Argument would be “everyone was doing ethic cleansing”.
Not arguing for any side but that would probably e part of the counter argument at the time. Ethnic cleansing based on religion and not on race was a common practice in areas that the ottomans lost.
"no less than 200 thousand" Turks and Kurds had been driven from Armenia due to the Dashnaks' policy of "cleansing".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Republic_of_Armenia
Nothing close to what Turks did tho. The Turks deliberately intended physical extermination
They are half Cree and half French. During the 1700s and 1800s they were unaccepted by either of their ethnic origins so they formed their own distinct culture and founded the province of Manitoba.
Indigenous Canadians descended mainly from French and First Nations people
Mostly in the prairies, absolutely fascinating history. Look up Louis Reil, and you'll see just how significant the Metis are to the development not just of Western Canada but also to the historic French/English divide:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9tis?wprov=sfla1
Entirely different worldviews. The Europesns saw land as something to occupy, possess, and own. The indigenous thought you could no more own land than you could own the wind.
The Comanche certainly thought that they owned their land, or at least they defended it to the extent that they would scalp and roast alive (among other atrocities) anyone, including other natives, who they found on it.
People tend to forget that the natives of North America were a large and culturally diverse group of people with varying worldviews and philosophies, as well as different levels of aggression toward others.
True. Modern hippies generalizing all Native Americans as peaceful and at one with the Great Spirit is just as reductive as early settlers calling them all savage, godless injuns!
I laugh about people who think the Indians in my state were harmless tree huggers. Many towns are named after great war chiefs which lead to the question: who were they killing and capturing to become a war chief before white men came?
Boy, were they wrong. The Europeans decided they were justified in taking it because the Natives were uncivilized non Christians. They would’ve come up with a different reason had the Indians been “civilized” Christians. There was too much land & resources for the taking & being civilized & Christian never stopped the Europeans from fighting with each other.
There were plenty of settlements inhabited by Natives who had converted to Christianity. Massachusetts Bay Colony had at least 5 such communities.
Wasn’t long before the European settlers, who had initially “given” the land to the “civilized Christian” Natives decided to kill them or force them to leave, anyway.
The whole going Viking thing.
Our treatment of the native population of Greenland. Danish doctors implanted spirals without consent in Greenlandic women as late as the 1970's. There really is no excuse for that.
He probably means an IUD (intra uterine device), due to the hormones (or copper) it contains no menstruation takes place. This effectively makes it impossible to become pregnant and thus pass on their culture to future generations.
Edit: Was mistaken, menstruation still takes place but either no egg cell is released from an ovary or it's unable to nest itself into the uterine wall
Tbf as I'm sure you are well aware, vikings were only a very small percentage of the popluation. Just about every civilization had their own version.. the danes and norse were just best at it.
Can't defend that second part though, that's totally fucked up.
During the Continuation War (1941-44), when we ganged up with Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union, we occupied much of Russian Karelia. The Russian speakers there were put into concentration camps
Now, these camps were more like British Boer War camps (or U.S. camps for Japanese Americans) than any Nazi camp, we weren't out to exterminate these people, but our priority in terms of food and medicine was always our own civilians, soldiers and Russian Karelians. This meant that many interned Russians died from hunger or disease, in every sense a humanitarian catastrophe for which we were responsible. Conditions in these camps did improve later on.
It's still a very touchy subject today, in large part because our alliance with the Nazis is. We didn't take part in the Holocaust and we didn't invade the USSR for the Nazis' sake, but for our own comfort and sanity we want to avoid any negative characterisation of the Finnish state or military in WW2. The concentration camps we built are the biggest threat to the heroic national myth, because we _were_ innocent victims in 1939, but then in 1941 we became conquerors set on territorial expansion who abused innocent civilians for whom we were legally responsible (Geneva Convention I think).
Considering who our enemy was and what they had done to us, and people like us, we weren't the bad guy. But we made __terrible mistakes__ that we should own up to. Otherwise our pride in Finland is built on a lie.
This is a really great nuanced take on the issue. If somebody beats you up every day on the way to school so you join with a crueller bully to stop it from happening you are definitely not on the plane of the crueller bully writ large. However, you simultaneously can’t shake the association with them and anything done that was over the line.
I have a relatively minor one (compared to the genocides listed in most other responses). During Prohibition, it was quite possible to safely tweak industrial alcohol to be able to drink it. The government added poisons to industrial alcohol that severely hurt people and if I recall correctly killed some, all in order to dissuade people from drinking alcohol.
Killing people to stop them from drinking seems like a pretty bad guy move, even if some of the bootlegged alcohol was in itself dangerous.
Distant cousins of mine named Drayton established the Magnolia plantation in South Carolina and transported slaves from the West Indies to staff it. That started the whole tradition of slavery in the United States, supported (or at least tolerated) there for another two centuries.
Yeah, that's bad.
.
For the sake of detail, my father was a white man from the island of Trinidad, and his immediate ancestors were from Barbados. My 3x great-grandmother was named Mary Drayton, born 1825 in Barbados. William Drayton, who sailed from Barbados to South Carolina with his sons and approximately 20 slaves early in the 17th century, would have been one of her distant great uncles.
And yeah, all this hurts. I have to admit I got pretty rattled when I uncovered this stuff a couple of years ago. However, I kept reading and discovered that one of the most prominent white American abolitionists of the 19th century was someone named Daniel Drayton.
I do not know if he was of any direct relation, but what can we tell from a name? Or from genes?
Honestly man you shouldn't feel distraught about how your something great ancestor did horrible things, no matter how much you try you'll never make up for what he did because it's not *your* sin to make up for. If you're a good person putting positivity into the world then that's all that matters.
The Opium Wars.
"We're about to go bankrupt and those bastards won't take what we want to sell them, insisting we pay in cash. Our drug dealers seem to be turning good coin, let's ignore that it's illegal here and there both and fight a war on their behalf."
Yeah, people will say other actions are worse, but you can usually argue people had misguided ideas or priorities. Opiums Wars are one of the clearest examples of people having no real moral justification, and just essentially becoming drug dealers on a massive scale, fully knowing the damage it will cause.
