Published on 12, July, 2020
Please share your interest to me through these questions. Feel free to answer as you wish but use the questions as a guide please.
Now, I am definitely more interested in your interests than mine but wanted to share my own as a warmup.
I am so happy to read what passion you have in your life, how it came to you and how it reveals itself.
I think that it would be essentially impossible to have a unique interest, what ever the subject there is bound to be at least one other person in the world with the same fixation. My obscure or unusual interests include: Napoleonic period cavalry, the Byzantine Empire in the Komnenian period (1080-1185), vintage and antique pocket watches, and their chains.
What interests you about that specific period of the Byzantine Empire?
It is a period of fight-back by the Empire from a nadir of military defeats and the loss of territory to the Normans in southern Italy, the Hungarians in the western Balkans, and, worst of all, the loss of Anatolia to the Seljuk Turks. It was also dominated by relations with Western Europe, particularly through interactions with the Crusades. The period was overseen by three generations of exceptionally talented rulers, Alexios I, John II and Manuel I of the Komnenos dynasty. It is also quite well covered by contemporary histories written by well-placed witnesses: Anna Komnene (daughter of Alexios I), her husband Nikephoros Bryennios, John Kinnamos (probably a military secretary of Manuel I) and Niketas Choniates (a prominent bureaucrat). Therefore, there is quite a considerable amount of historical detail available.
I was really talking about the Chinese government's interaction with Uigurs, Tibetans, Mongols, Tai etc. minorities within China. Empires are multi-ethic states with one ethnicity, or possibly two ethnicities (e.g. Italic and Greek in the Roman Empire) effectively calling the shots, culturally overwhelming and ruling the others. Imperialism does not have to involve Africa at all.
I'd say China has it economic interests in Africa along with the West. Whether that is Imperialism or not probably depends on defined terms. You can best believe that money is more important to these corporations that the people of Africa are.
Russia and China are contemporary empires. In both, a dominant ethnicity rules over many other ethnicities. China is probably the worst empire in history, because it is not content in ruling over many ethnicities, it actively seeks to overwhelm minorities by colonisation by Han Chinese, and at the same time force minorities to become indistinguishable from the Han Chinese.
There doesn't appear to be any clamour in the the world for the return of Empire. The negatives seem to outweigh the positives for the populations that were subjected to imperial domination.
I was pointing out the positive side, I'm aware of the negatives, but, as I said, we need a balanced picture. Also it is inaccurate to say that the British Empire 'caused' famines, it certainly didn't in Ireland - a potato disease caused that - but the British authorities did things that made it worse, when they could have alleviated it. Far, far more people died of disease than through starvation and the way the authorities organised what relief they provided, ensured ideal conditions for the spread of contagious disease. In India, famines happened before the British took over, of course. In the 1630-32 famine, for example, the Mughal emperor dispersed 100,000 rupees for famine relief, a tenth of the annual "pin-money" granted his empress Mumtaz Mahal, so pre-British famine relief was not adequate either. The Mughal Empire had fallen apart before the British became major players in India, they did not cause it. The last effective Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, was an intolerant Muslim zealot, which was obviously not in the interests of the majority of his subjects. The British were not religiously intolerant, which was an improvement. The India that the British took over was a patchwork of religious, ethnic and dynastic states, often at war with each other. The idea of an Indian nation state was essentially non-existent, in many ways the creation of India (other than culturally) was the result of British involvement in the sub-continent.
The British Empire also caused famine in India and Ireland. Neither of those countries are grateful for British rule today. For obvious reasons of pride and self respect.
Most empires can be described as having both beneficial and malign influences. The Byzantine Empire codified Roman law, which is the basis of most European law systems to this day. It helped to preserve aspects of classical literature and philosophy for future generations. It Christianised and civilised many future eastern European nations - Bulgarians, Serbs, Russians etc. The British Empire, as well as profiting from the slave trade, also ended it, through the exercise of naval power. Would India, the world's largest parliamentary democracy, have been a democracy if not for the British Empire? I doubt it.
I think that the world is better without empires. However the larger countries can still control the smaller ones through subtler means in todays world.
Do you think life would have been better if those empires never existed? The brittish empire have indeed caused a lot of problems for other humans. "The Nazy empire (Hitler)", "The califat (Islamic State)"
Empires might have caused both death and life, I would love to know more how society would have been without them or with more of them. There is a lot to research about your topic.
How empires have affected the world around it.
History is just great. There's so much to learn. Thankyou for your very interesting response Martin.
Excellent precis of the era for people (like me) who know little of it. Thank you.