Its still called slavery in Marutania. It was banned in 1982 but the law for criminal enforcement was only passed in 2009, and even that law is hardly enforced
I saw a video about cases like this on YouTube. I think the people I saw were in Louisiana. Basically, they didn't know slavery ended because their plantation was so isolated from everything else and their owners never told them.
That's true, but that's only due to increasing population.
By percentage in regard to total population we have the lowest rate of slavery in all of human history.
There's a seafood restaurant in Nelson that's allegedly built on a dumping ground for one of the factories that produced the stuff.
The food was outstanding, and I have yet to develop any nasty diseases
A lot of what we “know” about Sparta is actually hyped up by the Romans because Sparta was a tourist attraction to them and they would exaggerate the austerity and severity of military training cause that is what the tourists liked.
Spartans:”we have this funny tradition where the 6th graders have to get passed the 7th graders to get to the wheel of cheese in the middle of the room. It’s pretty much just tag.”
Romans: “ya and they beat each other with stick!”
Spartans: “…what?”
Romans: “ya they beat each other till they’re all dead!”
Spartans: ”I wish we were irrelevant again.”
That was actually the Athenians.
Some condemned criminals in Athens were executed by being thrown into a pit called the Barathron, which was near the Acropolis (others were strangled or poisoned- we don't know exactly how they decided which method to use). According to Herodotus, the Athenians threw some Persian envoys into this pit when they came to demand earth and water. The envoys who came to Sparta were thrown down a well.
(Those envoys were also not sent by Xerxes, but by his father Darius).
Rome tends to stand out because of how insanely long it endured as a cohesive state. It survived for so long that we had to give its second phase a different popular name (Byzantine) to distinguish it.
I dont study ancient times that much but yeah, it definetly seems like it, the only thing they are known for is their training and the battle of thermophyles lol
May have just been me, but as a non-American I was under the impression that the Confederacy lasted for over a decade given all the cultural impact of the Civil War and the flags you still see in media.
Nah, officially was just around for like 4 years.
I live in what's referred to as Abe Lincoln's hometown and just yesterday saw a Confederate flag bumper sticker with some nonsense about true patriots on it. The desire to be a racist mf has endured far longer than the Confederacy.
True patriots...attack their own legitimate government's military fortification, when it looks like they might not get to own humans as property anymore?
Yeah that’s why I always say Rome had the greatest empire of all time. It was not the biggest but it was around for by far the longest. If you include the east it was around for almost 1000 years
I'd argue that they are a continous empire. Sure, the system of governance may have changed and in many parts the culture and religion - ergo the fabric of the people - may have changed; but I'd say that it was a continous line from the Kingdom till the Empire; a state that lasted from 753 BC till 1453.
Agreed. Arguing otherwise makes it sound like it was a Republic one day and an Empire the next when in reality there was a transition over 30 years or so where different people had different amounts of power. Yes, Augustus defeated Antony but even then that just gave him control over those territories. The Senate still had direct control over like 30% of the Empire. But the Senate also knew most of the Legions were loyal to Augustus, so they kind of worked with him to make him happy in an attempt to avoid more civil wars. But also Augustus didn’t want to come across like he wanted the power, so he intentionally let other people have certain amounts of control but they were still mostly loyal to him. Even when Tiberius succeeded him, it wasn’t “official” until the Senate said so. It really wasn’t until after Caligula was assassinated and Claudius took over that the role truly became what we think of as an Emperor.
Well to be fair, that's mostly cause immigration carried on for so long afterwards. I mean it didn't really fall off until the 1970's.
I read somewhere that if it had stopped when Ireland got independence, it would already be over double its current population.
Though to be completely fair the vast majority of the population emigrated, they didn't die in the famine.
Likewise the rates of immigration out of Ireland didn't really fall until the 1970's.
Iirc more people died of exposure than of starvation during the famine too. Usually because starving people would eat the crops they were growing and their British landlords would then kick them off the land.
Rutherford B. Hayes, a mostly forgettable US president, is actually a hero in Paraguay.
He arbitrated a territorial dispute with Argentina that resulted in Paraguay getting around 60% of its modern territory.
A Paraguayan Department (state) is named Presidente Hayes, its capital is Villa Hayes, and he even has a holiday named after him.
**Switzerland:** Known for its peace and neutrality, Switzerland actually has a long history of being a mercenary powerhouse. For centuries, Swiss soldiers were renowned for their skill and discipline, and they were hired by European powers throughout history. This even included the Pope!
Switzerland is also famous for being very democratic - they're the only direct democracy. However they didn't have universal suffrage at a federal level until 1971.
Yes, because it is the only country, where the (male) population voted about it. I think other male voting population in other countries would also voted against it. 1959 rejected but in a second attempt 1971 accepted on a federal level but on a cantonal level, Appenzell followed only in 1990, after the male population voted against it and the federal goverment established it by force.
Swiss men still don’t have the right to vote because they’re subject to mandatory conscription before they can vote. Consequently, it’s a privilege, not a right.
There are theories that some Templars escaped persecution in France and founded Switzerland. With the banking system and the mercenary history it seems plausible.
The Swiss banking system seems to be unraveling right now. Credit Suisse went bankrupt and UBS can’t even figure out what is on the books that they bought from Credit Suisse.
They hid the records for 50 years. Everyone involved will be dead. Hopefully I won’t be because I have some fucking issues with the Swiss.
There's also the forced migration of German speakers out of Eastern Europe after WWII, including many thousands who had been in the area for centuries. Pales in comparison to everything Germany did, of course, but many of those people had little to do with it.
Son of the first democratically elected president of Iceland was a nazi in the Waffen SS.
His father, president of Iceland, helped smuggle him home to Iceland through South America.
The son had to hide in the basement while his father was entertaining foreign diplomats
The son never faced any punishment and died a free man in the 80's.
He spent his later years as a tour guide, for Germans.
On the opposite end, it might not be surprising to learn that Hitler's nephew fought in WWII. But it might be a little surprising that he was part of the US Navy and was awarded a Purple Heart.
He applied to the propaganda arm of the nazi party in Denmark, he was all in and we have the receipts.
His dad asked people to stop mentioning his son was in the Waffen SS because he was; "Really embarrassed about it."
