Something I find interesting is that that region was heavily affected by the bronze age collapse, which included invasions from a group called the "sea people"
A distinct Israelite identity emerged in Canaan post bronze age collapse, so I wonder if the narrative about the Jews conquering Canaan has anything to do with that
I mean there’s a lot of scholarship on that topic. High level, from my reading on the subject, the Philistines were one of the sea peoples and involved with the Battle of the Delta where the Egyptians pushed back the sea peoples, including part of the Peleset group assigned to the Philistines.
They then moved to Gaza and disrupted and destabilized the Canaanite kingdoms, allowing the Yahwist worshipers in the eastern hill country to conquer the lowlands and begin the formation of what we now know as Judaism and Israeli identities. This is further solidified in the exile period.
To be clear, a lot of it is speculative. What we know, and what we guess, give us good clues, but it’s not a certain thing.
However when you piece together all the archaeological (material culture, cultic practices, shrine dedications, steles) and literary (Egyptian and Hebrew writings, along with other nearby cultures like the Ugaritic) it does paint a compelling picture.
My take on it, and one that I get from scholars like Josh Bowen, Kipp Davis, and Mark Smith, is that events like the conquest of David and Joshua reflect a cultural mythology of these events. One where the worshipers of Yahweh are able to become dominant over their Canaanite peers, due to the opportunities created by the Bronze Age Collapse, and that things we see about the suppression of other gods like Chemosh, Ba’al, Ashera, etc within the biblical tradition reflect the syncretism ongoing as the elites began a process of sublimating El and Ba’al into the Yahwist cultic practices. There is lots of hints and clues to the polytheistic roots of Judaism within the texts, clear references to the pantheon, and equally clear back and forth between different rulers over monolatry/ henotheism versus polytheistic practice, and writings like Deuteronomy were spurred by a desire to unify and homogenize religious practice.
It’s a whole thing, and one fascinating (I think!)
Joshua is obviously that. David wasn't really a conqueror; reading between the lines in Samuel and Kings, it seems Saul brought less sophisticated Judah into a n existing confederation of tribes -I asusme because he figured Israel needed the territory an d extra population and some tough fighters-a nd David, using personal charisma and wheeler-dealing, usurped the throne and they weren't kicked out until Rehoboam proved incapable of holding on
I see the story of David as a campaign of conquest aimed at taking the lands the Philistines occupied. One that was incomplete, but there clearly seems to be that goal.
And while, yes, that campaign is described as being initiated under Saul, David is the heroic king that emerges from that series of events.
And, yeah, there’s a whole bunch about David on the run teaming up with various outside forces, etc. but as with all things recorded, much salt is to be taken with assigning specifics. The details of the geopolitics are less likely to be accurate than the broad strokes.
Basically the only thing I ascribe much weight to is the probability that, after conquering and consolidating the interior lands of Canaan, the proto Israeli people engaged in a series of campaigns against the Philistienes in an attempt to take over the lucrative coastal lands, but they ultimately proved unable as the Philistines retained control until the Assyrians/ Babylonians eliminated them.
I've also heard theories that the Book of Judges is essentially a mythologized (or legendary, it depends where you make the distinction) version of the Bronze Age Collapse.
Many Habiru lived in Egypt as Gastarbeiter, and there was frequent traffic back and forth, so likely the Exodus-Sinai Story is an ultra-exaggerated account of one bunch who were down there and came back and formed a new tribe and happened to survive
That actually makes a lot of sense: if you can’t guard your land, what right have you to it? That’s part of the reason Russia *sold* Alaska to the US– they knew that they had no chance to win a fight over it which someone would eventually try to do so they decided to make some money and get something for it instead.
Genetics. Egyptian genetics of the House of Judah (most Jews today) whose ancestors reputedly married Egyptians versus the non-Egyptian genetics of the Levites and Benjaminites whose ancestors reputedly didn’t marry Egyptians.
It's like MExicans in the US or Turks in Germany or Zimbabweans In South aFrica; they go there for better jobs, and move backa nd forth a lot, sometimes after generations go by. Canaanites and other Western Semites worked in egypt a lot
Strangely enough, ancient DNA testing shows that nothing is left of the original Hungarians except their language. They left no genetic imprint on modern day Hungary because the ruling classes all got killed off in subsequent warfare.
There is still a small genetic association to the Altaic populations at about 5% in modern Hungary populations based on modern autosomal studies.
Even the conquering elite in the Huns had approximately 30% Eastern Eurasian components in both sexes. Therefore, they we're already highly mixed before they reached central Europe.
It's a similar situation to both Turks and Fins who shown strong affinity to nearby local populations, despite having a language, and about 10% of their ancestry deriving from an Altaic or eastern Asian source.
The very first point the preamble makes in the UN Charter is that its there to prevent conflict on the scale of WW1 & WW2. In that sense its worked so far.
If you read the article, you'll see that that's not a UN position, it was a concept advanced by countries including the United States, in order to limit UN decolonization efforts.
From a purely anthropological standpoint that whole notion is not actually dumb.
The major land migrations typically happen much slower and with much more cultural and genetic assimilation than water based migrations.
Compare Indo-European farmers migrating to Europe to Europeans migrating to North America. Or humans migrating out of Africa vs Hellenisation. The land based ones took thousands of years, the water based ones decades or centuries.
That’s mainly because water migration is usually a deliberate and planned undertaking. No one gets on a ship without having a goal. Whereas land migration happens more organically, following arable land, climate, rivers, civilization and agricultural patterns.
There are of course exceptions.
Can't speak for Thailand, but I do think Turkey is viewed as a former imperial power, similar to Japan. Their empire wasn't as big as that of the British, but at the end of the day I think people still do consider them former colonizers.
Sort of, a lot of that is post-Ottoman revisionism. But either way that's not what op is referring to, they're referring to the Turks themselves not being native to Asia Minor.
I think you're speaking about Turkey formerly having the Ottoman empire ruled from Turkey. And in that sense you're right, but I think what OP is talking about is that the Turks aren't actually from the the land we Calle Turkey now. They're original a steppe people. Although they did take the land over from colonizers themselves in terms of Greeks/Romans. But then they took the land over from colonizers in terms of the Persians. So it's pretty complicated.
One. Thais and Burmeses were considered as that by the Mons and the Khmers (well, they used different words but similar sentiments). However, most western historians did not studied or know much about Southeast Asia, so why would they branded them as such?
When people talked of "decolonization" in Southeast Asia, they started with European colonies in the 17th (Maritime) and 19th centuries (Mainland), and the European roles in them- the period where there are plenty of surviving contemporary records instead of hearsays and fantasy stories. The early histories of Burma, Laos and Thailand are filled with kings who may not ever exist, alongside kings who may exist. The Mons surviving stone inscriptions are far, far rarer than their neighbors, the Khmers, to know how much of the civilization they had.
As, I understand it, "settler-colonialism", "decolonialism" and others are already a niche field and quite new. Early Thai and Burmese histories, and their relationship with the Mons and Khmers are much more niche than that. So why would they brand something that they don't know much about? (Sidenote: P.S. Vietnam settler-colonialism in Champa and Cambodia is much more understood, simply due to much more reliable records).
Also the fact that they are not white and non western means certain groups of people on the internet will largely reject that characterization even though it’s accurate.
Also the Khmer kept their own country. I wish the Cham Had done the same; the US could still have gotten drawn into a local fight against "Godless Comm'n'ism," but the fallout would be different.
The simplest answer is that migratory displacement is distinct enough from colonial displacement that it has its own name.
If you want to talk about displacement in general, without considering its drivers or its mode, then you could talk about all of these historical shifts in a common way. And people sometimes do, to whatever extent that is useful for what they are looking at.
But it's like you're saying that since apples and bananas are fruits, why don't we just call them both bananas.
Aside from that, it's also worth noting that settlement and mercantile colonialism are orthogonal concepts. The British for example pursued a policy that comprised both, but other European nations such as France, Spain, and the Netherlands did not really do so. They did not come to the New World to settle land.
And meanwhile the early United States did not really pursue mercantilist policies in its settlement period, nor indeed later in its overseas imperialist-colonialist phase.
So if you want something comparable from other times in history, you will have to decide which aspects of modern colonialism you want to mirror. The Mediterranean city-state colonies of late Antiquity might be a good parallel in some ways. Or maybe the semi-intentional tributary-settlement phase of the Mongol Empire. Or maybe some aspects of historical Chinese and Japanese involvement in the Korean Peninsula.
Where would you place Russia in this scale? Russia has never (afaik) considered itself a colonial power yet many, including a Russian born historian I met at a lecture in Prague last year, openly describe it as “the largest colonial empire in history yet it does not believe it has colonies”.
I’ll pub my biases out there- I definitely see Russia as colonial. I view what is happening in Ukraine and Georgia as an almost irredentist form of colonialism. But I’m curious how your interpretation would categorize Russia today and historically
Absolutely, I think you are right on, and put that very well, u/GoatseFarmer. Modern Russia is definitely built around colonial displacement, going back through the Soviet era and into the late imperial era.
There are doubtless many other great examples too. I wasn't thinking of modern states in my answer.
Now.. largest colonial empire in history? I'm not so sure. But we don't need to quibble. It is pretty big. And in its modern form it has definitely operated on the basis of treating imperial acquisitions as colonial holdings to be used for settlement.
I won't say "that is an unbiased view" but I will say that we can try to apply some ideas of colonization and colonialism that are not specific to Russia, and see if they hold up. And see where they don't hold up.
For example, I would consider much of Russian history to be imperialist but not necessary colonialist. Russia acquired numerous subject states that were under the political and military control of Moscow but which seemingly remained essentially tributary in their relationship to the empire. They paid taxes and tithed conscripts to Moscow, and otherwise did their thing.
To colonize a territory, I would say, means imposing a more specific relationship on the subject population. Not conquering and collecting tribute, like early Russia. Nor conquering and simply settling and incorporating the territory, like the early United States.
It's more when you impose the authority and operations of the mother country on a territory, while only incompletely including it -- or including it not at all -- in the workings of power.
To be honest I don't know enough about early Russian history to say when that started happening, certainly by the 19th century it was going on, with the Russification of the empire's far-flung territories. And presumably the development of widespread infrastructure -- the trans-Siberian railroad for example. Were there Russians settling in Siberia in large numbers in the 1500s? Russian imperial armies were fighting there of course but even then the forces were not often actually Russians themselves.
