Vikings were in North America by 1021 CE

[Henri Christophe]

I would disagree with this. Indebtedness was enough to drive the European conquest of the Americas from a pretty early point.

I think if the vikings really tryied to conquer Americas, they should fail. Because their technology isn't that superior of Americas at the time. But if they tried the desease should spread around America several years early, making the late conquest of Spain also more harder.

 

[Lexicus]

Why do you think Mars has no value?

It's a wasteland with nothing valuable enough to make the trip worth it. What is there on Mars that can't be obtained more easily on Earth? Why is it so easy to trick a certain kind of person into pretending Elon Musk's billionaire vanity project is humanity's manifest destiny?

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

It is the act of doing it that is worthwhile. I believe in the value in attempting to expand into space. New tech, new material science etc. I'd rather a billionaire like Musk "blow it all" on that rather than just hording and buying stuff on earth.

~Yes there is plenty of good things they could do on earth, more immediate, and more beneficial for humankind.. but its still a positive.

 

[Henri Christophe]

It's a wasteland with nothing valuable enough to make the trip worth it. What is there on Mars that can't be obtained more easily on Earth? Why is it so easy to trick a certain kind of person into pretending Elon Musk's billionaire vanity project is humanity's manifest destiny?

Even if Mars is a Wasteland, I think humanity should colonized it. Even one day a nucler war ends the human life on earth, we can survive as specie in other planets.

 

[innonimatu]

I would disagree with this. Indebtedness was enough to drive the European conquest of the Americas from a pretty early point.

Indebtedness early as a driver, how so?

If you mean the crown of Castile, conquest happened before Philip II really got into his ruinous wars in Flanders. The crown went bankrupt long after that and despite the american silver. It's some 50 years. If anything the early flow of gold from the conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires, and later silver, destabilized both businesses and tax collection across Charles V's and later Philips' territories.

Philip's strategy in the low countries as religious strife engulfed those regions would necessarily have been different if he didn't had the income from the treasure fleets. The role of genoese bankers providing gold to pay the armies in the north against the fleet's silver from the south simply wouldn't have been possible. Hence the need to substitute collections from tax farmers for the silver (leading to mounting debt and defaults) when the fleets didn't provide enough would not have happened.

I can agree that the wars tied to the Hapsburg attempt at universal monarchy did drive the financing of further conquest in Central and South America, after the spectacular pillage gotten from the Aztec and Inca Empires. The lure of gold as I said. But North America, that one didn't attract attention. Past the "civilized areas" of the great empires there wasn't relevant loot to be had.

Imo the conquest of the American empires drove international banking, larger scale warfare and state indebtedness in Europe, not the opposite. I guess I'm ending up agreeing at least in part with Lenin's thesis of imperialism having been indispensible for capitalism, albeit at an earlier state than he was focusing on. The modern instruments of state debt were first used oon a large scale by Philiph II and his italian bankers. The dutch and later the English were immitators.

 

[Lexicus]

Indebtedness early as a driver, how so?

I mean that the conquistadors themselves (Cortes, Pizarro, and their soldiers) were all deeply in debt and made their big ventures (the conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires) in part to defray those debts.

 

[innonimatu]

I mean that the conquistadors themselves (Cortes, Pizarro, and their soldiers) were all deeply in debt and made their big ventures (the conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires) in part to defray those debts.

Hm... it's a valid claim. But they were, by european standars of the time, little more than a mercenary company of the type that had existed during the italian wars. It's their success in taking over empires that was surprising. Then again the mamluks had taken over Egypt. Thta kind of stuff happened. It's just that eurocentric history misses much of it as it happened in the middle east.

 

[Lexicus]

Hm... it's a valid claim. But they were, by european standars of the time, little more than a mercenary company of the type that had existed during the italian wars. It's their success in taking over empires that was surprising. Then again the mamluks had taken over Egypt. Thta kind of stuff happened. It's just that eurocentric history misses much of it as it happened in the middle east.

Well, the main point there is that they were a two-bit mercenary company but they had literally millennia worth of technological and organizational advantage over those empires, which were using essentially neolithic technology. My understanding is that the Mamelukes represented a significant part of the military capability of Fatimid Egypt but I don't know enough to comment beyond that. I also thought they were military slaves, not mercenaries.

