9 ms·

It's incredible just how long the Iberian fascist regimes lasted. I imagine that if you polled a set of random people from the street, and asked when they thoug

by arawde 2y ago

It's incredible just how long the Iberian fascist regimes lasted. I imagine that if you polled a set of random people from the street, and asked when they thought the last war for colonial indepence from a European power was, very few would answer "the 1979s" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Colonial_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Colonial_War

boredpeter 2y ago
[dead]
int_19h 2y ago
I mean, if you count Russia as a European colonial power - and you should! - then it's far more recent. Chechnya fought a war over its independence in 1994-96, then another one with an active phase in 1999-2000 that tapered off into guerrilla warfare that lasted until mid-2010s.
- timeon 2y ago
  They are currently trying to regain one colony as well.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    I referenced Chechnya because it is a very traditional case of colonialism that very obviously parallels other European colonies in Africa etc: acquired through straightforward territorial conquest in 18-19th century with no justification other than "might is right" (with a dash of "white man's burden" thrown in for good measure), specifically to exploit as a colony. Ukraine is a bit different in that both the official Russian ideology and the prevailing public opinion don't see it as a colony, but rather as "lost heartland" that is inhabited by what are still fundamentally Russians who have "strayed". So the long-term goal there isn't to acquire a new colony for the metropole to exploit - it's to forcibly assimilate its Ukrainian population into the metropole in its entirety. Now in practice this isn't that simple either, because of course the occupied territories are exploited. However, one could argue that it is still not colonial exploitation, because its economic nature is fundamentally the same as the relationship between Moscow and basically every other Russian region. That is, it would make sense to say that occupied Ukraine is a colony if you're also willing to say that pretty much all of Russia is also effectively a colony of Moscow (which is not an unreasonable way to describe it, to be fair - just not a conventional one in Western historiography).
- ein0p 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - neoromantique 2y ago
    Beslan is indeed very illustrative example, but not of what you are implying.
  - quotz 2y ago
    Theres double standards. Catalonia tried to gain independence from Spain, the EU and the USA condemned it. But when Chechnya or Kosovo are in question, then its totally fine.
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    "The enemy of my enemy" may be a great way to run a hegemony, but it's lousy foreign policy in general. I sometimes wonder what the world might have been like if the USSR had occupied afghanistan in the early 1980s, re-secularising it in the ~decade before 1992, leading to a post-USSR afghanistan suffering no worse than an armenian/azerbaijani (<40'000) level of violence after collapse? (Let's take the upper end of estimates for the tajikistani civil war: 150'000 dead, as a benchmark. That'd still be better than 2'000'000 for the Soviet-Afghan war and another 200'000 for the US-Afghan war?) Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaK_CZk-0Rg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaK_CZk-0Rg
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      > Let's take the upper end of estimates for the tajikistani civil war: 150'000 dead, as a benchmark. That'd still be better than 2'000'000 for the Soviet-Afghan war and another 200'000 for the US-Afghan war?) 2.5% of the Tajik population died during the civil war, and it absolutely would have spread to Afghanistan, as 20% of Afghans are Tajik. > I sometimes wonder what the world might have been like if the USSR had occupied afghanistan in the early 1980s Afghanistan would have anyhow fallen into civil war even if Najibullah remained in power because Pakistan, Iran, India, China, Turkiye, Iran, Saudi, UAE, Qatar, and other regional powers all meddle there. There's a reason most of Najibullah's and Massood's family live in New Delhi and not Moscow or NoVA.
TremendousJudge 2y ago
They have all of these big monuments to their "Guerra do Ultramar" too, I don't think there was any sort of nationwide realization of what that implies.
- lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago
  If you spend any time in Portugal, one thing youll learn is that they are very proud of their past. No self-reflection whatsoever. And I said they even though Im one of them because I hate the culture of the country. Foreigners arent any depper, of course. They go "ohhh lisbon is so beautiful" and that's as far as they go.
  - MaxHoppersGhost 2y ago
    They should be proud of their past. Every civilization in the world (including the ones they conquered) at the time would have done what the Portuguese did if they could. All from a tiny country of a few million people.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      "Others were bullies, too" is not a valid reason to be proud for ever having been a bully.
  - styluss 2y ago
    Yup. There is no self awareness of how much we got from all our colonial history. It is also wild seeing how people are reacting to the President talking about reparations.
ghostDancer 2y ago
Supported by western democracies, USA and UK have always supported dictatorships while they are useful to them, economically and politically, and using the fear of communism they both supported both fascist regimes till the last minute.
082349872349872 2y ago