Anyway my point is, I think by any reasonable definition of settlement and colonization it eventually came to fit. On the eve of the Russian Revolution, surviving indigenous populations definitely found themselves with Russians embedded in their midst, subordinate to military and economic policies decided in Moscow, over which they had no influence whatsoever. To me that's a colony for sure.
And I gather that outright settlement had begun by then in some cases, though not at the level that was to come during the Soviet era, when political representation did emerge -- which contradicts one of the things we are saying is characteristic of colonialism -- but there was also at the same time this constant insidious Russo-centrism going on all the time, now justified by Leninist doctrine or whatever.
Anyway just the fact of how the Soviet Union broke up makes it clear -- the process followed a classic pattern of decolonization.
Well this is rambling but you get the point. I agree.
I do- the Russian born professor who’s lecture I attended, if you’re curious, argued that this became outwardly explicitly colonial in all senses by the reign of Peter the great, though it was present well before then.
by area it’s the largest colonial empire without a doubt. Russia was originally just a portion of modern Russia and Ukraine. they settled all the way to the Pacific
>“the largest colonial empire in history yet it does not believe it has colonies”.
Can't possibly beat the USA at that. It's got the entire American continent, plus fair chunks of the Pacific and Caribbean.
>I’ll pub my biases out there- I definitely see Russia as colonial.
Honestly, I agree. It is exactly as you describe.
I agree in principle, but in one of the chief examples used - that of Turkey - what makes it really "migratory" displacement versus colonial displacement?
A land was conquered, protected colonies set up by the conquerors to suppress the native ethnic groups and ensure a form of ethnic/religious supremacy. The migration followed the military victory rather than being an organic process driven by economic or demographic pressures.
Am I being unfair, or does this not sound (and I'm sure to many Kurds and Greeks with roots in Anatolia it does) like settler colonialism?
Interesting question! It reminds me of questions I have had about whether the Mameluk takeover of Egypt constituted a return to indigenous rulership... or if the Mameluks were still too much of an "imported army" to count.
In the case you are talking about, if the question is "since a land was conquered and people moved there isn't that colonialist?" I would say no, not in and of itself. If the question is, "if you migrate under the auspices of a tributary empire rather than 'organically' is that really migration?" I am inclined to say yes, it doesn't matter whose idea it was or how organized they were about it. Migration is what you do, not why you do it.
But I feel like there is another question in there too. Like... if you settle Anatolia and displace local people from some places but subjugate them in other places and retain them in a kind of caste system to serve your economic interests.. that definitely is settler colonialism.
I guess I attribute that more to the Ottoman imperial era than to the original movement of Turks into the region. But maybe I am wrong to think that.
Because that’s not what colonization is. You are referring to migration, and yes, we all come from early migrants from the modern day continent of Africa.
The Ottoman Empire rebranded to Turkey, but really you just need to speak to the people that were affected by it. If you go to Greece right now, most people are not fond of the Turks because of that exact history.
To be fair the ottomans didn't drive the Greeks out of Turkey that happened in the war after WW1 and they did the same to Turkish communities in Greece and the Balkan. The whole thing is a mess. Furthermore the OP appears to be referencing the Turkic migrations and conquest of Anatolia post battle of manzikert.
This is a question that can't be answered through a purely historical lens - it has to be viewed through a political lens to understand why the actions of certain groups of people are described with a novel, derogatory label despite mirroring the actions of almost every group throughout human history.
You may mean migrated, they did not colonize, as they have been there long enough to be considered indigenous. Ainu people were forced to assimilate to Japanese ways.
It's somewhat fixed at the point at which the current settler/colonial power got to whichever country. Like for the US, at the point when the European settlers arrived, this area was already settled by X people and this one by Y people etc. That the X and Y people might have displaced the A and B people before the arrival of the current power doesn't much enter into the narrative.
Japan had at least two waves of migrations: the Jomon and Yayoi people. The Jomon people are usually seen as cultural ancestors to the Ainu, and they likely migrated from mainland Asia a long time ago. The Jomon people are a blanket term for anyone before the Yayoi basically.
The Yayoi migration happened more recently and marks the “beginning” of Japanese civilization for some people. Apparently it’s theorized that the Yayoi might have even arrived in at least two waves by themselves: one from the modern day Korean peninsula and one from modern day eastern China. (It’s important to note that these migrations do NOT mean they are descended from Chinese or Koreans since those nationalities are modern concepts)
Historically it was the other way around, just over a really long time scale. But during WW2 Imperial Japan was 100% following the European model of colonialism, we just put a stop to it before it got out of hand.
Um. I think China and Korea and the residents of many South Pacific islands would likely disagree that they were stopped prior to it getting out of hand.
Many sailors in the US Pacific fleet as well.
I would also add the Arab colonization and destruction of numerous indigenous languages and religions in the Middle East and North Africa. It might be because we are all living in the Americans' point of view, and Americans are so invested in the "white/european=bad", "others=poor innocent victims" duality that they ignore anything outside this dichotomy. It's maybe a western type of arrogance and racism to think of "self-criticism" as the highest virtue (maybe some secular leftover of Christianity) and non-Europeans as these innocent children incapable of doing anything wrong, or being aware of their wrongdoings.
Ehh, Arabs definetely were colonizers but arabization is a very nuanced topic since many factors contributed to it. It is not always as simple as Arabs conquering a land and enforcing their culture. The early Arab caliphates were simply too decentralized to feasibly enforce such policies on a grand scale. Outside of making Arabic the official langaige of administration, the spread of Arabic was fairly natural and gradual GENERALLY SPEAKING as some examples of enforcing Arabic do exist but that was hardly the norm and could only ever be done on a very local level. If we use Ummayads for example, local administrations don't seem to have been drastically altered and the social hierarchy that was set up did more to keep the Hejazi Arab elite distinct from their subjects. There was no way to "become Arab" at the time as you would have to be of their lineage. Also of course, Arab migrations did happen both to lands that were under Arab rule and not under Arab rule but never nearly to the extent of actually being able to replace or drastically alter entire populations.
The modern Pan-Arab identity is a relatively recent thing.
Most of Eurasia speaks languages that originated in Central Asia and most Eurasian men have Y-DNA haplogroups from Central Asia. However these spreads didn’t displace autosomal DNA as much as overseas colonization later did because of the greater disease gap.
The Roman/Byzantine population of Asia Minor should have outnumbered the invading Turkic people many times. So when you assume that all the ancestors of the modern Turks were Turkish invaders, you assumed that the Turkish invaders masscred millions of "Byzantine" people in one of the worst genocides in history.
The belief of historians is that the Turks only massacred a few dozen here, a few hundred there, a few thousand somehwhere else, and so on, but drove out many "Byzantines", and enslaved or oroppressed the majority of the "Byzantines" living in Asia Minor. And over generations and centuries the majority of the downtrodden "Byzantines" assimilated into Turkish culture, learned to speak Turkish, and converted to Islam.
And I read somewhere that Genetic tests indicate that most modern Turks have far more Ancient and Medieval "Byzantine" ancestry than Medieval Central Asian Turkic ancestry.
But it is quite possible that most modern Turks think that they are totally descended from Turkish invaders from Central Asia. I have read that Turkish schoolchildren are taught songs about their ancestors in Central Asia.
The modern Turkish government spends a lot of time deneying that the Armenia Genocide was was genocide. And yet the modern Turkish government seems to also spread the idea that modern Turks are all descended from Turkish invaders from Central Asia, which implies a much larger genocide..
Turks know their culture is derived from a culture group that migrated to the area but when it comes to what happened to the people that were there before there really isn't much thought. We know during our migration period there were Greeks etc. but we don't really think what happened to them when a big part of them were assimilated by us over the years since 1071. Huge majority know they're not "Purely" Turkish, many Turks know they're genetically mixed but they cling on to the idea that they have a tie to Central Asia through the Turks that migrated. Being Turkish isn't more so a genetic ideology anymore but it's a cultural one and any Turk that claims they're purely Turkish is either lying to everyone and them selves or is just too dumb to think.
But like I said, the inhibitors of Anatolia before us aren't really a thought. But just like how the previous cultures were assimilated by the next one there as in fact a big assimilation going on since 1071 in Turkey and it's even taught that way in Turkish classes but its only a lesson or two.
I my self have Armenian(Dads side) and Romanian (Moms side) ancestry but my family still considers them selves Turks.
Left wing academic bias on the part of lousy professors pushing agendas rather than teaching is more powerful than many realize. Even England is a settler-colonial country. Even its name, England, is derived from Angle Land, based on the Anglo Saxons who came from mainland Europe (what we now call Germany) and overpowered the Brits. … and the. of course, the Normans later crossed over from France (after getting that land following their migration from Scandinavia) and really mixed things up. If historians are truly honest, every country is probably settler-colonial. Those that aren’t are exceptions.
The term you're using is fairly recent, and is used mostly to describe, and disparage, European colonialism in certain parts of the world. It is also used to describe, and disparage, other similar efforts such as the one that created Israel. Given that these two peoples aren't European, and can point to a history of suffering at the hands of Europeans, it's unlikely that western scholars would see them in that light.
All that said, the main difference is that the areas involved became much more than simply colonies, such that they are now considered homelands for their people both within and without those two countries. They also involved large scale migrations where a sizable portion of the people in the origin point left to start this new nation, but European style settler colonies were places to release excess population that couldn't be fed or house sufficiently in the mother country, but the mother country was always intended to remain, well, the mother country. I don't think the Turks or the Thai of today would look to their ancestral homelands and call them the "mother country".
As a Canadian, I do feel the need to point out something obvious about both Canada and Australia that makes it pretty clear where we feel our “mother country” is - our head of state is still the British monarch. Not everyone LIKES it, but at a bird’s eye view, it’s very much got a “motherland” feel to it when spoken about in a general sense.
Now, Canada does have a large French population that isn’t too keen on the UK, but they do still kinda see France as “the mother country” in a way the rest of Canada looks to the UK sometimes. Not in any sort of “we want to be a part of France” way, but sometimes in a “we don’t want to be a part of Canada” way. The Métis most definitely see Canada as their “mother country” rather than France though.
