My appreciation to the Lutetian, by the way. Given the circumstances, a vote of confidence from someone I gather to be a Frenchman (Joe the Parisian, even!) means a lot.
Pacification is not really such a word, the standard definitions already contain negative readings.
And yet it can also be readily used to imply "no bloody-handed slaughtering of the local noncombatants, no sirree."
It's a bit like "police action" in that it gets used to cover everything from cases where soldiers are actually deployed to
keep the peace (that is, to avoid or prevent violence) and are not killing people, to cases where soldiers are deployed and given free-fire zones to shoot up at will and wind up killing many thousands.
As such, the word "pacification" is remarkable and worth identifying for what it is, especially in cases where it seems unclear whether it's being used in a truthful manner to describe "the act of making something peaceful" or in a weaselly manner to describe "they make a desert and call it peace."
You don't know but you just assume it's not possible? Why?
I didn't say I assumed it's not possible. I asked the OP why
he thought it was possible. There's a difference. You know that, surely.
Because Gul Dukat is proposing a pretty significant departure from OTL. I infer that he has a clear reason in mind. Or that he has in his mind a clearly formed hypothesis explaining why France's population growth rates were slower than other Western European countries in OTL, and is asking "what if this well understood force were not in play?"
Except it can't be that second one, because Gul Dukat didn't just ask "what if [force] didn't lower French population growth rates and France grew at the same rate as Germany?" He, what was the phrase, wanted to go farther, so he tacked on an extra 1-3% of population growth. Such that France winds up with 150 million citizens (be they in metropolitan France or overseas) by 1960, more than Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom combined. By contrast, in real life they had less than fifty million citizens in 1960, based on a quick Googling.
It seems reasonable to inquire as to exactly what is supposed to be going on under the hood here, so I did. I have made no assumptions. I have only made some tongue-in-cheek speculations such as "aphrodisiac crêpes."
This is the core point of departure of his entire proposed timeline. I think I'm entitled to dig a little as to what he thinks might be happening here, how, or why.
And I think that if I posted an OP positing that an ATL nation's population would end up over a 160-year period
three times the size of what it ended up being OTL, someone would ask some questions about how that outcome might occur. I'd be disappointed if they didn't, frankly. It would show a remarkable lack of curiosity and insight if no one thought to look into that question. I like to think we're all sharper than that here.
Again, you have no clue but you just know it's not possible, this is just circular logic at this point and doesn't lead us anywhere, either you provide a way this growth could happen or you show exactly why you think it's not possible given that's the level of growth we see in virtually all neighbours of France.
What circular logic? I didn't say anything was impossible. Whose posts are you reading, anyway?
France being demographically dominant in the early modern period is something everyone that has any clue on the topic should know...
Ah, so you use this "demographically dominant" phrase too! What does it mean, exactly? I know what "demographic" means; it means "of or pertaining to the numbers and distribution of a population." I know "dominant" means "overpowering all others."
So in context, what does "demographically dominant" mean? Does France reliably "demographically dominate" all of Western Europe? What are the sources of this? Does it automatically and logically confer a +1% or +3% bonus to population growth rates throughout a 160-year period even when compared to other "non-dominant" demographics such as "the Germans," as Gul Dukat implies?
Please clarify.
Per Wikipedia, I get that France had a large population in 1345 (about twenty million) and in 1715 (about twenty million) and a pretty sizeable population in 1800 (about thirty million for a change!) But the proposition that this would just... keep happening, and indeed cause the French to multiply like rabbits, dramatically
faster year over year than the Germans or other Western European peoples...
I can believe it, but I am curious as to what Gul Dukat thinks is going on "under the hood" here.
Reductio ad absurdum, while the growth OP presumes might be too big, you and others also have some rather unjustified beliefs on why migration to Algeria was supposedly constrained by rather rigid limits without actually justifying why those limit supposedly exist.
And these beliefs are, pray tell? Or rather, the "you" beliefs that I myself have espoused. Not the "others" beliefs, which I cannot take responsibility for, cannot comment on, and in some cases have not
read.
I think you may be conflating my opinions with someone else's.
Again, this is literally mindless argumentative diatribe with no substance.
