Films & Series I, Caesar: The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (1997)

I don't think the situation in Belgian Congo and South West Africa were directly comparable, because in one case it was the slave like labour, profit orientation, corruption and brutality of all groups associated. Including the locals which sometimes just abused a system and the upper colonial ranks just looked away or were not able to control it. Whereas in the later case of South West Africa, it was a brutal guerilla war. The Germans simply cut off the rebels from water and food, since they were not able to control them otherwise in the huge, hostile terrain. The rebels started with extremely brutal acts against the local Europeans, men, women and children, truly horrible acts, which incited brutality on both sides naturally. So what they did was not profit oriented, it was not simply brutal and numb, it was the reaction to a specific situation. That way they could safe their own lifes, shorten the war and pacify the region. Guerilla wars of that kind, especially if they start like that, with the extremely inhumane and most brutal acts against the local Europeans, are always nasty, that's just as it is. Such wars can be led differently, but only if you want to lose more of your own civilians, soldiers and probably the whole war. it was not a deliberate genocidal act, because otherwise these tribes would no longer exist. We now have this attitude of "the civilised side" is always wrong, even if it just retaliates, whereas the "suppressed" are always right, even if they are more brutal in their methods (Marxist interpretation of reality).

The Herero started their attacks without provocation, in a situation in which the local civilian European settlers were completely unprotected. You can read up about it in the Wikipedia article:




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

So the whole story had two aspects: Military necessity and retaliation. Its not like the Germans were more brutal than the locals, not at all. The many men, even those which killed and tortured themselves, which could be interviewed afterwards, speak for themselves and the will of the Germans for a true "genocide".

Looking at what Caesar did in his campaign, he is more comparable to what the Germans did in Africa, because he too oftentimes offered friendly terms at first, and only when leaders and tribes betrayed him or acted very gruesome against his own people, he changed the pace and started to eliminate the resistance. Like in one case, he offered one tribe peace the first time, then they rebelled, but were subdued, and again got a favourable peace. But the third time, when they massacred the local Romans in a most brutal way and were stubborn, until they had no choice but to capitulate a third time, after Caeasr forces lost many men, material and time, they were all slaughtered or sold into slavery as a whole, to make an example of it for all of Gallia. One could question what he did, but at least going by the sources, that seems to be a reasonable approach.
That's also why some Gallic tribes even profited from the Roman conquest, while others were practically annihilated, sometimes, or even most of the time, after having breaking off and rebelling against the Romans the 2nd, 3rd or even 4th time.

Of course one could question the presence of colonial or any conquering force in the first place, but that's not the point, because all people did that at different times and circumstances. Its about how you treat subdued people "if they behave" and how you treat them "if they don't" and you simply have to protect your own soldiers and civilians. Like in various uprisings, also against the Romans, there were most brutal acts against Romans, soldiers and civilians. One prominent example is Boudiccas rebellion, which tortured and mutiliated tens of thousands of Roman men, women and children to death.

For me it makes a big difference, probably the biggest, talking about humanity and decency, whether you just kill enemies, or torture them to death in the most gruesome ways and let them suffer for a prolonged period of time, probably even with a sadistic pleasure. Men like Casear could be brutal and goal-oriented, but they were rarely if ever gruesome and sadistic. Which I think is a good quality, especially in his time, in the social and moral context he lived in.

I know all about the Herero genocide, and how you could try to condone it is beyond me. We're not talking about two thousand years ago; we're talking about a supposedly civilized and modern country in the late 19th and early 20th century. Also, what they did to those people was beyond brutal. In addition, what did those people get in return after being conquered? Did they get infrastructure, education, clean water, a better way of life, inclusion in the countries which conquered them? They got A BIG FAT NOTHING except more bad treatment. There is absolutely no comparison. Far better to have been conquered by the Romans 2,000 years ago than the Belgians and the Germans a hundred years ago. Open your eyes and stop looking at history from your distorted lens. You should be ashamed.

You should also be ashamed for saying that the only way the Chinese had of dealing with some Islamist stirrings in the Uighers was to put them in concentration camps. Then I guess the Americans putting the Japanese into internment camps was ok too?

What's next? More semantics to try to justify anti-semitism?

Then there's Bicicleur, who never misses the chance to jab at the Italians for things the Romans did 2000 years ago while no doubt in his head justifying what his own people did 100 years ago.