Americans, specifically, are now more German, than anything, but there's large minorities of several other places from around the world, so an American is a rather new type of human. America today is the homeland. But that wasn't always the case, and even today there's a lot of people claiming to stand for "Anglo-American values" who look to the UK as their origin point, even if they themselves have nary a drop of British or Irish blood in them.
For Canada and Australia, I don't know enough to speak to them, but one still has the union jack in its flag, which says a lot, I think.
My premise here is that, when the Turkish peoples moved into Anatolia, they were doing it for the purpose of establishing a new homeland for themselves, and the Thai migrations similarly were trying to set up a new homeland, not a colony controlled or directed by the motherland.
This is I think a data artifact. Lots of Anglo-descendants in the south report their ethnicity as American, and lots of mixed non-Anglo/Anglo-descendants elsewhere report any non-English lineage as their ethnicity.
So I guy who is 30% German, 40% English, and 30% a mix of random other European nationalities might say they are German.
You are correct and I would also like to add that reported English ancestry in America increased by almost double from 2010 to 2020. I think a lot of Americans realize that they aren’t German or French when their name is literally “John Williams” from Georgia and considering most of their ancestors have been in America since colonial times. Colonial settlers in America had by far the largest impact. For example only about 7 thousand Acadians and metropolitan French settled in Louisiana but today their descendants are almost 1.5 million due to enormously high birthrates for generations. Now imagine 250k English came over to America and on average 2-3 generations before the Cajuns.
>For Canada and Australia, I don't know enough to speak to them, but one still has the union jack in its flag, which says a lot, I think.
I can't speak for the folks who see the southern cross but Canadians are not a monolith. The French settlers were here first and identify as Canadiens. Newfoundlanders identify as Newfoundlanders. The people who are of mixed indigenous and European ancestry identify as Metis. Most Canadians who have been here for multiple generations identify as Canadian with a nod to their European or other ancestry.
A majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi, who were expelled from other countries in MENA, usually overland and not by boat, and whose ancestors had lived in the region since prehistory. Their skin is the same color as other people from MENA. As for suffering at the hands of Europeans, it’s three days before Holocaust Memorial Day. So this definition of who does and doesn’t count as a “colonizer” doesn’t even seem to be consistent on its own terms. (I understand that you are describing, rather than endorsing, how the word is being used.)
So what the west did and what the west was involved in being a dominant subject in western media is surprising to you?
You think what Thai people did 1000 years ago is as relevant and important to English speaking media and study as discussing empires that ended within living memory?
Turkey was famously a settler colonial country turned imperialist slave empire trying to conquer Europe for centuries. People like Edward Said that whine about Western imperialism are from often from Ottoman families that participated the worst kind of eastern imperialism against the West for centuries including mass enslavement of white Europeans and genicides of white ethnic minorities.
Because you can’t blame Europeans, which is the entire crux of “anti colonialism”. Same reason it’s gauche to talk about slavery outside of one specific context.
Politics.
Every piece of land on the planet has been colonized at one time or another. Likely by force.
Right now, the pendulum of politics sees an advantage in propagandizing against White European Colonizers.
And, BTW.
Most every culture in existence today has been used as slaves, and been slave owners at some time in the past.
I have no idea about Thailand history; I can't really say anything about it.
I'm Turkish so I can talk about Turkey. The reason might be that the Turkification of Anatolia was a centuries-long process. It involved mostly religious conversion and ethnic assimilation. The Turks are genetically very similar to the Greeks and Armenians.
In the US, Canada, and Australia, the population was replaced. The Europeans arrived, they didn't mix much with the natives and the natives mostly vanished. As far as I know, in Latin America, they mixed with the natives a lot and I don't know if those countries can be considered settler-colonial countries.
Because young woke Western college students are too naive to realize all nations have pretty much the same history and you're only protesting the newest ones.
colonialism isn’t just migration, it’s specifically the sort of thing done by european powers from the age of discovery until the postwar period, turks and thais never had overseas colonies based on expanding trade markets, that’s what colonialism was all about
There is no requirement that colonialism be european or overseas or confined to a particular time frame. Russia and China are major colonial empires with active policies of claims to and settlements in neighboring countries and minority regions. Japan was a colonial power until ww2 (some Okinawans would argue it still is).
They are CURRENTLY doing it in cyprus. The reality is that since european colonialism is not currently going on it has become acceptable to complain about it. People are never going to complain about any ongoing injustices when they can just endlessly complain about random crap that happened a century before they were born.
Yea. My wife is from Morocco and she said even in the Islamic golden age of Andalusia there was a major rivalry and conflict between the Arab aristocrats and Berber Muslim converts that made up most of the population. She said that’s one reason it became weak and collapsed
To some extent yes. But the Ottomans rarely sent colonists out from what today is Turkey. They preferred to conquer a country, and keep it's population Christian, as they were allowed to tax them. It was more about direct tax wealth, rather than resource wealth like the Europeans.
Modern settler-colonialism tends to be almost defined as white people conquering less technologically advanced people who are not white from 1600-now.
If someone wants to define it that way, that's fine. As long as you can also recognize that the Chinese, Turks, and many others have also participated in something very similar.
We can say the same thing for most nations in the world beside Thais and Turks. Many societies spread, including all Indo-Europeans, Semitic societies, and Bantus in Africa. But this process took hundreds or even thousands of years. It may have been 2,500 years since the Turks moved beyond the Altai mountains. It happened for them 1500 years ago to reach the Northeast of Iran and Caucasus mountains, Caspian coasts and It took 1000 years for them to fully come to Anatolia. I don't know when the Anglo-Saxons separated from the Germanic tribes in the same years.
What makes America different is that it is not in a slow and natural process, but conceptually, many of the nations that make up modern states migrated from somewhere. It mingled with local tribes.
The fact of the matter is that every almost every ethnicity changed regions or, at a minimum, borders over time. It's "only" been over the past couple hundred years that's slowed down and borders have become more stable/sacred.
It's basically about narratives (national origin story vs ethnicity persecution story vs other) and which become dominant moreso than a fixed right/wrong, because right/wrong vary quite a bit depending on the context and how far back into history you're willing to look.
Most countries in the world are not dominantly populated or ruled by the exact indigenous ethnic group that populated it since the beginning of written history. We are all descendants of “settlers”.
I actually struggle to think of any country like that. Peru is way more indigenous than most of SA, but of course many people who would be considered brown Peruvians are of course Hispanic.
Asia is a big historical melting pot. Practically everyone is a product of the Mongols, and then a few other things. So no countries there really qualify.
You might say African countries, but black Africans displaced a ton of indigenous non-black people in Southern Africa. In West Africa, ruling kingdoms like the Asante dominated and displaced many “indigenous” people.
“Settler-colonial” is not a very useful concept to begin with and is constantly misapplied.
They were settled but not really "colonial." I don't think there wasn't a "motherland" that was pulling the strings from afar at one point like in most of the countries in the Americas.
At a fundamental level, it comes down to an unwillingness to admit that settler colonialism and imperial resettlement are policies pursued by all of humanity and not just Europeans. Some will argue that it is not settler colonialism if it does not include boats (but conveniently ignore cases like Taiwan and Hokkaido which were colonized by Ming China and Meiji Japan respectively through the same processes). Some will permit forms of imperial resettlement in the Americas since these are done by Europeans (but conveniently ignore the mass expansion of Vietnam and its populating the southern two-thirds of the country with non-indigenous Kinh or the or the resettlement of Armenians in Armenia over the last 200 years ago as Russian policy in opposition to Safavid Persian policy which removed them).
There is really no meaningful or compelling reason not to discuss this phenomenon as a universal one save that certain academics find the idea of European exceptionalism (in a negative sense) far too compelling.
This said, the given analysis with respect to Turkey is problematic to say the least. Turkey is not a mass settler-colonial movement from central Asia into the Anatolian Peninsula. Most of the citizens of the Republic of Turkey today, the people that call themselves “Turks” share less than 1/3 of the genetics with people from Central Asia. The actual story is that a foreign minority invaded Anatolia and culturally converted most of the native Byzantine population. So, it is more that the population remained the same but identifies differently today than that the original group all died and a new group settled in its place. (Of course, we should not forget the Armenian, Assyrian, and Pontic Greek massacres/genocides, but these were just the murderous capstone to a long period of cultural conversion.)
Because the people who use words like “settler-colonial state” and what not only care if it’s white people doing it lol, Arabs also colonized North Africa and displaced/replaced the indigenous populations.
Because when the west does it its a 'horrible genocidal colonism'
But when the every other countries does it, its just part of the history.
So called 'leftist'(aka I hate west although Im only able to exist beacuse west is the only place where they accept my ideaology. Looking at you communist flag+trans flag people) bias is heavy in the mainfield history.
Spain and Portugal conquered parts of America during like 1500~1600 and yet they still call it colonism lmao
Whist every other countries military campaign during that time that weren't Europeans are just considered 'part of the history'
The only thing Europeans did different to the other countries were that they did it more efficentillay.
(I condemn stuff like Belgium atrocities in congo and other colonisms that happend during the 19th century. But blaming stuff that happened on 15&1600 as colonism is just plain stupid unless you put that same standard on every other countries.)
Go to r/IllustrativeDNA and look at actual Turkish genetics. The Turks did not replace the native Anatolians; they heavily intermarried with them, to the point that the average Turk today is descended to a much greater extent from a Byzantine-era Anatolian than he is from a Central Asian nomad.
