AHC: South America not "Latin"

OMG!!:mad: How about this, WHAT IF South America was not predominantly colonized by Portugal and Spain? There can we stop dissecting the heritage of everyone who speaks a Latin language.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
OMG!!:mad: How about this, WHAT IF South America was not predominantly colonized by Portugal and Spain? There can we stop dissecting the heritage of everyone who speaks a Latin language.

The thing is large parts of south america were more of a "wtf did you just take over the whole empire with 50 men" - it's not too hard to fail in mesoamerica and slightly less hard in Peru.
 

Hendryk

Banned
Fascinating side debate about whether the French qualify as a Latin people. Probably irrelevant for the purpose of this challenge, since I understand it to mean "no specifically Spanish or Portuguese conquest of South America", but interesting nonetheless.
The beginning Post says Spain or Portugal. The French are technically not Latin, but Germanic, as they are the descendants of the Franks.
It doesn't really matter who the French are genetically descended from, and that's not the Franks in any case save for a small infusion. What matters is that French culture is largely descended from the Roman heritage and that French is a Romance language. By these standards the French are a Latin people. France definitely has a closer cultural kinship to, say, Italy, than to Germany.

The French see themselve as Gallic not Germanic or Latin. Charles De Gaulle....Asterix the Gaul, Vercingetorix.
As pointed out by archaeogeek, the name "de Gaulle" has an entirely different etymology, and a single name is completely anecdotal.
 

Susano

Banned
The French see themselve as Gallic not Germanic or Latin. Charles De Gaulle....Asterix the Gaul, Vercingetorix.

No Frenchmen would see their country as German. They might say Latin to identify themselves with Catholic countries or with Romanians but it would not be their feeling.

The French may have talked about the Latin world but most people would make a distinction between Latin America (Spanish/Portuguese) and French America (Canada), just as people would distinguish German culture from British culture even if some people tried to see them both as Teutonic.

Argh, mind your terminology! "Teutonic" is a nonsense word meaning absolutely nothing at all (except when its used in hostile propaganda refering to Germany:rolleyes:). And Germanic != German. Sure no Frenchmen would see their country as German, but thats not whats talked about. The Franks were Germanic, not German (though of course just as France is the West Frankish Realm, Germany is the East Frankish Realm. The ever-squabbling twins). However, of course, France is no Germanic language and culture, but a Romance language and culture

The French are Celts (whatever mixture they were prior to 60BC) with an admixture of Latin colonists from the Roman Empire and Germanic invaders in the 4th and 5th century.
Oh, what nonsense. France is culturally and lingually Romance. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Celts, unless you go the silly racialist "by blood" route, which means nothing. France has absolutely no continuity with Gaul, just as Germany has absolutely no continuity with the Germanic tribes.

Hendryk said:
Fascinating side debate about whether the French qualify as a Latin people
I wouldnt really call it fascinating, because its just entirely silly to deny that.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
It's the misconceptions themselves that I find fascinating, TBH.

I find the "the french are celts" bit rather amusing given the attitude towards the breton language in french nationalist circles of the early 20th century; "language of the stone age" :rolleyes:
 
The thing is large parts of south america were more of a "wtf did you just take over the whole empire with 50 men" - it's not too hard to fail in mesoamerica and slightly less hard in Peru.

It does amaze me as well, and makes me sad and laugh at the same time. Like you said, "50 Spaniards just took over an empire", the Indigenous powers were smashed in less then a decades time; while on the other hand more 'tribal' groups managed to resist far longer.

But the whole debate over French being Latin or not is just getting silly. As Hendryk said, the French people speak a Romanance language, which thus includes them as a "Latin People". This would be like debating if I'm really Mohawk or not, because much of ancestry might actually be from neighboring tribes, based off captives from warfare being incorporated into mine. But then again I still be Iroquois since most of those captives would have been other Iroquoian speakers (never mind the fact most of British Islander blood got into my veins because of these practices as well, so now I'm Celtic and Germanic as well:rolleyes:).
 