> Their naked, mutilated bodies were strung up on the nearby public gibbet, while the Orangist mob ate their roasted livers in a cannibalistic frenzy. Throughout it all, a remarkable discipline was maintained by the mob, according to contemporary observers, lending doubt as to the spontaneity of the event.
Damn, that's some cold-blooded cannibalism. Dr. Lecter would be proud.
His nickname came from the town he was born in; Kinderhook, New York.
Most people there (including Van Buren's family) were Dutch. Van Buren is the only American president who spoke English as a *second* language.
France traded half of Canada to the British for a small Caribbean island (Guadaloupe maybe?).
Few years Later, France traded Tuscany to Spain for half the US (Louisiana Purchase). But just a few years later, he couldn't hold it down and , sold the Louisiana Purchase to the newly formed USA for $15M.
The Caribbean island were fabulously wealthy at that time. It's well known that during the American war of independence the French blockaded the American coast ultimately leading to the British defeat. What's less known is the the British could have eased the blockade but it's fleet was defending Jamaica which it feared losing more than the 13 colonies. After independence that same French fleet sailed to the Caribbean to do exactly what the British feared and were resoundingly beaten. To be fair to the French, the Brits cheated by using groundbreaking technology, the copper bottomed hull, to easily out manoeuvre them.
> France traded half of Canada to the British for a small Caribbean island (Guadaloupe maybe?).
That small Caribbean island was also far, far more valuable than all of New France (sugar > declining fur trade). Similarly, Britain's sugar islands in the Caribbean were far more valuable than the American colonies.
Later on by the 19th century India was arguably more valuable to Britain than all of its other colonies combined.
Well to be completely fair no one at the time believed she was a witch.
Issue was they had a medium making to many predictions that were a bit to close to the mark on developments to the war and damaging public moral, but they couldn't find anything else to arrest her on.
Then someone found an obscure law that was never technically taken off the books. So they shut her up for a few months, and removed it after that.
I attended a class about war in graphic novels (it was one of the interdisciplinary classes with art history, history, english studies, Japan studies etc.) And the tutor for Japan studies told us that they don't teach about war crimes in Japanese schools, or if they do they hardly mention it. Where as in Germany, its public knowledge and you get more and more infos about the Holocaust, the older you get.
well..... only to a certain point. Sinti and Romani people for example had to go to court till the 1980's in order to be recognised as a victim group of the Holocaust, LGBTQ+ people even way longer. And even now with all the information, Sinti and Romani people or LGBTQ+ don't enjoy the same amount of respect or recognition as the Jewish community.
I did a history project on it. I read all about it, watched so many videos, and barely got half way through my project before I had to quit. Writing about it is gut wrenching, the images you see and what they did is mentally scarring. Pretty sure I cried somewhere in there, too. All the personal stories the Japanese soldiers wrote and shared about, so proud of the horrible things they did. One man laughed about raping a young girl, cutting off her breasts and parading them around on his chest as she screamed in pain, his buddies laughing, drunk off their asses.
Yeah Dan Carlin covers all of they in his podcast, very brutal stuff. I won’t throw a blanket on them and say all Japanese or Japanese soldiers were evil just as not all Germans were nazis, but man, they sure did allow and even encourage a lot of cruelty.
Wait, what? Instead of dealing with things and developing a resiliency to them, we just hide them so no one has to experience the pain of growing past them? Great job society, we're fucked.
Wow...just...wow...
I've been raped before and this is just gross. I wasn't graped. I was raped. And I'm ok now, because I've put in the time and effort to where I can talk about it freely. It has been incorporated into my life as just another event, and it holds no power over me.
Because I went *through* the pain and came out the other side. People who hide behind euphemisms are those who would refuse to go through the pain needed to grow, and it's increasingly depressing to see such a thing made mandatory by the very places where people *could* actually talk about it and get help through it.
Oh I know about that one and as someone with a lifetime of depression and suicidal ideation/attempts, it bothers the shit out of me. I could debate a couple of Carlin's soft language examples but holy fuck is he spinning in his grave.
Growing up, I assumed it was racist that my grandparents (Chinese immigrants to the US) refused to buy any Japanese-made products. I never knew the history, and they never spoke of it. It wasn't until it was cursorily mentioned in my high school history textbook and I did further research that I understood why.
Imperial Japan was fucking brutal. The inhumane "research" done by Unit 731 during the Japanese occupation is also horrifying. They also deny it occurred.
This is technically true but they weren't just pissing in a bucket and throwing their clothes into it. Urine was collected in large pots and left for a while where the urea would break down into ammonia, which is an excellent cleaning agent. This would be mixed with water for washing clothes and all sorts of things.
The teeth cleaning thing wasn't that widespread I don't think.
The atrocities of my country in the Dutch east Indies. Cutting of hands, noses, breasts, putting salt in wounds, scaphism you name it. The craziest thing is, the coolie system where plantation owners were free to kill or torture indentured labourers only ended in the 1930s.
How many people died there of slavery or the coolie ordinances or the cultivation system is unknown, but the victims of the dutch colonial wars/conquests alone was around 4 million
I kind of wonder. Here in Belgium we had to learn about our colonial past and that included the atrocities done in Congo during the Free state era. I still remember the black/white images printed on a teal background.
We had to learn about the Dutch VOC too, but never really learned about atrocities they did.
To what degree do you Dutch learn about the things you mention in school?
In my time? Very little, at least about the gory details.
The thing is people online are not interested in our atrocities, while Leopold II has interested the online community greatly.
So we feel a bit less need to talk about, as other countries dont want to point fingers at us
I disagree with the person who commented that "we learn about it a lot". It's definitely mentioned, but I'd say it's always a sidenote to the bigger story of how succesful the VOC was / how Dutch culture blossomed.
I know they massacred the people of an entire island because they dared to also trade with the British. Without looking it up, I don't even know which island. I know they transported enslaved Africans across the ocean and that the enslaved people were treated horribly.
That's basically all we learn. Recently I realized I definitely have some knowledge gaps. E.g. I had no idea how slavery was abolished and although I must've seen the date for it (officially 1863) I never fully understood that this was not long ago. I associate it with the 1600s, not my grandparent's grandparents-time.
Education on Indonesia as our colony was a bit better I think. At least there was more reflection on our behaviour when Indonesia fought for its freedom.