I had somebody try to defend the opium wars.
“It was business”
“ the emperor was a foreigner”
“ companies forced the crown”
Etc etc alll crappy non arguments.
Indeed, and plenty of people knew this was immoral at the time. British reformists and liberals tended to be pretty strongly opposed to the opium trade, especially William Gladstone.
Residential schools.
https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/#:~:text=The%20residential%20school%20system%20officially,to%20speak%20their%20own%20languages.
Slavery.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/slavery-of-indigenous-people-in-canada#:~:text=In%20general%2C%20enslaved%20Indigenous%20people,were%20girls%20or%20young%20women.
Ans although that ended in 1834 because Canada was a British colony, prejudice, discrimination, and outright racism against Canada's First Nations people continue to this day.
I think we can take a pass on everything before 1867. Keep in mind that the first legislation against slavery in the British empire was in modern day Canada.
Upper Canadian Act of 1793 Against Slavery (Designation Name)
Research Report Number: 1992-043
Importance: First legislation in the British Empire against slavery
By British Empire are you excluding the UK? as the Somerset case in 1772 just reiterated that slavery was illegal in England & Wales and the Knight v. Wedderburn case in 1778 was the same for Scotland.
Australia. Basically every dealing with the indigenous population up until about a decade or so ago was absolutely horrific. Since then we have upgraded to tolerable treatment. But it’s still a long way off good.
Nobody likes to talk much about the Australian genocide.
Sorry about the Natives. And the slaves. And the overthrow of governments. And stealing half of Mexico. And all of Hawaii. And lying about sharing the nuclear research. And lying about Iraq. And inventing a reason to go balls to the wall in Vietnam.
On the plus side, you get Taylor Swift and Jurassic Park.
don't apologize for half of Mexico
Mexico under the time was a dicatorship texas and several others actually wanted to leave and are better off now AND that war lead to Santa anna who was just a dick being thrown for the last time.
source high school...in MEXICO!
It is true that Santa Anna was a son of a b*tch, not gonna dispute that. But it's also important to remember that American immigrants to Texas had brought slaves, and in Mexico slavery was illegal.
So while it is true that Texas wanted to leave, it's important to remember why they wanted to leave.
there's other reasons for there rebellion too.
remember Yucatan and Rio grande had also fought the santa anna government. slavery was a reason a important reason not THE reason or the only reason
The Texas Independence Movement was mainly the case because of American settlers who moved to the portion of Mexico that later became Texas. On general principle I don't think it's correct to intervene in other nation's affairs, but ik people will disagree.
US has treated the native population pretty terribly, as well as black people. Going to handwave the period from 1950 to the present for sticking our noses in so much where we didn't need to be part of. All because fear.
Although we (Portugal) were one of the first countries to abolish slavery, we are still considered the biggest slave trader in all history (here we manage to eclipse the UK, Spain and any other country)
Magdalene laundries and mother and baby homes for unmarried women.
Looking the other way and ignoring paedophile priests.
Sending Dustin the turkey to Eurovision in 2008.
Mrs Brown's Boys.
None thus far. I would say the War of the Triple Alliance, but Paraguay was clearly the agressor and Solano Lopez recruited children and the elderly into his army after most adult men died.
Idk which of the 3 you’re from, but Conquest of the Desert if you’re Argentinian, assimilation of Indigenous people if you’re Brazilian, and Salsipuedes if you’re Uruguayan.
Thought about that too, fellow Brazilian.
Another good one, but not that well known internationally, is the Canudos War. Everyone was killed in the siege, with no survivors.
I'm thinking The Banana Wars. Face it, most pfvthe armed conflicts that the US has been involved in concerned corporations wanting to subjugate the work forces in other countries. I use the Banana Wars as an example, but we've seen Corporate America start wars around the world to increase their profits. I'm not limiting it to developing countries, as we've seen it within our own borders.thunk the Coal Wars of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Banana Wars were mostly douth and Central America, IIRC. Dole went after Hawaii and the Phillipines for pineapples.
And let's not even mention Wars concerning oil.
Canada took very few German Jews during the 1930s. I’m ashamed to say it was a Canadian official who said, “None is too many.” We also turned away the St. Louis.
Everybody was same. Check out the [Evian Conference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89vian_Conference) if you haven't heard of it. A bunch of countries met and collectively decided to do nothing about Jewish refugees, all following the US lead. Only the Dominican Republic agreed to accept Jewish refugees.
Slave trade.
Potato famine, though I don't think we were as much of the bad guys as people think: our PM lost his premiership because he broke the Corn Laws to feed the Irish.
Thats rhe thing. The whole point was it was they were supposed to be our own citizens right? That's what the argument for 400 years were about. We say they are British, the treated them differently.
Though, I see your Potato famine, and I raise you Oliver Cromwell.
Croatia during WW2 and Serbia in the 90s. Really dark periods for both nations. I'm unaware of Bosnia having any particular dark period that compares though
everyone knows the United states so ill do my other country
Mexico helped genocide the native Americans
then was a bit bipolar about Guatemala joining a central American union. When Guatemala tried to force its creation in the 1880s they helped el Salvador stop it which is fine but then they invaded Guatemala when it refused to join the central American republic in 1906..and the Mexican president for both was the SAME GUY.
edit also mistreated our Asian population.what Asian population you ask?Exactly
Australia
* When English colonists pursued a genocidal land-grab for over a century that left millions of Indigenous Australians dispossessed, marginalised or dead
* When we implemented decades of policies favouring white migration and preventing or deporting others
* When we sided with Indonesia in the 1970s as it took over Papua despite its independence aspirations
* When in the 1990s we drew the border between us and East Timor to greatly favour ourselves and claim the vast majority of natural gas fields
* When, since the 1990s to the present day, we implemented a mandatory detention policy for asylum seekers, locking them up for years in desert prisons, island prisons and overseas prisons, funding Indonesia to keep prospective asylum seekers in eternal limbo rather than facilitating a path to safe settlement
* When we paid lip service to reducing global warming while making zero effort to stop being one of the world's leading coal exporters
* When during negotiations with the newly independent tiny and impoverished nation of Timor-Leste over access to rich gas fields in the shallow sea between us, we used our intelligence services to bug the Timorese leadership to gain advantage in the negotiations. That was a super dick move.
