Europe has a very long history of fighting wars and colonizing and exploiting the conquered. In the past 2,000 years, there have been many long and devastating wars within Europe.
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Wars in the past were sport events timed to start with blaring horns and with fighters dressed in colorful hats and decorated uniforms. Stones were the first weapons, followed by sticks. String turned stones into slingshots and sticks into bows and arrows. Then came metals and sticks turned to knives and clothes turned to heavy armor so stiff that you needed a horse to get around.
The slings and sticks got as big as they could get. Then chemists discovered explosives which they made as big as they could make. With each development the wars got shorter, more frequent and more brutal.
Before Christianity and Islam started to spread their wings, you were much more likely to be born during an era of peace, than in an era of war. But if you were unlucky enough to be born in an era of war, usually your parents and your children were also, as wars lasted more than one generation.
For the first 500 years after Christ, there is a noticeable period of relative peace followed by 1,500 years of almost constant war.
After Christians and Muslims started to fight in the name of their god, who was really the same but with a different name, the length of wars greatly decreased but their frequency greatly increased.
When explosives started to be used as weapons, the wars became so brutal that they were greatly shortened, but occurred more frequently.
- Between 1500-1800, there were about 50 short wars every 5 years.
- Between 1800-2000, there were 70 shorter wars every 2 years.
By 600BC, Greeks had introduced and given society history, philosophy, humanism and rationalism. This eventually paved the way to individualism and nationalism.
Athens was rich and cultured while Sparta was poor and hardened and liked to plunder Athens. Athens adopted democracy as a carrot on the stick to motivate the citizens to fight for their freedom and repel the invading Spartans. The advent of the democracy led to a 'golden age' for the Athenians. Despite the constant fighting among Athens and Sparta, they helped each other repelling invasions from Persia.
In 300BC, Alexander the Greek conquered civilizations from Egypt to Persia and beyond till India and the Himalayas. He was tutored by Aristotle who taught him horsemanship and inspired him to gather knowledge and accumulate it in great libraries for all mankind to exploit.
By O AD, Romans had introduced and given society organized religion, law, technology and government. This eventually paved the way to freedom and democracy. For the next 500 years, Europe was invaded from all sides, by barbarians that the Romans called the Goths, the Vandals, and the Huns.
In 400AD, Attila the Hun from Mongolia used the bow and arrow with horsemanship skills and battering rams to conquer Europe. His relatives became the monarchs of Europe.
In 600AD, Mohammad started to spread the wings of Islam. People fought and killed each other in the name of the same god. Africa was exploited for her slaves. Slave trades started that lasted for the next 1200 years.
By 1000AD, Europe was under the rule of 5 kings, the kings of England, France, Spain, Germany and the Catholic Church. The more power the church had, the more dark the history was with fighting, intolerance and sufferings. For the next 400 years, the church organized crusades against Muslims. Up to 9 million people were killed, but it was great for opening up traffic and trade between west and the east.
In 1300, Marco Polo from Italy went all the way to China to trade for silk and spices. Then the Turkish Ottoman Empire got in the way and blocked the silk road connecting Europe with the far east.
For the next 250 years, the Ottomans pushed into Europe and got as far as Vienna before being turned back.
In 1350, the pandemic called the Black Death killed half of the people in Europe.
Then a war between the monarchies of England and France started and lasted 100 years, until
Joan of Arc saved the day and claimed final victory. The war gave impetus to ideas of both French and English nationalism.
It as well changed the art of making war, from heavy armored knights on horses, to light equipped foot soldiers with longbows and rifles.
By 1500, there was a growing consensus that the earth was a spherical ball after all. Spain sent Columbus sailing west to sail around the world to get to India avoiding having to go thru the Turkish Empire. When Columbus landed on land, he thought he landed on the east side of India and called the natives he met there “Indians”. The land was later called America. The Spanish found lots of gold. They took over the land and brought back with them the gold that the Incas collected, as well as potatoes, corn and tobacco they cultivated.
Explorers from England and France looking for a northwest passage to the orient landed in the north of this new land and claimed the land for their sponsoring countries.
Beaver fur hats become a trend that lasted 300 years. They were traded from the native Indians for alcohol and guns.