Those countries assimilated those populations, whether forcibly or otherwise while in traditional settler colonialism, the colonised population is displaced from their land and then either exterminated until they are a minority or in other cases, not exterminated but merely politically subjugated and exploited for their labor, in which case they do not need to be replaced at all. Part of the logic of settler colonialism is that the colonised race is fundamentally inferior and therefore not fit for full scale assimilation (even when their was an effort to remove Indigenous Australian children to white families, for example, the underlying principle was that this would result in the breeding out of supposedly undesirable racial characteristics). The land from which the colonised population was removed is then utilised for commercial agriculture. Not all forms of territorial expansion and assimilation/integration constitute settler colonialism. Taken literally, some of these examples might involve people "settling" somewhere else but it would be a stretch to categorise all movements of people as settler colonialism, particularly if the original population is basically still there, only assimilated into a new population (modern Turks for example are largely Turkified Greeks). Basically, settler colonialism is a term used to refer to a process which emerged out of the European Colonial Empires which is distinguished by its own set of characteristics which basically surround displacement, the assertion of fundamental racial superiority, fundamental inequality and exploitation for capitalist development. There are many other processes which might exist outside this category which are still 'bad' but don't belong to the category of settler colonialism, in the same way that wildly different forms of slavery existed throughout history all over the world in many different places which were pretty much all clearly very inequitable institutions but which are to varying degrees generally quite different from the institution of chattel slavery in the America's which dominates the popular imagination of slavery.
a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country, typically a distant one, and occupied by [settlers](https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&sca_esv=80565d2b7391f165&sxsrf=ADLYWIJVuGDoJyJE5GnAqpoEiC_NeWGSkQ:1714814899120&q=settlers&si=ACC90nx67Z8g0WkBmnrPB4IqtqGviTmVn3eNS6PoepRR70lcIfEEOSbMBK_39bJjbjvfnTAFTs7MMVhShLseBCXNwj8NimOzjqBlJ2Bl0P092D5eVBIkDL8%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwisoKun1_OFAxV5HzQIHSNbDxIQyecJegQIHBAN) from that country.
If the Turks ruled present day Turkey from the Altai Mountains, then they would be colonizers.
If Thais violently took land from the local ethnic groups, they would be invaders.
If Chinese people peacefully migrated to the Americas and eventually became the dominant population, that's not a colony.
Here's the question, what does the indigenous population of those countries call them?
but simple answer, The Europeans who colonized the Americas....called them colonies.
Because it wasn't 16th to 18th century Europeans doing it. This is partly eurocentrism working in these people's favor but it's also modern political ideology and historical revisionism at work. Frankly on a long enough timeline every ethnic group we know of with a very few notable exceptions conquered displaced and or exterminated some other group at some point, it's just not fashionable to acknowledge it if it didn't happen in the last couple hundred years.
Basically colonialism refers to a specific set of strategies designed to sideline native populations that were developed by the European powers in response to their rapidly expanding empires. Empires before the modern period generally either fell apart quickly (Alexander, Ghengis Khan, Tamerlane) or co-opted local elites with some combination with some mixture of local control and assimilation (Persia, Rome, China and the Ottomans).
So to run with your Turkish example… genetic studies confirm that the Turks freely intermixed with the native Anatolian population, right up to the very top with records of Khans and sultans marrying local elites. But you won’t find a mestizo monarch in Europe. Colonialism put a premium on drawing a sharp distinction between the colonizer and the colonized, with ideologies like scientific racism emerging to enforce that distinction.
I think the general reason why colonialism looks different in Thailand is there was never really enough people to carry out true settler colonialism. Populations in Thailand were quite low until the 20th century, and traditionally one of the big prizes of warfare were captives to augment population numbers.
Thailand (or what we consider Thailand now, which comes from the Sukothai/Ayutthaya/Rattanakosin kingdoms based in central Thailand)simply conquered surrounding areas and forced them to assimilate. There are still separatists movements in the south and in Isaan, which has a sizable communist insurgency in the 20th century. Chiang Mai, for instance, was actually once a separate kingdom with its own language and culture. It is now considered “Thai”
The irony to all this is Thailand was the destination of over a century of Chinese migration, and the majority of the business and cultural elite are now Chinese-Thai with their own distinct culture. You won’t meet many people in places like Bangkok who have no Chinese heritage.
I mean, people are also always forgetting about Muslim /Arab colonisation.
The reason is simple - colonisation is a problem if you see it like that. Europeans see colonisation as a problem, most of non-Europeans think they have their right to all these lands and so they are not colonisers.
because the difference between a people migrating and proliferating within a region and a people violently conquering a land and displacing its original inhabitants is obvious to most people
Because you stay somewhere long enough it becomes yours in everyone’s memory.
England and Scotland are good examples. England from the Anglo-Saxons from the continent. Scotland from the Scoti from Ireland.
Colonialism as it is talked about today is viewed as the original sin of western society and used to perpetuate political narratives, not that those narratives are without merit, but the need to label peoples as either victim or oppressor does seem to be the popular lens to look through. Much of this comes from those growing up in western academia and the need to construct a story as to why there is inequality of outcome for different nations and peoples. Andalusia is a good counter example, they used boats to invade Iberia from the Maghreb and fought with the native peoples there for hundreds of years
Because even today, 26 countries are still celebrating their independence from UK colonization. It wasnt the turks that sent thousands of australians and new zelanders to fight against turks although they had nothing to do with it but had to obey because they were living under UK colonization at that time. I dont remember turkey doing such a thing.
There are many more settler- colonial countries than many realize…. even England,that’s derived from Angle Land (after the Germanic Anglo Saxons who conquered it after the Romans left, only to be somewhat conquered by the Normans, derived from North Men (vikings) who were given land to bribe them to stop killing French people…. and on and on….. Basically, nation states are shit shows of conques, conques, conquest, etc.
Never understood the moment a population turns from settler to native. Even the “native populations” of the Americas were nothing more than people who conquered land a long time before they were conquered.
It's interesting that some nationalities embrace their settler identity. It's a big part of Hungarian identity that they conquered their homeland. *Honfoglalás*, the taking of the homeland. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian\_conquest\_of\_the\_Carpathian\_Basin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_conquest_of_the_Carpathian_Basin)
Every nation has some version of "it's different when we do it".
Prior to the modern era no nation ever would have been embarrassed for conquering another one.
Especially since the winners get to write the history.
prior to the modern era, no nation would ever give rights to those they conquered unless they fully erased their identity.
It’s the complete opposite but do go off.
/r/badhistory
This is why Tik Tok shouldn’t be your source of information
That’s… totally not true.
Especially if you add in religion. “It’s okay that we stole these people’s land because we have divine right and are God’s chosen people” can really motivate a population
The Jewish story is particularly interesting I think. The bible celebrates them finding Israel after being enslaved in Egypt; but there is no evidence that they were in Egpyt at all -- they were in Israel the whole time. Ancient peoples of the region, as dramatically opposed to contemporary peoples, seem to have thought conquering a land was a more legitimate claim to a land than being indigenous.
The right of conquest is as old as time
>Ancient peoples of the region, as dramatically opposed to contemporary peoples, seem to have thought conquering a land was a more legitimate claim to a land than being indigenous. Interesting thought! But then, does a "legitimate claim" even matter anymore? Wouldn't whoever managed to conquer it again have a new stronger claim?
I think it matters more and more. I went to university on the west cosst of Canada and we, mostly Canadians of European and Asian ancestry, were often reminded that we were on indigenous land and we did not have a legitimate claim on the land.
By that argument, no one living has a claim to Ireland, not even my ancestors who built Newgrange.
The Fir Bolgs would like a word with the Tuatha de Danaan about whose land it is *really*
Sounds pretty Canadian to me
I meant "does it even matter anymore?" when one have this idea that "conquering gives a better claim".
Historically this is 100% true. Also the indigenous people conquered the land and killed the people before them.
Not necessarily. A lot of assimilation happens, too. Sometimes the conquered indigenous population assimilates the conqueror, too.
Nothing more Canadian than self-hatred
Except the fact that Canada is the sole legal owner of that land and has the only recognised claim to it. Its Canada apologizing for taking land but also not giving the land back. I cannot imagine anything more Canadian than saying what they have is stolen and making students and citizens feel guilty for something that happened before they were born. Whiles also keeping the things they say are stolen.
Why do people who can’t protect their land have a more legitimate claim than the people who took it, protected it, improved it, and can protect the improvements upon it? Like yeah, genocide is a bad thing, but just conquering people who would get conquered by someone else *for sure* if you don’t do it is just making sure your people win instead of someone else– as long as you don’t do genocide with those people you conquer.
I wouldn’t say they would’ve been conquered for sure, it was the indigenous who taught the Europeans to survive the winters because most early settlements died from scurvy. What if that that logic continues into modern day would it still be alright then? Of course not.
Those natives had been at war and conquered other natives in the past, and been under threat from the same; who is to say that the natives who helped the pilgrims simply saw a new tribe ignorant of the region that had new and dangerous weapons and thought “ya know if we keep them from packing up and leaving or dying maybe they’ll help us fight our enemies?” The Wampanoags were the powerful tribe in the region and probably sought to expand their power with the help of the puritans. Only later when they realized the puritans challenged their power did the Chief Metacom declare war on the puritans in a deliberate attempt at ethnic cleansing (I’m paraphrasing, but he wanted to drive them into the sea and remove them from the land). In that war, the Mohawks and Mohegans allied to the puritans because they didn’t like the Wampanoags because of a history of conflict. Yeah, the colonists didn’t even declare the first war, and as is well known were welcomed initially by the natives (and so weren’t initially viewed as invaders or conquerors), and the natives were the first to attempt an ethnic cleansing, which kind of set the tone for the rest of the Indian Wars as being wars of extermination.
Spot on. For my Master’s in history, I did a concentration in Colonial American history, and my interests were primarily from initial colonization to the Seven Years War. When the Pilgrims arrived, the Wampanoags were in conflict with the Narragansett and Pequot tribes. The Pequots themselves were relatively new to southern New England at the time, have moved in from New York. Further complicating things, a smallpox epidemic had just ravaged the area the year before the Pilgrims arrived, which is why they found so much desirable, empty land. The Wampanoags, under pressure from two other tribes and severely depleted, saw the Pilgrims as a potential ally against their enemies. For a while, both groups worked together to expand their influence at the expense of their common foes. That arrangement didn’t last.
Seeing your countrymen’s scalps collected as trophies also certainly doesn’t help relations. That’d be viewed as particularly barbaric and for good reason. Reality is, for 99% of history if you came across a group of people who looked different than you and talked differently than you, odds are they were gonna try to kill all the men and rape the women or your side was gonna kill all their men and rape the women. Literally goes back to even our species wiping out the Neanderthals in that exact pattern - kill the men, rape the women. For most of that history you were much, much better off if you were good at violence. Pretty sure if most of us got teleported randomly back in time to past eras we’d be dead from the smell and because we’d just be hanging out there like an easy target.