I've tried to stay for the members whose opinions I respect and from whom I can learn something, but I just can't deal with it anymore.

This site is turning into a cesspool of racist apologists and I want nothing more to do with it. I certainly don't want to be around when someone reports it to watchdog organizations.

I have a reputation to maintain in this country and I won't have it besmirched.
 
I look at it this way, in more recent history, the 1700s, the French had sacked and looted my mother's village. However, I don't hold any ill-will towards the French. In fact, I am looking forward to the day I can visit Paris.


The Catholic Church sent troops to crush an independence uprising in my Father's town during that time, and in the process executed many of the people there. While I am not really much of a practicing catholic, (in fact, I am an agnostic/more leaning towards atheist, really), my grips with the church are for different reasons. More for their suppression of science, hypocrisy, corruption, and greed. Nevertheless, we turn to them for weddings, baptisms, funerals, etcs.


In the past, the United States was hostile towards Italian immigrants. Nevertheless, I consider myself to be patriotic, and proud to have been born here.

that is correct
if you go back in history every one can find a reason to vilify the rest of the world

and I don't ignore the acomplishments of the Roman Empire, just showing the other side
I think that is what studying history is for

what I don't understand is that some here can't stop glorifying the Roman Empire and at the same time have to vilify the Germanic tribes whenever the occasion appears
I have decided to ignore her a few weeks ago because the discussions derail all the time

and about Belgium, this is what I wrote last week :
https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threa...ent-by-country?p=626098&viewfull=1#post626098

we, Flemish people were despised by the Belgian establishment till 2 generations ago

I have my own pride, but it is not because of simply belonging to this or other ethnic, religious or cultural group.

Those who want to diqcuss this kind of topics should find another forum.

Can we get back to the subject of the thread now?
 
Belgian history starts with Julius Caesar. He was a very ambitious man but also a mass murderer.
I don't know how much is true of what he had written in De bello Gallico, but he was boasting how many tribes he beated and murdered.
The Italians loved his cruel story. It made him very popular.
It was a war he had initiated himself. He only needed an excuse, the movement of the Helvetii.
It was all planned. He didn't conquer Gaul for the sake of Rome, but for his own glory.
Millions died for his glory, not only in Gaul.
From then on Rome was governed by ambitious men who tried to keep the mass happy and ignorant with panem et circenses.

Julius Caesar was a very controversial figure in his own time. After all, it is his naked ambition that eventually caused Roman senators to assassinate him. And among his assassins were officers that were with him in Gaul, like Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus or Gaius Trebonius. Even Titus Labienus, his most senior lieutenant during the Gallic Wars, and one of the few officers to serve as legate during the 8 years of Julius Caesar's campaign in Gaul, eventually defected Caesar to join Pompey after Caesar crossed the Rubicon. In Gaul, Labienus had been trying to convince Caesar to seek diplomatic solutions to conflicts and to help Romanise the Gauls in the most helpful, peaceful and positive manner so as to prevent rebellions, rather than seek glorious victories at the cost of tens of thousands of human lives.

Nevertheless, Caesar's claim that he killed about a million Gauls and Germans (Suebi) seems to be greatly exaggerated. For example Caesar besieged the oppidum of the Aduatuci in what is now the citadel of Namur, where he claimed some 100,000 Aduatuci had huddled, and were eventually all killed or enslaved. It's hard to believe that 100,000 people could fit at the location of the modern citadel, and even harder to believe that there would have been so many people living around it, when the modern city with its suburbs has just 100,000 people today. That would assume that the Belgae could support population densities as high as modern Belgium (one of the highest in Europe today) with modern agricultural technologies and medicine. What's more, the Condrusi tribe occupied the land immediately south of modern Namur, so that Aduatuci would only be the people in the northern section. I would tend to think that there couldn't have been more than 10,000 Aduatuci, 10x less than what Caesar claimed. Let's not forget that De Bello Gallico is first and foremost a work of propaganda designed to aggrandise Caesar's reputation as a great military leader, and numbers could easily be cooked up for that purpose.

EDIT : Note that the Romans surrounded the oppidum of the Aduatuci and built a huge siege tower. Seeing that, the Aduatuci surrendered, dropping their weapons over the oppidum's walls. Caesar was about to spare all of them in the name of the pax romana. When the Romans entered the oppidum, hidden archers and spearmen tried to kill them by surprise. Confronted with that treachery, Caesar ordered a counter-attack with no quarter. The Aduatuci were ultimately responsible for their own demise.

