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How do we feel about comparisons of ancient colonies to modern colonialism? (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I tend to rankle when people compare the colonialism of the last few centuries with the pre-capitalist expansion and settlement of ancient societies. It seems like there's a lot of daylight between the English founding Jamestown and ancient Ionians founding Massalia or w/e.

But what do Hexbear's historians think? Is it fundamentally the same social phenomenon across time or is capitalist settler-colonialism its own unique thing?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

i don't think they were very discrete groups with hard political affiliations, but there were regional dialects & religious groupings. the hellenistic era is actually when intra-greek differences in dialect are going away because of Koine & regionalism becomes less important under the big diadochi empires (Macedonians, Cretans, Rhodians, etc. are all just Greeks when you put them in Mesopotamia or Syria)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Very interesting. Are there any works you'd recommend that talk more about this? Besides the one @Wertheimer recommended, that is.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Peter Green's From Alexander to Actium is my main starting point for Hellenistic history. Of particular regional interest is Richard Stoneman's The Greek Experience of India.

The Greek version of the phrase "Don't bullshit a bullshittter" was "Don't try to out-Cretan a Cretan." There's an example of it in reference to siege-based treachery somewhere in Polybius.

Most of my other go-to examples are from the classical era. Abdera, despite multiple philosophical luminaries hailing from that town, was the place that generated the ancient Greek version of the Polish joke. Corinthians were notorious swindlers, Laconians were legendarily laconic, etc. Take a drink every time Thucydides introduces a speech (which he wrote, naturally) from a Spartan leader by saying something like "Brasidas, who was a good speaker, for a Spartan..."