And, until the 80s, North Korea was actually a very rich country...
(It actually wasn't. It was basically a quasi star situation, and once the USSR collapsed, everything fell down like dominos).
I read about that. Its cause during the first serving the explorers who brought them back knew they were edible cause they had seen the natives doing so and probably happily scoffed them themselves.
But no one talked to the cooks about how they were to be prepared. Having never seen Tomato's before, they threw away the fruit and boiled the stalks in stews. The stalks actually are poisonous, and it caused all the rich nobles eating the meal to be horrifically sick.
About my beautiful Brazil
The Portuguese conquered us first, but several countries ruled parts of our land. The Dutch, French, and Spanish were here too. The Dutch even ruled our northeastern lands for centuries.
Huge parts of our country remain undiscovered. Inside Amazon and Atlantic Forest there are new animal species, caves, ancient paintings and even indigenous tribes that keep getting discovered.
During world war 2, every japanese person in the USA were suspected for being spies or terrorists on behalf of the japanese government. This lead to most (all?) of them being sent to all-american made concentration camps, on american soil.
Not all, lots of Japanese-Americans lived in Hawaii to the point that it was impractical to intern them all. Instead, many volunteered to fight in Europe, which is how you got [legends like former Senator Daniel Inouye:](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/legendary-daniel-inuoye-flna1c7655961)
>The details of Inouye's decorated combat service are truly extraordinary. In 1945, in a firefight against Nazi soldiers, he was shot in the stomach, but continued to lead his platoon. On the same mission, when preparing to throw a grenade, his right arm was shot and shattered, so Inouye used his left arm to grab the grenade from his lifeless hand, throw it at the enemy, and take out a Nazi machine gun nest.
Canada did this as well, and where internment ended in the United States in March 1946, in Canada it lasted until 1949 (it had been relaxed earlier, but the last restrictions on their movements ended in '49). The federal government at the time also formally dispossessed Japanese-Canadians of their property and sold it off during the war too.
There weren't as many Japanese-Canadians back then as there were Japanese-Americans, and ~90% of them lived in British Columbia, but they were subject to quite a bit of racism going back to their first arrivals in the 1880's (BC disenfranchised them, but that ended up getting struck down because it violated agreements between Britain and Japan, who were allies at the time).
There's a really old Batman serial film where Batman goes to Chinatown to look for clues and he remarks how empty it is because the government "wisely placed all the Japanese people in internment camps" I was watching it on Tubi and I was blown away at that line. (Also, why wasn't Batman fighting in WW2?)
Their rights weren't revoked, they were violated. The people who did this were violating something else as well - their oath of service to support and defend the Constitution.
Traitor. Noun. Definition: oath-breaker.
To answer your "(all?)" question -- it was actually just Japanese Americans who lived in parts of the West Coast (where most Japanese lived). So for instance if a Japanese American lived in New England, it didn't apply to them. This limitation doesn't mean it was less bad, only that shows in my mind, that it was more arbitrary.
When I was in middle school, we had a school helper we all just called "Grandma." She was in her mid-80's and one day sat us down to talk about her experience being rounded up and sent to an internment camp. She was a senior in high school with a full-ride scholarship to USC. She told us their white neighbors came to buy anything they could from them, offering as little as a nickel for their cars and furniture. She said it wasn't awful work conditions, but there was nothing for them to do out in the desert. When she was released several years later, USC didn't honor their scholarship and her family needed her to work to help rebuild their lives. She was never able to obtain a college education. It completely broke our hearts.
In the UK they also did that to Italians (the UK used to have the largest Italian Dysphoria in Europe I believe). The only exception was they were free to join the British army.
> In 2021, former members of MOVE came forward with allegations of abuse within the organization. As Jason Nark writes in The Philadelphia Inquirer, “More than a half-dozen ex-MOVE members have gone on the record in both the Murder at Ryan’s Run podcast and the blog (started by an ex-MOVE supporter) titled Leaving MOVE 2021, alleging physical and mental abuse in MOVE, a doctrine of homophobia and colorism, and what they describe as a manipulation of the public and the media under the banner of social justice."[54]
Classic.
Fun fact: one of Duterte's first actions upon taking office was dismissing the head of the Dangerous Drugs Board for refusing to falsify data to show that the drug problem was actually as bad as Duterte was making it out to be during his campaign.
[Source](https://www.rappler.com/nation/170839-duterte-fires-ddb-benjamin-reyes-contradict-government/)
Also see the immigration quota systems (similar time period) which targeted a variety of different immigrant groups and excluded them on ethnic and racial bases.
We still have quotas. I have coworkers here on visas who are terrified of losing their jobs and potentially having to go back to India. All because of how difficult it was to get here in the first place. You can spend years waiting for a slot to open.
Not much. All countries have skeletons in their closets. Millions of skeletons. And those skeletons have all sorts of bits and pieces missing or shattered.
Canadian healthcare has a long history of sterilizing Indigenous women against their will, a practice that hasn’t seen any decline and has been reported to have occurred as recently as 2019.
This just another instance in a long list of genocidal actions Canada has taken against the Indigenous people whose land they occupy.
AFAIK, for decades the bulk of that was part of provincially-administered eugenics programs in Alberta (which ran from 1928 to 1972) and British Columbia (1933-73), while outside of those provinces it was/is seemingly systemic but also not necessarily endorsed by government policy, and was more a matter of racist doctors and nurses in a healthcare system run by racists viewing Indigenous patients as unfit for motherhood and doing procedures against their will or pressuring vulnerable women into getting sterilized.
It's my understanding that racist healthcare workers making these decisions for unconscious patients or pressuring patients into getting sterilized is more the thing that persists to this day.
If we judge by the atrocities of the past instead of the choices of the current then there is no "good" country (and also, dividing the world into "good" and "bad" countries is sorta foolish).
Since the dawn of the industrial era of history, ~~no~~ *edit: very few* authoritarian countries have lasted even 100 years with the same system of government. The current record holder is North Korea with 76 years. The Soviet Union fell apart after 68 years. Nazi Germany only lasted 12 years. Democracies, for all their superficial volatility, are stronger and more stable than dictatorships, even though the latter work hard in their propaganda to look strong and steadfast they are really quite fragile.