It's true that many people died during the conquest of Gaul. But then the ancient world was also far more violent than the modern world. At the battle of Arausio (Orange) in Provence in 105 BCE, a Roman army of 120,000 people were exterminated almost to the last one by the Cimbri, Teutones and some Gallic allies. Huge percentages of casualties in war were relatively normal back then. Defeated tribes could be wiped out or enslaved by the victor (if they considered them a too important threat) anywhere in Europe or the Mediterranean world. Caesar was not particularly more bloodthirsty than average for his time. What people reproached him back home was that he did it for his own glory and for the political control of Rome.
 
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Did they get infrastructure, education, clean water, a better way of life, inclusion in the countries which conquered them?

Some were better off than others, but yes, some of the first things the Germans did was building churches, hospitals, roads, railroads etc, sure not worse than what the Romans did. Some even work to this day and some locals are still proud to have been in German service. Ever heard of the Askaris? They were the African equivalent to Roman auxiliaries in modern times:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Askari

https://www.historynet.com/mie-askari-mdachi-german-askari.htm

I saw interviews with old, former Askari soldiers, which were still proud to have been part of the German local troops and showed off their medals, just like a Celtic or Germanic auxiliary would have 2000 years earlier. Things are not that fundamentally different. You said yourself one should consult Tom Holland and indeed, things should be put into perspective.

I also didn't justify what they did in detail, I just said it was for me no real genocide and a reaction to absolute horrible acts of the Herero themselves, which started it. That doesn't justify everything, of course, but its not like they just were "evil" and nonsense like that. You said it was worse than what happened in Congo. I think mutilating people for profits is worse than fighting back hard in a guerilla war after the rebels did such horrible things.

You should also be ashamed for saying that the only way the Chinese had of dealing with some Islamist stirrings in the Uighers was to put them in concentration camps.

I also don't say everything the Chinese do is right, but you have to consider how they treat their own Han Chinese people, and what these Uighur Islamists did, what kind of terror and brutality they showed, also what that kind of Islamism means, if it spreads. So the Chinese just do what is necessary to get at its root, whereas the "policing" and half-allied kind of policy the US does just made Sunni Islamism grow and own soldiers and innocent civilians die. Its also not like the Chinese did put all Uighurs in institutions, but they try to filter out, rather generously, that's granted, who is associated with conservative to radical Islamic views and connections. That is not nice, but looking at the death & destruction rate in Afghanisthan, for example, and even more important the chances for success, the Chinese have better chances of succeeding, more right to use force and won't destroy more lifes then the US policing missions. If you don't really want to win, why even trying? It just makes things worse and costs life for nothing, while not even protecting your own forces and the local loyalists. The Chinese are different, if they do something, they want results and they try to protect their people and loyalists from vicious attacks, with the means necessary. Read up on what happened before that, what kind of attacks the Islamists did in the province. The Chinese didn't even report most of it, because they were ashamed and didn't want the news to spread, but there happened a lot before they escalated themselves.
 
Julius Caesar was a very controversial figure in his own time. After all, it is his naked ambition that eventually caused Roman senators to assassinate him. And among his assassins were officers that were with him in Gaul, like Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus or Gaius Trebonius. Even Titus Labienus, his most senior lieutenant during the Gallic Wars, and one of the few officers to serve as legate during the 8 years of Julius Caesar's campaign in Gaul, eventually defected Caesar to join Pompey after Caesar crossed the Rubicon. In Gaul, Labienus had been trying to convince Caesar to seek diplomatic solutions to conflicts and to help Romanise the Gauls in the most helpful, peaceful and positive manner so as to prevent rebellions, rather than seek glorious victories at the cost of tens of thousands of human lives.

Nevertheless, Caesar's claim that he killed about a million Gauls and Germans (Suebi) seems to be greatly exaggerated. For example Caesar besieged the oppidum of the Aduatuci in what is now the citadel of Namur, where he claimed some 100,000 Aduatuci had huddled, and were eventually all killed or enslaved. It's hard to believe that 100,000 people could fit at the location of the modern citadel, and even harder to believe that there would have been so many people living around it, when the modern city with its suburbs has just 100,000 people today. That would assume that the Belgae could support population densities as high as modern Belgium (one of the highest in Europe today) with modern agricultural technologies and medicine. What's more, the Condrusi tribe occupied the land immediately south of modern Namur, so that Aduatuci would only be the people in the northern section. I would tend to think that there couldn't have been more than 10,000 Aduatuci, 10x less than what Caesar claimed. Let's not forget that De Bello Gallico is first and foremost a work of propaganda designed to aggrandise Caesar's reputation as a great military leader, and numbers could easily be cooked up for that purpose.