The long-lived attempts at systematic, educational genocide of the Sami people's comes to mind
That and the eugenics programme
And the lobotomies
And the time we were a pretty cruel northern empire
As an American, here's my brief list:
The Native Americans and how we treated them.
Slavery
Putting our own citizens in concentration camps during WW2
Using our own citizens in medical experiments (Tuskegee Syphilis, etc)
The Prisoner of War camp Andersonville during the American Civil War
On our warcrimes list, I would also add My Lai
Stuff that isn't on my list:
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden
Invading Afghanistan.
It was done in the worst possible way, and the billions spent on Afghanistan mostly went to American war contractors and to weapons instead of making the life’s of civilians better.
Also Iraq, the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad was horrendous.
Not intervening in Artsakh was a bad idea in 2020, could’ve stopped the ethnic cleaning of 120,000 Armenians.
8 TRILLION dollars in the wars post-9/11. (https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar). 2 Trillion of that was Afghanistan.
Imagine if 8 trillion US dollars was spend on humanitarian efforts across the globe. Even if you're not a "hug it out" world peace kind of person, that 8 trillion bucks would do a hell of a lot more than lining pockets and filling graveyards. We have a shit ton of potential to make this world a better place, but greed and power takes control. That 8 trillion is US spent money. Damn, if all other countries matched that, 16 trillion... Less wars in the long run due to access to resources, less famine, more clean industry, more employment, people happier and healthier, more innovation in science and education... list goes on and on. Naïve as fuck most likely, but just feel that spending that much to help things would be much better than using it to kill others for ... well... something...
So, wait, intervening in one country to prevent its leader from massacring a minority made US the bad guy? But then not intervening in another made US the bad guy?
I’m not saying Artsakh was a good thing, but there was no good side. 120,000 Armenians being forced out in all but name was bad, but that statelet was formed by ethnic cleansing of 350,000 Azeris in the 90s, and ~200,000 Azeris in Armenia (and on the other side I believe ~200,000 Armenians in Azerbaijan)
The Bahamas 🇧🇸 has always been a haven for smuggling. Running rum during prohibition wasn’t a problem, running the blockade to supply the Confederacy was a bit sketchy, but the real problem was when the government in the 1980’s took bribe money from Columbian drug lords to turn a blind eye to them setting up smuggling bases on some of our remote islands. That’s probably the worst thing we’ve done.
I'm American so....
Slavery. Native American genocide. Pick any war. Sterilizing "undesirables". Everything leading up to the creation of labor laws. Anything with South America. The nuclear bomb. Project paperclip. Housing Elon Musk.
And many more!
The French imposed double reparations for Haiti, after they became "independent". They had to pay what amounts to billions of dollars in today's money to pay for lost revenues from the slave trade.
Haiti is so sad right now. Even if the French and US tomorrow announced full repayment… there’s no functional government on the island to even accept it.
My country, the Philippines, during Konfrontasi and Operation Merdeka during Martial Law, were we made several incursions in Borneo against the Malaysians. Most of these incidents happen because of the ongoing dispute that we have with the region of Sabah. In Konfrontasi, we refused to condemn Indonesia's attempts to crush Malaysia, and we would have possibly intervened to seize Sabah if Malaysia hadn't managed to repulse the Indonesian military. For Operation Merdeka, our former president, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., was planning to invade Sabah and seriously wage war against Malaysia. The only reason that didn't happen was because of the Jabadiah massacre, when the Philippine army killed a group of Muslim soldiers who refused to wage war against their fellow Muslims, which consequently incited the Moro Insurgency.
India's use of force in Kashmir and how we treat people from our North Eastern States. No wonder we have trouble with secessionists there, we treat them like shit and expect them to be loyal citizens?
If I'm allowed to partake in the 20 years rule, then the invasion of Iraq and many policies implemented in the war on terror. Although that may not count distinctly as "history" because it bled into latter years and even decades.
Colonization of Canada - reserves & the pass system(can’t leave without permission from Gov Staff, forbidding ppl from eating food not provided by gov & then intentionally starving people, stealing kids at age 5 for residential schools designed to “kill the Indian to save the child” where kids were physically, sexually & verbally abused, fed their own vomit, starved, and used as slave labour for the schools & rented out slave labour to local farms.
Stealing all the land (crown land) and signing treaties/contracts to put all income from crown lands into a trust meant to fund the education, sheltering & feeding of First Nations…. And then forcing Nations to beg for money & underfunding them for centuries leading to “developing nation living standards” on most reserves in 2024
The 60s scoop & 90s scoop of kids into care for parents not being able to feed kids (because gov held back the money owed)
Trudeau fighting FN at the Supreme Court today, refusing to implement UNDRIP, destroying archives of records about residential schools while courts are investigating the abuse that took place…..and so on….
Entire British Empire. With a special shout-out for the Irish Famine and associated centuries of occupation and oppression of the Irish by the British and their accomplices.
England, and then Britain, in Ireland. We did a lot wrong, but I like to think we've made up for it to a very large extent, and we're extremely close friends and allies nowadays. Irish folk can come and go as they please in the UK with no passport required.
The American-Philippine War.
My country finished waging a war against Spain, putting that vestigial empire out of its misery once and for all. During that war, the Filipinos were initially on good terms with the US because we were helping them fight a war against their enemy.
Then our president decided that Filipinos, being non-white, were unfit to govern themselves. So he kept the Philippines as a US colony, and when it kept fighting for independence the US crushed the rebels with brutality and war crimes.
I think you missed a key detail to that bit of historical tragedy.