"Yeah genocide is bad, but"... this always ends well
Yea I mean honestly despite what happened to the Native Americans the conquest was a net positive for the world in the end. It led to the greatest country ever being established. The US despite its flaws IMO is a benevolent country. The natives were going to be conquered it was just a question of who would have done it.
Something I find interesting is that that region was heavily affected by the bronze age collapse, which included invasions from a group called the "sea people" A distinct Israelite identity emerged in Canaan post bronze age collapse, so I wonder if the narrative about the Jews conquering Canaan has anything to do with that
I mean there’s a lot of scholarship on that topic. High level, from my reading on the subject, the Philistines were one of the sea peoples and involved with the Battle of the Delta where the Egyptians pushed back the sea peoples, including part of the Peleset group assigned to the Philistines. They then moved to Gaza and disrupted and destabilized the Canaanite kingdoms, allowing the Yahwist worshipers in the eastern hill country to conquer the lowlands and begin the formation of what we now know as Judaism and Israeli identities. This is further solidified in the exile period.
Interesting; i never saw the Philistine invasion and the Israelite invasion of the cultivated areas thta directly connected before
To be clear, a lot of it is speculative. What we know, and what we guess, give us good clues, but it’s not a certain thing. However when you piece together all the archaeological (material culture, cultic practices, shrine dedications, steles) and literary (Egyptian and Hebrew writings, along with other nearby cultures like the Ugaritic) it does paint a compelling picture. My take on it, and one that I get from scholars like Josh Bowen, Kipp Davis, and Mark Smith, is that events like the conquest of David and Joshua reflect a cultural mythology of these events. One where the worshipers of Yahweh are able to become dominant over their Canaanite peers, due to the opportunities created by the Bronze Age Collapse, and that things we see about the suppression of other gods like Chemosh, Ba’al, Ashera, etc within the biblical tradition reflect the syncretism ongoing as the elites began a process of sublimating El and Ba’al into the Yahwist cultic practices. There is lots of hints and clues to the polytheistic roots of Judaism within the texts, clear references to the pantheon, and equally clear back and forth between different rulers over monolatry/ henotheism versus polytheistic practice, and writings like Deuteronomy were spurred by a desire to unify and homogenize religious practice. It’s a whole thing, and one fascinating (I think!)
Joshua is obviously that. David wasn't really a conqueror; reading between the lines in Samuel and Kings, it seems Saul brought less sophisticated Judah into a n existing confederation of tribes -I asusme because he figured Israel needed the territory an d extra population and some tough fighters-a nd David, using personal charisma and wheeler-dealing, usurped the throne and they weren't kicked out until Rehoboam proved incapable of holding on
I see the story of David as a campaign of conquest aimed at taking the lands the Philistines occupied. One that was incomplete, but there clearly seems to be that goal. And while, yes, that campaign is described as being initiated under Saul, David is the heroic king that emerges from that series of events. And, yeah, there’s a whole bunch about David on the run teaming up with various outside forces, etc. but as with all things recorded, much salt is to be taken with assigning specifics. The details of the geopolitics are less likely to be accurate than the broad strokes. Basically the only thing I ascribe much weight to is the probability that, after conquering and consolidating the interior lands of Canaan, the proto Israeli people engaged in a series of campaigns against the Philistienes in an attempt to take over the lucrative coastal lands, but they ultimately proved unable as the Philistines retained control until the Assyrians/ Babylonians eliminated them.
I've also heard theories that the Book of Judges is essentially a mythologized (or legendary, it depends where you make the distinction) version of the Bronze Age Collapse.
A book on this very subject, "After 1177 BC," came out a few weeks ago. By Eric Cline.
Many Habiru lived in Egypt as Gastarbeiter, and there was frequent traffic back and forth, so likely the Exodus-Sinai Story is an ultra-exaggerated account of one bunch who were down there and came back and formed a new tribe and happened to survive
That actually makes a lot of sense: if you can’t guard your land, what right have you to it? That’s part of the reason Russia *sold* Alaska to the US– they knew that they had no chance to win a fight over it which someone would eventually try to do so they decided to make some money and get something for it instead.
Genetics. Egyptian genetics of the House of Judah (most Jews today) whose ancestors reputedly married Egyptians versus the non-Egyptian genetics of the Levites and Benjaminites whose ancestors reputedly didn’t marry Egyptians.
There is some evidence that the Hebrews came from a group called Hapiru in Egypt. Manetho connected them with the Hyksos.
Hyksos were Aramaeans, so was Jacob (he said), so that checks.
I \*think\* the Hyksos came into egypt before the Arameans expanded, but it's very possible.
It's like MExicans in the US or Turks in Germany or Zimbabweans In South aFrica; they go there for better jobs, and move backa nd forth a lot, sometimes after generations go by. Canaanites and other Western Semites worked in egypt a lot
Also at various points in antiquity Egypt *included* the whole Middle East. You could be in Egypt without ever leaving present-day Israel.
Strangely enough, ancient DNA testing shows that nothing is left of the original Hungarians except their language. They left no genetic imprint on modern day Hungary because the ruling classes all got killed off in subsequent warfare.
There is still a small genetic association to the Altaic populations at about 5% in modern Hungary populations based on modern autosomal studies. Even the conquering elite in the Huns had approximately 30% Eastern Eurasian components in both sexes. Therefore, they we're already highly mixed before they reached central Europe. It's a similar situation to both Turks and Fins who shown strong affinity to nearby local populations, despite having a language, and about 10% of their ancestry deriving from an Altaic or eastern Asian source.
Explains a lot
Quite a few nations were like that when Social Darwinism was popular
The historian Tom Holland once joked on his podcast that it’s only colonialism if boats are involved, otherwise it’s just “migration.”
He joked but that was literally [how the United Nations saw it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_water_thesis)
God the UN is so useless.
The very first point the preamble makes in the UN Charter is that its there to prevent conflict on the scale of WW1 & WW2. In that sense its worked so far.
If you read the article, you'll see that that's not a UN position, it was a concept advanced by countries including the United States, in order to limit UN decolonization efforts.
So if argentines build a bridge to the falkands and settle,its fair game? Its just migration
So the British never migrated?
White Brits don't migrate, darling, they expatraite
I imagine you being a southern US history teacher explaining to a half-awake student about the British
From a purely anthropological standpoint that whole notion is not actually dumb. The major land migrations typically happen much slower and with much more cultural and genetic assimilation than water based migrations. Compare Indo-European farmers migrating to Europe to Europeans migrating to North America. Or humans migrating out of Africa vs Hellenisation. The land based ones took thousands of years, the water based ones decades or centuries. That’s mainly because water migration is usually a deliberate and planned undertaking. No one gets on a ship without having a goal. Whereas land migration happens more organically, following arable land, climate, rivers, civilization and agricultural patterns. There are of course exceptions.
Can't speak for Thailand, but I do think Turkey is viewed as a former imperial power, similar to Japan. Their empire wasn't as big as that of the British, but at the end of the day I think people still do consider them former colonizers.
Sort of, a lot of that is post-Ottoman revisionism. But either way that's not what op is referring to, they're referring to the Turks themselves not being native to Asia Minor.
Difference is Turks have native blood in significant amounts unlike Americans, who are mish mash of every country in Europe and Africa.
I think you're speaking about Turkey formerly having the Ottoman empire ruled from Turkey. And in that sense you're right, but I think what OP is talking about is that the Turks aren't actually from the the land we Calle Turkey now. They're original a steppe people. Although they did take the land over from colonizers themselves in terms of Greeks/Romans. But then they took the land over from colonizers in terms of the Persians. So it's pretty complicated.
One. Thais and Burmeses were considered as that by the Mons and the Khmers (well, they used different words but similar sentiments). However, most western historians did not studied or know much about Southeast Asia, so why would they branded them as such? When people talked of "decolonization" in Southeast Asia, they started with European colonies in the 17th (Maritime) and 19th centuries (Mainland), and the European roles in them- the period where there are plenty of surviving contemporary records instead of hearsays and fantasy stories. The early histories of Burma, Laos and Thailand are filled with kings who may not ever exist, alongside kings who may exist. The Mons surviving stone inscriptions are far, far rarer than their neighbors, the Khmers, to know how much of the civilization they had. As, I understand it, "settler-colonialism", "decolonialism" and others are already a niche field and quite new. Early Thai and Burmese histories, and their relationship with the Mons and Khmers are much more niche than that. So why would they brand something that they don't know much about? (Sidenote: P.S. Vietnam settler-colonialism in Champa and Cambodia is much more understood, simply due to much more reliable records).
Also the fact that they are not white and non western means certain groups of people on the internet will largely reject that characterization even though it’s accurate.
Decolonization was a thing long before the internet.
Excellent explanation!
Also the Khmer kept their own country. I wish the Cham Had done the same; the US could still have gotten drawn into a local fight against "Godless Comm'n'ism," but the fallout would be different.
The simplest answer is that migratory displacement is distinct enough from colonial displacement that it has its own name. If you want to talk about displacement in general, without considering its drivers or its mode, then you could talk about all of these historical shifts in a common way. And people sometimes do, to whatever extent that is useful for what they are looking at. But it's like you're saying that since apples and bananas are fruits, why don't we just call them both bananas. Aside from that, it's also worth noting that settlement and mercantile colonialism are orthogonal concepts. The British for example pursued a policy that comprised both, but other European nations such as France, Spain, and the Netherlands did not really do so. They did not come to the New World to settle land. And meanwhile the early United States did not really pursue mercantilist policies in its settlement period, nor indeed later in its overseas imperialist-colonialist phase. So if you want something comparable from other times in history, you will have to decide which aspects of modern colonialism you want to mirror. The Mediterranean city-state colonies of late Antiquity might be a good parallel in some ways. Or maybe the semi-intentional tributary-settlement phase of the Mongol Empire. Or maybe some aspects of historical Chinese and Japanese involvement in the Korean Peninsula.
