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?

  • Dolores [love/loves]
    ·
    2 years ago

    We go all the way back to stuff like Massalia, Kyrenaika, etc. we don't really have enough information to really compare. Like we know people recorded the relationship to mother cities, sometimes military alliances between them... but economically? did Sybaris export natural resources back to the 'metropole' in a client relationship? did colonies conquer their land, lease it/buy it by treaty? Did the Greeks bring slaves or enslave a bunch of locals on arrival?

    and on top of that, all the poleis had separate laws & customs we can only loosely affiliate with each other. so there remains possibility for any or all the possibilities to be true for any specific colony over a specific period---but we don't really know.

    my own very lukewarm opinion is that medieval italian (very complicated subject in its own right) colonies are probably what ancient efforts most resembled. and we can say those are pretty different from modern colonialism.

    my even weirder addendum is that i think cultural differences between medditerrean peoples in greece-italy-anatolia (i.e. where 90% of greek 'colonization' happened) are very much exaggerated & scholarship overemphasizes a 'hellenic' influence on surrounding peoples who might've just 'originally' been much more culturally similar & amenable to living with & around greeks than greek authors' chauvinism lets on

    • Wertheimer [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Have you read this one? It's been on my list for a while. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/greeks-and-barbarians/CA8E4141E95FF846E3C4831FB8279DBF#fndtn-information

    • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Didn't Hellenistic era Greeks have their own internal ethnic chauvanism going on though? Like Ionians didn't like Dorians who didn't like Magnetes or whatever?

      • Dolores [love/loves]
        ·
        2 years ago

        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)

          • Wertheimer [any]
            ·
            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..."

              • Wertheimer [any]
                ·
                2 years ago

                https://web.archive.org/web/20190402114641/http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/quinn_jokes.shtml

                Lots of :grillman: "Take my wife, please!" humor

            • Vncredleader
              ·
              2 years ago

              Those are great recommendations. Thanks for sharing

          • Dolores [love/loves]
            ·
            2 years ago

            :sadness: i got to read a ton of articles in school about the hellenistic period and poleis but since i dropped out & my school laptop killed itself i don't have them anymore.

            you can hit up encyclopedia iranica though that place has tonnes on greek cities/settlement, religion, culture etc. as it interacted with west asia

            • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Thanks, I had no idea that emcyclopedia iranica was even a thing! Condolences for your school laptop though, I'll light a candle tonight for it.

              • Wertheimer [any]
                ·
                2 years ago

                Check out this one, too: http://www.achemenet.com/

              • Alaskaball [comrade/them]A
                ·
                2 years ago

                Bit of trivia about the dictator of Sicily:

                Stolen from wikipedia

                Like Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens, Dionysius was fond of having literary men about him, such as the historian Philistus, the poet Philoxenus, and the philosopher Plato, but treated them in a most arbitrary manner. Diodorus Siculus relates in his Bibliotheca historica that Dionysius once had Philoxenus arrested and sent to the quarries for voicing a bad opinion about his poetry. The next day, he released Philoxenus because of his friends' requests, and brought the poet before him for another poetry reading. Dionysius read his own work and the audience applauded. When he asked Philoxenus how he liked it, the poet turned to the guards and said "take me back to the quarries."