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Comment by selestify | Hacker News Reader

What are some of these worse black marks?

Colonialism is one of them. History books in US and UK still teach that the colonizers saved the savages and brought them to the modern age. They continue to completely ignore that most colonies underwent centuries long recession as a result of the repression. Japan was never colonized and became quite advanced.

No they don't in the UK.

Which books? I've read through a fair number of history books published in the US, and they have tended to have a strong focus on the problems caused by colonization while criticizing the idea of 'saving' the locals.

> History books in US and UK still teach that the colonizers saved the savages and brought them to the modern age.

My history books (1980s public school, New York, US) most definitely taught nothing of the sort.

I don't think that's true. I went to school in the UK in the 80's and my kids are going to school in the US now, and this is far from what I remember then and not what I see now. "Colonial guilt" is how I would sum it up. Not to say there's not a lot of whitewashing and selective reporting, far from it. But it's probably been 50 years since "teach that the colonizers saved the savages"..

You have a point about the economic impact of the colonialism, and the economic value that was extracted. At least in the case of the UK, that was made it a global power. That is usually not discussed much, because it's history, not economics...

During elections people used to be bribed with alcohol.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/swilling-the-pla...

One of a thousand examples.

Ask a Native American.

Slavery

Annihilation of local tribes by colonisers

forced opium enslavement of China

dividing up China between France/Britain/Japan

pestilence from European cattle annihilating 2/3 of inland african people via starvation

the policy of the Holy Roman Emperor and The Pope to keep german states at war with italian states

emperor Chin executing the whole village where any crime at all occurred

The Spanish Inquisition

The Khmer Rouge

The Long March under Mao

Stalins purges and gulags

the list goes on

The original premise was that black marks will be overlooked. I don’t know how to break it to you, but the ones you’ve listed are infamous and hardly overlooked.

Premise: No they won't, it'll be whitewashed in textbooks and only those who study history will know. There's already so many so-called black marks that are worse and already quietly overlooked.

And you just offered a ton of support for the competing hypothesis that our period of history will be infamous along with the ones you’ve listed.

you dont need to break it to me... ask a group outside of HN and they will come up with a couple if you’re lucky.

try it.

No offense to this site, I like it a lot so far, but I wouldn’t favorably compare it in terms of non-technical knowledge to most of the educated population. You listed a ton of really infamous events, ones that are routinely covered in intro classes at all levels of schooling, and have entered even pop culture. If you think that most people are unaware of all, but a couple of them, you’re grossly underestimating people. I’d argue that the only two many people wouldn’t know are the actions of the pope one, and the Chin emperor. The rest are familiar to pretty much everyone who made it through high school.

> the ones you've listed are infamous and hardly overlooked

You think? Here's my experience (I went to school in Germany).

> Annihilation of local tribes by colonisers

Saw some TV documentaries on it. Not mentioned in history class.

> forced opium enslavement of China

Heard about it on a history podcast. Not mentioned in any sort of mainstream media or curriculums.

> dividing up China between France/Britain/Japan

Hearing about this for the first time now.

> pestilence from European cattle annihilating 2/3 of inland african people via starvation

Hearing about this for the first time now.

> the policy of the Holy Roman Emperor and The Pope to keep german states at war with italian states

This rings a bell, but only very distantly. So maybe I've heard about that somewhere, but no idea where.

> emperor Chin executing the whole village where any crime at all occurred

Who's emperor Chin?

> The Spanish Inquisition

Saw some TV documentaries on it. Not mentioned in history class.

> [the last three bulletpoints about communist dictatorships]

The gulags were mentioned in history class. Nothing about Mao or the Khmer Rouge. I saw some documentaries about Mao on TV, though.

In general, history education in school was infuriatingly superficial wrt the 20th century. The curriculum was basically chronological, starting with the antique Egyptian empire in 5th grade and ending with contemporary history in the 10th grade. (Then in 11th through 13th grade, the same structure, but condensed into three years.)

The obvious issue with this structure is that you always run out of time at the end of the curriculum, so you have to rush through the most recent parts of history, which IMO ought to be given the strongest emphasis of all periods.

These are certainly bad, but generally well-documented historically. I don't formally study history, but have read about most of these.

I wouldn’t argue it’s worse than slavery, but as a singular event Bikini Atoll was horrific.

This is a moving target; I haven't been in school for a while. Here's two:

The complicity of US corporations in the holocaust.

The way the US protected people who committed atrocities to gain a scientific advantage after WW2.

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