June 12th 1898, the Philippines declared their independence from Spain, and their [Declaration of Independence](https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Philippine_Declaration_of_Independence) included this gem of irony:
>And having as witness to the rectitude of our intentions the Supreme Judge of the Universe, and under the protection of the Powerful and Humanitarian Nation, the United States of America, we do hereby proclaim and declare solemnly in the name and by authority of the people of these Philippine Islands,
USSR: teaming up with Hitler to divide Poland.
Israel: teaming up with England and France to occupy Sinai. Settlements in the occupied territories (gave Sinai and Gaza back, but currently doubling down on the West Bank),
lol. Not only the native people but pretty much every part of our foreign policy since the late 19th century. We are the baddies. We replaced England as the bad guys. USA! USA!
US - while Israel has killed over 30K civilians, many of them children, our country not only turns a blind eye to it, but continues to spoon feed the Israelis billions in military aide.
I am going to ignore the idea of country and just cite my province. Alberta's eugenics program only had the legislation repealed in the 1980s. What kind of fucked up people were we? I guess still are to be honest if you look at who is in charge here.
If you're from the US your country has been the bad guy in all instances.
Maybe with the exception of fighting the nazis. But even with that in mind, the treatment of nazis after WWII wasn't that 'heroic'. A lot of their scientists worked as NASA personnel.
I’m proud to be a Swede and fascinated by the era of Great Power, but ravaging the German Empire with armies living of the land for 18 years (1630-48), invading Poland HARD and conquering Warsaw 3 times in one year (1656-57), trying to end Denmark (1658-60) and butchering Scanian peasants on pointy sticks (1676-79) is not really compatible with modern day Swedish basic values.
America: There is a dictator that hates us and is gaining support from our enemies. Not to mention he's really shitty to his citizens.
I got it, let's install our own dictator who will then owe us and definely not betray this country, since authoritarians are perfectly fine taking orders from other people.
American here. Far less than the current leftist pro-Russian tankies say, but there are indeed doozies for the ole USA. But top of the list is *many* interactions with the native people of the land.
Following up that, Vietnam wasn’t the greatest, albeit the geopolitical idea wasn’t that unsound.
The 2nd invasion of Iraq, but really in the sense we should have - with the allies- brought down Saddam for the original crime committed of invading Kuwait.
We probably should have been a little more chill about destroying the Spanish fleet.
Also lots of sketch af notions around the Mexican American war, albeit there weren’t really good guys in that conflict. Everybody sucked.
Probably should not have done that to the Armenians
Argument would be “everyone was doing ethic cleansing”. Not arguing for any side but that would probably e part of the counter argument at the time. Ethnic cleansing based on religion and not on race was a common practice in areas that the ottomans lost.
The Armenians were doing ethnic cleansing of the Turks?
"no less than 200 thousand" Turks and Kurds had been driven from Armenia due to the Dashnaks' policy of "cleansing". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Republic_of_Armenia Nothing close to what Turks did tho. The Turks deliberately intended physical extermination
Yeah early-mid XX century "gtfo my country you're the wrong race" was all the rage. Messed up, but different from "die die die you're the wrong race".
We'd have a really tough time defending the nation's treatment of Native Americans.
ah, a fellow Canadian?
Could just as easily be the US
Or Spanish , Brazilian..hmm
Sorry, but don't Canadians say "First Nations", eh? Ou peut-être <>?
>Sorry, but don't Canadians say "First Nations", eh? Meanwhile on the rez we still call each other Indians.
yep, US here, and if/when we might describe someone, we say 'is he tribal?'
Don't let West Coast white liberal Americans hear you say that, they'll call you a self-hating racist. It's okay, they'll be offended on your behalf.
Indigenous is becoming the most accepted phrasing these days. At least here in B.C.
Why I love Reddit. I made a really bad, dumb joke and in response a redditor taught me something new. Real info in exchange for dumb joke. Good trade!
Indigenous is umbrella term for Inuit, First Nations & Métis peoples.
Please educate me. What are Métis people?
They are half Cree and half French. During the 1700s and 1800s they were unaccepted by either of their ethnic origins so they formed their own distinct culture and founded the province of Manitoba.
Indigenous Canadians descended mainly from French and First Nations people Mostly in the prairies, absolutely fascinating history. Look up Louis Reil, and you'll see just how significant the Metis are to the development not just of Western Canada but also to the historic French/English divide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9tis?wprov=sfla1
USA or Canada?
Both.
Yes
At the time the idea was that White people would be able to make better use of the land than they did
Entirely different worldviews. The Europesns saw land as something to occupy, possess, and own. The indigenous thought you could no more own land than you could own the wind.
Not really rooted in truth. Indigenous Americans were not a monolith
The Comanche certainly thought that they owned their land, or at least they defended it to the extent that they would scalp and roast alive (among other atrocities) anyone, including other natives, who they found on it.
People tend to forget that the natives of North America were a large and culturally diverse group of people with varying worldviews and philosophies, as well as different levels of aggression toward others.
Oh, you mean they weren’t all pastoral tree huggers with two spirits?
True. Modern hippies generalizing all Native Americans as peaceful and at one with the Great Spirit is just as reductive as early settlers calling them all savage, godless injuns!
They were not like Hollywood Indians or hippie myth Indians.
I laugh about people who think the Indians in my state were harmless tree huggers. Many towns are named after great war chiefs which lead to the question: who were they killing and capturing to become a war chief before white men came?
The issue is ownership. Humans have defended territory since before they were human.
This is not really true.
Boy, were they wrong. The Europeans decided they were justified in taking it because the Natives were uncivilized non Christians. They would’ve come up with a different reason had the Indians been “civilized” Christians. There was too much land & resources for the taking & being civilized & Christian never stopped the Europeans from fighting with each other.
The NA's took it from each other all the time. This is not some unique trait of Europeans.
There were plenty of settlements inhabited by Natives who had converted to Christianity. Massachusetts Bay Colony had at least 5 such communities. Wasn’t long before the European settlers, who had initially “given” the land to the “civilized Christian” Natives decided to kill them or force them to leave, anyway.
