Most undeserved Dark Legends in History

The British army of the 19th century was led by incompetents promoted based on chin size (the smaller the better) rather than actual talent.

Related: the generals of WW1 were all a bunch of incompetents obsessed with fighting the Napoleonic Wars.

This is a good one that gets repeated all the time.
 
- Rome fell because of invading barbarians.

Rome invited barbarians who gradually became more and more in charge as roman government disappeared.

- Roman culture disappeared because of barbarians replacing the native romans

The barbarians were a small percentage of the population in most places and actually assimilated to roman culture. Roman culture evolved seperately in the western and eastern empire, but the east is generally seen to have been more advanced and so a more direct continuation of roman culture.
 
1. "The Middle Ages were a period of darkness and stunted learning." Complete and utter bullshit, invented by people of latter ages, trying to make themselves look better by comparison (and stressing their own supposed connection to a romanticised image of Antiquity). One may argue that the lack of centralised order had certain ill effects, but that was a relatively short-lasting issue, and things soon picked up again. (Can you say "Carolingian Renaissance"?)

2. "Christianity destroyed endless amounts of classical knowledge." Again, bullshit, although not as complete as the above example. Early Christianity, after it managed to acieve dominance in the Roman Empire -- and having faced persecution previously -- went on a bit of a vengeance kick, sure. They destroyed certain institutions and certain works. Again, this was a relatively short period, and it's also often not mentioned that for the most part, temples and centres of learning weren't destroyed, but just converted into Christian institutions. More importantly, christianity later became the most important preserver of classical works. This in a period where post-imperial chaos (rather than any purposeful agenda) was the big threat to that preservation. That chaos would've been there no matter what when Rome fell, and the fact that an organised Christian Church existed was ultimately a great boon to the preservation of classical works.
Continuing off of this, there's the whole myth that religion (specifically Christianity) and science are somehow two diametrically opposed worldviews that can't be reconciled. This is despite the fact that many major scientists were practicing Christians, some even active members of the clergy, and that the Church often sponsored scientific research.
 
Continuing off of this, there's the whole myth that religion (specifically Christianity) and science are somehow two diametrically opposed worldviews that can't be reconciled. This is despite the fact that many major scientists were practicing Christians, some even active members of the clergy, and that the Church often sponsored scientific research.
it's my observation that the people promoting this idea generally have an agenda against religion in the first place and look for any reason to demonize it. probably a good example is the "Road to the Multiverse" episode of Family Guy, where the first alternate world visited is one where Christianity never existed. obviously, the entire world would be a utopia thousands of years more advanced than ours because clearly Christianity is the root of all evil.

keep in mind that i'm saying all this is a quasi-Deist with conviction in my own beliefs and no goals, now or hopefully ever, in trying to get anyone else to follow those beliefs i hold. i always strive for fairness, objectivity, and self-determination, so it pisses me off that people say that religion holds back mankind and causes all war and conflict just as much as fundamentalists saying that any and all non-religious actions and beliefs are evil.
 
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- Rome fell because of invading barbarians.

Rome invited barbarians who gradually became more and more in charge as roman government disappeared.

- Roman culture disappeared because of barbarians replacing the native romans

The barbarians were a small percentage of the population in most places and actually assimilated to roman culture. Roman culture evolved seperately in the western and eastern empire, but the east is generally seen to have been more advanced and so a more direct continuation of roman culture.

I agree about the second, but I disagree about the first. For example, perhaps the most damaging of the barbarians, the Vandals/Alans, weren’t invited into the Empire, but crossed with the Suevi in he crossing of the Rhine in 406.

Also, the barbarians did do a lot of damage to the Roman state. The Vandal-Alan-Suevi coalition sacked their way through Gaul before settling in Hispania, essentially detaching those provinces from the Roman state. The Vandal-Alan group seized Africa, perhaps the most vital group of Provinces in the WRE. Alaric sacked Rome itself for the first time in several centuries, and after his invasion, the revenues of all Italia were decreased by about 6/7, IIRC. Even if they weren’t the only cause of the fall, they certainly played a part in it.
 
Likewise, a lot of people I feel understate or underestimate the totality of the demographic catastrophe that was the Spanish colonies in the New World.

What does this mean?

