The Assyrian Empire.
Border gore.
You may laugh, but to a mapmaker, the HRE and the Raj are contenders for worst border gore in history.I forgot about those bastards. If the sole purpose of your state is war, then I’d say that’s a shoe-in for most evil.
Truly the only proper judge of one’s morality.
Couldn't one see Nazi Germany and other 20th century regimes as the product of their times and contexts? I mean I tend to see Nazi Germany as being the culmination of a lot of late 19th and early 20th century European beliefs and ideologies, if only taken to a greater extreme. Social Darwinism, scientific racism,etc, were all present in Europe before the Nazis came to power, and they were widely accepted.As other posters have mentioned, states (especially pre 20th century) are rarely evil. They’re a product of their times and their context.
However, one notable exception would be the appalling house of horror that was Leopold’s Congo Free State.
Don't forget slavery (the Netherlands was one of the last countries to abolish it) and the slave trade. The wars against rthe Indians in the New Netherlands. The Cape colony and its treatment of the native Africans. The colonisation of Indonesia, with things like the Cultivation System. The treatment as second rate citizens of catholics, jews, lutherans, anabaptiss or remonstrants. The Netherlands does not have clean hands.As somebody who also lives there, I vaguely suspect that the answer is going to have something to do with Jan Pieterszoon Coen, and possibly with his actions on the Banda Islands specifically.
They are ethnolinguistically Iroquois, that is a fact. They are not a separate ethnic, religious, racial or national group from the wider Iroquois. Language plays an important role in identifying distinctions between ethnic groups but it’s not the only qualification. The Conestogas are not simply distinct because they had a slightly different language with slightly different cultural practices, just as it’s largely accepted that all the Han Chinese are one ethnic group despite linguistic and cultural differences between someone in Shanghai and someone in Inner Mongolia. Two guys with roots in Ireland are still the same ethnic Irish American despite one identifying as a New Yorker and the other a Houstonian and having different accents and day to day lives.
You could argue it, but it would be a severe misrepresentation of the definition of genocide.
Colonization of the Baltics/Pomerania (and if we're counting Charlemagne, slaughter of the Saxons)?I can kind of (well, kind of) understand the reasoning for putting all these countries into the poll...except one. What evil was the Holy Roman Empire associated with?
The main reason why the 'British empire ' was 'Evil' to me is not because it has or hasn't got the biggest death count .
I admit that maybe some other empire may have a greater death count .
The difference lies in the fact that England did it all in the name of 'uplifting' natives ,'educating' colonies .
Spreading the word of liberty(In later years) .
and claiming that they were a just ,judicial and 'civilized' empire .
Now show me if there is a time when Genghis khan said 'I am a fair ruler who cares for all humans and want to uplift society' ? .
and that's why !
Can't help but notice the double thinking.No love for the lands of the Khans? Though simply numerically speaking, you can't beat Mongol genocides, their Empire was not hostile to cooperating entities, and the stability and east-west connection it built was significant.
For people claiming the Mongols never created anything: they created the basis for society in most of Asia for centuries to come. From central Asia to the Mughals and their Taj Mahal, to the silk road.
The Spanish Empire on the other hand? A bureaucratic aristocratic monstrosity that destroyed every independent civilization in the Americas, forging the slave trade on a international level and burning everyone they deemed a heretic. Evil.
No love for the lands of the Khans? Though simply numerically speaking, you can't beat Mongol genocides, their Empire was not hostile to cooperating entities, and the stability and east-west connection it built was significant.
For people claiming the Mongols never created anything: they created the basis for society in most of Asia for centuries to come. From central Asia to the Mughals and their Taj Mahal, to the silk road.
The Spanish Empire on the other hand? A bureaucratic aristocratic monstrosity that destroyed every independent civilization in the Americas, forging the slave trade on a international level and burning everyone they deemed a heretic. Evil.
Can't help but notice the double thinking.
Where are the songs of the Tatars? Where are the canals and libraries of Baghdad? Where are the cities of the Khwarezm? Where are the towns of the Rus'? Their glories have passed away in blood and ash, trampled underfoot by the horses of the Mongols for no other reason than that they could.
The Spanish Empire built cathedrals and churches too, and their treasure fleets sailed around the earth, the first among the human race to do so. Take the good with the bad.![]()
The Inca descendants are still there, their language as well and a lot of their architecture. So are the Aztecs.What i was trying to convey was that the Mongol Empire lasted a couple of centuries and left massive cultural connections between east-west and a significant socio-political imprint in Asia. It killed millions, more then any other, yet it's not as inherently evil as the Spanish Empire (and a couple others.)