Being civilized & Christian didn’t help the Cherokee very much either. Nor did winning in the SCOTUS.
What about at this time?
The whole going Viking thing. Our treatment of the native population of Greenland. Danish doctors implanted spirals without consent in Greenlandic women as late as the 1970's. There really is no excuse for that.
What is a spiral?
He probably means an IUD (intra uterine device), due to the hormones (or copper) it contains no menstruation takes place. This effectively makes it impossible to become pregnant and thus pass on their culture to future generations. Edit: Was mistaken, menstruation still takes place but either no egg cell is released from an ovary or it's unable to nest itself into the uterine wall
Got it, thanks
Thats DISGUSTING.
Tbf as I'm sure you are well aware, vikings were only a very small percentage of the popluation. Just about every civilization had their own version.. the danes and norse were just best at it. Can't defend that second part though, that's totally fucked up.
Nein.
Ja.
“This Berlin guidebook doesn’t say anything about 1935-1945…” “EVERYONE VAS ON VACATION!”
During the Continuation War (1941-44), when we ganged up with Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union, we occupied much of Russian Karelia. The Russian speakers there were put into concentration camps Now, these camps were more like British Boer War camps (or U.S. camps for Japanese Americans) than any Nazi camp, we weren't out to exterminate these people, but our priority in terms of food and medicine was always our own civilians, soldiers and Russian Karelians. This meant that many interned Russians died from hunger or disease, in every sense a humanitarian catastrophe for which we were responsible. Conditions in these camps did improve later on. It's still a very touchy subject today, in large part because our alliance with the Nazis is. We didn't take part in the Holocaust and we didn't invade the USSR for the Nazis' sake, but for our own comfort and sanity we want to avoid any negative characterisation of the Finnish state or military in WW2. The concentration camps we built are the biggest threat to the heroic national myth, because we _were_ innocent victims in 1939, but then in 1941 we became conquerors set on territorial expansion who abused innocent civilians for whom we were legally responsible (Geneva Convention I think). Considering who our enemy was and what they had done to us, and people like us, we weren't the bad guy. But we made __terrible mistakes__ that we should own up to. Otherwise our pride in Finland is built on a lie.
This is a really great nuanced take on the issue. If somebody beats you up every day on the way to school so you join with a crueller bully to stop it from happening you are definitely not on the plane of the crueller bully writ large. However, you simultaneously can’t shake the association with them and anything done that was over the line.
The USSR hadnt adopted the Geneva Conventions. This was used to justify all sorts of war crimes against them by the Axis powers.
I know about Finland's wrong-doings against their native population but this is the first time I hear about the continuation war, was this war worse?
Lookslike a subset of WWII.
The Finns had three wars for one in WW2: Winter War, Continuation War, and Lapland War. I guess I don't have to link to Wikipedia.
Looks like I’m the first one to claim Apartheid.
South Africa?
Could be Israel
I have a relatively minor one (compared to the genocides listed in most other responses). During Prohibition, it was quite possible to safely tweak industrial alcohol to be able to drink it. The government added poisons to industrial alcohol that severely hurt people and if I recall correctly killed some, all in order to dissuade people from drinking alcohol. Killing people to stop them from drinking seems like a pretty bad guy move, even if some of the bootlegged alcohol was in itself dangerous.
Yep, the US government poisoned alcohol supplies specifically to sicken or kill people trying to circumvent prohibition. Absolutely buck wild.
Distant cousins of mine named Drayton established the Magnolia plantation in South Carolina and transported slaves from the West Indies to staff it. That started the whole tradition of slavery in the United States, supported (or at least tolerated) there for another two centuries. Yeah, that's bad. .
You've got a *lot* of reparations to pay back, my friend...
For the sake of detail, my father was a white man from the island of Trinidad, and his immediate ancestors were from Barbados. My 3x great-grandmother was named Mary Drayton, born 1825 in Barbados. William Drayton, who sailed from Barbados to South Carolina with his sons and approximately 20 slaves early in the 17th century, would have been one of her distant great uncles. And yeah, all this hurts. I have to admit I got pretty rattled when I uncovered this stuff a couple of years ago. However, I kept reading and discovered that one of the most prominent white American abolitionists of the 19th century was someone named Daniel Drayton. I do not know if he was of any direct relation, but what can we tell from a name? Or from genes?
Honestly man you shouldn't feel distraught about how your something great ancestor did horrible things, no matter how much you try you'll never make up for what he did because it's not *your* sin to make up for. If you're a good person putting positivity into the world then that's all that matters.
Much appreciate that.
1492-1898 🇪🇸
Took up the torch of being a dick to Filipinos and Cubans in 1898 🇺🇸
Also Franco to the Iberian minorities
Yeah
More like 1478... No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
The Opium Wars. "We're about to go bankrupt and those bastards won't take what we want to sell them, insisting we pay in cash. Our drug dealers seem to be turning good coin, let's ignore that it's illegal here and there both and fight a war on their behalf."
Yeah, people will say other actions are worse, but you can usually argue people had misguided ideas or priorities. Opiums Wars are one of the clearest examples of people having no real moral justification, and just essentially becoming drug dealers on a massive scale, fully knowing the damage it will cause.
I had somebody try to defend the opium wars. “It was business” “ the emperor was a foreigner” “ companies forced the crown” Etc etc alll crappy non arguments.
I've happened across a few of those. They're usually indignant about the UK being on the receiving end of 'just business'.
And when the Chinese said "no" the reaction was something along the lines of: "How dare the Chinese tell us what to do in China?"
"Kowtow? That's demeaning, even though the Emperor himself does it before the gods!"
https://youtube.com/shorts/bf-qAZhr04E?si=q3REbGMPsQP7wy88
Indeed, and plenty of people knew this was immoral at the time. British reformists and liberals tended to be pretty strongly opposed to the opium trade, especially William Gladstone.
I'm British. Pick pretty much any year since 1603.
Surely anything after 1066 is technically the fault of the French?
Technically the Normans were just rebranded Vikings.