Are you saying the Spanish colonies were a demographic catastrophe because they caused all the natives to die, because they didn't bring in enough Spanish population, or because they brought in too many Africans (isn't this racist?). Apologies if I misunderstood.
 
What does this mean?

Are you saying the Spanish colonies were a demographic catastrophe because they caused all the natives to die, because they didn't bring in enough Spanish population, or because they brought in too many Africans (isn't this racist?). Apologies if I misunderstood.

Pretty sure he meant that first one. They estimate a ~90 percent population loss in the Americas after the Europeans arrived, as I recall.

Anyways, most undeserved Dark Legend definitely has to go to Reconstruction and the Grant Administration in particular. Not nearly as strong now as a hundred years ago, but still relevant, I'd say.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Pretty sure he meant that first one. They estimate a ~90 percent population loss in the Americas after the Europeans arrived, as I recall.

Sure, but it's also widely understood that the vast majority was due to disease-- which would have spread simply due to contact of any sort. The only way to prevent it would be to quarantine the New World, and that's not even vaguely realistic. Bottom line: while the Spaniards no doubt did bad things, that massive death toll stems from something that wasn't specifically or uniquely their doing. If the disease problem hadn't existed, then the death toll would be very small compared to what we see in OTL. In fact, when we look at the number of Native Americans in Latin America, and the degree of mixing of population, and then contrast that with the situation in Anglo-America... well. The impression arises that the Anglos were far, far more thorough in any active extermination efforts. And that the Spanish primarily get the bad rep as "ultra-exterminators" because they were the first guys "on the scene", and thus doing their colonising when the waves of disease burned through the New World.

Naturally, this does not excuse any atrocities that were committed, but it does indicate that the image of Spanish colonialism being uniquely worse than that of other countries is not correct. (And in fact, Spanish colonialism may in certain ways have been marginally "less bad" for Native Americans than Anglo colonialism.)
 
It certainly wasn't. It's often forgotten that the Inquisition was actually introduced to make sure that people accused of heresy were given due process before being punished -- i.e., to make it harder to punish people, not easier. The Inquisition's methods consisted mostly of getting a judge to investigate the evidence and decide whether or not the accused was guilty, which ended up being adopted by most of the secular courts, as well; torture was sometimes used, but it was less common and less severe than in the secular courts. And its sentences were generally quite lenient; since the aim was to get heretics to repent rather than to kill them, unless you were a repeat offender you could generally get off by signing a statement along the lines of "I thought this view was correct, but now that the nice people from the Inquisition have explained matters to me, I see that I was wrong. Hurray for Catholicism!"
Mostly accurate, regarding the Roman Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition was a bit worse than that (though it still mostly applied a form of due process).
 
Sure, but it's also widely understood that the vast majority was due to disease-- which would have spread simply due to contact of any sort. The only way to prevent it would be to quarantine the New World, and that's not even vaguely realistic. Bottom line: while the Spaniards no doubt did bad things, that massive death toll stems from something that wasn't specifically or uniquely their doing. If the disease problem hadn't existed, then the death toll would be very small compared to what we see in OTL. In fact, when we look at the number of Native Americans in Latin America, and the degree of mixing of population, and then contrast that with the situation in Anglo-America... well. The impression arises that the Anglos were far, far more thorough in any active extermination efforts. And that the Spanish primarily get the bad rep as "ultra-exterminators" because they were the first guys "on the scene", and thus doing their colonising when the waves of disease burned through the New World.

Naturally, this does not excuse any atrocities that were committed, but it does indicate that the image of Spanish colonialism being uniquely worse than that of other countries is not correct. (And in fact, Spanish colonialism may in certain ways have been marginally "less bad" for Native Americans than Anglo colonialism.)
OTOH, the Spanish colonised the most densely populated Native lands. US and Canada had only a fraction of the population density of Mesoamerica to begin with. That said, yes, the Anglo (and, in some phases, Portuguese; different densities also being a factor in Brazil vs. Spanish Andean and Central America) settler colonialism tended to want to remove the Natives, while the Spanish largely extractive colonialism tended to be content with brutally exploiting them. Remarkably in Argentina, Uruguay and, to an extent, Chile, all colonised by Spain, the pattern is closer to US/Canada/Brazil than it is to Mexico/Peru/Bolivia. And you don't really find so much people with any traceable Native ancestry in modern Cuba, forget about recognizable Native groups there at all (unlike pretty much everywhere in the mainland, US, Canada, Argentina and Brazil included, main exception I know of being Uruguay).
To elaborate a bit, the point is only secondarily the colonizing nation involved, though of course Spain, Portugal, England/Britain and France had their specific strategies, constraints and preferences; its more the nexus between the native settlement pattern and the colonial local option for exploiting the land (in turn conditioned by political and cultural choices in the metropolis and in the colony, ecological and economical situations, sociopolitical bases of the colonization itself, etc.) the defined how badly the natives would have fared, usually on a scale from badly to horrifically worse anyway.
 