The junta in Greece went next, and Spain made it almost to the end of 1975: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40161770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40161770
pdpi 2y ago
Hell, Portugal and the UK ceded control over their colonies in China (Macau and Hong Kong respectively) in the late 90s.
somenameforme 2y ago
France is still being kicked out of African states. In recent times it's been Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. [1] There haven't been any wars over this yet, but France (as well as the US) was very much intimating that there would be. That was meant to intimidate the government and/or populations, but instead it just resulted in widespread demonstrations (against France) and people enlisting in the military en masse. So France waved their other flag and went home. It wasn't just troops and bases either. France was also exploiting these countries and extracting their mineral wealth (like uranium in Niger) while offering well below market rate royalties. I assume these 'agreements' have changed, but I haven't been following the exact events there lately. I'm sure there's plenty of others as well. The tentacles of colonialism are getting scarcer, but are still very much there. [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/france-pull-troops-out-niger-following-coup-says-macron-2023-09-24/ https://www.reuters.com/world/france-pull-troops-out-niger-f...
- int_19h 2y ago
  In case of Mali and Niger, it seems that the locals have simply traded French boots on their necks for Russian ones, so I doubt that things will get any better for them wrt foreign exploitation of their resources.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    I see no reason to think this is the case. Time had a reasonable article with some relevant back history here. [1] But beyond this I'd also add that I think colonialism has been an abject failure. It's been a story of small-short term gains for massive long-term losses, the MBA mindset of geopolitics. As soon as colonies start to become successful, they seek their independence. So you just end up with expensive adversarial relationships with anything resembling successful colonies, while getting bankrupted by your unsuccessful colonies. Basically - the story of the rise and fall of the British Empire. It's not something anybody is looking to recreate. [1] - https://time.com/6301177/niger-african-support-russia/ https://time.com/6301177/niger-african-support-russia/
    - 2y ago
runarberg 2y ago
It can be argued that the Vietnam war was a colonial war. Even though the original colonial power, France, had (mostly) withdrawn from the conflict after the First Indochina war concluded in 1954. Vietnam was still partitioned with the South having a puppet government from the western colonial powers. By the same logic it can be argued that the Troubles are an extension of the Irish war for independence and as such colonial war. Although I would admit both those examples are quite stretched. Less stretched though is the struggle to end South Africa’s apartheid and the Israel Palestine conflict. Both Apartheid South Africa, and modern day Israel are fighting to legitimize a settler colonial state (preferably ethno-state of European descendants) which unevenly allocates land and rights to the descendants of the European colonizers (see also Northern Ireland before the good Friday agreement). And finally we have Western Sahara, which is a full on colony just like Angola, and has an ongoing colonial war for liberation (just like Algeria). The only difference is that the colonial power is Morocco, which is not a European power.
rightbyte 2y ago
If you count failed attempts the Falkland war and IRA comes to mind.
- int_19h 2y ago
  Do you mean to say that invasion of the Falklands by Argentina was a war of colonial liberation? If so, who was being liberated, exactly?
  - runarberg 2y ago
    I’m also having a hard time seeing how the IRA “failed”. The Good Friday Agreement brought both Civil Rights and equal political representation for Northern Irish Catholics. It also gave a political avenue for further decolonization (including their ultimate goal of reunification with Ireland), making more terrorist activities kind of unnecessary. I would consider that a pretty good results of violent resistance against your colonizer.
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      Ye maybe IRA was a bad example.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Ye no I would not say it was a war of independence. But a colonial war though.
defrost 2y ago
It's not just the European powers .. Dutch colonialism in the East Indies was replaced with Indonesian colonialism. For anybody unfamiliar the many many islands in the East Indies historically have had easily distinguishable cultures and largely seperate rule until the Dutch consolidation. The Dutch were replaced as "rulers" by a small group, the most overtly colonial act being the invasion of West Papua following the west largely shrugging their shoulders when independance was sought and "free elections" were rigged via torture. I'm sure there's good writing on the subject, a cursory search turned up https://www.e-ir.info/2015/12/17/neo-orientalism-indonesias-colonialism-and-papua/ https://www.e-ir.info/2015/12/17/neo-orientalism-indonesias-... which seems adequate as a starting point.
- jimvdv 2y ago
  I would love some reading recommendations on the history of Indonesia after Dutch colonialism

by arawde 2y ago

boredpeter 2y ago

[dead]

int_19h 2y ago

I mean, if you count Russia as a European colonial power - and you should! - then it's far more recent. Chechnya fought a war over its independence in 1994-96, then another one with an active phase in 1999-2000 that tapered off into guerrilla warfare that lasted until mid-2010s.