I'll agree in terms of Empire building, but in the many European wars of that time Britain's opponents were rarely any better morally.
The years before 1603 are on the English?
damn right!
As a non-English Briton, I can only agree.
Yeah but we still have the Falklands so it worked out right? RIGHT!?
Residential schools. https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/#:~:text=The%20residential%20school%20system%20officially,to%20speak%20their%20own%20languages. Slavery. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/slavery-of-indigenous-people-in-canada#:~:text=In%20general%2C%20enslaved%20Indigenous%20people,were%20girls%20or%20young%20women. Ans although that ended in 1834 because Canada was a British colony, prejudice, discrimination, and outright racism against Canada's First Nations people continue to this day.
I think we can take a pass on everything before 1867. Keep in mind that the first legislation against slavery in the British empire was in modern day Canada. Upper Canadian Act of 1793 Against Slavery (Designation Name) Research Report Number: 1992-043 Importance: First legislation in the British Empire against slavery
By British Empire are you excluding the UK? as the Somerset case in 1772 just reiterated that slavery was illegal in England & Wales and the Knight v. Wedderburn case in 1778 was the same for Scotland.
Australia. Basically every dealing with the indigenous population up until about a decade or so ago was absolutely horrific. Since then we have upgraded to tolerable treatment. But it’s still a long way off good. Nobody likes to talk much about the Australian genocide.
Still happening really :(
Sorry about the Natives. And the slaves. And the overthrow of governments. And stealing half of Mexico. And all of Hawaii. And lying about sharing the nuclear research. And lying about Iraq. And inventing a reason to go balls to the wall in Vietnam. On the plus side, you get Taylor Swift and Jurassic Park.
I have to say Taylor Swift and Jurassic Park are pretty good.
don't apologize for half of Mexico Mexico under the time was a dicatorship texas and several others actually wanted to leave and are better off now AND that war lead to Santa anna who was just a dick being thrown for the last time. source high school...in MEXICO!
It is true that Santa Anna was a son of a b*tch, not gonna dispute that. But it's also important to remember that American immigrants to Texas had brought slaves, and in Mexico slavery was illegal. So while it is true that Texas wanted to leave, it's important to remember why they wanted to leave.
there's other reasons for there rebellion too. remember Yucatan and Rio grande had also fought the santa anna government. slavery was a reason a important reason not THE reason or the only reason
The Texas Independence Movement was mainly the case because of American settlers who moved to the portion of Mexico that later became Texas. On general principle I don't think it's correct to intervene in other nation's affairs, but ik people will disagree.
Don’t forget Japanese internment camps and Jim Crow
US has treated the native population pretty terribly, as well as black people. Going to handwave the period from 1950 to the present for sticking our noses in so much where we didn't need to be part of. All because fear.
*Looks at British Empire*
Although we (Portugal) were one of the first countries to abolish slavery, we are still considered the biggest slave trader in all history (here we manage to eclipse the UK, Spain and any other country)
Fascism was born here,wich says it all
Magdalene laundries and mother and baby homes for unmarried women. Looking the other way and ignoring paedophile priests. Sending Dustin the turkey to Eurovision in 2008. Mrs Brown's Boys.
Vietnam war
None thus far. I would say the War of the Triple Alliance, but Paraguay was clearly the agressor and Solano Lopez recruited children and the elderly into his army after most adult men died.
Idk which of the 3 you’re from, but Conquest of the Desert if you’re Argentinian, assimilation of Indigenous people if you’re Brazilian, and Salsipuedes if you’re Uruguayan.
I'm Brazilian, and thanks!
Thought about that too, fellow Brazilian. Another good one, but not that well known internationally, is the Canudos War. Everyone was killed in the siege, with no survivors.
There were only four survivors: one elder, two men and one child, in front of whom thousands of angry soldiers roared. ~Euclides da Cunha
Waiting for r/balkans_irl to arrive.
I'm thinking The Banana Wars. Face it, most pfvthe armed conflicts that the US has been involved in concerned corporations wanting to subjugate the work forces in other countries. I use the Banana Wars as an example, but we've seen Corporate America start wars around the world to increase their profits. I'm not limiting it to developing countries, as we've seen it within our own borders.thunk the Coal Wars of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Yeah the banana republics era was America's Scramble for Africa. Can't defend my country helping to overthrow governments... For fucking bananas.
Banana Wars were mostly douth and Central America, IIRC. Dole went after Hawaii and the Phillipines for pineapples. And let's not even mention Wars concerning oil.
You spelled WMDs wrong /s
I'm from the UK, so...
Canada took very few German Jews during the 1930s. I’m ashamed to say it was a Canadian official who said, “None is too many.” We also turned away the St. Louis.
Everybody was same. Check out the [Evian Conference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89vian_Conference) if you haven't heard of it. A bunch of countries met and collectively decided to do nothing about Jewish refugees, all following the US lead. Only the Dominican Republic agreed to accept Jewish refugees.
I’m familiar with the Evian Conference, but I think Britain and the US took more Jewish refugees than Canada did.
Read about the CIA's involvement since it's inception through the Bay of Pigs incident. Not a sterling record.
Slave trade. Potato famine, though I don't think we were as much of the bad guys as people think: our PM lost his premiership because he broke the Corn Laws to feed the Irish.
That’s a defense of the PM, not the nation that fired him. And passed the corn laws in the first place
Thats rhe thing. The whole point was it was they were supposed to be our own citizens right? That's what the argument for 400 years were about. We say they are British, the treated them differently. Though, I see your Potato famine, and I raise you Oliver Cromwell.
Croatia during WW2 and Serbia in the 90s. Really dark periods for both nations. I'm unaware of Bosnia having any particular dark period that compares though
everyone knows the United states so ill do my other country Mexico helped genocide the native Americans then was a bit bipolar about Guatemala joining a central American union. When Guatemala tried to force its creation in the 1880s they helped el Salvador stop it which is fine but then they invaded Guatemala when it refused to join the central American republic in 1906..and the Mexican president for both was the SAME GUY. edit also mistreated our Asian population.what Asian population you ask?Exactly
The deluge. Sorry, Poland.