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That British colonialism was somehow better than most other nations' forms of colonialism (I know, I know, probably a kamikaze flight on an Anglo-centric board, but I've just had to put up with a week of English house guests saying how Afrikaans people are backwards and conservative - one even saying "don't all Afrikaans people go to Hell, anyway?" - and the English "brought" the light of civilization to the Afrikaners, so I'm putting that one out there). AIUI, England was pretty much the same as most other nations in the colonialism game.

That's kind of the inverse of what this thread's supposed to be about.
 
it's my observation that the people promoting this idea generally have an agenda against religion in the first place and look for any reason to demonize it. probably a good example is the "Road to the Multiverse" episode of Family Guy, where the first alternate world visited is one where Christianity never existed. obviously, the entire world would be a utopia thousands of years more advanced than ours because clearly Christianity is the root of all evil.

keep in mind that i'm saying all this is a quasi-Deist with conviction in my own beliefs and no goals, now or hopefully ever, in trying to get anyone else to follow those beliefs i hold. i always strive for fairness, objectivity, and self-determination, so it pisses me off that people say that religion holds back mankind and causes all war and conflict just as much as fundamentalists saying that any and all non-religious actions and beliefs are evil.
I knew a person like this once, and they claimed that there had been no real evil atheists and that they made the world better. Example: "christianity is evil because it destroys civilization and causes genocide. After all, Hitler was a proper Christian". (Technically I'm paraphrasing, but it was basicly the same thing, just worded differently)
 
Mostly accurate, regarding the Roman Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition was a bit worse than that (though it still mostly applied a form of due process).
Not really. The Spanish Inquisition was probably the fairest court in Europe at the time, disallowing evidence from untrustworthy sources, looking dimly on information obtained under torture (compared to other courts at least), and having relatively light punishments overall with executions rare.
 
The reputation of Jesuits were torture-happy religious fanatics seems particularly undeserved.
Not really. The Spanish Inquisition was probably the fairest court in Europe at the time, disallowing evidence from untrustworthy sources, looking dimly on information obtained under torture (compared to other courts at least), and having relatively light punishments overall with executions rare.
The fact that they prosecuted "heretics" who were mostly converted Muslims and Jews is probably a part of why they're seen so dimly. Doesn't really matter how "fair" they are if their main purpose was to persecute religious minorities.
 
The Tudors didn't have the means to carry out the murders. If somebody killed the princes, which they did, then it was the Yorks.
Personally I think they were killed in a botched rescue attempt.

But anyways their deaths at this time don't avail Richard anything, he's already king and recognised as such by most, and they're recognised bastards. Their deaths for anything other than treason, which would be a few years off, don't do anything but lose him support.
It's Tudor and Buckingham who have the most to gain by their deaths in captivity.
 
Personally I think they were killed in a botched rescue attempt.

But anyways their deaths at this time don't avail Richard anything, he's already king and recognised as such by most, and they're recognised bastards. Their deaths for anything other than treason, which would be a few years off, don't do anything but lose him support.
It's Tudor and Buckingham who have the most to gain by their deaths in captivity.
In the summer of 1483 though Richard's reign wasn't really that secure. After the attempted rescue it would have made sense for him to have them killed. That attempt proved that they were both still threats to Richard's hold on the crown.

Also, as far as Buckingham goes I personally subscribe to the theory that Buckingham only threw his weight behind Henry when he realized that Edward and Richard had been killed.
 
In the summer of 1483 though Richard's reign wasn't really that secure. After the attempted rescue it would have made sense for him to have them killed. That attempt proved that they were both still threats to Richard's hold on the crown.
Maybe. But if he'd personally had them killed it would have been done in a way that improves his position. Richard was too shrewd to just bump them off.
 
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