Argh, mind your terminology! "Teutonic" is a nonsense word meaning absolutely nothing at all (except when its used in hostile propaganda refering to Germany:rolleyes:).Oh, what nonsense. France is culturally and lingually Romance. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Celts, unless you go the silly racialist "by blood" route, which means nothing. France has absolutely no continuity with Gaul, just as Germany has absolutely no continuity with the Germanic tribes.


I wouldnt really call it fascinating, because its just entirely silly to deny that.

If you took the trouble to read what I said you would have noticed the words "some people see them both as Teutonic.." I never said it was my opinion.

Many people did think like that. It doesn't matter whether they were right or wrong.

My remark about the French being Celts was in response to a comment that said the French were Latins with a mixture of Gauls. This implied that the native population of France was destroyed and replaced by Romans. This is not true.

Please don't patronize with your 'silly racialist by blood route' and then say something as ridiculous as France has nothing to do with Gaul or Germans has nothing to do with the Germanic tribes. All countries developed from their past. You may as well say the Egyptians of today have nothing to do with Ancient Egypt and that the Pyramids are not their monument because they now speak Arabic and are mostly Muslim or the Turkish people have nothing to do with anything in their country prior to the 14th century.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
It does amaze me as well, and makes me sad and laugh at the same time. Like you said, "50 Spaniards just took over an empire", the Indigenous powers were smashed in less then a decades time; while on the other hand more 'tribal' groups managed to resist far longer.

It's disheartening with both, but when they landed, the Inca empire was in the middle of a civil war and having its equivalent to the black death thanks to the viral shock, while Cortez was amazingly good at playing mesoamerican and spanish colonial politics for his own gain, and he quickly went from "50 spaniards" to "200 spaniards and 10.000 tarascans".
 

Susano

Banned
Please don't patronize with your 'silly racialist by blood route' and then say something as ridiculous as France has nothing to do with Gaul or Germans has nothing to do with the Germanic tribes. All countries developed from their past. You may as well say the Egyptians of today have nothing to do with Ancient Egypt and that the Pyramids are not their monument because they now speak Arabic and are mostly Muslim or the Turkish people have nothing to do with anything in their country prior to the 14th century.

The Egyptians of today DO have nothing to do with Ancient Egypt. Hellenisation, Christianisation, Islamification, Arabification... its a different culture now, plain and simple. One can make the same argument for the Greeks, who after all were insulted for centuries if you called them such (and not Romans), so theres no continuity in identity. So, yes even the oh so hallowed cultures of ancient times are not immune to that.

Sure, nothing arises out of a vacuum. But there is a difference between continuity and, well, replacement. Culturally, Gaul was entirely replaced, as was the world of the Germanic tribes. And culture and identity are the only things mattering in this regard.
 
It's disheartening with both, but when they landed, the Inca empire was in the middle of a civil war and having its equivalent to the black death thanks to the viral shock, while Cortez was amazingly good at playing mesoamerican and spanish colonial politics for his own gain, and he quickly went from "50 spaniards" to "200 spaniards and 10.000 tarascans".

Plus too, colonialism of those regions was quite different then say how the English/British and Dutch did it. The Spanish took over an existing structure, changing the religion and adding a race based hierarchy to it. While in the greater part of North America, Natives were generally wholly exterminated or pushed into the periphery. Sucks:(
 
The Egyptians of today DO have nothing to do with Ancient Egypt. Hellenisation, Christianisation, Islamification, Arabification... its a different culture now, plain and simple. One can make the same argument for the Greeks, who after all were insulted for centuries if you called them such (and not Romans), so theres no continuity in identity. So, yes even the oh so hallowed cultures of ancient times are not immune to that.

Sure, nothing arises out of a vacuum. But there is a difference between continuity and, well, replacement. Culturally, Gaul was entirely replaced, as was the world of the Germanic tribes. And culture and identity are the only things mattering in this regard.

Enjoy your trip to Egypt:D
 
Europeans were sailing to the New World before Columbus. Fisherman were already operating off the Grand Banks near Canada. Sailors almost certainly landed there before 1492.

