<story><title>What you can learn about medieval Europe if you focus on peasants</title><url>https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/those-who-work</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>neuronic</author><text>The atrocities and genocides that Europeans brought to the world for centuries should be focused on deeply. Context: I am European and disgusted with the way we treat our impact on the world.&lt;p&gt;I think among the most striking examples here aside from the obvious one (Holocaust), is Belgium, because it just seems to slip under a lot of people&amp;#x27;s radar. Belgium has an evil, brutal and vile history, especially in relation to its colonialism and the included human rights violations which in my opinion are massive compared to the country&amp;#x27;s size and geopolitical abilities.&lt;p&gt;Belgian citizens are oblivious, but at least slowly &amp;quot;waking up&amp;quot; as the BBC calls it [1]. To be clear, it&amp;#x27;s the system and leadership that I struggle with. Not the citizens.&lt;p&gt;To this day, Belgian schools do not in any way teach that Belgium is solely responsible for the Rwandan genocide in the early 90s. It was the sick Belgians who separated fake ethnic groups in Rwanda in the first place, depending on how ethnically white the shape of your skull appeared. And later they used these synthetic groups for political purposes and control.&lt;p&gt;The Belgian government&amp;#x2F;leadership has a long history of inhuman behavior, violence and murder that goes nearly completely ignored within Europe and it sort of rubs me the wrong way. Guy Verhofstadt said &amp;#x27;I beg your pardon&amp;#x27; once in Rwanda, and that was basically it. 800,000+ are dead and Belgium says &amp;#x27;sorry&amp;#x27; once. What?&lt;p&gt;Belgium isn&amp;#x27;t about chocolate, it&amp;#x27;s a country which is completely fine with not teaching its citizens about the common practice of chopping off children&amp;#x27;s arms for not meeting labor goals for the day. When Belgians travel to places like Rwanda they are dumbfounded by the realities of their own history.&lt;p&gt;And those people want to tell China something about human rights, yelling from some tower in Brussels. It&amp;#x27;s breathtaking.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world-europe-53017188&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world-europe-53017188&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>Karrot_Kream</author><text>And to go along with that, the Renaissance was actually an incredibly violent and turbulent time.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.exurbe.com&amp;#x2F;black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-telling-the-myth-of-a-renaissance-golden-age-and-bad-middle-ages&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.exurbe.com&amp;#x2F;black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-tel...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;is a good post about that, and the Dark Ages myth. There&amp;#x27;s a lot of propaganda from this time period that people still believe today because it was used to justify a lot of the European nationalism of the 19th and 20th centuries.</text></item><item><author>nexthash</author><text>There are a lot of misguided beliefs about the Medieval period arising from a popular Gothic&amp;#x2F;Romantic revival in the 19th century. The period became known by another name - &amp;quot;the Dark Ages&amp;quot; - and was seen as dark, mysterious, and primitive. That completely got wrong what the Medieval period really was - the transition from Roman imperial rule to early-modern European states, and a small industrial revolution in technology including agriculture and navigation.&lt;p&gt;The popular view of all-powerful, romantic nobility and dumb peasants also comes from this mischaracterization. In reality, the period&amp;#x27;s instability after the Roman empire fell really made kings and nobles more akin to local warlords playing at Roman customs, and there were exceptions to the rule like prosperous city-republics. Peasant life was also sophisticated, rational, and complex, completely attuned to local weather and crop cycles. A good blog series goes into detail about this here:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;acoup.blog&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;24&amp;#x2F;collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;acoup.blog&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;24&amp;#x2F;collections-bread-how-did-they...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The important thing to realize is that no matter how difficult it was, how long ago it occurred, and how foreign the customs were for a certain period, people are still people. They have emotions, worries, good days, and struggles. If you take things in perspective and empathize with the people that preceded you on this world, history will lose a lot of its mystery.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>NoOneNew</author><text>I 100% agree with you. As a Polish-American, Leopold II is what I lean on when someone tries to pretend Europe has clean hands from atrocities... which I&amp;#x27;ve personally met here in the US. They seem to act like the US invented atrocities.&lt;p&gt;But I disagree with you on the other spectrum. Mostly how the argument is presented. &amp;quot;If only those nasty Europeans never existed, the world would be at peace&amp;quot;. Yea, no. Every civilization, whether Asian, Persian, African, Pacific Islands, pre-European native Americans and everyone else I missed were perfectly cool with destroying some other tribe&amp;#x2F;clan&amp;#x2F;city. Hell, Hawaiians were a very warrior centric culture before Cook arrived.&lt;p&gt;We suck as humans. Doesn&amp;#x27;t matter where you were born, you suck because you&amp;#x27;re a human. No one&amp;#x27;s hands are clean. Pointing at one culture as the cause of the world&amp;#x27;s problems doesn&amp;#x27;t solve much and just spins the wheels of hate and war some more. And hey, dont get me wrong, when Merkel has negative things to say about how Poland and the US conducts themselves, the first thing I always think of, &amp;quot;Really &lt;i&gt;chancellor&lt;/i&gt; kraut?&amp;quot;. It is laughable when Brussels or Berlin or London or DC wants to take the moral high road. However, at some point we have to cut our losses and just quit being douches to each other or we are forever doomed to repeat the bad parts to history.</text></comment>
