Hacker News Reader

Comment by xstartup | Hacker News Reader

Genghis Khan (1206-1368)

Imperial Japan - 14th century

The Soviet Union - They mostly annexed poor territories. I am not sure, how much wealth they extracted but 2 bads don't make 1 good.

In comparison, European Imperialism started at 1400 ended just 70-years ago.

Till then the world had a global currency, industrialization had started. Heck, we even had structures representing modern companies, banks, and the stock market.

So, yea something which ended roughly 70 years ago is too old on nation timescale?

According to your argument, is it ok to rob your grandfather, so that your father and you are born in near poverty and judge you by your success today?

No one can deny, Europe has robbed other nations of their prosperity.

View on HN

> In comparison, European Imperialism started at 1400 ended just 70-years ago.

As did Asian imperialism. Look at Japan just about 70-years ago.

> No one can deny, Europe has robbed other nations of their prosperity.

No one can deny, Asians and Arabs robbed other nations of their prosperity.

>> As did Asian imperialism. Look at Japan just about 70-years ago.

2 wrongs don't make 1 right.

>> No one can deny, Asians and Arabs robbed other nations of their prosperity.

Scale vastly differs. You should be checking how much Europe extracted out of Asia/Africa before bringing Japan into the discussion.

I bet most Europeans are not taught about Europeans atrocities committed in Africa/Asia at school. That's why you are not able to even perceive scale of exploitation correctly. Europeans killed 4 million people deliberately engineering famine in South Asia. Pretty, sure they've removed these things out of their textbooks but feel free to do your own research. These things are less than 100 years old.

Yes, Japan/Europe are both rich today so are those Arab nations too.

What about the countries who they robbed?

Not a European but learned about this in American public school.

Also learned about the 35 million Chinese people the Chinese government killed via famine in a couple year period.

The west has no monopoly on causing suffering.

Chinese dying in China because of China's policy is their national problem but European powers going to some other country and meddling with their administration causing famine and benefiting economically is a different issue. This is an apple to orange comparison, I am afraid.

We'll have to disagree then. The Chinese government was not representative, it was won by conquest (at brutal cost to the ethnic populations of the territories conquered).

That they now claim national sovereign status seems immaterial. Thats like saying that it was ok for the Delhi Indians to slaughter the Mewat because they are now the same nation. They weren't then.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com