So Anastasia posed a question on her blog: empire bad, yes? What sayest thou?
After I made a rather obvious smartass comment, I revisited it to say the following:
Playing devil's advocate: Empire can both neutralize the extremities of culture and allow for a mingling that produces richness along the contact zones of cultures that would otherwise compete for supremacy. Unified by--and against--the colonizer, they mingle to create cultural richness that previously had not existed. Not to mention postcolonial literature ripe for analysis!
So while it's a darn shame that no one has had his still-beating heart ripped from his chest down in Central America lately, the Romans might have made some cultural improvements in Europe before succumbing to the Germanic hordes.
But undergraduates are studying marketable subjects--like philosophy--and wouldn't know about those things.
1 comment:
I'm modern enough not to be overly fond of empire, and yet I have difficulty in seeing it as a universally bad thing either.
Clearly, for all its faults, the Roman Empire left a positive imprint on Western history.
And when it comes to modern empire, I must admit I'm culturally insensitive enough to very much enjoy the claim that when it was explained to the British colonial administration in India that it was a local custom to burn the widow on a husband's pier, it was responded: "That's fine. We too have a local custom. We hang men who burn widows."
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