chapotraphouse

No but you see, imperialism is when the government does stuff in other countries, the more stuff it does the more imperialist it is and if it does a real lot of stuff that’s colonialism.

This happens because people confuse "imperial" (of empire) with "imperialist" (now referred to as late stage capitalism).

It really is that simple. It's a confusion because people think imperialism just means "when big countries do a thing I don't like to other countries".

It will only be countered with education on the difference between imperialism and imperial/empire at a massive scale.

Venice in Crete, the Teutonic Knights in the Baltics, the Reconquista, and the first Portuguese and Spanish explorers all viewed themselves within the context of the original Crusades. They all developed a sense of ethnic supremacy over the people living in the places previously. The conquered territories were resettled by Catholics, and the vast majority of resources extracted went back to the mother country. You can argue against it, but he can also have a point. It’s not something Dr Adnan Hussein had time to go into on a podcast where they talk about medical examinations of ball sacs.

You can only call it imperialism if it's made in the Imperi region.

Taking modern interpretations, standards, morals, etc. relating to the contemporary historical period then retroactively applying it to everything prior to the contemporary historical period in order to judge it as though it just happened last week - also known as lacking an understanding of historical materialism therefore understanding the past through the lens of 'presentism'

On my Hexbear?

Noo~ say it isn't so.

The nature of production and "economy" (which almost doesn't feel appropriate as a term) in medieval Europe was very different from later in the early modern period where we find the first manifestations of capitalism and colonialism and imperialism in our contemporary, Marxist sense.

The incentives are just different for the people involved in the crusades than that of settlers. Sure, in a superficial sense, there are similarities: some people from place go to another place and make war for their own gain. But when we break it down, the specifics of the incentive structure are different because they relate to different society and economy underpinning them.

The crusaders weren't going to the Levant or Egypt to establish a periphery with exploitable natural resources and labor to feed their manufacturing back home. Even if some of them moved there, they weren't quite doing it to settle either. These were already developed, wealthy places. The crusades were basically peer-conflicts. The European polities and Kings did not have the technology or infrastructure to subjugate in such a totalizing manner the people there.

It's difficult. There's a lot of things I want to express and touch on that give shape to the particular nature of the crusades as opposed to other wars of conquest or colonization. There's the religious aspect, which isn't just meant as a sort of basis for the crusades absent any material incentive, but that the Catholic Church was an immensely important and present force in the political (and personal) lives of the people who carried them out. Maybe the most important thing is that there was not capitalism and that the direct, important players of the crusades were not capitalists. The concept of reinvesting your surplus into more numerous, more productive, more intensive capital in order to expand ever-faster was not the way that kings were negotiating power then. The holy land was wealthy. It would provide a tax base, it would provide opportunity, it would provide glory, status, and legitimacy among peers and challengers. That's probably more along the lines of what the incentives for the crusades were for the nobility.

At least, this is a loose organization of some of my thoughts on the matter. There's more to say, certainly.

This post is imperialism

Wait are you saying imperialism didn't exist before capitalism because imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism? That is incredibly backwards

I don't remember them making any of these points, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention

Trans historical

A lot of people are smug in these replies about presentism, but the thing is that an analysis of the crusades as a such a project is the newtonian physics of history. It gets you to the right conclusion in 99% of cases even if it isn't technically accurate.

You're right. Subjugation of one state by another state does not equal imperialism. Imperialism is a specific phenomenon unique to global capitalism. I know a lot of Leninists will disagree with this, but in fact, one could argue that imperialism is not merely a stage of capitalism, but integral to it's existence as a global system. Thus imperialism can be defined as “precisely the amalgamation of the requirements and laws for the reproduction of capital; the social, national and international alliances that underlie them; and the political strategies employed by these alliances”. I'll just let Samir Amin explain further:

The modern global system of actually existing capitalism has always been polarizing by nature, through the very operation of what I call the ‘globalized law of value’, as distinct from the law of value tout court. In my analysis, therefore, polarization and imperialism are synonymous. I am not among those who reserve the term ‘imperialist’ for types of political behaviour designed to subjugate one nation to another – behaviour that can be found through the successive ages of the human story, associated with various modes of production and social organization. My analytic interest is anyway geared only to the imperialism of modern times, the product of the immanent logic of capitalist expansion.

In this sense, imperialism is not a stage of capitalism but the permanent feature of its global expansion, which since its earliest beginnings has always produced a polarization of wealth and power in favour of the core countries. The ‘monopolies’ enjoyed by the cores in their asymmetrical relations with the peripheries of the system define each of the successive phases in the history of the globalized imperialist system [...]

Imperialism, from its sixteenth-century origins to the Second World War, was a plural phenomenon; permanent, often violent, conflict between different imperialisms played an important role in shaping the world. In this respect, the Second World War ended with a major transformation, since a collective imperialism of the ‘triad’ (USA, Europe, Japan) then replaced the multiplicity of imperialisms.

• Samir Amin, Beyond US Hegemony? Assessing the Prospects for a Multipolar World

i mean the crusades were:

1. fought along ethnic lines (Arab Muslim vs. European Christian)

2. one of the involved parties was not native to the region, without any kind of real historical claim to the land (they adopted a book written based off of alleged events there as their religion, but never lived there)

3. normal standards of warfare (such as they were) were abandoned in the conflict. Crusaders consumed human meat, executed captives, etc. without any of the (inconsistent) standards they might apply to fellow europeans.

4. the primary goal was to extract wealth and land. European noble families were running out of land to distribute between their children, and the Arabs had a lot of valuables to loot as well.

it seems as much imperialism as the Mongols or the Romans at least. if its not imperialism, what is it? sparkling ethnic conflict?

transfered to a medieval context

Baby Gronk (ages 10-12) has nothing to do with Baby Gronk (ages 14-18)

incredibly complex phenomenon

liberals when they have to whitewash the extremely simple and obvious economic relations under Zionism lol

It is a bad take and it is infuriating to behold because if we actually want to have earnest conversations about either subject we shouldn't be conflating them. Pointing out similarities is one thing. Implying sameness is another.

Imperialism didn't exist in the medieval era?

also said that. Or something related to it, like Europe dropped the crusades immediately after fibding America or somethibg like that.

Probably the early invasion and control of america was not settler colonialism as we define it today?

How would you characterize the crusades?