Reverse colonization: Reasons to colonize Europe?

@alexmilman



I know it was non-existent at the time. I just used the term Russia out of sheer habit and it was supposed to denote modern-day Russia's borders. In that case, the answer to your question is that small piece of land above Armenia. [\QUOTE]

Most of that piece (if not all of it) is today's Azerbaijan. ;)


Yes. I don't see how they aren't. At the time, They, as well as Caucasians, were know to have had blue eyes, fair skin, and blond hair and given their beauty, Europeans adopted the term to refer to themselves. [\QUOTE]

The people who live in Caucasus tend to have black hairs and their skin is darker than one of the imaginable "Nordic" type. Here are typical Georgians
upload_2018-9-16_13-32-9.jpeg


And here are Armenian children:
200px-Armenian_children.jpg

Here are Spaniards:
upload_2018-9-16_13-36-9.jpeg



Furthermore, the Caliphate certainly had a access to the Caspian sea which means that they did have access to blond, fair skinned, and blue eyed slaves.

They did because these slaves had been transported there from the areas far away from the coast. Sometimes all the way from the Baltic region. Extensive slave trade all over the Eastern Europe is a well known fact just as the main consumers of that merchandise.

Then comes your "criteria". It implies that the blond, blue eyed slaves would be high-valued because of their appearance. This kind of implies that the scope of their usage was mostly in the sexual area (for the males as well?). But did it ever come to your attention that criteria of beauty was not uniform all over the world and that one prevailing in the Arab/Ottoman World did not necessary had fixation on the blond hairs? The Ottomans clearly preferred Circassian women (black hairs, black eyes, prominent eyebrows). Here is a painting of the (Circassian) wife of the last Caliph of Islam, Abdülmecit II
310px-%C5%9Eehsuvar%2C_wife_of_Abdulmecid.jpg



My point isn't that slaves aren't valuable, just that they aren't an impetus for colonization.

As I already said, this is so obvious that it does not worth arguing. Especially by using the wrong arguments.

You need much greater motivations than just slaves for colonization. Like you said, if they ever run out of slaves some how, they can always go raiding for more.

If you are talking about the Crimean Tatars, you keep quoting out of context. While there were numerous slaves who stayed permanently within the Khanate, the main purpose of raiding was to capture the new slaves for selling to the Ottoman Empire. However, it can be said that Crimea had been colonized (not in the sense of "became a colony") by the Tatars because they had been relative newcomers who settled there, established their own government, created their own economy, etc. Probably it would be a fair guess to assume that most of the slaves who remained within the Khanate had been working within that economy.

You haven't addressed my argument in the first place. Europe offer more valuable things than just slaves but Muslims don't know about that.

The Muslims did not fell from the Moon and Europe was not completely insulated from the rest of the world. Both sides knew their neighbors quite well before Muslim expansion started. And expansion was not a blitzkrieg: it was taking decades and, in the case of the Turks (Seljuks then Ottomans) centuries.

In the case of Constantinople the main motivation, besides a pure prestige, was the fat that it was the greatest marketplace in the region controlling some of the most important trade routes. Whoever owned it was getting huge income just from the custom dues, let alone other factors.
 
@alexmilman

Most of that piece (if not all of it) is today's Azerbaijan. ;)

I forgot Azerbaijan existed.

The people who live in Caucasus tend to have black hairs and their skin is darker than one of the imaginable "Nordic" type. Here are typical Georgians
upload_2018-9-16_13-32-9-jpeg.408648


And here are Armenian children:
200px-Armenian_children.jpg

Here are Spaniards:
upload_2018-9-16_13-36-9-jpeg.408650

Which is why I said, "at the time". Also, that is a very selective set of pictures for what would otherwise be an incredibly diverse set of ethnicities.

Then comes your "criteria". It implies that the blond, blue eyed slaves would be high-valued because of their appearance. This kind of implies that the scope of their usage was mostly in the sexual area (for the males as well?). But did it ever come to your attention that criteria of beauty was not uniform all over the world and that one prevailing in the Arab/Ottoman World did not necessary had fixation on the blond hairs? The Ottomans clearly preferred Circassian women (black hairs, black eyes, prominent eyebrows). Here is a painting of the (Circassian) wife of the last Caliph of Islam, Abdülmecit II

I presumed that your argument (along with some others in this thread) was that blue eyed, fair skinned, and blond slaves would be desired because of beauty and sex. I was just working within your (perceived) internal logic. If you don't think that white slaves won't be desired for sexual reasons then why would Ottomans and Caliphate colonize all of Europe? The main argument I'm seeing here is that the Caliphate would colonize Europe at first for slaves and then use the rest of it's resources. I have already voiced my disagreements on this matter but I would like to know exactly what your argument is since it seems to me that it is nothing of the one I have been arguing against.