EDIT : Note that the Romans surrounded the oppidum of the Aduatuci and built a huge siege tower. Seeing that, the Aduatuci surrendered, dropping their weapons over the oppidum's walls. Caesar was about to spare all of them in the name of the pax romana. When the Romans entered the oppidum, hidden archers and spearmen tried to kill them by surprise. Confronted with that treachery, Caesar ordered a counter-attack with no quarter. The Aduatuci were ultimately responsible for their own demise.

It's true that many people died during the conquest of Gaul. But then the ancient world was also far more violent than the modern world. At the battle of Arausio (Orange) in Provence in 105 BCE, a Roman army of 120,000 people were exterminated almost to the last one by the Cimbri, Teutones and some Gallic allies. Huge percentages of casualties in war were relatively normal back then. Defeated tribes could be wiped out or enslaved by the victor (if they considered them a too important threat) anywhere in Europe or the Mediterranean world. Caesar was not particularly more bloodthirsty than average for his time. What people reproached him back home was that he did it for his own glory and for the political control of Rome.

Thank you for the nice story Maciamo.
I visited the Citadel of Namur once. When you admire the view, it's impressive, you immeadiately realise it must have been an interesting stronghold for millenia, at the confuence of 2 rivers.

Can you elaborate on the Roman colonisation of Belgium?
Afaik the 2 most important cities were Tournai and Tongeren.
Tournai because it was on an important crossroad, and it also became the capital city of the Merovingian king Clovis on his way to conquer Gaul.
Tongeren because it was nearby the most fertile plains, where already the first LBK farmers had settled, and foremost because it was nearby the frontlines along the Rhine where the legions had to be fed and supported with logistics.
For the rest, I have the impression that Rome showed little interest in Belgium, certainly not for Flanders without fertile plains and with hard to cultivate lands and swamps where rebels could hide.
I wonder even more why they bothered to conquer nothern Germania, where they could do even less.
Tiberius and Germanicus spent a fortune trying and conquering it, only because they hoped it would bring them the same aura and glory as Julius Caesar?
 
Comparing random cities in space and time-Rome,Detroit,Mainz. Without going into the reasons why decline happens like in Rome. Is it possible to reverse, by actions like "reporting to watchdog organizations"? Or do cities age no different than a bag of expired milk, and depopulate?
 
Julius Caesar was a very controversial figure in his own time. After all, it is his naked ambition that eventually caused Roman senators to assassinate him. And among his assassins were officers that were with him in Gaul, like Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus or Gaius Trebonius. Even Titus Labienus, his most senior lieutenant during the Gallic Wars, and one of the few officers to serve as legate during the 8 years of Julius Caesar's campaign in Gaul, eventually defected Caesar to join Pompey after Caesar crossed the Rubicon. In Gaul, Labienus had been trying to convince Caesar to seek diplomatic solutions to conflicts and to help Romanise the Gauls in the most helpful, peaceful and positive manner so as to prevent rebellions, rather than seek glorious victories at the cost of tens of thousands of human lives.

Nevertheless, Caesar's claim that he killed about a million Gauls and Germans (Suebi) seems to be greatly exaggerated. For example Caesar besieged the oppidum of the Aduatuci in what is now the citadel of Namur, where he claimed some 100,000 Aduatuci had huddled, and were eventually all killed or enslaved. It's hard to believe that 100,000 people could fit at the location of the modern citadel, and even harder to believe that there would have been so many people living around it, when the modern city with its suburbs has just 100,000 people today. That would assume that the Belgae could support population densities as high as modern Belgium (one of the highest in Europe today) with modern agricultural technologies and medicine. What's more, the Condrusi tribe occupied the land immediately south of modern Namur, so that Aduatuci would only be the people in the northern section. I would tend to think that there couldn't have been more than 10,000 Aduatuci, 10x less than what Caesar claimed. Let's not forget that De Bello Gallico is first and foremost a work of propaganda designed to aggrandise Caesar's reputation as a great military leader, and numbers could easily be cooked up for that purpose.