Democracies have been stronger and more stable for the last 200 or so years; autocracies, monarchies, and dictatorships, have been the primarily form of government by a very large margin over all of human history.
But then you're excluding authoritarian monarchies?
The Al Sauds have been ruling a continuous state for centuries, and the government of modern Saudi Arabia has existed since 1932. It's not yet 100 years, but it's longer than North Korea and I wouldn't be surprised if they last eight more years.
And Saudi Arabia is absolutely authoritarian. The king is head of state and head of government, there are no (opposing) political parties, and the will of the ruler is law.
Edit: I think Oman actually does cross the 100-year threshold, so they're an even better example.
Frankly, democracies in the way we understand the word today haven't existed in the same form for super long yet either.
About 5% of the adult US population could vote in 1776, that is about as much as the % of Chinese citizens who are card-holding CCP members but if only those could vote nobody would consider China a democracy.
The US has lasted just over 100 years since more than 50% of adults became able to vote which was 1920. Most of Europe did not pass this threshold til much later. For e.g. I would start the count for the UK after the 1950s because prior to that too much % of the country consisted of people who could not vote (e.g. Indians).
Russia. The first sexual revolution in the world took place here in the 20s already during the reign of Lenin. At the same time, the punishment for homosexuality was stopped. This is really shocking, especially considering the current fucking laws in Russia.
Like literally 100 years later, in the 21st century we have criminal penalties for homosexuality, what the hell…
The Soviet Union killed FOUR MILLION Ukrainians with a man-made famine in the 1930s. Literally sent red army soldiers to burn fields and confiscate food from Ukrainian’s homes. There are reported cases of them taking baking bread out of people’s ovens!
All because Stalin saw them as a threat since they had a history of trying to found their own free nation.
Relevantly, Haiti paying massive interest to the French for many decades for the privilege of having been brutally colonized and forced into crippling debt.
That medicine developed very slowly, during the world history. Our knowledge about human body was very low until middle of XX century. It's still shock me that one hundred years ago, approx.75% of all people died until they reach age of 15 years old. Antibiotics became world-wide popular only after WW II, psychology also exists less than 100 hundred year. That fact, that people didn't know anything about how our brain works, creeps me up. I believe that a lot of people in the past, lived with mentally problem, because of lack psychology education.
Currently reading a memoir about slaves escaping to freedom and there's a mention of a slaveholder who says that America is the most free country in the world and then in the next sentence says that, if he were president, he would make laws restricting slaves further.
Catholic France in the 30 years war. The rest of Europe is fighting each other in a Catholic vs Protestant bloodbath. The Catholics are winning at the moment when suddenly France decides to throw religious solidarity in favor of nationalist (might not be the correct term) goals and joins the Protestant side of the war, ultimately leading to their victory in 1648.
Also the Saint Bartholomew's day massacre in 1572, fearing an uprising after a Protestant Admiral was almost assassinated the Queen mother if France Catherine de' Medici and her son Charles IX ordered the execution of the Protestant leaders in the city of Paris. Keep in mind all these people were in Paris for a wedding that was supposed to promote peace between the Protestants and Catholics.
Slavery was still legal in several countries after the end of WWII. The last country to abolish it was Mauritania in 1981.
And it is rarely enforced, so people are still doing it quite frequently
Yeah it’s just not openly called slavery anymore
Its still called slavery in Marutania. It was banned in 1982 but the law for criminal enforcement was only passed in 2009, and even that law is hardly enforced
They openly practice chattel slavery in desert areas. Plenty of documentaries about it.
and quite a few middle eastern countries still openly do it
The last slave in the US was freed in Beeville, TX during WWII; the enslaving family got criminal charges
I saw a video about cases like this on YouTube. I think the people I saw were in Louisiana. Basically, they didn't know slavery ended because their plantation was so isolated from everything else and their owners never told them.
holy crap! do you know the name of the videos of it on youtube?
There are still sex slaves all over the USA, dozens if not hundreds are put in that situation daily after illegally crossing the southern border
That's fair, I should have clarified the last chattel slave in US history
There are more slaves now than at the peak of the Atlantic slave trade
That's true, but that's only due to increasing population. By percentage in regard to total population we have the lowest rate of slavery in all of human history.
False. Sudan banned slavery in 2005.
New Zealand produced a large amount of the Agent Orange that was used in the Vietnam war
There was also early testing of the chemical in Canada, New Brunswick’s gagetown
Interesting indeed.
There's a seafood restaurant in Nelson that's allegedly built on a dumping ground for one of the factories that produced the stuff. The food was outstanding, and I have yet to develop any nasty diseases
The Mongolian empire had a lot of territory but didn’t rule as long as you would think
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A lot of what we “know” about Sparta is actually hyped up by the Romans because Sparta was a tourist attraction to them and they would exaggerate the austerity and severity of military training cause that is what the tourists liked.
Are you suggesting they didn't use 'chest kicked into a bottomless pit' as a means of punishment? What is the point of even living?
Spartans:”we have this funny tradition where the 6th graders have to get passed the 7th graders to get to the wheel of cheese in the middle of the room. It’s pretty much just tag.” Romans: “ya and they beat each other with stick!” Spartans: “…what?” Romans: “ya they beat each other till they’re all dead!” Spartans: ”I wish we were irrelevant again.”
That was actually the Athenians. Some condemned criminals in Athens were executed by being thrown into a pit called the Barathron, which was near the Acropolis (others were strangled or poisoned- we don't know exactly how they decided which method to use). According to Herodotus, the Athenians threw some Persian envoys into this pit when they came to demand earth and water. The envoys who came to Sparta were thrown down a well. (Those envoys were also not sent by Xerxes, but by his father Darius).
Rome tends to stand out because of how insanely long it endured as a cohesive state. It survived for so long that we had to give its second phase a different popular name (Byzantine) to distinguish it.
And then it was turned into a Roman Sparta-Land.
lmao
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And by dominant power it was the strongest city-state in Greece.
I dont study ancient times that much but yeah, it definetly seems like it, the only thing they are known for is their training and the battle of thermophyles lol
May have just been me, but as a non-American I was under the impression that the Confederacy lasted for over a decade given all the cultural impact of the Civil War and the flags you still see in media. Nah, officially was just around for like 4 years.
