History What are some of your most contraversial takes on history?

WolfBear

Well-known member
I think that had the Byzantine Empire permanently survived with its 1180 borders or even without its Anatolian possessions (minus Constantinople), it could have become the Austria-Hungary of the Balkans. I see a map of Europe in 1914 and I see three giant states: Germany, A-H, and Russia, and a bunch of small, insignificant, and largely irrelevant states in the Balkans. Byzantium would have been Stronk and Proud! ;)
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
The Serbian s firmly proved that one person really can change the world and why that's a bad thing.

Can you imagine that the events of the short 20th century (1914-1991) were sparked by a Serbian teenager with a gun who got two lucky shots? :(
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
Here's a controversial opinion.

The British were not the puppy kicking, mustache twirling, villains of 1776. And King George III was not the tyrant many modern Americans believe him to be.

Gwern actually argues that the Americans supported the wrong side in their revolutionary war:


In middle school, we were assigned a pro-con debate about the American Revolution; I happened to be on the pro side, but as I read through the arguments, I became increasingly disturbed and eventually decided that the pro-Revolution arguments were weak or fallacious.
The Revolution was a bloodbath with ~100,000 casualties or fatalities followed by 62,000 Loyalist/Tory refugees fleeing the country for fear of retaliation and their expropriation (the ones who stayed did not escape persecution); this is a butcher’s bill that did not seem justified in the least by anything in Britain or America’s subsequent history (what, were the British going to randomly massacre Americans for fun?), even now with a population of >300 million, and much less back when the population was 1/100th the size. Independence was granted to similar English colonies at the smaller price of “waiting a while”: Canada was essentially autonomous by 1867 (less than a century later) and Australia was first settled in 1788 with autonomous colonies not long behind and the current Commonwealth formed by 1901. (Nor did Canada or Australia suffer worse at England’s hands during the waiting period than, say, America in that time suffered at its own hands.) In the long run, independence may have been good for the USA, but this would be due to sheer accident: the British were holding the frontier at the Appalachians (see Royal Proclamation of 1763), and Napoleon likely would not have been willing engage in the Louisiana Purchase with English colonies inasmuch as he was at war with England. (Assuming we see this as a good thing: Bryan Caplan describes that as removing “the last real check on American aggression against the Indians”.)
Neither of these is a very strong argument; the British could easily have revoked the Proclamation in face of the colonial resistance (and in practice did16), and Napoleon could not hold onto New France for very long against the British fleets. The argument from ‘freedom’ is a buzzword or unsupported by the facts - Canada and Australia are hardly hellhole bastions of totalitarianism, and are ranked by Freedom House as being as free as the USA. (Steve Sailer asks “Yet how much real difference did the very different political paths of America and Canada make in the long run?”; could we have been Canada?)
And there are important arguments for the opposite, that America would have been better off under British rule - Britain ended slavery very early on and likely would have ended slavery in the colonies as well. (Some have argued that with continued control of the southern colonies, Britain would have not been able to do this; but the usual arguments for the Revolution center on the tyranny of Britain - so was the dog wagging the tail or the tail the dog?) The South crucially depended on England’s tacit support (seeing the South as a counterweight to the dangerous North?), so the American Civil War would either never have started or have been suppressed very quickly. The Civil War would also have lacked its intellectual justification of states’ rights if the states had remained Crown colonies. The Civil War was so bloody and destructive17 that avoiding it is worth a great deal indeed. And then there comes WWI and WWII. It is not hard to see how America remaining a colony would have been better for both Europe and America.
Aside from the better outcomes for slaves and Indians, it’s been suggested that America would have benefited from maintaining a parliamentary constitutional-monarchy democracy rather than inventing its particular president-oriented republic (a view that has some more appeal in the 2000s, but is more broadly supported by the popularity of parliamentary democracies globally and their apparent greater stability & success compared to the more American-style systems in unstable & coup-prone Latin America).
Since that paradigm shift in middle school, my view has changed little:
