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For today era, why not Sweden, Norway and Denmark blockade the strait so no Russian can pass through

Que? It didn't for me. You need to put yourself into the period mode of transportation, which was by sea. The coast of Norway is called "Highway no.1". Hardly any swedes lived inland in the northern half of what is now their country. In a dispute of the rights to the Nasa silver mines, a sami man testified in court that "he had never paid tax to Norway-Denmark", and thus the mines (now clearly encroaching into Norway) were judged to be swedish, even though he never paid any taxes to the swedes either.

I mean it in a way that you believe that historical Jesus is tied directly to the biblical Jesus. Mohammed its much more cleared example as with or without divine beliefs, we know about his actions and his direct followers. With Jesus its bit more complicated.

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That was great. Thanks. I like learning more nuanced history of other countries.

Sort of. The modern concept of a nation is pretty recent, so you have to think in terms of hereditary kingdoms. The interesting thing is that it was possible for a monarch to inherit not just one kingdom, but two or three. The kingdoms would sometimes merge in the legal sense (a "real union"; think the modern UK), but not necessarily. Sometimes you just had the same guy wearing two different (very ornate) hats as the king of two legally distinct kingdoms. This is called a "personal union", since the kingdoms were united not by laws, but were united "in the person" of the monarch.

That was the case from 1397 to 1524, during which the King of Denmark was also the King of Norway and ALSO the King of Sweden. After Sweden broke off in 1524, the Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway were united in a "real union" with Norway as the junior partner. This lasted until 1815 when Norway made an unsuccessful bid for independence and Denmark was forced to cede Norway to Sweden due to politics surrounding the Napoleonic Wars (during which time the idea of a modern nation state was starting to become more of a thing).

This is all a massive oversimplification (it's super messy) and I'm certain I'm making some real historians eyes twitch, but that's the best TLDR I can give you.

I almost wrote ¨what non religious individual,¨ but you´re right about Mohammed and Jesus. I tend to think there was an historical Jesus, but we may never know for sure.

They teach about the rise of then NAZI party and the holocaust in German schools. It is mandatory. They were not the victors yet they have determined never to let such things happen again.

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Everquest Blade of War anyone? 🤣

So we’re Denmark and Norway a single country?

Historians don't pick "good guys" or "bad guys" in fact, we're trained to purposefully avoid doing that.

And we have a lot of evidence from the German side of WWII, you can buy Mein Kampf in many bookstores (some country's don't allow it, but it's easy enough to find if you do). Our archives are also full of Nazi Germany plans, journals, manuscripts, etc. We really couldn't ask for more when it comes to WWII.

As for how to do we identify propaganda? Well, that's a huge part of what historians do. We don't just look at a source and say "well it says here that.." we need to take what the source is arguing, and investigate it. We need to compare it with other works, we need to compare it with other sciences and approaches. We can then analyse the data and produce an argument with that evidence. It's a process, but it's why there's so much training and credentials that historians need to acquire and why there's systems in place to make sure historians have followed the proper steps and didn't get caught up or tricked.

Hi!

It seems like you are talking about the popular but ultimately flawed and false "winners write history" trope!

While the expression is sometimes true in one sense (we'll get to that in a bit), it is rarely if ever an absolute truth, and particularly not in the way that the concept has found itself commonly expressed in popular history discourse. When discussing history, and why some events have found their way into the history books when others have not, simply dismissing those events as the imposed narrative of 'victors' actually harms our ability to understand history.

You could say that is in fact a somewhat "lazy" way to introduce the concept of bias which this is ultimately about. Because whoever writes history is the one introducing their biases to history.

A somewhat better, but absolutely not perfect, approach that works better than 'winners writing history' is to say 'writers write history'.

This is more useful than it initially seems. Until fairly recently the literate were a minority, and those with enough literary training to actually write historical narratives formed an even smaller and more distinct class within that.