EDIT : Note that the Romans surrounded the oppidum of the Aduatuci and built a huge siege tower. Seeing that, the Aduatuci surrendered, dropping their weapons over the oppidum's walls. Caesar was about to spare all of them in the name of the pax romana. When the Romans entered the oppidum, hidden archers and spearmen tried to kill them by surprise. Confronted with that treachery, Caesar ordered a counter-attack with no quarter. The Aduatuci were ultimately responsible for their own demise.

It's true that many people died during the conquest of Gaul. But then the ancient world was also far more violent than the modern world. At the battle of Arausio (Orange) in Provence in 105 BCE, a Roman army of 120,000 people were exterminated almost to the last one by the Cimbri, Teutones and some Gallic allies. Huge percentages of casualties in war were relatively normal back then. Defeated tribes could be wiped out or enslaved by the victor (if they considered them a too important threat) anywhere in Europe or the Mediterranean world. Caesar was not particularly more bloodthirsty than average for his time. What people reproached him back home was that he did it for his own glory and for the political control of Rome.

what i always wondered is that if de bello gallico was first and foremost propaganda and we assume the numbers aren't correct, isn't it also reasonable to assume that at least some of the reasons/justifications for certain slaughter events were invented by caesar?
after all, looting a village or city is sometimes much more profitable and also needed to sustain the troops with food and payment.

i think i read somewhere that the price of gold sank drastically in rome because of all the gold that was brought from gaul.
 
what i always wondered is that if de bello gallico was first and foremost propaganda how can we be certain that the treasons comitted by the gauls that then led to caesar butchering them were not also invented by caesar?
after all looting a village or city is sometimes more profitable and also needed to sustain the troops, than just let it be.

there is not much or no archeological evidence
the locations of the battle fields are subject to speculaton
de bello gallico is a story the common people back in Italia want to hear, but these people are unable to check the facts
Julius Caesar himself has to appear as a hero in the story
I guess there are a lot of fabrications
and i'ts very likely he exaggerated the numbers of the ennemy troops and the numbers butchered and he downplayed his own losses


as for the story about the siege of the Citadel of Namur, I don't know if there is any source other than de bello gallico

Maciamo?
 
there is not much or no archeological evidence
the locations of the battle fields are subject to speculaton
de bello gallico is a story the common people back in Italia want to hear, but these people are unable to check the facts
Julius Caesar himself has to appear as a hero in the story
I guess there are a lot of fabrications
and i'ts very likely he exaggerated the numbers of the ennemy troops and the numbers butchered and he downplayed his own losses


as for the story about the siege of the Citadel of Namur, I don't know if there is any source other than de bello gallico

Maciamo?


some of the actions of his enemies which Caesar describes just don't make much sense to me. for example that germanic tribe he butchered in the very beginning, can't remember the name. i think he made some kind of truce with them, and then suddendly some germanic horsemen began attacking the romans according to caesar who then took his army and killed everyone with all the germanics just sitting in their tents. so, why should a small group of horsemen attack the romans while all the others were just sitting around unequipped for battle together with their families?

did the germanics underestimate how fast the romans could mobilize?

or did caesar just want to remove the germanics from that side of the rhine asap and just needed an excuse to remove them?

i looked it up again. the tribes were named Usipetes and Tencteri and it wasn't really at the beginning of caesars campaign.
 
Surely for you I'm a 'woke' (and leftish) man. I never admired "great" figures and "great" states too much. I prefer people like Gandhi, personally.
I don't like more what you call victimology, because too often, the victims are only the loosers of a cruel game which they would have liked to be the winners. I think the famous "memory duty" is valuable for the whole humanity (or inhumanity?). But too much "memory duty" becomes quickly lost of time, I prefer new ways to built future in a more "fairplay" manner; it's my point.
It isn't without link with what I call the "Hypra-sionism" question of today in Palestine. Past is past, everyone his responsability, but this principle ought not to obliterate future in the region. Someones reproach to others the fact they are trying to come back to recent past but they forget they refer themselves (sionists) to a very far past without value for a lot of others; whoever they are. And thinking all this is in part the result of foreign selfproclamed" great democratic" states action...



Mosean you‘re too classy, too polite, too honest, too respectful, and too much interested in facts for being “woke“ or an SJW. To these woke leftists anyone who is mildly left-wing is an 'Alt-right Neo-Nazi. That‘s why people who are left-leaning but who are not woke enough are being cancelled and silenced, too. Besides, I‘m a young person but I can‘t identify with millennials and wokeism at all.