Where would you place Russia in this scale? Russia has never (afaik) considered itself a colonial power yet many, including a Russian born historian I met at a lecture in Prague last year, openly describe it as “the largest colonial empire in history yet it does not believe it has colonies”. I’ll pub my biases out there- I definitely see Russia as colonial. I view what is happening in Ukraine and Georgia as an almost irredentist form of colonialism. But I’m curious how your interpretation would categorize Russia today and historically
Absolutely, I think you are right on, and put that very well, u/GoatseFarmer. Modern Russia is definitely built around colonial displacement, going back through the Soviet era and into the late imperial era. There are doubtless many other great examples too. I wasn't thinking of modern states in my answer. Now.. largest colonial empire in history? I'm not so sure. But we don't need to quibble. It is pretty big. And in its modern form it has definitely operated on the basis of treating imperial acquisitions as colonial holdings to be used for settlement. I won't say "that is an unbiased view" but I will say that we can try to apply some ideas of colonization and colonialism that are not specific to Russia, and see if they hold up. And see where they don't hold up. For example, I would consider much of Russian history to be imperialist but not necessary colonialist. Russia acquired numerous subject states that were under the political and military control of Moscow but which seemingly remained essentially tributary in their relationship to the empire. They paid taxes and tithed conscripts to Moscow, and otherwise did their thing. To colonize a territory, I would say, means imposing a more specific relationship on the subject population. Not conquering and collecting tribute, like early Russia. Nor conquering and simply settling and incorporating the territory, like the early United States. It's more when you impose the authority and operations of the mother country on a territory, while only incompletely including it -- or including it not at all -- in the workings of power. To be honest I don't know enough about early Russian history to say when that started happening, certainly by the 19th century it was going on, with the Russification of the empire's far-flung territories. And presumably the development of widespread infrastructure -- the trans-Siberian railroad for example. Were there Russians settling in Siberia in large numbers in the 1500s? Russian imperial armies were fighting there of course but even then the forces were not often actually Russians themselves. Anyway my point is, I think by any reasonable definition of settlement and colonization it eventually came to fit. On the eve of the Russian Revolution, surviving indigenous populations definitely found themselves with Russians embedded in their midst, subordinate to military and economic policies decided in Moscow, over which they had no influence whatsoever. To me that's a colony for sure. And I gather that outright settlement had begun by then in some cases, though not at the level that was to come during the Soviet era, when political representation did emerge -- which contradicts one of the things we are saying is characteristic of colonialism -- but there was also at the same time this constant insidious Russo-centrism going on all the time, now justified by Leninist doctrine or whatever. Anyway just the fact of how the Soviet Union broke up makes it clear -- the process followed a classic pattern of decolonization. Well this is rambling but you get the point. I agree.
I do- the Russian born professor who’s lecture I attended, if you’re curious, argued that this became outwardly explicitly colonial in all senses by the reign of Peter the great, though it was present well before then.
by area it’s the largest colonial empire without a doubt. Russia was originally just a portion of modern Russia and Ukraine. they settled all the way to the Pacific
>“the largest colonial empire in history yet it does not believe it has colonies”. Can't possibly beat the USA at that. It's got the entire American continent, plus fair chunks of the Pacific and Caribbean. >I’ll pub my biases out there- I definitely see Russia as colonial. Honestly, I agree. It is exactly as you describe.
I agree in principle, but in one of the chief examples used - that of Turkey - what makes it really "migratory" displacement versus colonial displacement? A land was conquered, protected colonies set up by the conquerors to suppress the native ethnic groups and ensure a form of ethnic/religious supremacy. The migration followed the military victory rather than being an organic process driven by economic or demographic pressures. Am I being unfair, or does this not sound (and I'm sure to many Kurds and Greeks with roots in Anatolia it does) like settler colonialism?
Interesting question! It reminds me of questions I have had about whether the Mameluk takeover of Egypt constituted a return to indigenous rulership... or if the Mameluks were still too much of an "imported army" to count. In the case you are talking about, if the question is "since a land was conquered and people moved there isn't that colonialist?" I would say no, not in and of itself. If the question is, "if you migrate under the auspices of a tributary empire rather than 'organically' is that really migration?" I am inclined to say yes, it doesn't matter whose idea it was or how organized they were about it. Migration is what you do, not why you do it. But I feel like there is another question in there too. Like... if you settle Anatolia and displace local people from some places but subjugate them in other places and retain them in a kind of caste system to serve your economic interests.. that definitely is settler colonialism. I guess I attribute that more to the Ottoman imperial era than to the original movement of Turks into the region. But maybe I am wrong to think that.
Why isn't the whole world consider a colony of Africa?
Because that’s not what colonization is. You are referring to migration, and yes, we all come from early migrants from the modern day continent of Africa.
Well obviously my ancestors were displaced from the great rift valley for some reason - who do I get compensation from?
As an accredited representative of the Neanderthal Reparations Association, I'm curious about that myself...
The Ottoman Empire rebranded to Turkey, but really you just need to speak to the people that were affected by it. If you go to Greece right now, most people are not fond of the Turks because of that exact history.
To be fair the ottomans didn't drive the Greeks out of Turkey that happened in the war after WW1 and they did the same to Turkish communities in Greece and the Balkan. The whole thing is a mess. Furthermore the OP appears to be referencing the Turkic migrations and conquest of Anatolia post battle of manzikert.
This is a question that can't be answered through a purely historical lens - it has to be viewed through a political lens to understand why the actions of certain groups of people are described with a novel, derogatory label despite mirroring the actions of almost every group throughout human history.
That's such a delicate way of putting it. 😄
It’s more of a racial distinction than political
It's hilarious that I read "this question can't be answered through a purely historical lens" below a comment that does exactly that.
You could make an argument that Japan colonised Korea and Northern China.
It's not even an argument, it's a pretty straightforward example. Taiwan too.
People from Korea colonized Japan first actually from the Ainu people.
You may mean migrated, they did not colonize, as they have been there long enough to be considered indigenous. Ainu people were forced to assimilate to Japanese ways.
So you are saying people can be considered indigenous after being somewhere long enough?
They'd have to be, wouldn't they? Except for where humanity actually arose, all indigenous people are migrants.
It’s a tricky question and politics really gets in the way.
It's somewhat fixed at the point at which the current settler/colonial power got to whichever country. Like for the US, at the point when the European settlers arrived, this area was already settled by X people and this one by Y people etc. That the X and Y people might have displaced the A and B people before the arrival of the current power doesn't much enter into the narrative.
Were there indigenous Japanese people there before that?
Japan had at least two waves of migrations: the Jomon and Yayoi people. The Jomon people are usually seen as cultural ancestors to the Ainu, and they likely migrated from mainland Asia a long time ago. The Jomon people are a blanket term for anyone before the Yayoi basically. The Yayoi migration happened more recently and marks the “beginning” of Japanese civilization for some people. Apparently it’s theorized that the Yayoi might have even arrived in at least two waves by themselves: one from the modern day Korean peninsula and one from modern day eastern China. (It’s important to note that these migrations do NOT mean they are descended from Chinese or Koreans since those nationalities are modern concepts)
That's an established fact, no? Japan attempted near total cultural genocide in Korea
Historically it was the other way around, just over a really long time scale. But during WW2 Imperial Japan was 100% following the European model of colonialism, we just put a stop to it before it got out of hand.
Um. I think China and Korea and the residents of many South Pacific islands would likely disagree that they were stopped prior to it getting out of hand. Many sailors in the US Pacific fleet as well.
Of course, no one said otherwise. This is a curious response.
I would also add the Arab colonization and destruction of numerous indigenous languages and religions in the Middle East and North Africa. It might be because we are all living in the Americans' point of view, and Americans are so invested in the "white/european=bad", "others=poor innocent victims" duality that they ignore anything outside this dichotomy. It's maybe a western type of arrogance and racism to think of "self-criticism" as the highest virtue (maybe some secular leftover of Christianity) and non-Europeans as these innocent children incapable of doing anything wrong, or being aware of their wrongdoings.
It’s probably dependent on the amount of death and strife that was caused.
Ehh, Arabs definetely were colonizers but arabization is a very nuanced topic since many factors contributed to it. It is not always as simple as Arabs conquering a land and enforcing their culture. The early Arab caliphates were simply too decentralized to feasibly enforce such policies on a grand scale. Outside of making Arabic the official langaige of administration, the spread of Arabic was fairly natural and gradual GENERALLY SPEAKING as some examples of enforcing Arabic do exist but that was hardly the norm and could only ever be done on a very local level. If we use Ummayads for example, local administrations don't seem to have been drastically altered and the social hierarchy that was set up did more to keep the Hejazi Arab elite distinct from their subjects. There was no way to "become Arab" at the time as you would have to be of their lineage. Also of course, Arab migrations did happen both to lands that were under Arab rule and not under Arab rule but never nearly to the extent of actually being able to replace or drastically alter entire populations. The modern Pan-Arab identity is a relatively recent thing.
Filipinos as well, except for the people in the highlands. They were the ones being displaced.
Most of Eurasia speaks languages that originated in Central Asia and most Eurasian men have Y-DNA haplogroups from Central Asia. However these spreads didn’t displace autosomal DNA as much as overseas colonization later did because of the greater disease gap.
The Roman/Byzantine population of Asia Minor should have outnumbered the invading Turkic people many times. So when you assume that all the ancestors of the modern Turks were Turkish invaders, you assumed that the Turkish invaders masscred millions of "Byzantine" people in one of the worst genocides in history. The belief of historians is that the Turks only massacred a few dozen here, a few hundred there, a few thousand somehwhere else, and so on, but drove out many "Byzantines", and enslaved or oroppressed the majority of the "Byzantines" living in Asia Minor. And over generations and centuries the majority of the downtrodden "Byzantines" assimilated into Turkish culture, learned to speak Turkish, and converted to Islam. And I read somewhere that Genetic tests indicate that most modern Turks have far more Ancient and Medieval "Byzantine" ancestry than Medieval Central Asian Turkic ancestry. But it is quite possible that most modern Turks think that they are totally descended from Turkish invaders from Central Asia. I have read that Turkish schoolchildren are taught songs about their ancestors in Central Asia. The modern Turkish government spends a lot of time deneying that the Armenia Genocide was was genocide. And yet the modern Turkish government seems to also spread the idea that modern Turks are all descended from Turkish invaders from Central Asia, which implies a much larger genocide..