As I already said, this is so obvious that it does not worth arguing. Especially by using the wrong arguments.

Then I would like to know exactly why a good amount of posters here are arguing this exact same thing? You may find it obvious but this is certainly not the case for a good deal of posters here. Furthermore, none of the arguments I have given are wrong. The only actual argument you have given me thus far has to due with me putting words in your mouth when I was talking to a completely different person.

If you are talking about the Crimean Tatars, you keep quoting out of context. While there were numerous slaves who stayed permanently within the Khanate, the main purpose of raiding was to capture the new slaves for selling to the Ottoman Empire. However, it can be said that Crimea had been colonized (not in the sense of "became a colony") by the Tatars because they had been relative newcomers who settled there, established their own government, created their own economy, etc. Probably it would be a fair guess to assume that most of the slaves who remained within the Khanate had been working within that economy.

I wasn't referring specifically to the Crimean Tatars. I was talking in general. Caliphates often had a system of "state-sanctioned raiding" and as a consequence of this, there was a constant source of slaves. There is no impetus to colonization as I have said before.

The Muslims did not fell from the Moon and Europe was not completely insulated from the rest of the world. Both sides knew their neighbors quite well before Muslim expansion started. And expansion was not a blitzkrieg: it was taking decades and, in the case of the Turks (Seljuks then Ottomans) centuries.

I know, but what I am talking about are the areas in Europe that Muslims didn't have direct contact with like England or the Nordic countries or Poland etc. and thus could not know of the exact resources these polities had. Pretty much everything in Northern Western Europe was shaky as far as Islamic knowledge goes.

In the case of Constantinople the main motivation, besides a pure prestige, was the fat that it was the greatest marketplace in the region controlling some of the most important trade routes. Whoever owned it was getting huge income just from the custom dues, let alone other factors.

So you agree that slaves weren't an impetus for the conquest of Constantinople?
 
If Europe didn't advance as it did historically, the immense forests and gold would be the main reason for colonialism, if it did advance as it did historically, slaves and iron are the only main ones.

People often forget just how large the forests used to be and without the Romans, there is an immense amount of relatively easy to access gold in places like Spain. Outside of that however, Europe is very much the Jack of All Trades of continents, it has a decent amount of many different things, but very few things of which it has an extreme amount of.

In regards to what the difference is between conquering and colonising, there is significant overlap.

Colonising can be one of two things, replacing all previous state and governmental infrastructure with one that is staffed entirely by your own people while expelling any and all of the native people from positions of authority or bringing in your own people to replace the natives, with the goal of eventually outnumbering them or exterminating them.

Conquering can also be the first. The difference between the two is modern perceptions, we perceive there to be a difference between a country conquering land from another relatively equal country and a country conquering land from a significantly weaker country. The latter we sort as colonialism, the former as merely conquering.
 
Spices are out, most other resources and goods are possible as an attractor, depending on the economic history.

IOTL, Western Europe experienced a big economic regression in its markets and civil society post-Roman Empire, relative to the rest of the world, while soldiering on in much of its general technology. So finished goods flowed east->west more than in the reverse. Eventually European merchants go out by sea to cut out the middle man, and establish bases to trade from within the somewhat hostile, distant environment, and from this flows colonization in Asia, probably dependent on some other factors. But there's no necessary reason this has to be the case with a different economic history without the same economic contours, and indeed in IOTL, trade and colonization patterns would be different even without the silver of the Americas, which I would think probably allowed an asymmetric trade in finished goods to continue far beyond any point of parity in productive technology.
 
@alexmilman

Well, it does.

I'm not arguing that it doesn't.

Your "at that time" is not backed up by anything substantial and so far you did not produce anything besides pure generalities.

It is backed by the substantial occupation of the coasts of the Black Sea and Caucasus by foreign invaders of which were not blond, fair-skinned, and blue eyed and intermingled with the native population. Also here are some pictures of blond, fair-skinned, and blue eyed Circassians, Georgians, Armenians, etc.:

Circassians:

adyghe-traditional-costume-circassian-children-girls.jpg

david-shawgen.jpg


Georgians:

x5181.jpg


daw2g.jpg


Armenians:

Shami.jpg

kurdish-children.jpg


How about, instead of presuming something, you stick to what was actually written?