Where's the Land of Inca? Where's the gold of Machu Pichu? Where' the Pyramids long torn down? Where's the Aztecs and the Incas? Where's the golden cities of West Africa? Where's the Kingdom of Mansa Musa? Where's the gods of the polynesians? Where's the gods of any of them?
All taken and burned, all used and spent. All for some baroque Cathedrals covered in Gold?
And for the last part, I believe you've mistaken the Spanish for the Portuguese, rulers of the seas.![]()
Sure the ruins are still there. And sure, there's still descendants of those that survived and were forcibly converted, and assimilated. Yay.The Inca descendants are still there, their language as well and a lot of their architecture. So are the Aztecs.
Slave trade.Golden Cities of West Africa? What are you talking about?
Mansa Musa? Mali? Why are accusing the Spanish of destroying them?
Oh, behave.Frankly your whole point is dumb to its core,
Well, i guess it's settled then.no the Mongols WERE inherently worse morally than Spaniards as a whole
but apparently the fact they "left an imprint" makes them good, you think the Spaniards or Portoguese didn't left an imprint, that they didn't connect the Atlantic and the world?
Granted that neither of them were nice.This is a perfect case of double think, when 2 groups do relatively similar things, you take one favourable PoV for one and a unfavourable for the other.
What i was trying to convey was that the Mongol Empire lasted a couple of centuries and left massive cultural connections between east-west and a significant socio-political imprint in Asia. It killed millions, more then any other, yet it's not as inherently evil as the Spanish Empire (and a couple others.)
Where's the Land of Inca? Where's the gold of Machu Pichu? Where' the Pyramids long torn down? Where's the Aztecs and the Incas? Where's the golden cities of West Africa? Where's the Kingdom of Mansa Musa? Where's the gods of the polynesians? Where's the gods of any of them?
All taken and burned, all used and spent. All for some baroque Cathedrals covered in Gold?
And for the last part, I believe you've mistaken the Spanish for the Portuguese, rulers of the seas.![]()
The Spanish created (with the Portuguese) modern globalisation. They created the modern world.Sure they connected the Atlantic world. By creating modern slavery. They didn't conmect civilizations, they simply wiped out the old and used the americas as a plantation and mining core to fund their empire.
The mongols never connected anything though right? Not like there was some kind of trade along some kind of road that extended from china to the mediterranean? I must be imagining it.
And the Spanish Empire is the beginning of the modern world, with all its beauties and all its atrocities, also leaving equally massive cultural connections between east and west, perhaps even more so considering the Columbian Exchange.
The Inca still speak Quechua and are still there, and the same can be said of the Maya in Guatemala and the Mexica with Nahuatl. I am Filipino, and I still speak Tagalog.
I was not speaking specifically of Mali, just of the west african societies. Tried to sound a bit poetic, failed.The empire of Mali collapsed for reasons unrelated to the Spanish Empire, so don't lay their corpse at the feet of Spain.
But Islam didn't reach the mesoamerican faiths, christianity did. I'm not saying Islam would be any nicer, nor am i attacking christianity(Christian here). Just because it could've been worse, it doesn't mean it wasn't horrible. The religious intolerance promulgated by spain in it's own land and later on the New world was absolutely insanity.As for the gods of Mesoamerica: any religion that doesn't practice human sacrifice encountering a culture that regularly practices human sacrifice is not going to react well. Islam would have reacted worse, frankly speaking: had it been Al-Andalus, they would have torn down the idols of the Mexica even more violently, destroyed the very names of their gods, and forced the Faith down their throats, I'm sure.
Yeah, i agree with that. But the Mongol Empire, on it's core, was extremely tolerant of other faiths within it. To a Bizarre degree.And I could say the same about that ostentatious marble tomb in India built on the corpses of the Khwarezm.
CoffCoffupstartspaniardscoffcoffEh. Spain sailed just as much as Portugal did, and lasted far longer.![]()
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The Spanish created (with the Portuguese) modern globalisation. They created the modern world.
If we really want to be splitting hairs, the Spanish introduced the potatoes to Europe and China, allowing billions more to be born.
Some of the Aztec civilisation was erased, but it's also through cultural assimilation. Many of the Nobles of Mexico in the XVIIth century (one of the most cosmopolitan places on Earth) were ethnically Aztecs