Scottish Independence: Quebec Edition

[Maximus]

really?  Americans did not feel Americans?  They all felt they were the same people as the soldiers of the Empire who recently disembarked in their lands?  They considered themselves loyal subjects of His Majesty and were ready to accept his rule&judgment just as any other British citizen was expected to?  In the preceding years, there were no feeling at all that they were abandonned by Great Britain, left to fend for themselves against the French & Indians?  No feeling that they should decide of their own war policies during the French&Indian Wars?  No resentment against heavy taxation from a Tyrant oversea, Great Britain's legitimate ruler, in the years to come?  No feeling that they were treated differently than other British subjects?

Many of those things have nothing to do with nationalism.

Most of them are though. Did they feel American? Was there a sense of difference - and will for self-reliance - about Americans than Britain? Those are feelings of American nationalism.

I'm not sure what you are saying here, aside from the misquote.

However to address some of viper's questions now that I have some time, the only one that has anything to do with nationalism is the first one:

They all felt they were the same people as the soldiers of the Empire who recently disembarked in their lands?

My understanding is yes, they saw themselves as the same people for the most part. The grievances against British soldiers weren't that they were foreigners, but that they perpetrated and enforced what were viewed as unjust practices. The soldiers that were actually viewed as foreigners were the Hessian mercenaries and that was a separate grievance.

[Barrister]

Now, in point of fact, some places were temporarily not inhabited when European colonization took place - mostly because of inter-native wars, such as the infamous war of extermination between the Iroquous confederacy and the Hurons.

That is clearly bullshit.

We all know Native Americans just rode around on their horses "counting coup" on each other - war for them was really more of a sport, to pass the time between their careful husbandry of the forest and occasional hunting of a deer or buffalo, which they scrupulously used all of for some purpose after asking the animals forgiveness for any pain they may have caused.

Umm, everything you said is true - up to a point.

Native Amnerican war wasn't just counting coup, but was not "wars of extermination" either.  They would kill a brave or two, maybe still some women, but mostly just try and drive the other tribe off of the lands.

The evidence is they were involved in careful husbandry of the forest / plains.  They did scrupulously use every part of the animal (more driven by need, but they did thank the animal for giving itself to them).

[Malthus]

Now, in point of fact, some places were temporarily not inhabited when European colonization took place - mostly because of inter-native wars, such as the infamous war of extermination between the Iroquous confederacy and the Hurons.

That is clearly bullshit.

We all know Native Americans just rode around on their horses "counting coup" on each other - war for them was really more of a sport, to pass the time between their careful husbandry of the forest and occasional hunting of a deer or buffalo, which they scrupulously used all of for some purpose after asking the animals forgiveness for any pain they may have caused.

Umm, everything you said is true - up to a point.

Native Amnerican war wasn't just counting coup, but was not "wars of extermination" either.  They would kill a brave or two, maybe still some women, but mostly just try and drive the other tribe off of the lands.

The evidence is they were involved in careful husbandry of the forest / plains.  They did scrupulously use every part of the animal (more driven by need, but they did thank the animal for giving itself to them).

What happened between the Iroquois and the Huron could, without exageration, be described as a "war of extermination". Certainly, thousands were killed or captured, not just "a brave or two". These were major wars with tens of thousands of combatants in which whole peoples were destroyed or driven off of their lands.

You are heavily romanticizing native north americans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Wars

The wars were brutal and are considered one of the bloodiest series of conflicts in the history of North America. As the Iroquois succeeded in the war and enlarged their territory, they realigned the tribal geography of North America, and destroyed several large tribal confederacies—including the Huron, Neutral, Erie, Susquehannock, and Shawnee—and pushed some eastern tribes west of the Mississippi River, or southward into the Carolinas. The Iroquois also controlled the Ohio Valley lands as hunting ground, from about 1670 onward, as far as can be determined from contemporary French (Jesuit) accounts. The Ohio Country and the Lower Peninsula of Michigan were virtually emptied of Native people as refugees fled westward to escape Iroquois warriors. (Much of this region was later repopulated by Native peoples nominally subjected to the Six Nations; see Mingo.)