I have stuck to what was written. That is what formed the basis of my argument in the first place.

BTW, did anybody wrote that both female and male slaves had been kept exclusively for sex? Anyway, within this line of thought the countless black slaves probably indicate that their owners had quite diverse preferences which more or less kills the whole "beauty" argument.

No that's just what I thought your argument was. Yes, you are right about that.

Did I wrote that? BTW, both female and male slaves would be needed just for this reason?

I mean, in hindsight, I guess there was the implication? I guess I simply combined the views of yours with the views of others (to make matters more confusing you also responded to responses I made to other posters) and argued against that.

I'm afraid that a number of the Caliphate Arabs with the ...er.... "diverse" views in the sexual area would not be enough to motivate conquest with this explicit purpose. :firstimekiss:

Exactly.

But it does not make sense to argue with me on that subject because this was not my position to start with.

Then what is your position?

To start with, there was an intensive Muslim trade all the way to the Baltic coast. Then, to conquer Scandinavia or Poland Caliphate would have to start with conquering quite a few territories in between. And the closer you get the more information is available to you.

That's true but how would the Caliphate conquer all of that territory and not over-extend? Over-extension was a problem all Caliphates have faced.

As formulated, question does not make too much sense. As I said, the reasons were numerous and as far as the economic reasons are involved, control of the slave trade from the Black Sea area would be one of them.

Alright I was an idiot. What I actually meant was whether or not you agree that slaves aren't an impetus for Islamic colonization. Constantinople was on my mind while I was writing that point and I just wrote it into my point somehow. :)

As a result, it is almost impossible to answer to your posts: the editor keeps adding "
" creating a complete mess. :teary:[/QUOTE]

Do you know how to fix this problem since I'm pretty new here and just today have I figured out how to quote others.
 
I actually see absolutely no reason to interpret the current Arab world as anything but the aftermath of an extensive, long-running, very violent but most of all very successful colonial effort on par with anything the Romans or 19th c. British did. If the definition of colonialism manages to exclude the Romans or the Caliphates it's a useless definition.
In my opinion, I see the Roman and Arab expansions as conquests rather than colonization. The only colonial part of both empires is when there was actual settling by Romans/Arabs. The former did this much more than the latter. The latter mostly took part in cultural change as being Arab is apparently a privilege since Muhammad was an Arab.
 
Problems with colonizing Europe. (as in Americas style)

1. Europe's most attractive resource is it's plentiful arable land and good temperate climate. However this has bred a high population density. So either the Europeans would have to have extremely poor agricultural technology (and thus a low population as in parts of fertile Africa when the Europeans came) or the colonizing power would have to commit genocide by the millions at least (something that the Europeans never did). In short you need a culture substantially worse than the Europeans OTL but just as powerful technologically and in development. And you need to play the Europeans off one another to kill and enslave large swathes of the population, and gradually finish up with the rest.

2. According to 1), any colonization of Europe that does not end with large-scale settlement and displacement is simply not worthwhile. Slaves might have value, but the Europeans didn't conquer Africa for slaves, which they already got from trading. Plus slavery loses its economic importance eventually once colonies develop and Europe would be low on the priority list, which means that colonies elsewhere would be developed by the time Europe was under consideration.

3. The Americas was colonized easily due to the fact that 90% of the indigenous population perished due to disease (in addition to low population density to begin with). Even if Europe had low pop density due to absent agricultural tech, it would still be harder to colonize than the Americas as they wouldn't be wiped out by disease unless you go ASB.

4. Is it worth the effort? No valuable resources except for land and slaves. The conquest and extermination would require a lot of resources by the imperial powers as well. Europe would probably be the last place they would colonize, only after everywhere else is taken. (Even Africa is more lucrative in terms of ivory, diamonds and rare mineral resources, Europe only has coal and iron which is comparably-speaking found everywhere) One way is to have the imperial powers undergo a massive population boom (like Europe OTL), coupled with the Europeans having primitive agricultural tech plus infighting, in addition genocide must be culturally acceptable. That way the Europeans would be largely displaced.

