next: the romans

I often remark with disdain the penchant for the British/Europeans to think that they owned the world when they started to colonialize.  In many senses, I think they ran roughshod over existing cultures - Native Americans, Africans (who did, however, succeed in throwing off the yoke), Aboriginal Australians, Indigineous Central/South Americans (who seem to be more an integrated part of the Spanish colonial culture than the North American natives are in ours).

The Europeans learned from the best of them, though - the Romans.  The romance languages are based on Latin, and so many of English’s complicated words are Latin-based, left over from Roman occupation.  And they did bring order and the arguable “advancement” to the lands they conquered.  One could make the same argument about the Europeans, if one looked at it from a purely anthropological perspective.  

I’ve already started listening to the audiobook version of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.   It is likely I will be posting about this sort of thing for a while.

Posted by Marie on March 18th, 2007 under Uncategorized


Leave a Comment

rss feed
About Marie


Archives:


March 2007
M T W T F S S
« Feb   Apr »
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  

Links