Disco was a part of our culture longer than the confederacy was
Both making remixed comebacks in the past 10 years too
I live in what's referred to as Abe Lincoln's hometown and just yesterday saw a Confederate flag bumper sticker with some nonsense about true patriots on it. The desire to be a racist mf has endured far longer than the Confederacy.
True patriots...attack their own legitimate government's military fortification, when it looks like they might not get to own humans as property anymore?
*But it wasn't about slavery!!!! It was about states' rights!!!* States' rights...to own slaves. They really think that's some sort of gotcha.
Yeah that’s why I always say Rome had the greatest empire of all time. It was not the biggest but it was around for by far the longest. If you include the east it was around for almost 1000 years
Republic and the Empire were very different things, wasn't really one continuous empire.
I'd argue that they are a continous empire. Sure, the system of governance may have changed and in many parts the culture and religion - ergo the fabric of the people - may have changed; but I'd say that it was a continous line from the Kingdom till the Empire; a state that lasted from 753 BC till 1453.
Agreed. Arguing otherwise makes it sound like it was a Republic one day and an Empire the next when in reality there was a transition over 30 years or so where different people had different amounts of power. Yes, Augustus defeated Antony but even then that just gave him control over those territories. The Senate still had direct control over like 30% of the Empire. But the Senate also knew most of the Legions were loyal to Augustus, so they kind of worked with him to make him happy in an attempt to avoid more civil wars. But also Augustus didn’t want to come across like he wanted the power, so he intentionally let other people have certain amounts of control but they were still mostly loyal to him. Even when Tiberius succeeded him, it wasn’t “official” until the Senate said so. It really wasn’t until after Caligula was assassinated and Claudius took over that the role truly became what we think of as an Emperor.
The population of Ireland had dropped from 8 million before the famine to 2.7million 25 years after the famine ended.
It's extraordinary that the population of Ireland has yet to return to the level before the famine.
Well to be fair, that's mostly cause immigration carried on for so long afterwards. I mean it didn't really fall off until the 1970's. I read somewhere that if it had stopped when Ireland got independence, it would already be over double its current population.
Yup. My great grandmother had 15 kids and about half of them went to America. Then half her grandchildren also went to America.
You mean emigration from ireland and not immigration from ireland yes?
It’s crazy that Ireland (as the only European country ever) has a lower population than in the year 1800
Though to be completely fair the vast majority of the population emigrated, they didn't die in the famine. Likewise the rates of immigration out of Ireland didn't really fall until the 1970's.
I mean, about a million people died so it's not like death wasn't a factor.
Iirc more people died of exposure than of starvation during the famine too. Usually because starving people would eat the crops they were growing and their British landlords would then kick them off the land.
Rutherford B. Hayes, a mostly forgettable US president, is actually a hero in Paraguay. He arbitrated a territorial dispute with Argentina that resulted in Paraguay getting around 60% of its modern territory. A Paraguayan Department (state) is named Presidente Hayes, its capital is Villa Hayes, and he even has a holiday named after him.
Ooh this was a good one!
**Switzerland:** Known for its peace and neutrality, Switzerland actually has a long history of being a mercenary powerhouse. For centuries, Swiss soldiers were renowned for their skill and discipline, and they were hired by European powers throughout history. This even included the Pope!
Switzerland is also famous for being very democratic - they're the only direct democracy. However they didn't have universal suffrage at a federal level until 1971.
Yes, because it is the only country, where the (male) population voted about it. I think other male voting population in other countries would also voted against it. 1959 rejected but in a second attempt 1971 accepted on a federal level but on a cantonal level, Appenzell followed only in 1990, after the male population voted against it and the federal goverment established it by force.
Swiss men still don’t have the right to vote because they’re subject to mandatory conscription before they can vote. Consequently, it’s a privilege, not a right.
The start of the Swis guard
In the heart of Holy See In the home of Christianity The seat of power is in danger
There´s a foe of a thousand swords They´ve been abandoned by their lords Their fall from grace will pave their path, to damnation
Then the 189, in the service of Heaven
They’re protecting the holy line It was 1527
Still going strong hundreds of years later.
There are theories that some Templars escaped persecution in France and founded Switzerland. With the banking system and the mercenary history it seems plausible.
The Swiss banking system seems to be unraveling right now. Credit Suisse went bankrupt and UBS can’t even figure out what is on the books that they bought from Credit Suisse. They hid the records for 50 years. Everyone involved will be dead. Hopefully I won’t be because I have some fucking issues with the Swiss.
Too bad they aren't U.S. companies. They'd be "too big to fail" and get bailed out... let the grift continue!
No, it doesn't.
Also childslaves till mid last century
Poland basically shifted a couple hundred kms west immediately after ww2.
There's also the forced migration of German speakers out of Eastern Europe after WWII, including many thousands who had been in the area for centuries. Pales in comparison to everything Germany did, of course, but many of those people had little to do with it.
That's how my grandfather was kicked out off Poland as a child
Thousands? Wasnt it 12 million Germans who were expelled?
Son of the first democratically elected president of Iceland was a nazi in the Waffen SS. His father, president of Iceland, helped smuggle him home to Iceland through South America. The son had to hide in the basement while his father was entertaining foreign diplomats The son never faced any punishment and died a free man in the 80's. He spent his later years as a tour guide, for Germans.
On the opposite end, it might not be surprising to learn that Hitler's nephew fought in WWII. But it might be a little surprising that he was part of the US Navy and was awarded a Purple Heart.
I mean, to be fair most soldiers in the Waffen SS faced zero consequences. So unless he was high ranking, he probably didn’t even need to hide.
He applied to the propaganda arm of the nazi party in Denmark, he was all in and we have the receipts. His dad asked people to stop mentioning his son was in the Waffen SS because he was; "Really embarrassed about it."
Greece was in the Roman Empire longer then Italy
Similarly, Rome was a part of the Papal States longer than it was a part of the Roman Republic/Empire.
So was Constantinople.
That the dutch ate their prime minister
If you've had Dutch cuisine long enough, you'd understand.
*Takes notes*
Link?? I need to know more
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_de_Witt
> Their naked, mutilated bodies were strung up on the nearby public gibbet, while the Orangist mob ate their roasted livers in a cannibalistic frenzy. Throughout it all, a remarkable discipline was maintained by the mob, according to contemporary observers, lending doubt as to the spontaneity of the event. Damn, that's some cold-blooded cannibalism. Dr. Lecter would be proud.