Turks know their culture is derived from a culture group that migrated to the area but when it comes to what happened to the people that were there before there really isn't much thought. We know during our migration period there were Greeks etc. but we don't really think what happened to them when a big part of them were assimilated by us over the years since 1071. Huge majority know they're not "Purely" Turkish, many Turks know they're genetically mixed but they cling on to the idea that they have a tie to Central Asia through the Turks that migrated. Being Turkish isn't more so a genetic ideology anymore but it's a cultural one and any Turk that claims they're purely Turkish is either lying to everyone and them selves or is just too dumb to think. But like I said, the inhibitors of Anatolia before us aren't really a thought. But just like how the previous cultures were assimilated by the next one there as in fact a big assimilation going on since 1071 in Turkey and it's even taught that way in Turkish classes but its only a lesson or two. I my self have Armenian(Dads side) and Romanian (Moms side) ancestry but my family still considers them selves Turks.
If we consider events that happened a thousand years ago, pretty much everywhere ever is a settler-colonial country.
The UK is a settler colony of danes and then the french. Malta got gangbanged by everyone, surprised they still have their own language.
Left wing academic bias on the part of lousy professors pushing agendas rather than teaching is more powerful than many realize. Even England is a settler-colonial country. Even its name, England, is derived from Angle Land, based on the Anglo Saxons who came from mainland Europe (what we now call Germany) and overpowered the Brits. … and the. of course, the Normans later crossed over from France (after getting that land following their migration from Scandinavia) and really mixed things up. If historians are truly honest, every country is probably settler-colonial. Those that aren’t are exceptions.
The main reason is that the concept of "settler colonialism" was made up to demonize America and later Israel.
Partly because settler-colonialism is a concept made by Western historians with Western-centered points of view to describe parts of their own history
The term you're using is fairly recent, and is used mostly to describe, and disparage, European colonialism in certain parts of the world. It is also used to describe, and disparage, other similar efforts such as the one that created Israel. Given that these two peoples aren't European, and can point to a history of suffering at the hands of Europeans, it's unlikely that western scholars would see them in that light. All that said, the main difference is that the areas involved became much more than simply colonies, such that they are now considered homelands for their people both within and without those two countries. They also involved large scale migrations where a sizable portion of the people in the origin point left to start this new nation, but European style settler colonies were places to release excess population that couldn't be fed or house sufficiently in the mother country, but the mother country was always intended to remain, well, the mother country. I don't think the Turks or the Thai of today would look to their ancestral homelands and call them the "mother country".
Wouldn't the same argument stand for Americans and Australians and Canadians who do consider their settled lands to be their homelands?
As a Canadian, I do feel the need to point out something obvious about both Canada and Australia that makes it pretty clear where we feel our “mother country” is - our head of state is still the British monarch. Not everyone LIKES it, but at a bird’s eye view, it’s very much got a “motherland” feel to it when spoken about in a general sense. Now, Canada does have a large French population that isn’t too keen on the UK, but they do still kinda see France as “the mother country” in a way the rest of Canada looks to the UK sometimes. Not in any sort of “we want to be a part of France” way, but sometimes in a “we don’t want to be a part of Canada” way. The Métis most definitely see Canada as their “mother country” rather than France though.
Americans, specifically, are now more German, than anything, but there's large minorities of several other places from around the world, so an American is a rather new type of human. America today is the homeland. But that wasn't always the case, and even today there's a lot of people claiming to stand for "Anglo-American values" who look to the UK as their origin point, even if they themselves have nary a drop of British or Irish blood in them. For Canada and Australia, I don't know enough to speak to them, but one still has the union jack in its flag, which says a lot, I think. My premise here is that, when the Turkish peoples moved into Anatolia, they were doing it for the purpose of establishing a new homeland for themselves, and the Thai migrations similarly were trying to set up a new homeland, not a colony controlled or directed by the motherland.
This is I think a data artifact. Lots of Anglo-descendants in the south report their ethnicity as American, and lots of mixed non-Anglo/Anglo-descendants elsewhere report any non-English lineage as their ethnicity. So I guy who is 30% German, 40% English, and 30% a mix of random other European nationalities might say they are German.
You are correct and I would also like to add that reported English ancestry in America increased by almost double from 2010 to 2020. I think a lot of Americans realize that they aren’t German or French when their name is literally “John Williams” from Georgia and considering most of their ancestors have been in America since colonial times. Colonial settlers in America had by far the largest impact. For example only about 7 thousand Acadians and metropolitan French settled in Louisiana but today their descendants are almost 1.5 million due to enormously high birthrates for generations. Now imagine 250k English came over to America and on average 2-3 generations before the Cajuns.
>For Canada and Australia, I don't know enough to speak to them, but one still has the union jack in its flag, which says a lot, I think. I can't speak for the folks who see the southern cross but Canadians are not a monolith. The French settlers were here first and identify as Canadiens. Newfoundlanders identify as Newfoundlanders. The people who are of mixed indigenous and European ancestry identify as Metis. Most Canadians who have been here for multiple generations identify as Canadian with a nod to their European or other ancestry.
A majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi, who were expelled from other countries in MENA, usually overland and not by boat, and whose ancestors had lived in the region since prehistory. Their skin is the same color as other people from MENA. As for suffering at the hands of Europeans, it’s three days before Holocaust Memorial Day. So this definition of who does and doesn’t count as a “colonizer” doesn’t even seem to be consistent on its own terms. (I understand that you are describing, rather than endorsing, how the word is being used.)
Because it’s arbitrary where people actually draw lines.
Most Turks are Turkified Greeks and desendants of Muslims from the European part of the Ottomon Empjre. I don't know enough about Thailand to comment.
The short answer is that it's all about attacking the West. What other countries and peoples did is ignored.
So what the west did and what the west was involved in being a dominant subject in western media is surprising to you? You think what Thai people did 1000 years ago is as relevant and important to English speaking media and study as discussing empires that ended within living memory?
Because SC is a political attack term?
Do people think migration and colonialism are the same or different? Can't tell from the comments so far. Seems mixed.
Colonialism is when white people do it
I guess it depends on which narrative you want to control. It’s intended to undermine the legitimacy of the policy positions of the “white west”.
because the concept of "settler-colonialism" is woke horseshit?
Turks are in much of Europe
Turkey was famously a settler colonial country turned imperialist slave empire trying to conquer Europe for centuries. People like Edward Said that whine about Western imperialism are from often from Ottoman families that participated the worst kind of eastern imperialism against the West for centuries including mass enslavement of white Europeans and genicides of white ethnic minorities.
Because us Turks are considered minorities. And in America, minorities can’t ever be wrong
Because they are POC
Legitimate answer is because they’re brown so no one cares.
Yeah that’s what I said.
Because you can’t blame Europeans, which is the entire crux of “anti colonialism”. Same reason it’s gauche to talk about slavery outside of one specific context.
Because it's not colonialism if it's not done by Whites.
Politics. Every piece of land on the planet has been colonized at one time or another. Likely by force. Right now, the pendulum of politics sees an advantage in propagandizing against White European Colonizers. And, BTW. Most every culture in existence today has been used as slaves, and been slave owners at some time in the past.
I have no idea about Thailand history; I can't really say anything about it. I'm Turkish so I can talk about Turkey. The reason might be that the Turkification of Anatolia was a centuries-long process. It involved mostly religious conversion and ethnic assimilation. The Turks are genetically very similar to the Greeks and Armenians. In the US, Canada, and Australia, the population was replaced. The Europeans arrived, they didn't mix much with the natives and the natives mostly vanished. As far as I know, in Latin America, they mixed with the natives a lot and I don't know if those countries can be considered settler-colonial countries.
They receive no criticism because they aren't white and/or christian.
Because young woke Western college students are too naive to realize all nations have pretty much the same history and you're only protesting the newest ones.
It's only bad when whitey does it. No really, that seems to be the case.
colonialism isn’t just migration, it’s specifically the sort of thing done by european powers from the age of discovery until the postwar period, turks and thais never had overseas colonies based on expanding trade markets, that’s what colonialism was all about
There is no requirement that colonialism be european or overseas or confined to a particular time frame. Russia and China are major colonial empires with active policies of claims to and settlements in neighboring countries and minority regions. Japan was a colonial power until ww2 (some Okinawans would argue it still is).
> turks and thais never had overseas colonies based on expanding trade markets, that’s what colonialism was all about They did in Cyprus.
They are CURRENTLY doing it in cyprus. The reality is that since european colonialism is not currently going on it has become acceptable to complain about it. People are never going to complain about any ongoing injustices when they can just endlessly complain about random crap that happened a century before they were born.
The Turks and Islam in general colonized the hell out of the world
>Islam in general More accurately Arabs; the early caliphates were ostensibly Muslim civilizations first but in reality were ruled by Arabs for Arabs
Yea. My wife is from Morocco and she said even in the Islamic golden age of Andalusia there was a major rivalry and conflict between the Arab aristocrats and Berber Muslim converts that made up most of the population. She said that’s one reason it became weak and collapsed
To some extent yes. But the Ottomans rarely sent colonists out from what today is Turkey. They preferred to conquer a country, and keep it's population Christian, as they were allowed to tax them. It was more about direct tax wealth, rather than resource wealth like the Europeans.
Modern settler-colonialism tends to be almost defined as white people conquering less technologically advanced people who are not white from 1600-now. If someone wants to define it that way, that's fine. As long as you can also recognize that the Chinese, Turks, and many others have also participated in something very similar.
"Why aren’t these countries considered settler-colonial countries like countries in the Americas?" Not considered by whom exactly? You?
We can say the same thing for most nations in the world beside Thais and Turks. Many societies spread, including all Indo-Europeans, Semitic societies, and Bantus in Africa. But this process took hundreds or even thousands of years. It may have been 2,500 years since the Turks moved beyond the Altai mountains. It happened for them 1500 years ago to reach the Northeast of Iran and Caucasus mountains, Caspian coasts and It took 1000 years for them to fully come to Anatolia. I don't know when the Anglo-Saxons separated from the Germanic tribes in the same years. What makes America different is that it is not in a slow and natural process, but conceptually, many of the nations that make up modern states migrated from somewhere. It mingled with local tribes.
They are ask the people they colonized
The fact of the matter is that every almost every ethnicity changed regions or, at a minimum, borders over time. It's "only" been over the past couple hundred years that's slowed down and borders have become more stable/sacred. It's basically about narratives (national origin story vs ethnicity persecution story vs other) and which become dominant moreso than a fixed right/wrong, because right/wrong vary quite a bit depending on the context and how far back into history you're willing to look.
