• flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
    85·
    9 months ago

    tbh, up to 80 years ago Europeans were in constant war as well and nobody else drew their borders
    EU had to be created to finally stop French and Germans from killing each other

    • Funkytom467@lemmy.world
      52·
      9 months ago

      Europe had it’s borders defined by wars for millennia. So i guess it’s only fitting we decided the borders, and that it lead to more war.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
        24·
        9 months ago

        It’s not just Europe, it’s everywhere.

        Before the British Mandate, Iraq was part of the Ottoman Empire, and as Wikipedia says:

        Throughout most of the period of Ottoman rule (1533–1918) the territory of present-day Iraq was a battle zone between the rival regional empires and tribal alliances

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iraq

        Before the Ottomans were the Mongols, who slaughtered their way across the world.

        The only kind of “stable” period was when the Abbasid Caliphate had Baghdad at its core – but that only meant that the border wars were happening elsewhere in the middle east.

        When the Europeans got to the Americas, they killed a lot of natives. But, they also made alliances with some of the natives who were eager to have a new ally in their territorial conflict with other native groups, because, surprise surprise, before the Europeans got there the native groups were in a constant state of conflict over territory too.

        The history of humanity is conflict. Even chimps fight brutal fights with other chimp groups over territory, so it goes back to our non-human ancestors.

        There’s nothing unique about Europeans and conflicts over territory.

    • JayObey711@lemmy.world
      2·
      8 months ago

      A lot of the German wars in Europe I can think of right now where actually fought because of poorly drawn borders or were at least motivated largely by borders. Including French German wars. The Elsass-Lothringen dispute has always been extremely important for french-german relations.

  • DessertStorms@kbin.social
    62·
    9 months ago

    They didn’t just create the borders, but also actively pitted the different local groups in each region, all over the globe, against each other to keep them from joining forces against the colonisers and imperialists, so very deliberate war mongering.

    Similar tactics are used today in the form of “culture wars” and institutional and systemic bigotry - we (the working class, the majority of the population) are divided and pitted against each other by those who want to keep us from joining forces and turning on them.

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
      23·
      9 months ago

      When I learned that even World War I was sparked by oil grabs, I was briefly surprised, then realized, of course it was.

  • Steve@startrek.website
    31·
    9 months ago

    Amazing there was never any conflict in the middle east before WW2!

    …checks the bible…

    Oh. This post is stupid.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
          4·
          9 months ago

          There was a 100+ year period of relative peace and prosperity after the conquest of Constantinople, just like today where Western Europe has had a period of peace and prosperity after the defeat of Nazi Germany. The revolts began when the Ottoman Empire entered stagnation and decline because of warfare with Europe. It has nothing to do with ethnic and cultural conflicts, it’s all economic and political and it always has been. The ethnic and cultural dimensions of the conflicts are merely set dressing for deeper structural causes of war.

          Now that we have entered our own period of stagnation and possible decline, be prepared to live in Interesting Times.