To give a few examples, Genghis Khan must surely go down as one of the great victors in all history, but he is generally viewed quite unfavorably in practically all sources, because his conquests tended to harm the literary classes.
Similarly the Norsemen historically have been portrayed as uncivilized barbarians as the people that wrote about them were the "losers" whose monasteries got burned down.

Of course, writers are a diverse set, and so this is far from a magical solution to solving the problems of bias. The painful truth is, each source simply needs to be evaluated on its own merits.
This evaluation is something that is done by historians and part of what makes history and why insights about historical events can shift over time.

This is possibly best exemplified by those examples where victors did unambiguously write the historical sources.

The Spanish absolutely wrote the history of the conquest of Central America from 1532, and the reports and diaries of various conquistadores and priests are still important primary documents for researchers of the period.

But 'victors write the history' presupposes that we still use those histories as they intended, which is simply not the case. It both overlooks the fundamental nature of modern historical methodology, and ignores the fact that, while victors have often proven to be predominant voices, they have rarely proven to be the only voices.

Archaeology, numismatics, works in translation, and other records all allow us at least some insight into the 'losers' viewpoint, as does careful analysis of the 'winner's' records.
We know far more about Rome than we do about Phoenician Carthage. There is still vital research into Carthage, as its being a daily topic of conversation on this subreddit testifies to.

So while it's true that the balance between the voices can be disparate that doesn't mean that the winners are the only voice or even the most interesting.
Which is why stating that history is 'written by the victors' and leaving it at that is harmful to the understanding of history and the process of studying history.

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"History is written by the victorious." Eventually over time how will we know who was actually the "bad guys"? How do we know we aren't the bad guys and we aren't being propaganda'd? Also.. why do we never see war or (insert here) from the views of the other side? Example being ww2 and Adolf.

You will be amazed when it comes back next week. But seriously, its one of the best kinds of thread in here.

This is political, so it has elements of arrogance and greed and cultural chauvinism, but there's also a lot of politics. Part of the reason to colonize N. America for the English was to get rid of troublesome groups within the country. England had a lot of religious groups that were a pain in the ass to governing powers. They could warehouse them in North America where they were kind of out of sight, out of mind.

Spain had all these people that were no longer needed to fight the Moors. Having a large warrior class with nothing to do is dangerous. Letting them conquer another territory was unifying and focused trouble away from home.

France had severe budgetary problems. Colonies might provide the king with financial relief, and leverage against his own nobles, if enough wealth could be extracted.

The 30 Years War/War of Spanish Succession had put the Netherlands in a precarious position. Without population, they'd have to rely on mercenaries. Colonies provided a potential source of revenue to pay those mercenaries without levying heavy taxes on the local populations.

Countries were jealous of the wealth their competitors were achieving and wanted to gain stature against their neighbors.

This stuff is all very multifaceted and some reasons can be stated more openly than other reasons. Saying you want to Christianize the New World is great PR for Spain. Saying you need to find something to do with all these blood thirsty ruffians from Extremadura so you're going to send them to the edge of the world on some harebrained scheme is not. So you say one real loud and whisper the other.

The racism is a little more complicated. There's good research and writing on how it developed out of the needs of imperialism and probably wasn't a cause of imperialism, but it's awful offspring, until maybe beginning in the 17th century.

The Western European arrogance, greed, and racism set the tone for pretty much all of it, right?

I’m still fascinated by the risk takers, and the struggles and the failures. Grew up in southern NJ, knew about the English colony, a small bit about the Dutch, but knew nothing about New Sweden until I went down a Wiki-hole.

I don't believe your assumptions about newly conquered people quickly or ever even becoming Latin speakers is correct. Ruling elites maybe. In Roman Judea Greek was a lingua franca of commerce and diplomacy between various peoples. Literate people of the ancient Mediterranean world usually had some Greek. Greeks and the Levant had been interacting for a thousand years before Rome appeared. Greek was considered an intellectual and philosophical language by the Roman world.. Rome did not form many settler colonies in the Eastern Med.

Fascinating.

I don’t have a question but I love the idea of this thread

Which is why Sweden does not have a border with Russia but Norway does.

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