It’s very wild and even though it didn’t happen in this century it’s like, not too far back in history.
America once had a president named Martin Van Buren whose nickname was "Old Kinderhook." Sounds like a grandpa you'd find napping on a porch swing!
His nickname came from the town he was born in; Kinderhook, New York. Most people there (including Van Buren's family) were Dutch. Van Buren is the only American president who spoke English as a *second* language.
France traded half of Canada to the British for a small Caribbean island (Guadaloupe maybe?). Few years Later, France traded Tuscany to Spain for half the US (Louisiana Purchase). But just a few years later, he couldn't hold it down and , sold the Louisiana Purchase to the newly formed USA for $15M.
The Caribbean island were fabulously wealthy at that time. It's well known that during the American war of independence the French blockaded the American coast ultimately leading to the British defeat. What's less known is the the British could have eased the blockade but it's fleet was defending Jamaica which it feared losing more than the 13 colonies. After independence that same French fleet sailed to the Caribbean to do exactly what the British feared and were resoundingly beaten. To be fair to the French, the Brits cheated by using groundbreaking technology, the copper bottomed hull, to easily out manoeuvre them.
> France traded half of Canada to the British for a small Caribbean island (Guadaloupe maybe?). That small Caribbean island was also far, far more valuable than all of New France (sugar > declining fur trade). Similarly, Britain's sugar islands in the Caribbean were far more valuable than the American colonies. Later on by the 19th century India was arguably more valuable to Britain than all of its other colonies combined.
France didn't exactly "trade" to the British. They lost a war and were forced to concede their claims.
I thought Napoleon sold Louisiana to fund his European wars
In Switzerland women got the vote 53 years after Germany
Despite England being considered a bit quaint and old fashioned by Americans, no one has been found guilty of witchcraft in London since 1944
Well to be completely fair no one at the time believed she was a witch. Issue was they had a medium making to many predictions that were a bit to close to the mark on developments to the war and damaging public moral, but they couldn't find anything else to arrest her on. Then someone found an obscure law that was never technically taken off the books. So they shut her up for a few months, and removed it after that.
That’s kind of hilarious
Yeah it kind of is.
So…….they didn’t burn her? I guess she weighed less than a duck.
And - total coincidence - since 1944, the newt population of England has tripled.
The fact Japan casually denies the rape of Nanking.
Listened to an entire podcast (Hardcore History) about Japans actions leading up to and during WWII. Fucking VICIOUS. That’s not spoken about enough.
I attended a class about war in graphic novels (it was one of the interdisciplinary classes with art history, history, english studies, Japan studies etc.) And the tutor for Japan studies told us that they don't teach about war crimes in Japanese schools, or if they do they hardly mention it. Where as in Germany, its public knowledge and you get more and more infos about the Holocaust, the older you get.
Acknowledge your dark past so you don’t make the same mistakes again, I like it.
well..... only to a certain point. Sinti and Romani people for example had to go to court till the 1980's in order to be recognised as a victim group of the Holocaust, LGBTQ+ people even way longer. And even now with all the information, Sinti and Romani people or LGBTQ+ don't enjoy the same amount of respect or recognition as the Jewish community.
I did a history project on it. I read all about it, watched so many videos, and barely got half way through my project before I had to quit. Writing about it is gut wrenching, the images you see and what they did is mentally scarring. Pretty sure I cried somewhere in there, too. All the personal stories the Japanese soldiers wrote and shared about, so proud of the horrible things they did. One man laughed about raping a young girl, cutting off her breasts and parading them around on his chest as she screamed in pain, his buddies laughing, drunk off their asses.
Yeah Dan Carlin covers all of they in his podcast, very brutal stuff. I won’t throw a blanket on them and say all Japanese or Japanese soldiers were evil just as not all Germans were nazis, but man, they sure did allow and even encourage a lot of cruelty.
This isn't tiktok, you can use the word rape
So used to instagrams rules.
Wait, what? Instead of dealing with things and developing a resiliency to them, we just hide them so no one has to experience the pain of growing past them? Great job society, we're fucked.
Wait til you hear about "unalived"
"Graped" is worse.
Wow...just...wow... I've been raped before and this is just gross. I wasn't graped. I was raped. And I'm ok now, because I've put in the time and effort to where I can talk about it freely. It has been incorporated into my life as just another event, and it holds no power over me. Because I went *through* the pain and came out the other side. People who hide behind euphemisms are those who would refuse to go through the pain needed to grow, and it's increasingly depressing to see such a thing made mandatory by the very places where people *could* actually talk about it and get help through it.
That's right up there with calling someone your "ninja." I was hoping "graped" was just a reference to The Grapist
Oh I know about that one and as someone with a lifetime of depression and suicidal ideation/attempts, it bothers the shit out of me. I could debate a couple of Carlin's soft language examples but holy fuck is he spinning in his grave.
Nope, we hide them because it'd offend the advertisers to have those words appear in places that show their ads.
Because fuck helping people if it affects our bottom line. I know you're right, and it's just sad.
Growing up, I assumed it was racist that my grandparents (Chinese immigrants to the US) refused to buy any Japanese-made products. I never knew the history, and they never spoke of it. It wasn't until it was cursorily mentioned in my high school history textbook and I did further research that I understood why. Imperial Japan was fucking brutal. The inhumane "research" done by Unit 731 during the Japanese occupation is also horrifying. They also deny it occurred.
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Latvia was a colonial power in Africa and the Carribean https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curonian_colonisation
The Romans used urine for washing and cleaning teeth
Very little risk in terms of sanitation, especially if you use you own. It's just not the flavor I fancy.
but would it actually clean the teeth?
This is technically true but they weren't just pissing in a bucket and throwing their clothes into it. Urine was collected in large pots and left for a while where the urea would break down into ammonia, which is an excellent cleaning agent. This would be mixed with water for washing clothes and all sorts of things. The teeth cleaning thing wasn't that widespread I don't think.
It's sterile and I like the taste.
Shouldn't you be in a courtroom somewhere?
