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The Great Illyrian Revolt

en.wikipedia.org

51–60 of 64 posts

Re: The Great Illyrian Revolt

#51
post #23

>The Romans, aside from committing atrocities I see this in a lot of historical Wikipedia articles now. I'm not sure what to think of it. It feels like a modern tag added to articles that feels somewhat out of place. My understanding that at the time, and most of history war, what we think of as war crimes were a standard practice of war. It seems strange to me to tag the end of an article about a large scale war and…

Funny how these articles seldom mentioned the war crimes of the sympathetic side. Like how these rebellions started by killing all Romans in the province, after raping the women and children first of course.

Those rebellions in those provinces start after Romans export half of the population as slaves and send the rest to work in the local mines. There's the catch.

Actually, its worse - even if you were a saintly society neighboring Rome or within the reach of Rome, Rome would invent a 'reason' to invade you if you had something they wanted or they lacked enough slaves. Like how the Syracuse invasion was done on literally manufactured consent by disguised legionnaires committing acts of atrocities against the Romans. All the wars of Rome from Early Republic and on were done on such manufactured consent and false flags.

At the end of the Republic period, everything changes - they stop needing to manufacture 'reasons' for invasions. By this time, the empire is already nascent as a social and political format and the slave-reliant economy is already dominant so there is no need to manufacture consent for the need for acquiring slaves.

Re: The Great Illyrian Revolt

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macedonia is particularly egregious because its genesis as an ethnic group is still within living memory and would make as much sense as Pennsylvanians declaring themselves the last true Vikings, erecting statues with horned helmets and talking about retaking their true homelands. All other major ethnic groups in the Balkans have at least two or more generations from their creation, either synthetic or organic, and a…

I don't understand this comment about Macedonians. They seem like a pretty distinct ethnic group, as evidenced by the unique language and culture. That was not just created out of thin air in any kind of recent time. Are people upset about them adopting the name?

And what exactly is distinct and unique about their language and culture?

Re: The Great Illyrian Revolt

#54
post #23

>The Romans, aside from committing atrocities I see this in a lot of historical Wikipedia articles now. I'm not sure what to think of it. It feels like a modern tag added to articles that feels somewhat out of place. My understanding that at the time, and most of history war, what we think of as war crimes were a standard practice of war. It seems strange to me to tag the end of an article about a large scale war and…

As others mentioned here, the contemporaneous audience may be unaware of that era's lack of many conventions which are more or less assumed nowadays, including for conflicts/wars, so mentioning (unbiasedly) the brutality of a given interaction may paint a clearer picture, which is (or should be) the point of these articles. And as the time goes on and we distance ourselves from memorable conflicts, that may be increasingly more necessary if less and less of the audience would assume it by default.

Regarding the difference in the level of war brutality that the involved parties experienced in history, one notable example comes to mind - mongols. I have yet to encounter someone willing to argue that the suffering that medieval mongols inflicted in their campaign was comparable to that of their opponents.

Re: The Great Illyrian Revolt

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this comment about Macedonians. They seem like a pretty distinct ethnic group, as evidenced by the unique language and culture. That was not just created out of thin air in any kind of recent time. Are people upset about them adopting the name?

And what exactly is distinct and unique about their language and culture?

Judging by the username I'll guess this is coming from the Bulgarian perspective? Then again you could argue that most of that region is half-Turk :-)

Re: The Great Illyrian Revolt

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to watch this mini-series.

That summary is sort of the early life of Julius Caesar, but it actually worked out for him[0]. Also the story of this great little game that came out last year[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_and_career_of_Juliu... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expeditions:_Rome

Lol, interesting - I'd never heard of this game, I'll check it out.

I was just riffing on what was a pretty standard story for governors and similar officials in far-away posts - precisely because Caesar's success in engineering favourable military campaigns established a sort of blueprint.

Re: The Great Illyrian Revolt

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what exactly is distinct and unique about their language and culture?

Judging by the username I'll guess this is coming from the Bulgarian perspective? Then again you could argue that most of that region is half-Turk :-)

Not exactly. I was born and raised in Bulgaria, but my direct ancestors did run a printing house, as well as a lot of revolutionary work, in Macedonia during the late 19th and early 20th century. So I would have been a Macedonian if not for the violent suppression of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie uprising :) Additionally, what bothers me with the "Bulgarian perspective" is that Bulgaria chickened out on Macedonia on multiple occasions, yet some people go around saying "Macedonia is Bulgarian". Well, you can't have your cake and eat it, right? After the Young Turk Revolution, even my family (Bulgarians through and through) seems to have gotten frustrated with Bulgarian politics and started leaning towards independent Macedonia. So, I'm totally okay with the situation as-it-is.