 
The Uighurs were even privileged in the past, were allowed to get more children and a good representation in the political organisation of the province and state. However, it was expected of them to assimilate and, on the long run, just embrace, generally speaking, the national Chinese identity.
The problems came about when, exactly at the time of beginning ethnic Uighur resistance to full scale assimilation, began an infiltration of the Islamic part of this resistance by foreign Salafists. Like local Uighurs said, it is not in their local, ethnic tradition that women being fully covered in black scarves, or that the interpretation of Islam being that radical. But right in the ethnic conflict, the Islamist indoctrination through foreign agents started. The result were, again, most brutal attacks against Chinese civilians, which are just completely unacceptable for any nation caring for its own people. What followed was an escalation on both sides, and contrary to some weaker states, the Chinese state didn't give in, in the face of radical Islamism, but escalated itself. That's a different strategy from Russia, in which Putin allied up with local Islamists of the somewhat more moderate kind to just execute indirect rule in what I may call a fragile peace with an expiration date. China is strong enough and thinks on the long term, so they don't accept something like that but work for a lasting solution to the Islamist problem. Whether they succeed or not, will be interesting to watch.
But you have to consider that, just like in other areas of the world, there is no good way to negotiate or make peace with hardcore Islamists, nowhere. What others tried, it didn't work out, nowhere. Religious extremism is a problem for any kind of modern state and society and the Islamic state in Syria & Iraq just showed the world what kind of "humanism" they practise. Tibetans were a special case, they could have been left alone, because of their peaceful and isolated way of doing things, even if it was a theocratic-autocratic, most conservative, in a negative way, state. But Islamism is different, as it is more aggressive and expansive. Like Russia even gave Chechens their Islamic state, but they just kept attacking the neighbouring provinces, using that state as a base. That says a lot about how things would turn out, if China gets weak and would break apart, because it would suffer a worse fate than Russia with the break up of the Soviet Union, I'd guess. And constant terrorism and attacks from Islamists in the Uighur provinces are simply no option for the current leadership.


China is an ethno- fascist country and a totalitarian regime that massively violates human rights on regular basis. Therefore, under the pretense of fighting radical Islam, they preform forced abortions on the Uighurs and sterilize entire Uighur villages. This is ethnic cleansing, racism, thus an unacceptable crime. The Chinese state also ruthlessly persecutes Christians, dissidents and anyone that isn't in line with their inhumane regime. In addition to that Uighurs are a tiny minority among 1.4 Billion of Chinese. Anyway, there is no justification for forced sterilization/abortion in order to get rid of unwanted or even problematic minorities. It's barbaric and an atrocity. Furthermore, calling out the Chinese for their ethnic cleansing if not genocide, is considered racist by white liberal hypocrites and the left-wing mainstream media: To the woke leftists, racism, slavery, and genocide are solely condemnable and heinous if Europeans aka white people are involved.



 
Moesan, being "woke" and being left wing can be exclusive from one another. I do not think you are woke, it is not one in the same as being leftist.

OK, sure, but I know people who thinks both are tied by evidence (some supporters and some opponents). Others think 'leftishness' supports laziness and blind assistantship without nuance...
 
China is an ethno- fascist country and a totalitarian regime that massively violates human rights on regular basis.


Completely different topic, but China is close to being totalitarian, but surely not "ethno-fascist" (whatever that means) at all. Even on the contrary, they priviliged minorities way too much in comparison to their own ethnicity, especially in the context of the one child policy and gave the minorities a lot of rights and participation many other nations never did. Only when there was real separatism or resistance, they changed the pace pretty quickly and sometimes radically.

Therefore, under the pretense of fighting radical Islam, ...

Better inform yourself, because radical Islam is a serious issue and began to dominate the radical Uighur resistance, especially the terroristic and violent one. During the already escalating conflict it began to spread like wildfire in the common people there. Even neutral observers and Uighurs noted it, that suddenly the tone in mosques got radical, the frequency of black scarved women increased many times and paroles from Salafists made the round. You can just argue that the Chinese could have tried to come to better terms early on, but later on, they had to deal with a radical enemy with which no reasonable peace can be made. Its just like it is with the Taliban in Afghanistan. This reminds of the ignorance for the Syrian situation, in which some propagandists kept telling people that there is just Assad and "democratic rebels", pointing to every collateral damage caused by the Syrian forces, but ignoring the atrocities of the Islamists as long as they could, until their own journalists became public victims nobody could ignore any longer. The Uighur situation is pretty similar. It probably started differently, but it became similar, because in the radical resistance in most Sunni Muslim vs. other situations, the radical Islamists take over.
 