timeon 2y ago
They are currently trying to regain one colony as well.
- int_19h 2y ago
  I referenced Chechnya because it is a very traditional case of colonialism that very obviously parallels other European colonies in Africa etc: acquired through straightforward territorial conquest in 18-19th century with no justification other than "might is right" (with a dash of "white man's burden" thrown in for good measure), specifically to exploit as a colony. Ukraine is a bit different in that both the official Russian ideology and the prevailing public opinion don't see it as a colony, but rather as "lost heartland" that is inhabited by what are still fundamentally Russians who have "strayed". So the long-term goal there isn't to acquire a new colony for the metropole to exploit - it's to forcibly assimilate its Ukrainian population into the metropole in its entirety. Now in practice this isn't that simple either, because of course the occupied territories are exploited. However, one could argue that it is still not colonial exploitation, because its economic nature is fundamentally the same as the relationship between Moscow and basically every other Russian region. That is, it would make sense to say that occupied Ukraine is a colony if you're also willing to say that pretty much all of Russia is also effectively a colony of Moscow (which is not an unreasonable way to describe it, to be fair - just not a conventional one in Western historiography).
ein0p 2y ago
[flagged]
- neoromantique 2y ago
  Beslan is indeed very illustrative example, but not of what you are implying.
- quotz 2y ago
  Theres double standards. Catalonia tried to gain independence from Spain, the EU and the USA condemned it. But when Chechnya or Kosovo are in question, then its totally fine.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  "The enemy of my enemy" may be a great way to run a hegemony, but it's lousy foreign policy in general. I sometimes wonder what the world might have been like if the USSR had occupied afghanistan in the early 1980s, re-secularising it in the ~decade before 1992, leading to a post-USSR afghanistan suffering no worse than an armenian/azerbaijani (<40'000) level of violence after collapse? (Let's take the upper end of estimates for the tajikistani civil war: 150'000 dead, as a benchmark. That'd still be better than 2'000'000 for the Soviet-Afghan war and another 200'000 for the US-Afghan war?) Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaK_CZk-0Rg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaK_CZk-0Rg
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > Let's take the upper end of estimates for the tajikistani civil war: 150'000 dead, as a benchmark. That'd still be better than 2'000'000 for the Soviet-Afghan war and another 200'000 for the US-Afghan war?) 2.5% of the Tajik population died during the civil war, and it absolutely would have spread to Afghanistan, as 20% of Afghans are Tajik. > I sometimes wonder what the world might have been like if the USSR had occupied afghanistan in the early 1980s Afghanistan would have anyhow fallen into civil war even if Najibullah remained in power because Pakistan, Iran, India, China, Turkiye, Iran, Saudi, UAE, Qatar, and other regional powers all meddle there. There's a reason most of Najibullah's and Massood's family live in New Delhi and not Moscow or NoVA.

TremendousJudge 2y ago

They have all of these big monuments to their "Guerra do Ultramar" too, I don't think there was any sort of nationwide realization of what that implies.

lkdfjlkdfjlg 2y ago
If you spend any time in Portugal, one thing youll learn is that they are very proud of their past. No self-reflection whatsoever. And I said they even though Im one of them because I hate the culture of the country. Foreigners arent any depper, of course. They go "ohhh lisbon is so beautiful" and that's as far as they go.
- MaxHoppersGhost 2y ago
  They should be proud of their past. Every civilization in the world (including the ones they conquered) at the time would have done what the Portuguese did if they could. All from a tiny country of a few million people.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    "Others were bullies, too" is not a valid reason to be proud for ever having been a bully.
- styluss 2y ago
  Yup. There is no self awareness of how much we got from all our colonial history. It is also wild seeing how people are reacting to the President talking about reparations.

ghostDancer 2y ago

Supported by western democracies, USA and UK have always supported dictatorships while they are useful to them, economically and politically, and using the fear of communism they both supported both fascist regimes till the last minute.