5. If you look at actual possible PoDs, you would need Europe at its absolute nadir, say AD 900. Then have the Muslim world undergo rapidly the industrial, scientific, agricultural revolutions. But then the problem would be to get the Muslims to totally displace and exterminate the Europeans (and taking the arable land for Muslim ME settlers) as opposed to just ruling them. So we need a virulent strain of radical Islam that kills everyone who refuses to convert being the de fact ideology in ME in conjunction with industrial/scientific/agricultural revolutions, plus a Europe that is more hard-core Christian than they were in AD900, refusing to convert, and then the Muslims feeling justified to kill tens of millions. Otherwise if conventional conquest is all that's possible, Europe is probably not worth doing as there is little economic benefit (less than Africa certainly). Imperial powers would instead opt for proxy states instead as well as trade and economic concession and open access to markets.
 
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In my opinion, I see the Roman and Arab expansions as conquests rather than colonization. The only colonial part of both empires is when there was actual settling by Romans/Arabs. The former did this much more than the latter. The latter mostly took part in cultural change as being Arab is apparently a privilege since Muhammad was an Arab.

By that metric, nothing the Europeans did in Africa, Asia really counts as colonialism as opposed to conquest. There was no large-scale settlement of Europeans in these areas.

(There was little cultural change either, so by your measure it's only the lack of cultural change that defines colonialism? But what about cultural change in the Americas and Australia? Is that not colonialism?)

If you mean both large scale cultural change and lack of settlement is needed to rule out colonialism, I see no difference between the Caliphate and European conquests of Africa/Asia in principle. Neither had large scale settlement as you say, but there was some cultural change in European colonies without European settlement. This is usually taken as the consequence of the existence of a colonial relationship, not the absence of one. That position would not in principle be changed even if the cultural change in question was much more extensive.

But apparently for the Caliphate, cultural change is indicative of the absence of colonization. I suppose it must be the religious factor. But I can't imagine Africans ruling out colonialism just because they happened to convert to Christianity. You have to appeal to the specific ideology of Islam I suppose.

But if thats the case the definition of colonialism loses its purpose because then it could be much better than conventional conquest. In many cases the Arab wars were bloodier than European colonial wars not to mention the Romans.
 
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Problems with colonizing Europe. (as in Americas style)

1. Europe's most attractive resource is it's plentiful arable land and good temperate climate. However this has bred a high population density. So either the Europeans would have to have extremely poor agricultural technology (and thus a low population as in parts of fertile Africa when the Europeans came) or the colonizing power would have to commit genocide by the millions at least (something that the Europeans never did). In short you need a culture substantially worse than the Europeans OTL but just as powerful technologically and in development. And you need to play the Europeans off one another to kill and enslave large swathes of the population, and gradually finish up with the rest.

Maybe prevent the domestication of plants like turnip and cabbage, which will reduce Northern Europe's agricultural potential, and also prevent the emergence of any state like the Roman Empire. The goal is to keep Northern Europe a backwater rather than emerging as the center of the world. If this happens, Northern Europe will still have huge amounts of resources (since little of it would be exploited) as well as the timber to attract people, yet also be good for a settler colony.

5. If you look at actual possible PoDs, you would need Europe at its absolute nadir, say AD 900. Then have the Muslim world undergo rapidly the industrial, scientific, agricultural revolutions. But then the problem would be to get the Muslims to totally displace and exterminate the Europeans (and taking the arable land for Muslim ME settlers) as opposed to just ruling them. So we need a virulent strain of radical Islam that kills everyone who refuses to convert being the de fact ideology in ME in conjunction with industrial/scientific/agricultural revolutions, plus a Europe that is more hard-core Christian than they were in AD900, refusing to convert, and then the Muslims feeling justified to kill tens of millions. Otherwise if conventional conquest is all that's possible, Europe is probably not worth doing as there is little economic benefit (less than Africa certainly). Imperial powers would instead opt for proxy states instead as well as trade and economic concession and open access to markets.

At that point, much of Northern Europe was sparsely populated and still forested, and vast quantities of precious metals and such were to be found in the Ore Mountains and elsewhere in Central Europe. No need for exceptionally violent/fundamentalist Islam/Christianity, because Europe has a lot of resources for the taking and not a lot of people to resist. The Middle East is also going to need some fuel for its industrialisation--oil probably isn't going to work since it's hard to transport before better metallurgy to make pipelines, and coal in the Middle East is relatively rare, found mainly in Anatolia and Iran. So if you have the Arabs sailing around Northern Europe, say Belgium or England, first they'll come for the forests (always overexploited in the Middle East), but then they'll find the ample amounts of coal.
 