<story><title>What you can learn about medieval Europe if you focus on peasants</title><url>https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/those-who-work</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>neuronic</author><text>The atrocities and genocides that Europeans brought to the world for centuries should be focused on deeply. Context: I am European and disgusted with the way we treat our impact on the world.&lt;p&gt;I think among the most striking examples here aside from the obvious one (Holocaust), is Belgium, because it just seems to slip under a lot of people&amp;#x27;s radar. Belgium has an evil, brutal and vile history, especially in relation to its colonialism and the included human rights violations which in my opinion are massive compared to the country&amp;#x27;s size and geopolitical abilities.&lt;p&gt;Belgian citizens are oblivious, but at least slowly &amp;quot;waking up&amp;quot; as the BBC calls it [1]. To be clear, it&amp;#x27;s the system and leadership that I struggle with. Not the citizens.&lt;p&gt;To this day, Belgian schools do not in any way teach that Belgium is solely responsible for the Rwandan genocide in the early 90s. It was the sick Belgians who separated fake ethnic groups in Rwanda in the first place, depending on how ethnically white the shape of your skull appeared. And later they used these synthetic groups for political purposes and control.&lt;p&gt;The Belgian government&amp;#x2F;leadership has a long history of inhuman behavior, violence and murder that goes nearly completely ignored within Europe and it sort of rubs me the wrong way. Guy Verhofstadt said &amp;#x27;I beg your pardon&amp;#x27; once in Rwanda, and that was basically it. 800,000+ are dead and Belgium says &amp;#x27;sorry&amp;#x27; once. What?&lt;p&gt;Belgium isn&amp;#x27;t about chocolate, it&amp;#x27;s a country which is completely fine with not teaching its citizens about the common practice of chopping off children&amp;#x27;s arms for not meeting labor goals for the day. When Belgians travel to places like Rwanda they are dumbfounded by the realities of their own history.&lt;p&gt;And those people want to tell China something about human rights, yelling from some tower in Brussels. It&amp;#x27;s breathtaking.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world-europe-53017188&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;world-europe-53017188&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>Karrot_Kream</author><text>And to go along with that, the Renaissance was actually an incredibly violent and turbulent time.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.exurbe.com&amp;#x2F;black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-telling-the-myth-of-a-renaissance-golden-age-and-bad-middle-ages&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.exurbe.com&amp;#x2F;black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-tel...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;is a good post about that, and the Dark Ages myth. There&amp;#x27;s a lot of propaganda from this time period that people still believe today because it was used to justify a lot of the European nationalism of the 19th and 20th centuries.</text></item><item><author>nexthash</author><text>There are a lot of misguided beliefs about the Medieval period arising from a popular Gothic&amp;#x2F;Romantic revival in the 19th century. The period became known by another name - &amp;quot;the Dark Ages&amp;quot; - and was seen as dark, mysterious, and primitive. That completely got wrong what the Medieval period really was - the transition from Roman imperial rule to early-modern European states, and a small industrial revolution in technology including agriculture and navigation.&lt;p&gt;The popular view of all-powerful, romantic nobility and dumb peasants also comes from this mischaracterization. In reality, the period&amp;#x27;s instability after the Roman empire fell really made kings and nobles more akin to local warlords playing at Roman customs, and there were exceptions to the rule like prosperous city-republics. Peasant life was also sophisticated, rational, and complex, completely attuned to local weather and crop cycles. A good blog series goes into detail about this here:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;acoup.blog&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;24&amp;#x2F;collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;acoup.blog&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;24&amp;#x2F;collections-bread-how-did-they...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The important thing to realize is that no matter how difficult it was, how long ago it occurred, and how foreign the customs were for a certain period, people are still people. They have emotions, worries, good days, and struggles. If you take things in perspective and empathize with the people that preceded you on this world, history will lose a lot of its mystery.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>PartiallyTyped</author><text>I have the same experience. Growing up in Greek schools, we learn early about our &amp;#x27;great ancestors&amp;#x27;, but every depiction is with rose coloured glasses.&lt;p&gt;We are not taught about the atrocities of our ancestors and how the Greece the &amp;#x27;mother of all cultures&amp;#x27; was infact filled with traitors and slavery, especially Athens.&lt;p&gt;Our &amp;#x27;great&amp;#x27; past is ,beat, almost literally into our heads. We named one of the worst warlords in history &amp;#x27;Great&amp;#x27; and instead of talking about the slavery and death he brought, we call it &amp;#x27;liberation of the barbarians&amp;#x27;, with &amp;#x27;barbarians&amp;#x27; 
meaning all who are not greeks (::winky face::).&lt;p&gt;When it came to the Romans, we were still the winners because conquered them with our culture.&lt;p&gt;The worst of all is that this becomes so ingrown, even in young people, that for many it becomes a corner-store of their identity; any critical discussion is met with attacks because it literally shakes the foundation of their world.</text></comment>