https://nitter.1d4.us/simongerman600/status/1668742548548997120
Chocolate hand candy, a mockery of the Africans who had their hands cut off for failing to meet their rubber harvest quotas set by the Belgian empire, are still a popular treat for Belgians. Younger people less so, but the older generation either don't care or think it's innocent enough in the present day.
I need to change that goose chasing the man with a goose down coat to be "Belgian chocolate? WHERE DID YOU GET THE CHOCOLATE BELGIUM?!
I know a Belgian guy whose parents have huge scrimshawed elephant tusks and shit all over their home in Belgium, but he didn't learn about the Belgian Congo until he got to America and some history buffs set him right about his country's storied past in the genocide and atrocity industry.
odd that there's no data for portugal
in case people don't know what i'm talking about, here is the portugese empire
it was pretty big, and lasted longer than every other colonial era empire as far as i knowSpanish unity isn't as concrete as some of the other examples. Some people are still upset that Castillian is just "Spanish" outside of Spain. Like even Cantonese is recognized as Chinese moreso than Basque or Catalan as Castillian. Germany was split between Based Germany and Cringe Germany for much of the post WWII era, the British nationalism may be on the rise but they're on the brink of losing NI and Scotland. Hell, if the UK were separate, Scotland would probably be the lowest due to how embarrassing their attempt at colonialism was.
I'm surprised how low Italy is on the chart, between latent nationalism and rising fascism, Gladio, muh Roman Empire, and cuisine.
Spanish unity isn’t as concrete as some of the other examples. Some people are still upset that Castillian is just “Spanish” outside of Spain.
funny because Spanish is just 'Castillian' in Latin America. or rather it was for the most part, and the term is still often used due to the 'vary your words a bit' writing conventions. and we get people who aren't from castille complaining about it.
Really? I've mostly heard people just say Espanol and not Castellano when referring to the language, even some the same friends who go out of their way to say Mandarin/Cantonese /Hokkien/etc when describing Chinese languages, or distinguish Hindi/Punjabi/etc
It depends on the age and setting. Older people like to call it Castelhano, and if you're writing a paper you'll probably go back and forth between Espanhol and Castelhano, just as you might between Chinês and Mandarim.
But maybe my mistake here is that I'm brazilian. To us, Castelhano isn't just the language of the Spaniards but also the Argentineans and so on. At that point the old custom of speaking about the Castillian Language would last a bit longer than elsewhere.
Plus, if I'm not mistaken the spanish americans have a large diaspora community in Spain itself. That's a medium of exchange that would make them and their relatives refer to the language as Spanish. While the Mexicans have their diaspora in the US, which wouldn't refer to Castillian either.
I can see the disambiguation factor. Tell an American "I speak Castellano" and they likely wouldn't know what you're talking about.
Barely related note, I've often heard that Galicinan and Portuguese are mutually intelligible. Is that actually true or just an internet rumour?
I’ve often heard that Galicinan and Portuguese are mutually intelligible.
They are, pretty much. To us, they sound like a frontier person with a soft spanish accent that flares up at times. But they aren't as, uh, monotonous or streamlined as proper spanish. The vocabulary seems closer to ours, at least the coloquial part - though its not 100%.
Funnily enough their intonation seem closer to ours. Lisbon really went the weird danish route at some point.
The real internet meme is saying Occitan is mutually intelligible with PT-BR and Galician.
Even so, socialist education may have had dispelled some of the nostalgia for the Second Reich and First Reich as well as the Third. German colonies in Africa may not have been as recent as the Third Reich but I'm sure a fair amount of people know about them and disavow
Oh yeah doesn't Germany have that fucked up system where schools are segregated by economic class?
I’m surprised how low Italy is on the chart, between latent nationalism and rising fascism, Gladio, muh Roman Empire, and cuisine.
Might have something to do with the Italian "Empire" being an absolutely pathetic embarrassment even at its height. Who'd even want to be associated with that shitshow?
Didn't they eat shit during attempts to invade Ethiopia several times? I remember something about their repeated attempts at invasion being because Ethiopia was one of the few regions left that hadn't been overrun, but the Ethiopians kicked their asses and sent them home.
I imagine it's because Spain doesn't feel the benefits of imperialism as much as other European powers do. Easy to admit it was an error when you're one of the poorer nations in your neoghbourhood lol.
It's important to note that even taking these values at their face, Spain is not the highlight of this dataset. The dutch are. And one would probably not argue that the Dutch think their stint in Indonesia was cool and good just because they are rich. So are the Belgians. Wealth is also something relative to how your country is doing at the moment. Spain isn't poor, doesn't mean spaniards, especially young spanish people, don't feel like they have no future. Even if that is nowhere near the level of despair you should see in countries outside the golden billion.
Historically, the Spanish and the Portuguese leaned hard on themselves as a 'civilizational force in the past' precisely because they were poorer and in crisis when compared to rest of Europe. That is what happened in the long 1800s, during their second attempt at Empire building. And it only started dying when places like Mexico stabilized enough to build up and open up their national archives, giving rise to a historiography that questions the whole shebang.
But perhaps what is key is that I don't know where these numbers come from and how the questions were asked. 'Are you proud of the Spanish Empire?' and 'Do you think the Spanish Empire civilized the american barbarians?' are two very different ideas, and one can hold different stances on either. For an instance, they can hold the Empire in contempt for it's weaknesses and blame it for their relative poverty, while also having an underdog complex where they glorify aspects of Empire. In that same sense, a demographic breakdown would be interesting to see if there has been a change over the generations, further informed by someone who actually knows one thing or two about spanish secondary education during the Franco era and onwards.
Weirdly anti-Swedish Finnish nationalist:
Why wasn't Sweden included even though they colonised Finland for a thousand years :rage-cry:
I suspect 64% of sweeds are unironically proud of that time their "empire" controlled finland, estonia and five little towns in germany and constantly getting into bullshit wars with russia
swedish fash love Carl the 12th but the whole country loves Gustav Adolf, lol
not asking danes, austrians, or russians? cmon :bern-disgust: also portugal is probably low but ya shudda asked
Russians aren't European any more.
A better alternative would be asking the Poles, the baltic-nazis, or the Hungarians and Austrians imo.
The polish empire was kind of cool though wasn't it? They got invaded repeatedly for being too religiously tolerant, and as far as I know they never did colonialism
Kid named the duchy of Courland and it's colonies:
:waltuh:
:shrug-outta-hecks: honestly wouldn't know, I just like poking fun at the Europeans.
Yeah, I have met several Dutch people that said something to the effect of "unlike other European nations we just traded with people and didn't conquer and kill". So yeah, that seems to be very widely accepted version of historical revisionism and apologia.
start questioning a lib and press on their position and they'll go: ''ah well i'm not informed enough and I don't really believe in politics.''
Belgium, whose only colonial venture is the prime example of colonialism being terrible, having a quarter proud of it is nuts.
Also on that note, wtf Japan.
I keep telling people the Dutch are evil but they just keep looking at me like I ate hand-shaped chocolates in honor of the Dutch bastard that killed a giant because he didn't want to pay a fee for infrastructure maintenance in the medieval period.
weird brainworms among some of the population because the corpse was around a long time basically
and the lie that they bring in more money than they cost us
i will point out that people who actually support the monarchy are a minorityThe king/queen was good, it was their evil scheming advisors that ran the empire!