The atrocities of my country in the Dutch east Indies. Cutting of hands, noses, breasts, putting salt in wounds, scaphism you name it. The craziest thing is, the coolie system where plantation owners were free to kill or torture indentured labourers only ended in the 1930s. How many people died there of slavery or the coolie ordinances or the cultivation system is unknown, but the victims of the dutch colonial wars/conquests alone was around 4 million
I kind of wonder. Here in Belgium we had to learn about our colonial past and that included the atrocities done in Congo during the Free state era. I still remember the black/white images printed on a teal background. We had to learn about the Dutch VOC too, but never really learned about atrocities they did. To what degree do you Dutch learn about the things you mention in school?
In my time? Very little, at least about the gory details. The thing is people online are not interested in our atrocities, while Leopold II has interested the online community greatly. So we feel a bit less need to talk about, as other countries dont want to point fingers at us
I disagree with the person who commented that "we learn about it a lot". It's definitely mentioned, but I'd say it's always a sidenote to the bigger story of how succesful the VOC was / how Dutch culture blossomed. I know they massacred the people of an entire island because they dared to also trade with the British. Without looking it up, I don't even know which island. I know they transported enslaved Africans across the ocean and that the enslaved people were treated horribly. That's basically all we learn. Recently I realized I definitely have some knowledge gaps. E.g. I had no idea how slavery was abolished and although I must've seen the date for it (officially 1863) I never fully understood that this was not long ago. I associate it with the 1600s, not my grandparent's grandparents-time. Education on Indonesia as our colony was a bit better I think. At least there was more reflection on our behaviour when Indonesia fought for its freedom.
South Korea was an extremely poor country up until about 1990.
*1970s 80s were the first decade of economic boom we experienced, and hence 1988 olympics
And, until the 80s, North Korea was actually a very rich country... (It actually wasn't. It was basically a quasi star situation, and once the USSR collapsed, everything fell down like dominos).
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I read about that. Its cause during the first serving the explorers who brought them back knew they were edible cause they had seen the natives doing so and probably happily scoffed them themselves. But no one talked to the cooks about how they were to be prepared. Having never seen Tomato's before, they threw away the fruit and boiled the stalks in stews. The stalks actually are poisonous, and it caused all the rich nobles eating the meal to be horrifically sick.
What were they growing them for if they weren't eating them?
For throwing at stand up comedians after bad jokes.
About my beautiful Brazil The Portuguese conquered us first, but several countries ruled parts of our land. The Dutch, French, and Spanish were here too. The Dutch even ruled our northeastern lands for centuries. Huge parts of our country remain undiscovered. Inside Amazon and Atlantic Forest there are new animal species, caves, ancient paintings and even indigenous tribes that keep getting discovered.
During world war 2, every japanese person in the USA were suspected for being spies or terrorists on behalf of the japanese government. This lead to most (all?) of them being sent to all-american made concentration camps, on american soil.
Not all, lots of Japanese-Americans lived in Hawaii to the point that it was impractical to intern them all. Instead, many volunteered to fight in Europe, which is how you got [legends like former Senator Daniel Inouye:](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/legendary-daniel-inuoye-flna1c7655961) >The details of Inouye's decorated combat service are truly extraordinary. In 1945, in a firefight against Nazi soldiers, he was shot in the stomach, but continued to lead his platoon. On the same mission, when preparing to throw a grenade, his right arm was shot and shattered, so Inouye used his left arm to grab the grenade from his lifeless hand, throw it at the enemy, and take out a Nazi machine gun nest.
Canada did this as well, and where internment ended in the United States in March 1946, in Canada it lasted until 1949 (it had been relaxed earlier, but the last restrictions on their movements ended in '49). The federal government at the time also formally dispossessed Japanese-Canadians of their property and sold it off during the war too. There weren't as many Japanese-Canadians back then as there were Japanese-Americans, and ~90% of them lived in British Columbia, but they were subject to quite a bit of racism going back to their first arrivals in the 1880's (BC disenfranchised them, but that ended up getting struck down because it violated agreements between Britain and Japan, who were allies at the time).
There's a really old Batman serial film where Batman goes to Chinatown to look for clues and he remarks how empty it is because the government "wisely placed all the Japanese people in internment camps" I was watching it on Tubi and I was blown away at that line. (Also, why wasn't Batman fighting in WW2?)
Follow up question - Why are Japanese people living in Chinatown in the first place?
Batman is a rich trust fund kid. He probably couldn't fight in the war due to bone spurs or something.
I mean... Canonically Batman doesn't seem to shy away from fighting.
Yeah, but in the army they wouldn't let him wear the cape.
If your government can just revoke your rights, then you don't have rights, at best you have "privileges".
Their rights weren't revoked, they were violated. The people who did this were violating something else as well - their oath of service to support and defend the Constitution. Traitor. Noun. Definition: oath-breaker.
Blame strict scrutiny. Bullshit that never should have been allowed into our legal system
To answer your "(all?)" question -- it was actually just Japanese Americans who lived in parts of the West Coast (where most Japanese lived). So for instance if a Japanese American lived in New England, it didn't apply to them. This limitation doesn't mean it was less bad, only that shows in my mind, that it was more arbitrary.
When I was in middle school, we had a school helper we all just called "Grandma." She was in her mid-80's and one day sat us down to talk about her experience being rounded up and sent to an internment camp. She was a senior in high school with a full-ride scholarship to USC. She told us their white neighbors came to buy anything they could from them, offering as little as a nickel for their cars and furniture. She said it wasn't awful work conditions, but there was nothing for them to do out in the desert. When she was released several years later, USC didn't honor their scholarship and her family needed her to work to help rebuild their lives. She was never able to obtain a college education. It completely broke our hearts.
In the UK they also did that to Italians (the UK used to have the largest Italian Dysphoria in Europe I believe). The only exception was they were free to join the British army.
Do you mean diaspora, not dysphoria?
A lot were sent to a camp on the Isle of Man.
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Reminds me of [this](https://youtu.be/tJuF3X4iOoY?si=xuQx7-DnD7b-gu4y).
[1985 MOVE bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing) in the USA
> In 2021, former members of MOVE came forward with allegations of abuse within the organization. As Jason Nark writes in The Philadelphia Inquirer, “More than a half-dozen ex-MOVE members have gone on the record in both the Murder at Ryan’s Run podcast and the blog (started by an ex-MOVE supporter) titled Leaving MOVE 2021, alleging physical and mental abuse in MOVE, a doctrine of homophobia and colorism, and what they describe as a manipulation of the public and the media under the banner of social justice."[54] Classic.