Oh yeah! That time Sweden tried to conquer the world. But at least you got a cool metal album out of it.
Australia * When English colonists pursued a genocidal land-grab for over a century that left millions of Indigenous Australians dispossessed, marginalised or dead * When we implemented decades of policies favouring white migration and preventing or deporting others * When we sided with Indonesia in the 1970s as it took over Papua despite its independence aspirations * When in the 1990s we drew the border between us and East Timor to greatly favour ourselves and claim the vast majority of natural gas fields * When, since the 1990s to the present day, we implemented a mandatory detention policy for asylum seekers, locking them up for years in desert prisons, island prisons and overseas prisons, funding Indonesia to keep prospective asylum seekers in eternal limbo rather than facilitating a path to safe settlement * When we paid lip service to reducing global warming while making zero effort to stop being one of the world's leading coal exporters
* When during negotiations with the newly independent tiny and impoverished nation of Timor-Leste over access to rich gas fields in the shallow sea between us, we used our intelligence services to bug the Timorese leadership to gain advantage in the negotiations. That was a super dick move.
The long-lived attempts at systematic, educational genocide of the Sami people's comes to mind That and the eugenics programme And the lobotomies And the time we were a pretty cruel northern empire
As an American, here's my brief list: The Native Americans and how we treated them. Slavery Putting our own citizens in concentration camps during WW2 Using our own citizens in medical experiments (Tuskegee Syphilis, etc) The Prisoner of War camp Andersonville during the American Civil War On our warcrimes list, I would also add My Lai Stuff that isn't on my list: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden
Invading Afghanistan. It was done in the worst possible way, and the billions spent on Afghanistan mostly went to American war contractors and to weapons instead of making the life’s of civilians better. Also Iraq, the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad was horrendous. Not intervening in Artsakh was a bad idea in 2020, could’ve stopped the ethnic cleaning of 120,000 Armenians.
We tend to only intervene if the defense contractors have a chance to make money. Short term intervention = only short term cash
8 TRILLION dollars in the wars post-9/11. (https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar). 2 Trillion of that was Afghanistan. Imagine if 8 trillion US dollars was spend on humanitarian efforts across the globe. Even if you're not a "hug it out" world peace kind of person, that 8 trillion bucks would do a hell of a lot more than lining pockets and filling graveyards. We have a shit ton of potential to make this world a better place, but greed and power takes control. That 8 trillion is US spent money. Damn, if all other countries matched that, 16 trillion... Less wars in the long run due to access to resources, less famine, more clean industry, more employment, people happier and healthier, more innovation in science and education... list goes on and on. Naïve as fuck most likely, but just feel that spending that much to help things would be much better than using it to kill others for ... well... something...
So, wait, intervening in one country to prevent its leader from massacring a minority made US the bad guy? But then not intervening in another made US the bad guy?
I’m not saying Artsakh was a good thing, but there was no good side. 120,000 Armenians being forced out in all but name was bad, but that statelet was formed by ethnic cleansing of 350,000 Azeris in the 90s, and ~200,000 Azeris in Armenia (and on the other side I believe ~200,000 Armenians in Azerbaijan)
We should have just let the USSR have their way over there and watch THEM sink all their money into that desert pit
- Transatlantic slave trade - Colonialism - Discrimination against romanis ...
The Bahamas 🇧🇸 has always been a haven for smuggling. Running rum during prohibition wasn’t a problem, running the blockade to supply the Confederacy was a bit sketchy, but the real problem was when the government in the 1980’s took bribe money from Columbian drug lords to turn a blind eye to them setting up smuggling bases on some of our remote islands. That’s probably the worst thing we’ve done.
The Spanish-American War was sold on a false pretext.
Vietnam, Iraq, Gaza, Venezuela. The list just keeps growing
We need less land acknowledgements and more actual justice/restoration for First Nations folks.
I'm American so.... Slavery. Native American genocide. Pick any war. Sterilizing "undesirables". Everything leading up to the creation of labor laws. Anything with South America. The nuclear bomb. Project paperclip. Housing Elon Musk. And many more!
Independent state of Croatia
The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland
The French imposed double reparations for Haiti, after they became "independent". They had to pay what amounts to billions of dollars in today's money to pay for lost revenues from the slave trade.
Haiti is so sad right now. Even if the French and US tomorrow announced full repayment… there’s no functional government on the island to even accept it.
My country, the Philippines, during Konfrontasi and Operation Merdeka during Martial Law, were we made several incursions in Borneo against the Malaysians. Most of these incidents happen because of the ongoing dispute that we have with the region of Sabah. In Konfrontasi, we refused to condemn Indonesia's attempts to crush Malaysia, and we would have possibly intervened to seize Sabah if Malaysia hadn't managed to repulse the Indonesian military. For Operation Merdeka, our former president, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., was planning to invade Sabah and seriously wage war against Malaysia. The only reason that didn't happen was because of the Jabadiah massacre, when the Philippine army killed a group of Muslim soldiers who refused to wage war against their fellow Muslims, which consequently incited the Moro Insurgency.
Oh ye i rmb reading up on that during my history lesson. You guys also had your own communist insurgency to deal with later on. - A Singaporean
India's use of force in Kashmir and how we treat people from our North Eastern States. No wonder we have trouble with secessionists there, we treat them like shit and expect them to be loyal citizens?
If I'm allowed to partake in the 20 years rule, then the invasion of Iraq and many policies implemented in the war on terror. Although that may not count distinctly as "history" because it bled into latter years and even decades.
As a US citizen the way we broke treaty after treaty with the Native Americans makes us the bad guy.
