If you want to be poor, fight for independence

[Lexicus]

How does the OP account for the case of the United States?

 

[AmazonQueen]

How does the OP account for the case of the United States?

I don't know how he accounts for how you prospered after refusing our benevolent rule but he seems to think you've taken over our benevolent role

 

[Lexicus]

Undoubtedly his explanation will be some thinly disguised racist nonsense that uses the phrase "cultural heritage" and "Western institutions" a lot

 

[Cheetah]

How does the OP account for the case of the United States?

Oh, I wasn't so much considering OP, but more replying to the post before me. Just brought up the US, which is a powerful state and empire, and just pointing out that it hasn't lasted particularly long for having had major ups and downs in its fortunes.

 

[Lexicus]

Sorry, I wasn't really responding to your post, the question just occurred to me probably because you mention the US.

 

[Cheetah]

Ah, right. I thought that could be a possibility, but then again, felt I could still explain why I mentioned it.

Your question is still good, however.

 

[Hrothbern]

OP reacts on this post of me from another thread:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/news-thread-of-the-americas.522119/page-45#post-15440539

That Civilisation series vid was from the BBC !
There was a time that you could take BBC documentaries for good level quality.
But just like with National Geographics... a lot has changed.
Between some hard science (little room for tinkering) a lot of suggestive stories.
It has meanwhile more Daniel Defoe quality: Robinson Crusoe a nice adventure story fully ingrained with superiority.
And who did not read as little kid Robinson Crusoe ?

Forget about the desert island as a symbol of ego or Crusoe’s solitude as a terrifying test of sanity: in Robinson’s view, the book, written by a slave trader, was intended as both “a prospectus for potential investors” in the South Seas and a manual outlining the DIY skills that colonists would need to conquer the wilderness. In 1903, a schools inspector trumpeted the novel’s educational value by declaring that “nothing, not even football, will do more to maintain and extend the dominion of the Anglo-Saxon than the spirit of Robinson Crusoe”. Dominion back then was a synonym for colony; football, with its tribes of baying hooligans rallied by the likes of Tommy Robinson, can be fascism by other means.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/21/good-morning-mr-crusoe-jack-robinson-review

 

[Senethro]

I'm not sure the OP has opinions he wishes to share. He posts threads as an exercise in "Just Asking Questions".

 

[schlaufuchs]

So, what is it that the OP thinks the colonies should have done in the face of systemic political, social, and economic oppression? Live without the rights he takes for granted because, hey, Britain build some railroads?

I mean, he's a conservative, so, yeah?

 

[Cutlass]

How does the OP account for the case of the United States?

The revolutionaries were WASPS.

 

[Lexicus]

I'm not sure the OP has opinions he wishes to share. He posts threads as an exercise in "Just Asking Questions".

He may not wish to share his opinions, but "Niall Ferguson wrote something and I took it seriously" reveals more than he might have wanted known

 

[Ajidica]

A fallback from Germania and Dacia after what - two hundred years? When Rome left Britain, the Britons immediately emerged with little presence of Romanization left over, because the Romans treated Britain like a frontier zone than a core part of the Empire.

We have precious little knowledge of the political situation in post-Roman Britain until the early 7th century, so I'm not sure how you can speak so confidently on how 'Roman' post-Roman Britain was. While it seems urban life suffered more than on the mainland, I'm doubtful that can be attributed to Rome treating the whole of Roman controlled Britain as a 'frontier zone'. The little we know indicates that post-Roman Britain existed thoroughly within the framework of the Roman world and disappeared slowly due to pressure from Saxons, Picts, and Irish.

When they left Spain, the Vascones rose up almost immediately. When they left North Africa, the Romano-Moors popped up.

Rome never really 'left' Spain. The Visigoths slowly usurped Roman authority in Spain until it began to function more as an independent kingdom than a Roman province.

The East suffered even more of a languishing death, though from 650 to 1000; they had a pretty good Golden Age.

Odd you would choose that period as a Byzantine 'Golden Age' as for easily half that period Byzantium was on the verge of collapse after losing Egypt, North Africa, the Levant, and good chunks of Anatolia and the Dodecanese to the Arabs; along with much of the Balkans and Greece to the Slavs, and Italy to the Lombards. The Empire spent much of that period wracked by civil wars, military reversals, and coups with the succession determined by bigger-army-diplomacy. Even the much vaunted Macedonian Dynasty really only hit its high point for a hundred years - and that is with their primary enemies collapsing in civil war and wracked by foreign invasions.