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Re: Republicanism still an ...

Jay Random
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SubjectRe: Republicanism still an offence in England? (wasRe: Queen mother (of
FromJay Random
Date2002-04-16 11:45 (2002-04-16 03:45)
Message-ID<3CBBF2A8.8020309@bondwine.ca>
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Newsgroupsalt.fan.tolkien
FollowsTradeSurplus
FollowupsTamim (3h & 28m)
TradeSurplus (6h & 5m) > Jay Random
TradeSurplus wrote:

TradeSurplus
Jay Random wrote ..

You appear not to have understood my point at all. Regardless of whether the territory where I live has been colonized in the past, the people, the nation that developed there is not guilty of colonization, twenty generations later.

No, it is _you_ who are misunderstanding _my_ point. The territory is still one that has been _conquered_ (I said nothing about `colonization') in the past, & if you do not have some statute of limitations on reparations, then virtually every square centimetre of the earth's inhabitable surface is subject to claims by its former inhabitants.

As to telling you where I live; thus far on this thread you have responded to my posts with a strawman parody of my position and a misdirected attack on my posting record. Am I being overly suspicious to think that telling you where I live will be followed up with a pointless attack on my nation and culture?

You're being downright paranoid. I will, however, remind you of as many instances as I can of times when your bit of the earth's surface changed hands violently, & list the modern-day descendants of the former possessors who might claim that it should be returned to them for that reason.

As it is, I gave you another example of a nation that is a popular topic of discussion on this group, namely Ireland. If you want more, consider Iceland, inhabited for over a millenium IIRC with no overseas colonies. Finland doesn't have very many colonies either unless I'm mistaken. And these three countries are in Europe, the home of overseas colonization. I recently vacationed in the US and came across the Pequot and Narragansett (sp?). I'm not very familiar with their history other than being massacred a few years after sharing the first thanksgiving dinner but I haven't heard that they colonized very many other peoples.

Again, colonization has nothing to do with the case. I was talking about _conquest_. Attend closely, please:

1. Ireland has been conquered by the English, the Norse, the Scoti, at least one previous wave of Celtic peoples, & if you accept the legends, the Firbolg & the Tuatha de Danann. In this particular case, there are no known survivors of the aboriginal peoples living elsewhere, but some overconfident archaeologists have put in a claim on behalf of the Basques.

2. Iceland was originally settled by Irish monks (!), who were called _p?par_ by the Norsemen who came to displace them. It subsequently changed hands several times as Norway, Sweden, & Denmark shuffled kings & territories among themselves as the result of divers wars & treaties, & regained its independence in the 20th century with strong support from the U.S.

3. Finland was occupied by the Finns about the beginning of the Common Era; it had previously been occupied by a Neolithic people who may or may not have been of Finno-Ugric origin. In the 13th century, Sweden invaded Finland under pretext of a crusade, conquering the whole country by the mid-17th century. When Sweden's power declined, Russia invaded, & by 1815 all of Finland was a Russian province. Finland regained its independence as the result of a short, sharp war of independence in 1918. Portions of it were subsequently reconquered by the USSR.

4. The Narragansett & Pequod were expelled or killed, & their territory taken over, by the English colonists in New England. The descendants of those settlers subsequently fought a war to establish themselves as the rulers of the colonies in place of the English monarchy.

That covers the instances you mentioned. One could multiply them until literally every acre of the inhabited earth was shown to have been conquered by someone at some point in history. To argue that one nation ought to give back territory to another simply because it was taken by conquest is to reopen thousands upon thousands of overlapping & conflicting claims. The mere fact that one's ancestors once possessed a given tract of land does not give one a claim thereto.

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Tamim (3h & 28m)
TradeSurplus (6h & 5m) > Jay Random