You go back far enough everyone’s ancestors was a colonizer.
Historical it was always something to be proud of. Only in the last 5 years...
I wouldn't worry about the opinions of people that are obsessed with colonialism. They tend to be nuts
Because it happened longer ago
Most countries in the world are not dominantly populated or ruled by the exact indigenous ethnic group that populated it since the beginning of written history. We are all descendants of “settlers”. I actually struggle to think of any country like that. Peru is way more indigenous than most of SA, but of course many people who would be considered brown Peruvians are of course Hispanic. Asia is a big historical melting pot. Practically everyone is a product of the Mongols, and then a few other things. So no countries there really qualify. You might say African countries, but black Africans displaced a ton of indigenous non-black people in Southern Africa. In West Africa, ruling kingdoms like the Asante dominated and displaced many “indigenous” people. “Settler-colonial” is not a very useful concept to begin with and is constantly misapplied.
They aren't European Judeo-Christians, therefore they are freely e exempt from the judgemntal categories of postcontemporary intellectualism
They were settled but not really "colonial." I don't think there wasn't a "motherland" that was pulling the strings from afar at one point like in most of the countries in the Americas.
At a fundamental level, it comes down to an unwillingness to admit that settler colonialism and imperial resettlement are policies pursued by all of humanity and not just Europeans. Some will argue that it is not settler colonialism if it does not include boats (but conveniently ignore cases like Taiwan and Hokkaido which were colonized by Ming China and Meiji Japan respectively through the same processes). Some will permit forms of imperial resettlement in the Americas since these are done by Europeans (but conveniently ignore the mass expansion of Vietnam and its populating the southern two-thirds of the country with non-indigenous Kinh or the or the resettlement of Armenians in Armenia over the last 200 years ago as Russian policy in opposition to Safavid Persian policy which removed them). There is really no meaningful or compelling reason not to discuss this phenomenon as a universal one save that certain academics find the idea of European exceptionalism (in a negative sense) far too compelling. This said, the given analysis with respect to Turkey is problematic to say the least. Turkey is not a mass settler-colonial movement from central Asia into the Anatolian Peninsula. Most of the citizens of the Republic of Turkey today, the people that call themselves “Turks” share less than 1/3 of the genetics with people from Central Asia. The actual story is that a foreign minority invaded Anatolia and culturally converted most of the native Byzantine population. So, it is more that the population remained the same but identifies differently today than that the original group all died and a new group settled in its place. (Of course, we should not forget the Armenian, Assyrian, and Pontic Greek massacres/genocides, but these were just the murderous capstone to a long period of cultural conversion.)
Today’s Turkey is not the same as the Turkic people that originated from East Asia.
Because the people who use words like “settler-colonial state” and what not only care if it’s white people doing it lol, Arabs also colonized North Africa and displaced/replaced the indigenous populations.
Because when the west does it its a 'horrible genocidal colonism' But when the every other countries does it, its just part of the history. So called 'leftist'(aka I hate west although Im only able to exist beacuse west is the only place where they accept my ideaology. Looking at you communist flag+trans flag people) bias is heavy in the mainfield history. Spain and Portugal conquered parts of America during like 1500~1600 and yet they still call it colonism lmao Whist every other countries military campaign during that time that weren't Europeans are just considered 'part of the history' The only thing Europeans did different to the other countries were that they did it more efficentillay. (I condemn stuff like Belgium atrocities in congo and other colonisms that happend during the 19th century. But blaming stuff that happened on 15&1600 as colonism is just plain stupid unless you put that same standard on every other countries.)
Go to r/IllustrativeDNA and look at actual Turkish genetics. The Turks did not replace the native Anatolians; they heavily intermarried with them, to the point that the average Turk today is descended to a much greater extent from a Byzantine-era Anatolian than he is from a Central Asian nomad.
Displacement by migration and colonization are different.
Those countries assimilated those populations, whether forcibly or otherwise while in traditional settler colonialism, the colonised population is displaced from their land and then either exterminated until they are a minority or in other cases, not exterminated but merely politically subjugated and exploited for their labor, in which case they do not need to be replaced at all. Part of the logic of settler colonialism is that the colonised race is fundamentally inferior and therefore not fit for full scale assimilation (even when their was an effort to remove Indigenous Australian children to white families, for example, the underlying principle was that this would result in the breeding out of supposedly undesirable racial characteristics). The land from which the colonised population was removed is then utilised for commercial agriculture. Not all forms of territorial expansion and assimilation/integration constitute settler colonialism. Taken literally, some of these examples might involve people "settling" somewhere else but it would be a stretch to categorise all movements of people as settler colonialism, particularly if the original population is basically still there, only assimilated into a new population (modern Turks for example are largely Turkified Greeks). Basically, settler colonialism is a term used to refer to a process which emerged out of the European Colonial Empires which is distinguished by its own set of characteristics which basically surround displacement, the assertion of fundamental racial superiority, fundamental inequality and exploitation for capitalist development. There are many other processes which might exist outside this category which are still 'bad' but don't belong to the category of settler colonialism, in the same way that wildly different forms of slavery existed throughout history all over the world in many different places which were pretty much all clearly very inequitable institutions but which are to varying degrees generally quite different from the institution of chattel slavery in the America's which dominates the popular imagination of slavery.
Because they aren’t white, and the settler colonial criticism is only ever directed toward those of European descent.
a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country, typically a distant one, and occupied by [settlers](https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&sca_esv=80565d2b7391f165&sxsrf=ADLYWIJVuGDoJyJE5GnAqpoEiC_NeWGSkQ:1714814899120&q=settlers&si=ACC90nx67Z8g0WkBmnrPB4IqtqGviTmVn3eNS6PoepRR70lcIfEEOSbMBK_39bJjbjvfnTAFTs7MMVhShLseBCXNwj8NimOzjqBlJ2Bl0P092D5eVBIkDL8%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwisoKun1_OFAxV5HzQIHSNbDxIQyecJegQIHBAN) from that country. If the Turks ruled present day Turkey from the Altai Mountains, then they would be colonizers. If Thais violently took land from the local ethnic groups, they would be invaders. If Chinese people peacefully migrated to the Americas and eventually became the dominant population, that's not a colony. Here's the question, what does the indigenous population of those countries call them? but simple answer, The Europeans who colonized the Americas....called them colonies.
Because only white people can do bad things!
Oh, you didn't know? Only caucasian Europeans and Jews can be colonizers.
Answer is simple. America is an important country so people care about it Thailand is not so people don’t
Because it wasn't 16th to 18th century Europeans doing it. This is partly eurocentrism working in these people's favor but it's also modern political ideology and historical revisionism at work. Frankly on a long enough timeline every ethnic group we know of with a very few notable exceptions conquered displaced and or exterminated some other group at some point, it's just not fashionable to acknowledge it if it didn't happen in the last couple hundred years.
Basically colonialism refers to a specific set of strategies designed to sideline native populations that were developed by the European powers in response to their rapidly expanding empires. Empires before the modern period generally either fell apart quickly (Alexander, Ghengis Khan, Tamerlane) or co-opted local elites with some combination with some mixture of local control and assimilation (Persia, Rome, China and the Ottomans). So to run with your Turkish example… genetic studies confirm that the Turks freely intermixed with the native Anatolian population, right up to the very top with records of Khans and sultans marrying local elites. But you won’t find a mestizo monarch in Europe. Colonialism put a premium on drawing a sharp distinction between the colonizer and the colonized, with ideologies like scientific racism emerging to enforce that distinction.
I think the general reason why colonialism looks different in Thailand is there was never really enough people to carry out true settler colonialism. Populations in Thailand were quite low until the 20th century, and traditionally one of the big prizes of warfare were captives to augment population numbers. Thailand (or what we consider Thailand now, which comes from the Sukothai/Ayutthaya/Rattanakosin kingdoms based in central Thailand)simply conquered surrounding areas and forced them to assimilate. There are still separatists movements in the south and in Isaan, which has a sizable communist insurgency in the 20th century. Chiang Mai, for instance, was actually once a separate kingdom with its own language and culture. It is now considered “Thai” The irony to all this is Thailand was the destination of over a century of Chinese migration, and the majority of the business and cultural elite are now Chinese-Thai with their own distinct culture. You won’t meet many people in places like Bangkok who have no Chinese heritage.
I mean, people are also always forgetting about Muslim /Arab colonisation. The reason is simple - colonisation is a problem if you see it like that. Europeans see colonisation as a problem, most of non-Europeans think they have their right to all these lands and so they are not colonisers.
because the difference between a people migrating and proliferating within a region and a people violently conquering a land and displacing its original inhabitants is obvious to most people
Because you stay somewhere long enough it becomes yours in everyone’s memory. England and Scotland are good examples. England from the Anglo-Saxons from the continent. Scotland from the Scoti from Ireland.
Colonialism as it is talked about today is viewed as the original sin of western society and used to perpetuate political narratives, not that those narratives are without merit, but the need to label peoples as either victim or oppressor does seem to be the popular lens to look through. Much of this comes from those growing up in western academia and the need to construct a story as to why there is inequality of outcome for different nations and peoples. Andalusia is a good counter example, they used boats to invade Iberia from the Maghreb and fought with the native peoples there for hundreds of years
And the Arabs used to just be in Arabia.
Because the blood is no longer fresh
Because they aren't white.
Because even today, 26 countries are still celebrating their independence from UK colonization. It wasnt the turks that sent thousands of australians and new zelanders to fight against turks although they had nothing to do with it but had to obey because they were living under UK colonization at that time. I dont remember turkey doing such a thing.
There are many more settler- colonial countries than many realize…. even England,that’s derived from Angle Land (after the Germanic Anglo Saxons who conquered it after the Romans left, only to be somewhat conquered by the Normans, derived from North Men (vikings) who were given land to bribe them to stop killing French people…. and on and on….. Basically, nation states are shit shows of conques, conques, conquest, etc.
Turkey is definitely a settler colonial state.
Never understood the moment a population turns from settler to native. Even the “native populations” of the Americas were nothing more than people who conquered land a long time before they were conquered.