By 1600, colonies were set up in India to exploit her spices.
By 1650 German theologian Martin Luther sparked a protest to reform the Church. Kings became divided between protestant and catholic faiths.
This eventually led to the 30 years war which devastated much of Europe killing more than 10 million people.
Many people fled religious persecution and sailed across to settle in America to persecute the native Indians.
The influence of the Islam culture and its mathematics infected Europe and made it erupt in a period of rebirth. The Renaissance spread across Europe like a flood-light. It saw the flowering of art, philosophy, music, and the sciences, under the joint patronage of royalty, the nobility, the Church, and an emerging merchant class.
Many kings unified their respective empires into nations with stable and centralized governments. Empires became nations.
Inventions like the printing press allowed ideas to be mass printed and to be spread to sprout new inventions.
Inventions like portable compasses, clocks and telescopes allowed ships to sail great distances, discover, conquer, and exploit new lands. This worldwide colonization paved the way for rapid economic growth in Europe.
In 1770, Australia became a penal colony used to incarcerate prisoners. During 70 years over 150,000 convicts were incarcerated there. In 1776, America gained her freedom and independence from England.
In 1789, the French revolted against the aristocracy and for 10 years there was a reign of terror where many of the nobility perished under the guillotine.
Napoleon rose to power and eventually conquered large parts of Europe before being defeated by England in 1815 in the Battle of Waterloo. More than 6 million people died.
This opened up great opportunities in the new colony called Canada that provided beaver hats to also provide timber for rebuilding all the houses and bridges that Napoleon destroyed.
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By 1800, the steam engine opened the way for the industrial revolution which marks a major turning point in human history opening up the way for the technological life we have at present. The life of the people greatly improved as it was seen that machines were cheaper than slaves. This greatly made the life of slaves and common man much easier. This freedom from misery that technology offered was never before experienced by the common man and it whetted his appetite for more.
In 1848, people all over Europe unsuccessfully revolted against their monarchs for their freedom and colonies revolted against their exploiters.
In 1867, Canada gained her freedom from England and in 1901, Australia followed. That caused England to scramble for Africa to get new colonies. The Spanish, the French, the English and the Dutch were all busy colonizing and exploiting new explored lands. The Italians were colonizing in East Africa, the Japanese were colonizing in China, The French were colonizing in the Far East, The Turks were colonizing the Middle East,. The Germans felt rather left behind and there were fewer and fewer lands to colonize. The Germans had their eyes on the vast lands in Russia.
Just like land masses that push against each and want to expand inevitably cause cracks and fault lines to form that eventually break into earthquakes, there was a fault line in the part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire called the Balkans, ethnic groups of Serbs, Muslims and Christians, speaking different languages and having different customs. These ethnic areas were contested by the Turks and the Russians as well as by the Austrians.
In 1914, the heir king of Austria was assassinated in Serbia and Germany convinced Austria to invaded Serbia, a colony of Russia, in retaliation to the assassination. When Russia invaded Austria in retaliation to the invasion, Germany invaded Russia to help Austria. In all of this chaos, the Russians managed to free themselves from the reigns of their monarchy, just like France did 100 years before.
Turkey jumped in to help Germany. France and Britain jumped in to help the Russians. Eventually America jumped in to help France and Britain. They all ended up fighting a worldwide war they called WWI. After the war, the victors carved up the conquered lands among themselves.
The weapons manufacturers were delighted to be able to put to use the new technologies that scientists were developing which promised great destructive capabilities as well as great opportunities to get rich.
The construction companies were delighted at the prospect of using the newly found resources of the colonies to rebuild what the weapons destroyed. The bankstrers were delighted to finance both destruction and rebuilding. Chemists soon jumped in to take a piece of the pie that promised great riches.
To the horror of everyone involved, scientists developed a very cheap weapon of mass destruction in the form of poison gas that promised to kill at a fraction of the cost of what it took to kill with guns and bombs. The new weapon of mass destruction did not destroy buildings and roads and allowed soldiers to protect themselves by breathing thru inexpensive filters called gas masks. The new weapon just did not make any economic sense and it was eventually outlawed for use in future wars. America saved the day. After 4 years of fighting and more than 65 million people killed, the Germans were defeated and WWI ended. The victors severely punished the losers. The empires of Austria, Germany and Turkey were dismantled and broken apart.