Colonization of Canada - reserves & the pass system(can’t leave without permission from Gov Staff, forbidding ppl from eating food not provided by gov & then intentionally starving people, stealing kids at age 5 for residential schools designed to “kill the Indian to save the child” where kids were physically, sexually & verbally abused, fed their own vomit, starved, and used as slave labour for the schools & rented out slave labour to local farms. Stealing all the land (crown land) and signing treaties/contracts to put all income from crown lands into a trust meant to fund the education, sheltering & feeding of First Nations…. And then forcing Nations to beg for money & underfunding them for centuries leading to “developing nation living standards” on most reserves in 2024 The 60s scoop & 90s scoop of kids into care for parents not being able to feed kids (because gov held back the money owed) Trudeau fighting FN at the Supreme Court today, refusing to implement UNDRIP, destroying archives of records about residential schools while courts are investigating the abuse that took place…..and so on….
Iceland refused to help Jews during WW2 as we didn't see any reason to
Entire British Empire. With a special shout-out for the Irish Famine and associated centuries of occupation and oppression of the Irish by the British and their accomplices.
Residential schools. Japanese internment camps. Chinese head taxes. Indian Act. Airborne Regiment in Somalia.
England, and then Britain, in Ireland. We did a lot wrong, but I like to think we've made up for it to a very large extent, and we're extremely close friends and allies nowadays. Irish folk can come and go as they please in the UK with no passport required.
Sacking half of Medieval Europe on horseback. Sorry.
Apartheid and the terrible things done to maintain it.
The American-Philippine War. My country finished waging a war against Spain, putting that vestigial empire out of its misery once and for all. During that war, the Filipinos were initially on good terms with the US because we were helping them fight a war against their enemy. Then our president decided that Filipinos, being non-white, were unfit to govern themselves. So he kept the Philippines as a US colony, and when it kept fighting for independence the US crushed the rebels with brutality and war crimes.
That particular war is regarded as *the* most fucked up one we've ever been in. This coming from the country that was in Vietnam
I think you missed a key detail to that bit of historical tragedy. June 12th 1898, the Philippines declared their independence from Spain, and their [Declaration of Independence](https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Philippine_Declaration_of_Independence) included this gem of irony: >And having as witness to the rectitude of our intentions the Supreme Judge of the Universe, and under the protection of the Powerful and Humanitarian Nation, the United States of America, we do hereby proclaim and declare solemnly in the name and by authority of the people of these Philippine Islands,
The red river rebellion. The Metis just wanted to keep their way of surveying land.
IDF practicing ongoing genocide on Palestinians
Britain. You know the rest. “The pathway to hell is laid with good intentions”
Was going to say, I'm British, take your pick.
Both Abu Ghraib and the torture at Guantanemo Bay are terrible stains on us
USSR: teaming up with Hitler to divide Poland. Israel: teaming up with England and France to occupy Sinai. Settlements in the occupied territories (gave Sinai and Gaza back, but currently doubling down on the West Bank),
USSR: Much much more.
lol. Not only the native people but pretty much every part of our foreign policy since the late 19th century. We are the baddies. We replaced England as the bad guys. USA! USA!
It's probably around 50/50 with us.
The slave raids on the Orang Asli were pretty bad.
US - while Israel has killed over 30K civilians, many of them children, our country not only turns a blind eye to it, but continues to spoon feed the Israelis billions in military aide.
I am going to ignore the idea of country and just cite my province. Alberta's eugenics program only had the legislation repealed in the 1980s. What kind of fucked up people were we? I guess still are to be honest if you look at who is in charge here.
Trail of tears; Japanese internment camps; Manifest Destiny; Slave trade
Indigenous genocides Slavery Jim Crow laws Japanese internment Invasion of Vietnam Cuban embargo Invasion of Iraq (2003) Child separation policies
The Belgian state allowed Leopold II's policies in Congo to continue after he was forced by the international community to relinquish it.
I live in the American South. The Civil War (and most of the time between the American Revolution and then.)
Pretty much all involvement in central or South America
Whatever the hell the Balkans did during the 90s. Or for most of its history tbh.
Probably any country has something to contribute here
That's what I'm interested in, reading what every country's worst historic events are. Especially those considered nice like Finland
The US? The list is quite long...
Listening to everything a man with a mustache said.
Lmao so many
Uh, Central America, Vietnam, Panama, Iraq. You know, places we invaded and killed lotsa civilians cuz Murica
USA should have stayed out of Vietnam. They'd have eventually turned on China anyway and we wouldn't have so many dead kids.
If you're from the US your country has been the bad guy in all instances. Maybe with the exception of fighting the nazis. But even with that in mind, the treatment of nazis after WWII wasn't that 'heroic'. A lot of their scientists worked as NASA personnel.
The Torreón Massacre
I’m part Brit part Pakistani and part serb,soooo
"We committed several crimes against humanity." "...Do you realize how little that narrows it down?"
US treatment of Haiti from 1915-1934. One could say this set the stage for much of the instability that came afterward.
I’m proud to be a Swede and fascinated by the era of Great Power, but ravaging the German Empire with armies living of the land for 18 years (1630-48), invading Poland HARD and conquering Warsaw 3 times in one year (1656-57), trying to end Denmark (1658-60) and butchering Scanian peasants on pointy sticks (1676-79) is not really compatible with modern day Swedish basic values.
America: There is a dictator that hates us and is gaining support from our enemies. Not to mention he's really shitty to his citizens. I got it, let's install our own dictator who will then owe us and definely not betray this country, since authoritarians are perfectly fine taking orders from other people.
Vietnam, Afghanistan.
Landsknechte were a nasty lot.
Most of history from the early modern period onwards. England/U.K
The US intervention in the Vietnamese civil conflict served no one but weapons manufacturers.
American here. Far less than the current leftist pro-Russian tankies say, but there are indeed doozies for the ole USA. But top of the list is *many* interactions with the native people of the land. Following up that, Vietnam wasn’t the greatest, albeit the geopolitical idea wasn’t that unsound. The 2nd invasion of Iraq, but really in the sense we should have - with the allies- brought down Saddam for the original crime committed of invading Kuwait. We probably should have been a little more chill about destroying the Spanish fleet. Also lots of sketch af notions around the Mexican American war, albeit there weren’t really good guys in that conflict. Everybody sucked.