[lalpphilalk]

That's pretty much on a par to saying rape is great because it feels nice for the rapist.

[Pelefaifs]

Originally posted by BeBro
but the inner constitution of a larger empire becomes usually one of stabilization and pacification even between lotsa different nations, religions, ethnicities etc. Like in the Roman empire. I agree with you with one argument, that in order to maintain peace within the empire the rulers need to either find enemies outside of the empire, whithin the empire, or both.

[surefireinvest]

Maybe I'm idealizing the ancient guys a bit but I'd be much more critical to the post-1500 types of imperialism with those vast colonial empires. I just don't see how the big colonial powers really integrated those from African or Asian colonies successfully into their own population in the way for example Romans did manage to deal with their former enemies in many cases (and finally giving out the status as Roman citizen to all free inhabitants of the empire).

US doesn't count IMO since the colonials here weren't really natives that had to be integrated in a completely different political and cultural environment since they already had (often) a cultural background similar (or even the same) to those from the colonial powers when they arrived in the new world.

[GrolmangHat27]

They didn't do a great job of assimiliating Carthage either.

[Noxassope]

Originally posted by BeBro
OK, so it's Everyone loves Imperialism, but they don't call it that. They call it freedom and democracy.

[zzbust]

Originally posted by molly bloom
Consider that Gallic Celtic civilization was on the way to making settled city and town sized centres before it was destroyed in Caesar's wars. What's your source on this? I'm familiar with what Caesar wrote (he attributed the most civilized Gauls with being civilized by proximity to Rome) but I haven't seen any contemporary primary sources other than that.

[Ingeborga]

I cannot disagree with the concept of spreading Civilization. If another giant continent full of hunter-gatherers and resources had appeared today, I would've firmly supported it's conquest and colonization. And if it's necessary to fool a few natives and buy tracts of land in exchange for a mirror... Well, life sucks.

Naturally, I also cannot support the original genocidal methods employed by European empires.

[grizolsemn]

Originally posted by Patroklos


Hardly, the only thing in store for the Gauls without Roman intervention when it happened was being conquered and subjugated by the Germanic tribes. It had actually already started (Ariovistis). Not true. The Celts had been building oppida for quite some time, in Gaul and in Britain:

Robert Bedon, "La naissance des premières villes en Gaule intérieure durant la période de la Tène finale" (195-214), brings us back to the problem of the true Roman meaning of the term 'oppidum' as applied to the urban phenomenon in the Gallia Comata and offers an interesting typology of the oppida in this region (196-199) as well as a review of the chronology and historical context of their founding. The Roman conquest, entailing the destruction or damage of a number of them, was in fact just the beginning of the period of the greatest flourishing of the Gallic oppida. The ultimate integration into the Roman province did not trigger the urbanization of this region, which had started already during the late La Tène period, but only 'Romanized' the previously existing urban settlements. In his turn, Jean-Paul Guillaumet, "De la naissance de Bibracte à la naissance d'Autun" (215-225), presents a very rare case where we can compare two successive capitals of a given region (the civitas of the Aedui): the Roman town Augustodunum (Autun) inherited its population from the Gallic oppidum Bibracte. Although earlier excavators at Bibracte envisioned it as an exemplary Celtic town, more recent discoveries show the extreme complexity of the Celtic urban phenomenon. Perhaps the most striking thing is a recently discovered open site, which can tentatively be considered a place of the assembly of the Aeduan citizenry (220). http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2005/2005-01-18.html


Recent excavations at Maiden Castle show it not have been a fortress with an attached population, but a large civilian settlement with fortifications.

A slightly different emphasis.

One of the problems when dealing with the pre-Romanized population of Europe is that (in the case of the Celts) they had no written language of their own (although inscriptions have been found left by Celts who used Latin and Greek) and thus the 'history' tends to be a little one-sided, with many earlier historians simply taking what the 'non-barbaric' Greeks and Romans said about the Celts at face value.

Consider the Celtic Sack Of Delphi- often recounted as a savage invasion by the barbarous Celts who were then overwhelmed by the Aetolian peltasts.

And yet somehow enough survived this onslaught to found a kingdom in what is now modern day Turkey, Galatia:

In an article last year in the British journal Anatolian Studies, English and Turkish scholars said the Galatian communities established in the third century B.C. constituted ''a new, significant and increasingly important geopolitical entity within Asia Minor'' and this ''can hardly be attributed to a marginal, and politically, socially and economically unsophisticated people.'' On the contrary, they wrote: ''The fact that their polities survived to be incorporated into the Roman empire would indicate the existence of highly developed social structures bound together by shared value systems. The European Galatians successfully adapted to their new environment, changing it and being changed by it.'' http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...=&pagewanted=3

[alenbarbaf]

Originally posted by Patroklos
It doesn't matter what the Gauls were doing Molly, as the Germans were already and would have continued to burn it down to support their migrations.

It is a fact that two Germanic tribes had already crossed the Rhine/Alps for that very purpose. QFT

So Rome may have in fact saved a lot of Celtic culture.