Google| Subject | Re: Republicanism still an offence in England? (wasRe: Queen mother (of |
| From | Jay Random |
| Date | 2002-04-15 17:28 (2002-04-15 09:28) |
| Message-ID | <3CBAF19F.9000902@bondwine.ca> |
| Client | |
| Newsgroups | alt.fan.tolkien |
| Follows | TradeSurplus |
| Followups | TradeSurplus (2h & 10m) > Jay Random |
TradeSurplus wrote:
TradeSurplusThe Basques would beg to differ on that point. In any case, France is the product of over a millennium of wars of conquest by the Merovingian-Carolingian-Capetian-Valois-Bourbon monarchy & the empires & republics that followed. At one time, France did not extend east of the Rh?ne, & large tracts in the northwest & southwest were not subject to the kings at Paris. Burgundy was at one time an independent power; France conquered it. Aquitania, in the early Middle Ages, was a Visigothic principality; France conquered it. Corsica was conquered by France only a few years before Napoleon Bonaparte was born there; if the French had kept out, Buonaparte would probably have been an obscure Corsican _condottiere_. And if you go right back to the beginning of France, the Franks conquered Gaul from the Roman Empire, & established a Frankish aristocracy which kept all political power to itself, & which, despite intermarriage, continued to exist in a recognizable form right down to 1789.
A common cry of the colonizer, "Everyone else did it. We're not so bad." It's not true though. Many nations and cultures arise on the land their ancestors occupied and never attempt to move beyond. Take the French for example. The Celts were colonizers, the Romans were colonizers, the Franks and all the rest were colonizers. However, the French are not Celts or Romans or Franks, they are a new people and culture formed from a complex mixture. They did not colonize France.
So tell me where _you_ live, & tell me with a straight face that it has never been conquered by one nation from another.
2002-03-30-
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