082349872349872 2y ago

The junta in Greece went next, and Spain made it almost to the end of 1975: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40161770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40161770

pdpi 2y ago

Hell, Portugal and the UK ceded control over their colonies in China (Macau and Hong Kong respectively) in the late 90s.

somenameforme 2y ago

France is still being kicked out of African states. In recent times it's been Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. [1] There haven't been any wars over this yet, but France (as well as the US) was very much intimating that there would be. That was meant to intimidate the government and/or populations, but instead it just resulted in widespread demonstrations (against France) and people enlisting in the military en masse. So France waved their other flag and went home. It wasn't just troops and bases either. France was also exploiting these countries and extracting their mineral wealth (like uranium in Niger) while offering well below market rate royalties. I assume these 'agreements' have changed, but I haven't been following the exact events there lately. I'm sure there's plenty of others as well. The tentacles of colonialism are getting scarcer, but are still very much there. [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/france-pull-troops-out-niger-following-coup-says-macron-2023-09-24/ https://www.reuters.com/world/france-pull-troops-out-niger-f...

int_19h 2y ago
In case of Mali and Niger, it seems that the locals have simply traded French boots on their necks for Russian ones, so I doubt that things will get any better for them wrt foreign exploitation of their resources.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  I see no reason to think this is the case. Time had a reasonable article with some relevant back history here. [1] But beyond this I'd also add that I think colonialism has been an abject failure. It's been a story of small-short term gains for massive long-term losses, the MBA mindset of geopolitics. As soon as colonies start to become successful, they seek their independence. So you just end up with expensive adversarial relationships with anything resembling successful colonies, while getting bankrupted by your unsuccessful colonies. Basically - the story of the rise and fall of the British Empire. It's not something anybody is looking to recreate. [1] - https://time.com/6301177/niger-african-support-russia/ https://time.com/6301177/niger-african-support-russia/
  - 2y ago

runarberg 2y ago

It can be argued that the Vietnam war was a colonial war. Even though the original colonial power, France, had (mostly) withdrawn from the conflict after the First Indochina war concluded in 1954. Vietnam was still partitioned with the South having a puppet government from the western colonial powers. By the same logic it can be argued that the Troubles are an extension of the Irish war for independence and as such colonial war. Although I would admit both those examples are quite stretched. Less stretched though is the struggle to end South Africa’s apartheid and the Israel Palestine conflict. Both Apartheid South Africa, and modern day Israel are fighting to legitimize a settler colonial state (preferably ethno-state of European descendants) which unevenly allocates land and rights to the descendants of the European colonizers (see also Northern Ireland before the good Friday agreement). And finally we have Western Sahara, which is a full on colony just like Angola, and has an ongoing colonial war for liberation (just like Algeria). The only difference is that the colonial power is Morocco, which is not a European power.

rightbyte 2y ago

If you count failed attempts the Falkland war and IRA comes to mind.

int_19h 2y ago
Do you mean to say that invasion of the Falklands by Argentina was a war of colonial liberation? If so, who was being liberated, exactly?
- runarberg 2y ago
  I’m also having a hard time seeing how the IRA “failed”. The Good Friday Agreement brought both Civil Rights and equal political representation for Northern Irish Catholics. It also gave a political avenue for further decolonization (including their ultimate goal of reunification with Ireland), making more terrorist activities kind of unnecessary. I would consider that a pretty good results of violent resistance against your colonizer.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Ye maybe IRA was a bad example.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Ye no I would not say it was a war of independence. But a colonial war though.

defrost 2y ago

It's not just the European powers .. Dutch colonialism in the East Indies was replaced with Indonesian colonialism. For anybody unfamiliar the many many islands in the East Indies historically have had easily distinguishable cultures and largely seperate rule until the Dutch consolidation. The Dutch were replaced as "rulers" by a small group, the most overtly colonial act being the invasion of West Papua following the west largely shrugging their shoulders when independance was sought and "free elections" were rigged via torture. I'm sure there's good writing on the subject, a cursory search turned up https://www.e-ir.info/2015/12/17/neo-orientalism-indonesias-colonialism-and-papua/ https://www.e-ir.info/2015/12/17/neo-orientalism-indonesias-... which seems adequate as a starting point.

jimvdv 2y ago
I would love some reading recommendations on the history of Indonesia after Dutch colonialism