@oca2073

The difference between colonialism and conquest is mentality. Conquest sees the newly conquered territories as legitimate provinces of the empire and thus warrants development. Colonization sees newly conquered territories as peripheries to the main core of the empire; whose resources are to be exploited as opposed to cultivated.

To your last statement, weren't the earlier Islamic conquests a little more bloody due to most of the world having a larger population than they did during classical era and antiquity? I also don't know how you can think that Islamic wars were more bloodier than European colonial conquests given that European colonial conquests, as a whole, killed off more people than Islamic wars have combined.

@metalinvader665

Actually, I think we should think about what sort of industrialization the Middle East would have. Based on the inventions being made during the Golden Age, we see great deals of interest and advancement in water contraptions. Eventually, I presume, such inventions would lead to the development of something similar to the water turbine. This means that an industrialized Middle East may be based on hydroelectricity as opposed to coal or steam.
 
@metalinvader665

Actually, I think we should think about what sort of industrialization the Middle East would have. Based on the inventions being made during the Golden Age, we see great deals of interest and advancement in water contraptions. Eventually, I presume, such inventions would lead to the development of something similar to the water turbine. This means that an industrialized Middle East may be based on hydroelectricity as opposed to coal or steam.

I'd think hydropower would be a temporary stopgap until they could get coal or oil going. A lot of the rivers in the Middle East seem prone to drought and only the coastal areas even have rivers sufficient for hydropower. There's a reason most dams in the Middle East are mainly used for irrigation.

Getting the coal out of the ground (first in Anatolia and Persia, then from colonies in Northern Europe) seems simpler than getting an oil-based infrastructure going. They'd already be importing goods from Europe anyway, so what's one more good to import?
 
@alexmilman


That's true but how would the Caliphate conquer all of that territory and not over-extend? Over-extension was a problem all Caliphates have faced.

That's the point. None of the realistic entities could conquer/colonize/<whatever> the whole Europe (territory from the Atlantic coast and all the way to Ural Mountains). They simply did not have necessary numbers in their military systems. Depending upon the specifics, each of them could conquer and "colonize" greater or smaller territory on the "fringe".

The Arabs got over-extended when they became raiding Southern/Central France (they did manage to subdue, temporarily, Aquitaine and part of the French Mediterranean coast) and had to "roll back" to the Peninsula. But even then, they were short on the numbers and needed either additional troops from Africa (with the disastrous results for themselves ;)) or availability of the Christian troops (as, IIRC, was the case with Al Mansur's wars).

The Ottomans grabbed everything they could but their repeated attempts to expand into Europe failed with them hardly getting out of the "corner" of the Western Europe.

The Mongols managed to grab and hold for a while the biggest chunk of Europe but for all practical purposes they almost completely disappeared within the mass of the local nomads, except for their rulers). Again, with "gravity center" being shifted to China and with the wars between the Genghisids, they simply lacked resources for anything much greater and, anyway, specifics of their culture had been limiting the scope of their "colonozation": non-steppe areas could be just the tributary states with the minimal Mongolian/Tatar presence.


Do you know how to fix this problem since I'm pretty new here and just today have I figured out how to quote others.

Unfortunately, I don't. :'(
 
In my opinion, I see the Roman and Arab expansions as conquests rather than colonization. The only colonial part of both empires is when there was actual settling by Romans/Arabs. The former did this much more than the latter. The latter mostly took part in cultural change as being Arab is apparently a privilege since Muhammad was an Arab.

I suspect that the terminology is all confused. "Colonization" Roman style is not the same as modern "colonialism".
 
@metalinvader665

Do you think Middle Eastern and North African bodies of water are prone to drought because of recent news or historically? Historically, water in those areas was very carefully managed and, although not having as much rivers as Europe, still had plenty. Hydroelectric power in this circumstance would be feasible.

@alexmilman

I guess you could have an Islamic power in Western Anatolia conquer Constantinople and colonize Europe however I think that's pushing it.
 
@metalinvader665

Do you think Middle Eastern and North African bodies of water are prone to drought because of recent news or historically? Historically, water in those areas was very carefully managed and, although not having as much rivers as Europe, still had plenty. Hydroelectric power in this circumstance would be feasible.

@alexmilman

I guess you could have an Islamic power in Western Anatolia conquer Constantinople and colonize Europe however I think that's pushing it.


Yes, that's pushing it: none of the realistic Islamic powers had necessary numbers (and quite a few other things) for colonization of the whole Europe.
 
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