As for Balkan people being half-Turk, I have to disagree. You probably meant the Bulgars? They were some 30,000 men and their families, and were quickly assimilated into the local population (mostly slavicized, romanized Thracians). Check out the yDNA/mDNA haplogroups for Bulgarian (or Macedonian, they're almost the same) people, then compare this to (for example) Tatars, and you'll quickly see there's not much in common.

Sorry for the wall of text, but since you asked.. :)

Re: The Great Illyrian Revolt

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by the username I'll guess this is coming from the Bulgarian perspective? Then again you could argue that most of that region is half-Turk :-)

Not exactly. I was born and raised in Bulgaria, but my direct ancestors did run a printing house, as well as a lot of revolutionary work, in Macedonia during the late 19th and early 20th century. So I would have been a Macedonian if not for the violent suppression of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie uprising :) Additionally, what bothers me with the "Bulgarian perspective" is that Bulgaria chickened out on Macedonia on mult…

My Turk comment was somewhat inspired by me realizing just how many of our words across the ex-Yu region are Turcisms. I had this epiphany when I watched the show Diriliş: Ertuğrul on Netflix, and couldn't go 60 seconds without hearing a familiar word that I never would have guessed the source of.

Now as for the uniqueness/culture, I'm biased having an ex-Yu background, where we tended to have a culture of equality/inclusivity and things like labels or instructions or competitions tried to represent all the constituent languages, and we always ended up with the 4 interchangeable ones (Croat/Serb/Bosniak/Montenegrin) and the 2 unintelligible ones (Slovene and Macedonian). From that perspective the Macedonian SR was quite unique and also famous for its distinct culture and natural beauty. However, I could not tell how close it was to regions outside its borders - presumably it was a spectrum, the way most Slavic influence is a spectrum both across culture and language. It seems that you have by far a better data sample set for comparison :-)

Re: The Great Illyrian Revolt

#59
post #23

>The Romans, aside from committing atrocities I see this in a lot of historical Wikipedia articles now. I'm not sure what to think of it. It feels like a modern tag added to articles that feels somewhat out of place. My understanding that at the time, and most of history war, what we think of as war crimes were a standard practice of war. It seems strange to me to tag the end of an article about a large scale war and…

Given that today we expect war crimes not to occur, how will people know that they did or didn't occur in Antiquity if not told explicitly so? The bigger problem is being so unspecific about the atrocities committed.

> we expect war crimes not to occur

I think that’s a bad assumption.

Re: The Great Illyrian Revolt

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. I was born and raised in Bulgaria, but my direct ancestors did run a printing house, as well as a lot of revolutionary work, in Macedonia during the late 19th and early 20th century. So I would have been a Macedonian if not for the violent suppression of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie uprising :) Additionally, what bothers me with the "Bulgarian perspective" is that Bulgaria chickened out on Macedonia on mult…

My Turk comment was somewhat inspired by me realizing just how many of our words across the ex-Yu region are Turcisms. I had this epiphany when I watched the show Diriliş: Ertuğrul on Netflix, and couldn't go 60 seconds without hearing a familiar word that I never would have guessed the source of. Now as for the uniqueness/culture, I'm biased having an ex-Yu background, where we tended to have a culture of equality/i…

> many of our words across the ex-Yu region are Turcisms

Oh, I got you now, komşu. I guess we picked up most of these during the Ottoman rule.

> I'm biased having an ex-Yu background

Btw Bulgaria was very close to joining the party in 1934, and again in 1947. Would have meant nicer Socialism. But also probably wars in the 90's. So I'm not sure what to think of it.

> Macedonian SR was quite unique and also famous for its distinct culture and natural beauty

Yeah, beautiful country, good people. Can't wait to hike there again once international tensions settle a bit... which can take 2 or 200 years.

> Slavic influence is a spectrum both across culture and language

Right, at the end of the day, we all essentially speak dialects of Old Church Slavonic (aka Old Serbian/Croatian/Bulgarian/Macedonian depending on who you ask).

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