Han Solo Gul Dukat shot first. Read our posts.
I said that there would need to be some compelling reason to motivate millions of Frenchmen to leave their homeland and settle in the freshly blood-soaked soil of North Africa. A sense of 'Manifest Destiny' would not in itself suffice. Which seems to me rather obvious- people are not mindless drones who live to implement the national will. Surely you agree with that, Gloss, yes?
...
But then Gul Dukat said:
"Why wouldn't at least some Frenchmen move to Algiers and Tunis, which are major regional trading hubs? I would of [sic]
enjoyed... but alas people genuinely believe that literally no extra Frenchmen"
Now, perhaps Gul Dukat was responding to someone else's post. I don't know. I may have missed something; I was more interested in engaging with the OP.
But the thing is... He only quoted
my post, you see. And the idea that "the Masked Discombobulator genuinely believes that literally no extra Frenchmen..." cannot be reasonably understood as an interpretation of my post.
...
So his response to me? I would hesitate to call it "mindless," because that would be a rude thing that rude people do. It would be very rude to call someone "mindless" when they have not insulted you personally before, Gloss.
But it is assuredly an argumentative diatribe. It is clearly intended as a tool of argument and not of understanding, thus, 'argumentative.' And it is 'diatribe,' that is to say, a bitter (if perhaps passive-aggressive) verbal attack, as can clearly be told from the tone.
And it lacks substance, because it does not engage with what I actually said.
And yet.
And yet.
I don't think my own reply was "literally" "mindless" or "of no substance" at all. I might concede the point that it is argumentative, because I felt I was being grossly misrepresented by someone else's misplaced sense of persecution. I might even grant you "diatribe," because I get sarcastic and snippy when I am grossly misrepresented by someone else's misplaced sense of persecution.
But it is a quite substantial objection to say "I disagree with your claim that because I
questioned whether two or three million people would do X,
therefore I believe that NO people would do X." There is some definite substance there. That is not a mindless objection, no sir-and/or-ma'am, it is not.
And it is most
assuredly not "literally" either of those things. You are doing grave violence to the meaning of the words 'literally' and 'mindless' here, and considerable violence to the meaning of the word 'substance.'
Once again why do people that have no clue about the basic demographic history of the discussed region jump into the topic anyway...
While a great amount of death did happen what also is true is that the native Algerian population grew about 3-4 times from 1830 to independence,
Who said anything about 1830 to independence? All the killing being described took place in the much narrower time window from 1830 to, I believe, 1875. Which would have a much greater demographic impact, especially given that it would inevitably mean either near-total slaughter of the Algerian people's adult males, or great slaughter among Algerians of all ages and sexes.
The proposed level of mass murder being discussed would greatly diminish the Algerian population
on net, such that there would be many fewer living Algerians in 1875 than in OTL. This would, in turn, have knock-on effects for the population dynamics at all future times. Especially if the millions of transplanted Frenchmen prove as spectacularly and unusually fecund in the lands
outre-mer as they did in metropolitan France.
Further complicating the analysis, as already noted by Gul Dukat himself, the coastal belt in particular would be
far more heavily seized by the French settlers than the inland regions. This might well act to inhibit population growth among the Algerians, simply because the most fertile land and the best opportunities to raise a family are all the more firmly in French hands and not in Algerian hands. See also, for instance, the way the Irish population never really recovered from the Potato Famine, to the point where
even today Ireland is less populated than in 1840.
Perhaps Gul Dukat took that into account. I'm a bit unclear on that at the moment. I was hoping Gul Dukat was going to go into detail on his approach to Algerian population modeling, but alas, he did not seem interested in doing so in his last post. Maybe he'll have a change of heart.
While you could consider any given region to be in some part a 0 sum game in terms of who can live there, this has to take into account whether the overall population is growing as well.
If both populations grow, then there is a certain tension at all future times- and French populations in this timeline seem to grow very quickly. Anomalously so. I still blame the aphrodisiac crêpes, myself.
Oh, and one more thing.
if the native population had to be killed to make place for settlers
Had to be.
Had to be?
What an interesting way to put it. What did you mean by that?