  • Crane Brinton’s The Anatomy of Revolution confirmed my beliefs with statistics about the economic class of participants: naked financial self-interest is not a very convincing argument for plunging a country into war, given that England had incurred substantial debt defending and expanding the colonies and their tax burden - that they endlessly complained of - was comically tiny compared to England proper. One of the interesting points Brinton makes was that contrary to the universal belief, revolutions do not universally tend to occur at times of poverty or increasing wealth inequality; indeed, before the American revolution, the colonists were less taxed, wealthier & more equal than the English.
  • continuing the economic theme, the burdens on the American colonists such as the Navigation Acts are now considered to not be burdensome at all, but negligible or positive, especially compared to independence. Famed Scottish economist Adam Smith supported the Navigation Acts as a critical part of the Empire’s defense18 (which included the American colonies; but see again the colonies’ gratitude for the French-Indian War). Their light burden has become economic history consensus since the discussion was sparked in the 1960s (eg. Thomas 1965, Thomas 1968): in 1994, 198 economic historians were surveyed asked several questions on this point finding that:
    1. 132 disagreed with the proposition “One of the primary causes of the American Revolution was the behavior of British and Scottish merchants in the 1760s and 1770s, which threatened the abilities of American merchants to engage in new or even traditional economic pursuits.”
    2. 178 agreed or partially agreed that “The costs imposed on the colonists by the trade restrictions of the Navigation Acts were small.”
    3. 111 disagreed that “The economic burden of British policies was the spark to the American Revolution.”
    4. 117 agreed or partially agreed that “The personal economic interests of delegates to the Constitutional Convention generally had a [substantial] effect on their voting behavior.”
  • Mencius Moldbug discussed good deal of primary source material which supported my interpretation.
    I particularly enjoyed his description of the Pulitzer-winning The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, a study of the popular circulars and essays (of which Thomas Paine’s Common Sense is only the most famous): the author finds that the rebels and their leaders believed there was a conspiracy by English elites to strip them of their freedoms and crush the Protestants under the yoke of the Church of England.
    Bailyn points out that no traces of any such conspiracy has ever been found in the diaries or memorandums or letters of said elites. Hence the Founding Fathers were, as Moldbug claimed, exactly analogous to 9/11 Truthers or Birthers. Moldbug further points out that reality has directly contradicted their predictions, as both the Monarchy and Church of England have seen their power continuously decreasing to their present-day ceremonial status, a diminution in progress long before the American Revolution.
  • Possibly on Moldbug’s advice, I then read volume 1 of Murray Rothbard’s Conceived in Liberty. I was unimpressed. Rothbard seems to think he is justifying the Revolution as a noble libertarian thing (except for those other scoundrels who just want to take over); but all I saw were scoundrels.
  • Attempting to take an outside view and ignore the cult built up around the Founding Fathers, viewing them as a cynical foreigner might, the Fathers do not necessarily come off well.
    For example, one can compare George Washington to Robert Mugabe: both led a guerrilla revolution of British colonies against the country which had built their colony up into a wealthy regional powerhouse, and they or their allies employed mobs and terrorist tactics; both oversaw hyperinflation of their currency; both expropriated politically disfavored groups, and engaged in give-aways to supporters (Mugabe redistributed land to black supporters, Washington approved Alexander Hamilton’s assumption of states’ war-debts - an incredible windfall for the Hamilton-connected speculators, who supported the Federalist party); both were overwhelmingly voted into office and commanded mass popularity even after major failures of their policies became evident (economic growth & hyperinflation for Mugabe, the Whiskey Rebellion for Washington), being hailed as fathers of their countries; and both wound up one of, if not the, most wealthy men in the country (Mugabe’s fortune has been estimated at anywhere from $3b to $10b; Washington, in inflation-adjusted terms, has been estimated at $0.5b).
  • Jeremy Bentham amusingly eviscerates the Independence’s complaints
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
I wouldn't quite go that far, as I don't think there are any true "villains" in the American War of Independence. I just feel Britain gets vilified far too much.

Yeah, sounds reasonable.

Anyway, off-topic, but Russian Tsar Nicholas II should have thrown Serbia under the bus in 1914, similar to what the Anglo-French did for Czechoslovakia in 1938, what a surviving JFK would have likely done for South Vietnam in 1965, and what Joe Biden did for Afghanistan in 2021. Serbia's continued independence was not worth the lives of millions of young and middle-aged European men, that's for sure! And Russia was only a Serbian ally since 1903 or so, so it wouldn't be a huge sacrifice or loss for Russia to lose Serbia.
 

