Have you ever actually met an American? What a load of shit! [/quote]
Quite right. The US$200m-a-year US genealogy industry is er all for um foreigners who want to find out if they’re American. Or something. Lots of countries designate October as Family History Month. It was completely wrong to suggest Americans are obsessed with genealogy. Who is this fool who goes around making these stupid generalisations?[/quote]
I wouldn’t consider a US$200m/year industry to be very large in the US. The fake university degree industry in the state of Hawaii is at somewhere close to $200m.
I have never even heard of “Family History Month”, but I have only lived in the US for about 40 years.
The US has a population over 300m. Damn, I don’t remember spending that $0.67 trying to find my lineage, maybe my brother spent $1.33.
It still leaves me asking who goes around making these stupid generalizations.
I disagree. I think most Americans are very interested in their family histories. It’s unusual for an American not to have at least some idea of where their ancestors come from in the least. How often have you heard “well my great-grandfather come over from Ireland, Germany, etc.”? I personally know a lot about my family history, and know many others who do as well. And the last time I checked genealogy.com was charging a $200 USD annual fee. Quite the pretty penny.
I don’t disagree that most Americans know where their families came from. I disagree with the statement that Americans Absolutely have to trace where they are from and that Americans are obsessed with genealogy.
At $200 a pop, I guess approx. 1 million Americans out of 300 million are willing to pay to find out this information. It doesn’t really seem like an obsession to me.
Is LL trying to tell me that no one in Europe knows who their great-grandparents were or where they came from?
Actually I suspect Europe would have eventually been conquered by the Muslims if it had not strengthened itself by expanding into the Americas. Of course technology played a big role in Europe’s defense and ultimate rise to power (and partial colonization of Muslim lands), but the material resources of the New World, the economic stimulation of colonization, and major innovations in naval technology were the only reason Europe became strong enough to fight its enemies. Keep in mind that most of the Byzantine Empire was Islamicized by the middle of the 15th century. Constantinople –once the greatest city in the Christian world- fell to the Turks in 1453. That sealed the fate of Wallachia and Moldavia (present day Romania), Yugoslavia, and a large part of Hungary. The Muslims being driven once and for all out of Spain and Portugal in 1492 was a pittance compared to their gains in Anatolia, the Balkans, and Hungary. It would be a very serious mistake to think Europe would merely have stagnated. It would probably have been conquered.
Most of the modern histories I’ve read on this subject (written within the last ten years) do not accept the theory the supposed depletion of Europe’s resources served as an impetus for colonization. In fact resources were plentiful and the economy was doing well. Maritime historians record that Portugal was doing more business in the 15th century with Northern Europe and the Mediterranean countries rather than with Africa or Asia. It was closer, had more resources, used accepted currencies, and was far safer. There were many canals built all over Europe in the late Middle Ages which greatly improved trade and general prosperity. Heck trade was even booming with the Turks, despite their inroads into Eastern Europe. It’s simply untrue that Europe’s resources were depleted.
I’m surprised you threw this in here, as every single history I’ve read on the subject is eager to disprove the notion people of Columbus’ time believed the earth was flat. As with the depleted resources thing, it simply isn’t true. The public mockery of Columbus had nothing to do with whether the Earth was flat or spherical, but rather how big the earth was. Columbus, like many academics of his day, believed the earth to be smaller than it actually is. He thought he could reach the Indies in the time it actually took to reach North America. Columbus went back and forth between the Americas a few times, but he died believing that he had actually found a shorter route to India, not discovered a new country. His vindication was that he was “correct” the earth was smaller than believed. It was not until several years after his death it became common knowledge among Europeans that Columbus had actually discovered a new country.
Also, while I know very little about the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas, it is my impression that the Aztec and Incan empires were actually on the decline prior to the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese. I only took one history class on that time period and my memory is getting hazy, but I recall the Incans were in the middle of a bloody civil war when Pizarro and his 180 men arrived on the scene. Pizarro allied himself with various key tribes and overthrew the already weakened government. Cortez did the same thing when he fought the Aztecs by allying with the Confederacy of the Tlaxcala against the Aztecs. The change of the guard to the Spaniards made little difference to the masses, who were already under subjugation by the Incans and Aztecs. They paid the same material and labor tribute they always had, going through the same middlemen, benefiting the same elite class as before. The only difference was the administration changed and the elites who had sided against the Spaniards were either killed, exiled, or had their lands and/or tribute seized. There was nothing about the Spanish takeover remotely different from the usual elite struggles that took place over the centuries within the established Aztec and Incan empires. There were never, as far as I know, any mass killings, raping, or pillaging. The devastation to the native Americans had nothing to do with the change in administration, but with the diseases they brought with them. I seem to recall reading that 90% of the native populations of the Americas were killed by disease, most of which were probably imported. Of course there was still some displacement of native populations as the Spanish and Portugese sent colonies. But unlike in North America, neither Spain nor Portugal managed to entice large colonies of families. Mostly it was men looking for work or land, and married the local women instead of importing wives from back home. Sure there were elite creoles (different meaning in Latin America than New Orleans) who prided themselves on their white heritage, but the majority of male settlers did not care and were happy to marry the local lasses. There was never the same us versus them mentality as in North America or the same large scale displacement. That’s my general impression from the class I took and the books I have read, but I’m sure Dragonbones or one the other scholars on here can correct anything I’ve got wrong. But in general, the image of bloodthirsty Europeans savaging the Americas is just a myth.
well, apparently some ad person at Ancestey.com had a huge brain-fart and still gives a shit…
One of about 1,000 awful things about this commercial is it ignores the fact that for black Americans - myself included - and for others in the diaspora, DNA and documentary ancestry information is as painful and traumatic as it is illuminating. These are not love stories. https://t.co/tuTpHwmnGk
My disagreement with him is reparations mean that someone else, who bears no responsibility for slavery, has to lose out in order for the descendents of slaves to benefit.
We see this with quotas to top universities. I don’t the see the justice of innocent people now suffering because of the crimes of their ancestors. No doubt Hitch would have had me down as a white whiner.