To keep Europeans out of America you would have to bring ship building development to a halt and create a force field across the mid Atlantic to stop fisherman, whalers and adventurers from reaching landfall in America.

Yes, but seasonal fishing posts and shipwrecked people are a different thing that organized and active exploration (with cartographic works), conquest and colonization.
Though, yes, you are right, it would be very difficult to keep the europeans in the other side of the ocean forever, but we don't need to keep the europeans tied in the other side of the Atlantic to preserve the native dominance, as those pre-columbian contacts prove. Columbus and those who came after him were not looking for whales after all.


I find the "the french are celts" bit rather amusing given the attitude towards the breton language in french nationalist circles of the early 20th century; "language of the stone age" :rolleyes:


I was expecting someone bringing the Gauloises cigarettes as an argument, or whatever.

It's disheartening with both, but when they landed, the Inca empire was in the middle of a civil war and having its equivalent to the black death thanks to the viral shock, while Cortez was amazingly good at playing mesoamerican and spanish colonial politics for his own gain, and he quickly went from "50 spaniards" to "200 spaniards and 10.000 tarascans".

This. The idea of a small bunch of white men conquering native empires with a hand tied to the back is one of these non-innocent historical misconceptions which lasts because fulfills the wishful thinking of certain people. The conquest would have been impossible, at least with such small contingents, without the circumstances which allowed the conquerors to play with the internal politics of the conquered states and gain the support of local groups.

OTOH, if the term Ibero-America was more broadly used in english we wouldn't have this debate about the latin quality of the french:p.
 
The Egyptians of today DO have nothing to do with Ancient Egypt. Hellenisation, Christianisation, Islamification, Arabification... its a different culture now, plain and simple. One can make the same argument for the Greeks, who after all were insulted for centuries if you called them such (and not Romans), so theres no continuity in identity. So, yes even the oh so hallowed cultures of ancient times are not immune to that.

Sure, nothing arises out of a vacuum. But there is a difference between continuity and, well, replacement. Culturally, Gaul was entirely replaced, as was the world of the Germanic tribes. And culture and identity are the only things mattering in this regard.

Arguably, modern Greece has more to do with ancient Greece (read: the Greek language) than modern Egypt has with ancient Egypt (semi-exception: the Coptian Christians, since the Coptic language, although only a liturgical language, is the descendant of the ancient Egyptian language).

Regarding the French, obviously the bulk of France is descended from the Latinized Gauls, but there's otherwise no continuity between Gaul and France. And the Bretons, while they speak a Celtic language, it is a Brythonic language that arrived there during the migrations period (hint: Brittany ;) ).
 
BS. The French nowadays are the descendants of a myriad of cultures; the Franks were merely a small elite ruling the Gallo-Roman population.

The French were always mostly Romanic, really........perhaps Turkish Capybara has a soft spot for the ancient Teutonic tribes, and there's nothing too wrong with that. :D
But if anything at all, it does seem to be the Franks were probably more Celtic than anything{hey, it does kinda make sense when you think about it........they were from the same general area that the Gauls came from.}, at least at first{but given how common mingling of different people was, especially in those days.........well, it's probably nothing more than a moot point nowadays. ;)}
 
The French were always mostly Romanic, really........perhaps Turkish Capybara has a soft spot for the ancient Teutonic tribes, and there's nothing too wrong with that. :D
But if anything at all, it does seem to be the Franks were probably more Celtic than anything{hey, it does kinda make sense when you think about it........they were from the same general area that the Gauls came from.}, at least at first{but given how common mingling of different people was, especially in those days.........well, it's probably nothing more than a moot point nowadays. ;)}

Let me say this: it's a bit complicated. If we go by genetics - as far as things are discernable here (R1b-L21 and R1b-152 are our best shots here), the bulk of the population of modern France is probably of originally Celtic descend. In regard for Germany, the same sort of is true, because most a large chunk of the modern area of Germany (basically, everything west of the Rhine and south of the Main) was probably majorly Celtic-speaking as late as the 1st century BC. Before that (during the Hallstatt Period) most of Germany was probably Celtic- or Proto-Celtic speaking, and got gradually absorbed from the 6th century onwards as the Germanic tribes spread southwards and absorbed the Celts (and the Roman conquests of Gaul and the Alpine region probably meant the death blow to the Celts as a culture, anyways). Still, even Ptolemy (in the 2nd century AD) mentions a fair number of recognizably Celtic town names in the area of Germania Magna.

