[geeks] Now for something completely geek

[Mike Meredith]

On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 16:30:27 -0400 (EDT), Sandwich Maker wrote:
> the mughals -were- mongols, in india.  i see your point though.

That would explain why I confuse the two :)

> being of norman ancestry [if you go back far enough] myself, i've long
> found the what ifs intriguing.  england lost their substantial french
> holdings through royal ineptitude.

Given the length of time involved, it was more to do with luck ... the
French were lucky their incompetent monarchs were around at less
critical times than the English. Oddly the English/British monarchs
claimed the throne of France until 1802!

Even more oddly the British monarchs still claim title to the Duchy of
Normandy with justification ... the French kings threw the English kings
out of Normandy itself, but not out of the Channel islands which was
part of the Duchy. Norman French was used until recently (possibly still
is) for legal purposes in the Channel islands.

> i don't think germany counts.  britain had a lot of help, and their
> objective wasn't to add germany permanently to their territory.

Once you're in control of a region, it's your decision on whether to
keep the territory even if it wasn't your intention to keep it
initially. And whilst the British certainly had plenty of help, they
still did plenty of the work themselves.

> france and spain i can't honestly speak to.

Pretty much the same applies ... it wasn't the intention to hold on to
the territory. Britain traditionally (since the Spanish armada) fights
in Europe to keep wars some distance away. Of course there's the oddity
of Gibraltar.

> an influence.  enormous?  other european countries had
> colonies/territories as near - france in particular.

I'd say enormous. The German empire was pathetically small in
comparison, and the French empire was still quite a bit smaller.
Although the Spanish still had a fair amount of territory in the 19thC,
they were busy trying to lose it. I'm not sure whether distance is
really relevant here.

The combination of the largest empire in history (and the most populous)
together with an industrial revolution caused Britain to be the dominant
superpower of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Before the
Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, the Royal Navy had a policy of
maintaining the size of their fleet at twice the size of the next
nearest navy.

> i've heard it said that modern-day hispanic macho is a cultural relic
> from the attitudes of those long-ago arabs.

So have I, although the hispanic macho tendency also applies in areas of
Spain that were never subject to Arab rule.

> it's also fascinating to discover how much we influenced china via
> that same silk road.  chili peppers...

I guess that would be true, although I don't know enough about Chinese
history to say. In fact I don't know enough about any history :)

> it's sad to see well-intentioned arabic/moslem leaders wanting to re-
> establish an islamic golden age such as they enjoyed six centuries
> ago, when they don't understand that flowering depended on the
> hammerlock they had on east-west trade, and the money they could

I wish them all the luck in the world ... an Islamic world reflecting
the attitudes of the Islamic golden age would be much more palatable
than the kind of Islam promoted by the fundamentalists. I'm not sure the
golden age was driven purely by the profits of the east-west trade ...
some at least must have been the result of open-mindedness and
tolerance.

> there's one other empire whose influence we should reckon - the
> catholic empire.  for much of the last two millennia the bishop of
> rome has been more powerful than kings, even in europe.

Indeed. My attitude to them is just about summed up by Lemmy from
Motorhead :-

I am the one, Orgasmatron, the outstretched grasping hand
My image is of agony, my servants rape the land
Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain
Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name
Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law
My name is called religion, sadistic, sacred whore.

(Orgasmatron)