450 posts IS a worse crime than wanting to kill us .
POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Friday, May 22, 2009 14:59
VIEWED: 29463
PAGE 45 of 46
Quote:Well, that’s one way to show that you have no idea what the discussion is about.
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Two Words. The. Crusades.
Hey, if you're willing to dig back a thousand years or more to prove how America isn't an empire, can't I do the same to show how Christian fundamentalists are bloodthirsty and destructive?
Just wanna make sure we're playing by the same rules.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:The US is not an empire in any way that would make comparisons between Rome sensible. The point was brought up when I used Rome as the model for the caste system of European aristocracy, and contrasted it with the modern concept of liberalism.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Um... okay. Was there a relationship between that point and the topic of whether the USA is an empire? I might have missed it.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:I’ll be interested to see what you come up with.
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
Finn-
I'm going to have to get back to you on that. I have a big library at my disposal, but very limited time right now. Soon as I've compiled my "evidence", I'll be back here. Thanks you for your patience!
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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"Actually both of those (the Mahabharata and the Ramayana) are written texts."
Written AFTER thousands of years of oral retelling. Just as, for example, the bible was written only after centuries, or more likely millenia, of verbal retelling.
(You don't REALLY think Adam and Even wrote their memoirs for posterity, do you ?)
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:Quote:I’ll be interested to see what you come up with.
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
Finn-
I'm going to have to get back to you on that. I have a big library at my disposal, but very limited time right now. Soon as I've compiled my "evidence", I'll be back here. Thanks you for your patience!
I decided to go the easy way and use wikipedia first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_peoples#Society
"A main element uniting Germanic societies is kingship, in origin a sacral institution combining the functions of military leader, high priest, lawmaker and judge. Germanic monarchy was elective, the king was elected by the free men from among elegible candidates of a family (OE cynn) tracing their ancestry to the tribe's divine or semi-divine founder.
In early Germanic society, the free men of property each ruled their own estate and were subject to the king directly, without any intermediate hierarchy as in later feudalism. Free men without landed property could swear fealty to a man of property who as their lord would then be responsible for their upkeep, including generous feasts and gifts. This system of sworn retainers was central to early Germanic society, and the loyalty of the retainer to his lord was taken to replace his family ties.
Early Germanic law reflects a hierarchy of worth within the society of free men, reflected in the differences in weregild. Among the Anglo-Saxons, a regular free man (a ceorl) had a weregild of 200 shillings (i.e. solidi or gold pieces), classified as a twyhyndeman "200-man" for this reason, while a nobleman commanded a fee of six times that amount (twelfhyndeman "1200-man"). Similarly, among the Alamanni the basic weregild for a free men was 200 shillings, and the amount could be doubled or trebled according to the man's rank. Unfree serfs did not command a weregild, and the recompense paid in the event of their death was merely for material damage, 15 shillings in the case of the Alamanni, increased to 40 or 50 if the victim had been a skilled artisan."
If that doesn't sound like the solid basis for later feudalism, I don't know what would.
"Traditional Germanic society is gradually replaced by the system of estates and feudalism characteristic of the High Middle Ages in both the Holy Roman Empire and Anglo-Norman England in the 11th to 12th centuries, to some extent under the influence of Roman law as an indirect result of Christianization, but also because political structures had grown too large for the flat hierarchy of a tribal society."
To some extent. That's all. Feudalism, based on the existing system of fealty, certainly wasn't modeled after Roman patrician/plebeian relations.
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More than writing, the ONE thing necessary for a fixed hierarchy is agriculture, or some form of reliable surplus. Hierarchies are unproductive. The people at the top suck up resources rather than generate them. In order to keep them going year after year, generation after generation, you need a reliable source of support for them. Agriculture generally fills that role. I know of no other surplus source, though it seems possible there would be examples.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
The US is not an empire in any way that would make comparisons between Rome sensible.
Sounds like the self-serving rhetoric of American ethnocentrism. You have yet to explain the annexation of the territories outside of the original thirteen colonies. The wars waged against the Native American's, Mexicans and Spanish. The genocide of the natives of the Philippines.
So you're wrong, America was and is, in fact, an expanding territorial Empire. The American's certainly displaced local populations when they could, i.e. reservations.
Sounds to me like you're splitting hairs and denying definitions in order to suit some imperial ethnocentric perspective. I think maybe you don't want to believe that the American Empire is in fact an Empire, because such a thing insults your feelings of Americanism. You want to pretend that nations that were conquered and ruled by the Americans weren't really conquered and ruled. But in fact they were and they became part of the American Empire. Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, all states won through conquest (not counting the wars with the Natives). They were all conquered and became territorially part of the American Empire. You don't have to accept it, but it remains a fact nonetheless.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Well, that’s one way to show that you have no idea what the discussion is about.
And that's another.
Mike
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
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Quote:So? You don’t actually think the story of Adam and Eve remained unchanged and unembellished over thousands of years of retelling, do you? A better example is Exodus though. I’m not sure the Israelis existed exactly at that time; they were the Hebrews back then, and t hey weren’t in bondage as much as they were an Egyptian ethnicity. Some warlike clan or federation of clans of Hebrews probably weren’t content to be part of the Egyptian working class and instead lived a semi-nomadic life, raiding and pillage nearby Punic settlements until they eventually invaded and conquered some region gaining political control. But a few hundreds years of oral tradition and Moses is leading the Children of Israel across the Red Sea out of Egyptian bondage to the Promised Land. Who knows what Moses would have accomplished had there been a few more centuries before some Jew put pen to papyrus.
Originally posted by rue:
"Actually both of those (the Mahabharata and the Ramayana) are written texts."
Written AFTER thousands of years of oral retelling. Just as, for example, the bible was written only after centuries, or more likely millenia, of verbal retelling.
(You don't REALLY think Adam and Even wrote their memoirs for posterity, do you ?)
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:Thanks for looking into it, but of course, I’ve already read the Wikipedia article. I was hoping you had amore in-depth source, since authoritative, comprehensive and interpretative texts on Ancient German social structure is hard to come by. The Wikipedia article says little about Pre-Roman Germanic society and instead talks about mostly post-classical Germanic society. It specifically mentions the Anglo-Saxons and the Alemanni, both of which were late antiquity Germanic confederations of tribes that had already had significant interactions with the Romans.
Originally posted by AgentRouka:
To some extent. That's all. Feudalism, based on the existing system of fealty, certainly wasn't modeled after Roman patrician/plebeian relations.
What is being described sounds like it could have come directly from the Romans, and in fact, if you follow the link for “Early Germanic Law,” it specifically states that Roman law played a big part in Early German legal codes. Furthermore, if you follow the links to the articles describing the individual Germanic codices, you’ll note that many of them specifically spell out rules for succession of the thrown. Once again, this goes back to the idea that a stable ruling nobility requires a legal framework to function.
What I’m interested in understanding is the social structure of Germanic tribes in the Early Antiquity, prior to Roman interaction. It is my assertion that at this time, the German society was composed of small clans lead by a chieftain backed by a warrior class, and while this chieftain may have traced his lineage to the divine, the other clan members shared in that lineage. That is to say that the society was not broken into castes of nobility and peasantry, but it was united by clan loyalty to a chief warlord. There was little specialization, and everyone shared in the toils and spoils of the clan.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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