FWIW I got this idea from David Graeber, he sketches it out in Debt: The First 5,000 Years. His broader thesis is that there was a "debt-soldier-slave complex" (the engine by which the very quick Roman expansion starting ca. 150 BCE occurred) in classical antiquity that was reined in to some degree by moderating institutions during the middle ages, but then as the middle ages transition to modernity you have the re-emergence of a similar dynamic where ambitious politicians or private adventurers (the line between them is certainly blurred at various historical times and places) take out fantastic debts and then are able to repay them by the plunder from wars of conquest. Graeber connects the conquistadors with the members of the Fourth Crusade, most of whom down to the level of common soldiers were also deeply in debt and Graeber interprets the extraordinary violence of both the sacking of Constantinople and the conquistadors' wars as an outgrowth of the psychology of indebtedness: a toxic mix of reduction of everything and everyone around you to a means of (re)payment and self-disgust at being a person who thinks and acts in this fundamentally inhuman way.

 

[innonimatu]

I still have to get his (sadly) last book, should be worthwhile.

The fourth crusade is interesting because it looks like the byzantines, or more specifically the inhabitants of Constantinople, were terribly stupid. They had this huge army camping nearby, rival claimants to the throne using it, a previous attack on the city that did replace the emperor but did not result in a sack. And they they go and before the army moves on to the Holy Land, overthrow they favoured emperor again! Strategically that was completely and totally dumb. They had but to wait a few months and they they kill the emperor to their petty heart's contentment.

Why provoke a huge war machine that was bound to move on soon without causing damage? Adn it wasn't just "the mob". It was the politians, the ones who led them and wanted the crown. Anmd who ended upo dead as a result to their own strategic stupidity. Sorry, I digress. But strategic stupidity has been much on my mind recently.

 

[EvaDK]

The Viking settlements in Newfoundland only lasted 10-20 years. The current interpretation of the archeological finds in the area, suggests they departed because of clashes with the natives and a lack of resources. The Viking settlers also more or less left their lands in Greenland. Icelandic settlements were a succes though and the island was not inhabited by native people when the Vikings arrived there. Culturally and linguistically, Iceland and the Icelandic language are the closest relation we have today to Norse culture. Icelandic is almost completely unintelligible to Swedes, Danes and Norwegians, while people from those three nations can usually speak to each other in their native language and makes themselves understood.

As for Mars - we have a continent larger than the United States here on Earth, that is almost completely devoid of human settlements, because it is simply too harsh to live there and it offers no supply of needed resources; we call it Antarctica.
Mars is Antarctica x 50.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

Antarctica likely has resources. We just politically don't have access.

I agree Mars doesn't offer anything tangiable, but why does it have to?

 

[Hygro]

I 100% agree Mars is a super worthy goal. We don’t need to find extractive value in everywhere we go. But there is. The difference between doing it and theoretically knowing how is everything. The coolest thing humanity ever did is visiting the moon. And the gains in putting 5% of gdp to getting there echos in our material wealth today. Obviously if we can get self sustaining, or at least like 40 year sustaining, space settlements we greatly greatly increase our species chance of survival. The motivation that we are doing something real and important and awesome alone will enliven us to great benefit.

But again, it’s not the tangible benefits, it’s the beautiful glory of achieving something so incredible that makes it worthy.

 

[Lexicus]

I would at least like to ascertain that there is no native Martian life before we start sending humans there with our germs and horsehocky.

 

[Henri Christophe]

As for Mars - we have a continent larger than the United States here on Earth, that is almost completely devoid of human settlements, because it is simply too harsh to live there and it offers no supply of needed resources; we call it Antarctica.
Mars is Antarctica x 50.

Acctually Antarctica is already subdivided in peaces for each country


Some of it's boarders overlap, that mean there will be a propably conflict between these countries for land when we have the technology to colonize Antartica.

 

[Hygro]

That's a lot of ms paint to just say "USA"

 

[Lexicus]

If we cook the planet hard enough Antarctica will be covered by subtropical forests as it was tens of millions of years ago.

I am afraid it is no laughing matter at all @Henri Christophe.

*shakes fist at Hygro*

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

So, unless Musk or Bezos decides to throw a hundred Billion at sending people to Mars (for whatever reason), I don't see us going there for generations. We aren't even going back to the Moon atm.

Well they are throwing Billions! We're getting there.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I would just like to point out that there are Vikings on Mars already and have been for decades. They are very skilled at getting around.

As for Antarctica, leave it for the penguins. Honestly, please just let them exist in peace. We're not so short of space that we need to kill every ecosystem for our own selfishness.