TheRomanSlayer

Unipolarity is for Subhuman Trogdolytes
Yeah, sounds reasonable.

Anyway, off-topic, but Russian Tsar Nicholas II should have thrown Serbia under the bus in 1914, similar to what the Anglo-French did for Czechoslovakia in 1938, what a surviving JFK would have likely done for South Vietnam in 1965, and what Joe Biden did for Afghanistan in 2021. Serbia's continued independence was not worth the lives of millions of young and middle-aged European men, that's for sure! And Russia was only a Serbian ally since 1903 or so, so it wouldn't be a huge sacrifice or loss for Russia to lose Serbia.
That would mean Russia loses whatever is left of their influence in the Balkans. Bulgaria was already lost, Greece is firmly in the Anglo-French bloc, and Romania is a pissed at the Russians because of Bessarabia. Throwing Serbia under the bus would also mean Montenegro would also be lost as well.

Another controversial take of mine:

1) Japan’s misadventures in Korea during the Imjin War was costly for the Hideyoshi Shogunate, as their defeat allowed Tokugawa Ieyasu to consolidate his control of Japan. Ironically, China would also suffer from the Imjin War indirectly, as their decline allowed the Manchus to ultimately conquer China, destroy the Ming, and set up the Qing.

2) The Protestant Reformation was in reality an excuse to pillage the monasteries by the state, but it enabled Protestant nations to get a head start in their economic development.

3) Filioque Clause. Nuff said.
 

Cherico

Well-known member
I wouldn't quite go that far, as I don't think there are any true "villains" in the American War of Independence. I just feel Britain gets vilified far too much.

Britain was freaking lucky to do as well as they did.

During the last few wars they managed to piss off a lot of people, and after centuries of more or less ignoring their colonies thought they could just up and change the entire system with zero local imput.

This conflict turned into a world war were the british empire had to face american colonists, the spanish, the french and the Dutch republic with no major allies. Considering the size of the alliance this could have very well been the end of the british empire strangled to death by every one they had fucked over.

The british people should count themselves lucky that things ended as well as they did for them with losses as limited as they were. It easily could have been a whole hell of a lot worse of an outcome.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
That would mean Russia loses whatever is left of their influence in the Balkans. Bulgaria was already lost, Greece is firmly in the Anglo-French bloc, and Romania is a pissed at the Russians because of Bessarabia. Throwing Serbia under the bus would also mean Montenegro would also be lost as well.

Losing the Balkans is a small price for Russia to pay for avoiding what it actually suffered during the 20th century in real life.
 

TheRomanSlayer

Unipolarity is for Subhuman Trogdolytes
But that would mean most of the Orthodox Balkan states would in turn, be subordinated to Catholic powers indirectly. Hardly a small price to pay though, as it would mean oppression of Orthodox Christians at the hands of Catholics, just decades after being freed from Ottoman Turkish Muslim rule. And that kind of suffering would have been avoided had Pyotr Stolypin not get assassinated in 1911. Stolypin would eventually have been able to introduce bits of reforms that would have addressed Russia's main problems in economic areas.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
But that would mean most of the Orthodox Balkan states would in turn, be subordinated to Catholic powers indirectly. Hardly a small price to pay though, as it would mean oppression of Orthodox Christians at the hands of Catholics, just decades after being freed from Ottoman Turkish Muslim rule. And that kind of suffering would have been avoided had Pyotr Stolypin not get assassinated in 1911. Stolypin would eventually have been able to introduce bits of reforms that would have addressed Russia's main problems in economic areas.

Orthodox Christians who won't like Catholic rule could simply move to Russia. It would be a win for both them and Russia!
 

TheRomanSlayer

Unipolarity is for Subhuman Trogdolytes
Orthodox Christians who won't like Catholic rule could simply move to Russia. It would be a win for both them and Russia!
Seriously!? That's your solution!? Get rid of the more anti-Catholic elements and subsume the moderates into the Catholic system!? Disgusting.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
Orthodox Christians who won't like Catholic rule could simply move to Russia. It would be a win for both them and Russia!
Orthodox Christians would be just another of the many Christian sects the west has. The main differences between them revolve around minutiae.
 

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