Nonetheless, the Franks as they existed at the eve of the Migration Period (and later) were overtly a Germanic people, and the modern Dutch and German languages are (in part at least) descended from the old Frankish tongues. Of course, as I said the key issue is that no real population replacement took place on the area of France, and hence most of the population is descended from Latinized Gauls. ;)
 
to solve the SPANISH/PORTUGUESE issue brought up, how about the Spanish War of Succession leads to a full on French victory, maybe the Ottomans attack the Habsburgs at a very inopportune moment and the british and portuguese get beat, some of the colonies that were spanish become french.

or, an independent italian state pops up in argentina (which has a large italian population, and oddly brings new meaning to 'latin' america).

same is possible for a german state, just a breakaway germanophone nation.

brits can see the future and look at any alternate history map of argentina, and realize that they should colonize there :p but seriously, maybe if morgan opens pandoras box, and the english make a concerted effort, they can capture parts of colombia
 
to solve the SPANISH/PORTUGUESE issue brought up, how about the Spanish War of Succession leads to a full on French victory, maybe the Ottomans attack the Habsburgs at a very inopportune moment and the british and portuguese get beat, some of the colonies that were spanish become french.

or, an independent italian state pops up in argentina (which has a large italian population, and oddly brings new meaning to 'latin' america).

same is possible for a german state, just a breakaway germanophone nation.

brits can see the future and look at any alternate history map of argentina, and realize that they should colonize there :p but seriously, maybe if morgan opens pandoras box, and the english make a concerted effort, they can capture parts of colombia

Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina had a great amount of immigration from the Levant. Once I wrote a TL (in Italian, sorry), about an Arabic-speaking "New Syria" carved from Brazil.
It was not the most likely of the ideas but it was fun. Now, have an even more oppressive Ottoman rule around 1900 in Greater Syria, or an even worse famine in Lebanon during WWI, so the Arabs migrating there are much more. They might end as being the majority in many parts of Argentina and some parts of Brazil.
Maybe Argentina may end up as perceiving herself as an "Arab" country (given that Spaniards have obviously a lot of remote Arab ancestries by themselves). It seems odd, but Somalis are actually far less "Arab" than that by any means, and still Somalia is a member of the Arab League.
 
By the way, France is "Latin" as much as Spain and Portugal are. By the standard that the French as Germanic because of the Franks, so would be the Spaniards because of the Visigoths, unless you credit them to be "Moors". And the Reconquista saw a great participation of Basques, who were not Latin-speaking at first. :)
(and I am Longobardian, i guess :) ).
Oh, there is an internation organization called Unilat, meaning Union Latine, Unión Latina, Unione Latina etc. Its headquarters happen to be in... Paris. ;)
Its members include the Philippines and Angola (but not Argentina, oddly enough, she is an observer).
 
By the way, France is "Latin" as much as Spain and Portugal are. By the standard that the French as Germanic because of the Franks, so would be the Spaniards because of the Visigoths, unless you credit them to be "Moors". And the Reconquista saw a great participation of Basques, who were not Latin-speaking at first. :)
(and I am Longobardian, i guess :) ).
Oh, there is an internation organization called Unilat, meaning Union Latine, Unión Latina, Unione Latina etc. Its headquarters happen to be in... Paris. ;)
Its members include the Philippines and Angola (but not Argentina, oddly enough, she is an observer).

yeah, latin american is really just a term used, as far as i know, by americans to distinguish the english speaking parts of america from the spanish and portuguese. it may have different origins, but that's what it colloquially means now. all this argument about the french being latin is pointless, i guess because people just don't understand what the MOD meant to say
 
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