Both Algonquian and Iroquoian societies were greatly disrupted by these wars. The conflict subsided with the loss by the Iroquois of their Dutch allies in the New Netherland colony, and with a growing French objective to gain the Iroquois as an ally against English encroachment. After the Iroquois became trading partners with the English, their alliance was a crucial component of the later English expansion. They used the Iroquois conquests as a claim to the old Northwest Territory.

[Maximus]

I would be very surprised if one could accurately generalize like that for hundreds of tribes over an entire continent.

[garbon]

really?  Americans did not feel Americans?  They all felt they were the same people as the soldiers of the Empire who recently disembarked in their lands?  They considered themselves loyal subjects of His Majesty and were ready to accept his rule&judgment just as any other British citizen was expected to?  In the preceding years, there were no feeling at all that they were abandonned by Great Britain, left to fend for themselves against the French & Indians?  No feeling that they should decide of their own war policies during the French&Indian Wars?  No resentment against heavy taxation from a Tyrant oversea, Great Britain's legitimate ruler, in the years to come?  No feeling that they were treated differently than other British subjects?

Many of those things have nothing to do with nationalism.

Most of them are though. Did they feel American? Was there a sense of difference - and will for self-reliance - about Americans than Britain? Those are feelings of American nationalism.

Sure now those things exist, but then?

[Razgovory]

Now, in point of fact, some places were temporarily not inhabited when European colonization took place - mostly because of inter-native wars, such as the infamous war of extermination between the Iroquous confederacy and the Hurons.

That is clearly bullshit.

We all know Native Americans just rode around on their horses "counting coup" on each other - war for them was really more of a sport, to pass the time between their careful husbandry of the forest and occasional hunting of a deer or buffalo, which they scrupulously used all of for some purpose after asking the animals forgiveness for any pain they may have caused.

Umm, everything you said is true - up to a point.

Native Amnerican war wasn't just counting coup, but was not "wars of extermination" either.  They would kill a brave or two, maybe still some women, but mostly just try and drive the other tribe off of the lands.

The evidence is they were involved in careful husbandry of the forest / plains.  They did scrupulously use every part of the animal (more driven by need, but they did thank the animal for giving itself to them).

Eh.  No.  Those are enormous generalization about people inhabiting an entire continent.  Plains Indians were known to drive buffaloes off cliffs creating much more meat then could be carried away are used.  There are many species of mega fauna that are extinct from when the the paleo-Indians arrived.  We know of places where large numbers of Indians were killed violently in one place.  Driving people off their land is going to result in the destruction of a people.  Even if they find new land they are going to have to take it from somewhere else.  The end result is extermination.  There are plenty of examples of that.  It's now believed that the sedentary peoples sometimes overextended the carrying capacity of the land resulting in collapses.

[Maximus]

Nationalism isn't about grievance, though that's often a motivating factor. It's about a sense of separate identity especially culturally and believing that because of that it needs its own political expression around that geographic, ethnic or civic identity.

Nationalism based on civic or geographic identity? That's a lot more broad definition than I am used to, and seems awfully close to defining any meaning out of the term.

If you define it that way then sure, the American revolutionaries were nationalists. Pretty much any halfway-functional, halfway-westernized state is a nation-state.

[Barrister]

Now, in point of fact, some places were temporarily not inhabited when European colonization took place - mostly because of inter-native wars, such as the infamous war of extermination between the Iroquous confederacy and the Hurons.

That is clearly bullshit.

We all know Native Americans just rode around on their horses "counting coup" on each other - war for them was really more of a sport, to pass the time between their careful husbandry of the forest and occasional hunting of a deer or buffalo, which they scrupulously used all of for some purpose after asking the animals forgiveness for any pain they may have caused.

Umm, everything you said is true - up to a point.

Native Amnerican war wasn't just counting coup, but was not "wars of extermination" either.  They would kill a brave or two, maybe still some women, but mostly just try and drive the other tribe off of the lands.