In 1919, shortly after WWI ended, an Italian journalist Benito Mussolini was very disillusioned that nothing seemed to work properly in his broken country. He formed a movement called "Fascio di combattimento" which was translated in English as "Union for struggle". They were a group of gangsters who were protected by local officials and police. They were affectionately called fascists and they terrorized their political enemies, especially if they were communists or socialists. Elections were suspended and trade unions were banned and the king of Italy asked Mussolini and his party to form the government. Everyone was delighted and trains began to run on time. Jews were stripped of their Italian citizenship and were greatly discriminated against.
In 1933, shortly after WWII started, a German artist Adolf Hitler, who was once an Austrian journalist, was very disillusioned that nothing seemed to work properly in his broken country. He formed a movement called "National socialists". They did not support socialism for the people but rather supported the interest of the leaders of industries. They were a group of fascist gangsters who were affectionately called "Nazis". They terrorized their political enemies, especially if they were communists or socialists. After they were elected to form the government, elections were suspended and trade unions were banned. Leaders from the industries and the church were delighted and trains began to run on time. Jews were stripped of their German citizenship and all of their wealth was expropriated and they were put into concentration camps to be eventually exterminated.
In 1939 Germany invaded Poland in an attempt to regain losses after WWI that it felt were unfair. A second world war, called WWII started. A new generation of banksters, weapons manufacturers and rebuilders were just as delighted as their fathers were 25 years before.
It was the same countries fighting as in WWI but with a new generation of improved technology and with the addition of Japan helping the Germans.
Scientists developed a new weapon of mass destruction that was more sophisticated and expensive than poison gas and that only the rich could afford. It was a new bomb based on splitting the nucleus of atoms. It was able to demolish large areas that conventional bombs could only damage.
Both the Germans and the Russians had very crazy leaders. Hitler used the outlawed poison gas to exterminate over 6 million Jews for fear of them contaminating the German race. Stalin killed millions for fear of losing his power. After 6 years of fighting and more than 72 million people killed, the Germans were defeated and WWII ended. The new weapon of mass destruction was called the atom bomb. It was promoted and adopted by the richest countries that went on a shopping spree called the arms race to buy and have more of the new bombs than anyone else did.
Europe was divided with control going to America and Russia. Russia got Hungary, Poland and the east half of Germany and like prisoners of war, they were enclosed with fences and walls called the iron curtain and they were indoctrinated to be communists. America on the other hand enclosed its captors with capitalistic debt, and indoctrinated them to be capitalists.
WWII left the colonizers from Europe weakened. African states slowly started to gain their freedom. In 1950, Libya was the first to gain her freedom from Italy, losing it 20 years later for 40 years to Gaddafi.
India also gained her freedom in 1950 from England who treated India like it was a company. Mahatma Gandhi with his passive resistance movement helped to achieve final freedom.
In 1990 Poland and Hungary opened up the way for the iron curtain to fall. Poland elected anti-communists leaders and Hungary refused to shoot people escaping into Austria. Soon after that, one country after another behind the iron curtain demanded freedom.
In 1993, in an attempt to stop its long history of fighting, 27 countries formed a united states of Europe called EU, promising never to fight among themselves again. The chances of that happening are slim as the three main powers of the union are very arrogant.
The French proudly claim to be the best in the art of making love and to have the finest foods and wines. The Germans claim to be the masters in the art of making war and are proud to have the best sausages and beer. The English concede to the claims of the Germans and the French, but it is clear that they are superior at colonizing and exploiting. They vainly believe that that everyone deep inside really wants to be English.
We can learn from Europe’s history the art of making war. War is where our toys are made into weapons and later into useful tools for making newer toys and more powerful weapons. War allows us to conquer and to exploit people to the point where they have nothing to lose and demand their freedom with their lives.
Hopefully the art of keeping peace, by uniting in "one for all and all for one" and agreeing not to fight, that the Europeans have learned from Switzerland will last.
Other countries rally around "liberty".
The Swiss rally around "hard work, respect, tolerance and pride".... and being on time and being tidy.
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