Concerning the documentary about Rome, I can't stand bad fighting scenes. Some of the few which did it right in some episodes was the series Rome, even pointing the failure of so many others out by creating a story, in the first episode, in which the legionary which jumped out of the rank in frenzy and drunken got punished afterwards. Even the Germanics fought, usually, in closed ranks and those chaotic scenes were rare occasions, probably at night or in an unusual trap, but not at any other time.
 
weren't the Celts fighting in disarray, rather for personnal glory than for communal victory?

in the Battle of the Sabis, de Bello Gallico describes the Nervii as charging at full speed towards the Roman legions
 
weren't the Celts fighting in disarray, rather for personnal glory than for communal victory?

in the Battle of the Sabis, de Bello Gallico describes the Nervii as charging at full speed towards the Roman legions

Yes. The Celts were brave warriors but too individualistic and lacking a proper group strategy. The Gauls didn't like using archers, slingers or artillery (onagers, ballistae) as they considered it a cowardly way of fighting that didn't earn glory to the warriors. This exaggerated sense of individual glory is also why they didn't use group formations like shield walls or testudos. That was their biggest weakness against the organised and pragmatic Romans.

But Roman legions benefited from the inclusion of Gallic auxiliaries (and later full Gallo-Roman legionaries) joined their ranks and adopted Roman discipline and tactics melded with Celtic courage and vigour. Even in Caesar's time many legionaries were recruited among Romanised Celts, such as the 14th legion, which was made up almost entirely of Cisalpine Gauls.
 
weren't the Celts fighting in disarray, rather for personnal glory than for communal victory?

in the Battle of the Sabis, de Bello Gallico describes the Nervii as charging at full speed towards the Roman legions

The Celts had better weapons, originally, but their tactics were too chaotic indeed. But even if in one case they charged in full speed, this doesn't have to mean they did attack in complete disarray and if he described the Nervii in such a way it means it was exceptional, probably trying to surprise the enemy. It was not the norm, especially not in open field, for practically nobody. And even if, latest when meeting the Roman lines, there would have formed bulks of people in a line. The main problem of the Celts was that their groups attacked with pressure, expecting the enemy to break early on. If that didn't work out, they got tired, and were crowded, almost unable to move, both forward or backward. This led to panicking. The Romans on the other hand kept lines in good order, which could move in all directions, as a group, protected by each others. And the first line was regularly exchanged by fresh troops, which again made them vastly superiour against the Celtic mob attacks.
So why while they had no good order, proper lines and units to move, they surely didn't attack in complete disarray, because in fact, this is against the human nature. Rather they formed lose lines and mobs, which pressed against the enemy like waves of water and if getting tired and broken, even if just the front ranks, oftentimes the complete battle was lost.
 
Yes. The Celts were brave warriors but too individualistic and lacking a proper group strategy. The Gauls didn't like using archers, slingers or artillery (onagers, ballistae) as they considered it a cowardly way of fighting that didn't earn glory to the warriors. This exaggerated sense of individual glory is also why they didn't use group formations like shield walls or testudos. That was their biggest weakness against the organised and pragmatic Romans.

But Roman legions benefited from the inclusion of Gallic auxiliaries (and later full Gallo-Roman legionaries) joined their ranks and adopted Roman discipline and tactics melded with Celtic courage and vigour. Even in Caesar's time many legionaries were recruited among Romanised Celts, such as the 14th legion, which was made up almost entirely of Cisalpine Gauls.

I guess it was this attitude that allowed Germanic tribes, who were much more pragmatic in warfare, to move further south.
In the end the Celts were crushed between the Germanic tribes moving south and the expanding Roman Empire.

IMO the Germanic tribes were climate refugees.
There are no signs of excessive violence in the Nordic Bronze age, but during that time grapes grew in Scandinavia, which means it was a lot warmer than today.
At the end of the Nordic Bronze age, the neolithic settlements in middle Scandinavia were abandonned and replaced by Uralic HG.


P.S. note that climate warming never caused major problems on a global scale, it was always climate cooling that caused major problems
 

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