The evidence is they were involved in careful husbandry of the forest / plains.  They did scrupulously use every part of the animal (more driven by need, but they did thank the animal for giving itself to them).

Eh.  No.  Those are enormous generalization about people inhabiting an entire continent.  Plains Indians were known to drive buffaloes off cliffs creating much more meat then could be carried away are used.  There are many species of mega fauna that are extinct from when the the paleo-Indians arrived.  We know of places where large numbers of Indians were killed violently in one place.  Driving people off their land is going to result in the destruction of a people.  Even if they find new land they are going to have to take it from somewhere else.  The end result is extermination.  There are plenty of examples of that.  It's now believed that the sedentary peoples sometimes overextended the carrying capacity of the land resulting in collapses.

The death of megafauna by native americans is quite dubious.  Megafauna died all over.  We have little to justify any possible explanation.

Tribes would drive bison off a cliff (there's a famous spot in Alberta - Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump), but they were quite effective in processing and curing the meat.

Driving people off their land is in fact quite disruptive and may even result in death - didn't mean to imply otherwise.  But what they didn't do is just start butchering entire tribes left and right.  They fought the warriors, took women as wives and drove off or destroyed enemy tribes in that fashion.

[The Minsky Moment]

If we are being honest, Europeans did bring a lot of bad stuff to Canada.
On the plus side, they did plant Riesling.

[garbon]

Driving people off their land is in fact quite disruptive and may even result in death - didn't mean to imply otherwise.  But what they didn't do is just start butchering entire tribes left and right.  They fought the warriors, took women as wives and drove off or destroyed enemy tribes in that fashion.

This sounds a bit too much like a narrative of noble savages.

[mongers]

Given this is quite an important* current issue, can we hive the off Native American/colonization discussion into another thread?





* a country could cease to exist** in a few days by peaceful means.


** well the divorce is decided and the breakup begins.

[Malthus]

Driving people off their land is in fact quite disruptive and may even result in death - didn't mean to imply otherwise.  But what they didn't do is just start butchering entire tribes left and right.  They fought the warriors, took women as wives and drove off or destroyed enemy tribes in that fashion.

They didn't commit Nazi-style extermination, that is true. But if you read about the Iroquis wars, they were pretty damn brutal within the limitations of their tech. Certainly, is isn't a disservice to the historical record to describe depopulation of what are now almost entire states/provinces as "wars of extermination". Yes, often some of the women were spared (basically, captured and raped, then forcibly incorporated into the winning tribe), and yes many survirors escaped the reach of the enemy by running far, far away, but the net effect was thousands of deaths and large areas completely depopulated.

The notion that native american warfare was always a matter of ceremonyial counting coup, with maybe a warrior killed, is simply wrong. It is romanticism, and applying what may have been true in one time and place to all times and places. It is the equivalent of describing the Thirty Years War in terms of "knighly jousting".

[Razgovory]

We have a very good idea why Megafauna died out.  Their extinction across the world matches up to when modern people showed up!  But, yeah, butchering whole tribes was something that was done.  Here's an example

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_Creek_massacre

These sites are hard to find, due to the fact that nobody who involved was literate and had stone age technology.  But yeah, all these "Noble Savage" myths are bullshit.

[garbon]

Given this is quite an important* current issue, can we hive the off Native American/colonization discussion into another thread?

* a country could cease to exist** in a few days by peaceful means.

Hardly seems more important than many of the other "current issues" we are discussing.

[Berkut]

Driving people off their land is in fact quite disruptive and may even result in death - didn't mean to imply otherwise.  But what they didn't do is just start butchering entire tribes left and right.  They fought the warriors, took women as wives and drove off or destroyed enemy tribes in that fashion.

This sounds a bit too much like a narrative of noble savages.

Of course it is - the reality is that there was nothing "special" about human being sliving in North America versus anywhere else in the world. They killed, raped, warred on one another, destroyed their environment, acting like assholes, etc., etc. etc.

There was nothing about their culture that was any different from other cultures around the world in that particular stage of social evolution.