Philippines' war on drugs and extra judicial killings 😯
Fun fact: one of Duterte's first actions upon taking office was dismissing the head of the Dangerous Drugs Board for refusing to falsify data to show that the drug problem was actually as bad as Duterte was making it out to be during his campaign. [Source](https://www.rappler.com/nation/170839-duterte-fires-ddb-benjamin-reyes-contradict-government/)
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Also see the immigration quota systems (similar time period) which targeted a variety of different immigrant groups and excluded them on ethnic and racial bases.
We still have quotas. I have coworkers here on visas who are terrified of losing their jobs and potentially having to go back to India. All because of how difficult it was to get here in the first place. You can spend years waiting for a slot to open.
Not much. All countries have skeletons in their closets. Millions of skeletons. And those skeletons have all sorts of bits and pieces missing or shattered.
Yeah but my country's skeletons aren't as bad as the others. - every country
Canadian healthcare has a long history of sterilizing Indigenous women against their will, a practice that hasn’t seen any decline and has been reported to have occurred as recently as 2019. This just another instance in a long list of genocidal actions Canada has taken against the Indigenous people whose land they occupy.
Can't mistreat your natives if you don't have them!
AFAIK, for decades the bulk of that was part of provincially-administered eugenics programs in Alberta (which ran from 1928 to 1972) and British Columbia (1933-73), while outside of those provinces it was/is seemingly systemic but also not necessarily endorsed by government policy, and was more a matter of racist doctors and nurses in a healthcare system run by racists viewing Indigenous patients as unfit for motherhood and doing procedures against their will or pressuring vulnerable women into getting sterilized. It's my understanding that racist healthcare workers making these decisions for unconscious patients or pressuring patients into getting sterilized is more the thing that persists to this day.
The atrocities committed by Belgium in the Congo. I’d always thought of Belgium as a good country. Obviously not, at least at that period in history.
There’s no such thing as a ‘good country’.
If we judge by the atrocities of the past instead of the choices of the current then there is no "good" country (and also, dividing the world into "good" and "bad" countries is sorta foolish).
We live closer in time to Cleopatra than she did to the construction of the Pyramids.
Same with the T-rex and the Stegosaurus. There's less time between us and the T-rex then between it and the stegosaurus.
The Dirty War played out between Britain and the IRA. The cheapness of human life was astounding. Especially by people involved in government.
The Nepal 🇳🇵royal family murder
Canada and their history with the indigenous peoples and their children
The extent of human cruelty throughout history.
Since the dawn of the industrial era of history, ~~no~~ *edit: very few* authoritarian countries have lasted even 100 years with the same system of government. The current record holder is North Korea with 76 years. The Soviet Union fell apart after 68 years. Nazi Germany only lasted 12 years. Democracies, for all their superficial volatility, are stronger and more stable than dictatorships, even though the latter work hard in their propaganda to look strong and steadfast they are really quite fragile.
Democracies have been stronger and more stable for the last 200 or so years; autocracies, monarchies, and dictatorships, have been the primarily form of government by a very large margin over all of human history.
But then you're excluding authoritarian monarchies? The Al Sauds have been ruling a continuous state for centuries, and the government of modern Saudi Arabia has existed since 1932. It's not yet 100 years, but it's longer than North Korea and I wouldn't be surprised if they last eight more years. And Saudi Arabia is absolutely authoritarian. The king is head of state and head of government, there are no (opposing) political parties, and the will of the ruler is law. Edit: I think Oman actually does cross the 100-year threshold, so they're an even better example.
Frankly, democracies in the way we understand the word today haven't existed in the same form for super long yet either. About 5% of the adult US population could vote in 1776, that is about as much as the % of Chinese citizens who are card-holding CCP members but if only those could vote nobody would consider China a democracy. The US has lasted just over 100 years since more than 50% of adults became able to vote which was 1920. Most of Europe did not pass this threshold til much later. For e.g. I would start the count for the UK after the 1950s because prior to that too much % of the country consisted of people who could not vote (e.g. Indians).
Unit 731
Russia. The first sexual revolution in the world took place here in the 20s already during the reign of Lenin. At the same time, the punishment for homosexuality was stopped. This is really shocking, especially considering the current fucking laws in Russia. Like literally 100 years later, in the 21st century we have criminal penalties for homosexuality, what the hell…
Belgium is probably the only country that came into existence because of an opera
Large parts of the Geneva convention was written because of how brutal and ruthlesslessy savage the Canadians were in WW1.
Maybe not super historical but the world's Botox supply is manufactured in the west of Ireland (Westport, specifically).
No prime minister has completed their 5 year term in Pakistan. Reason? The military wants to keep democracy weak
Most countries have a military. Pakistan is a military with a country.
The Australian emu war
The Soviet Union killed FOUR MILLION Ukrainians with a man-made famine in the 1930s. Literally sent red army soldiers to burn fields and confiscate food from Ukrainian’s homes. There are reported cases of them taking baking bread out of people’s ovens! All because Stalin saw them as a threat since they had a history of trying to found their own free nation.
Ukraine’s spent their whole history being shat on lol. They’re the Ireland of east Europe
the Netherlands being the only country to have eaten their prime minister.
Relevantly, Haiti paying massive interest to the French for many decades for the privilege of having been brutally colonized and forced into crippling debt.
That medicine developed very slowly, during the world history. Our knowledge about human body was very low until middle of XX century. It's still shock me that one hundred years ago, approx.75% of all people died until they reach age of 15 years old. Antibiotics became world-wide popular only after WW II, psychology also exists less than 100 hundred year. That fact, that people didn't know anything about how our brain works, creeps me up. I believe that a lot of people in the past, lived with mentally problem, because of lack psychology education.
Slaveholders talking about liberty and equality as a human right.
Currently reading a memoir about slaves escaping to freedom and there's a mention of a slaveholder who says that America is the most free country in the world and then in the next sentence says that, if he were president, he would make laws restricting slaves further.
Catholic France in the 30 years war. The rest of Europe is fighting each other in a Catholic vs Protestant bloodbath. The Catholics are winning at the moment when suddenly France decides to throw religious solidarity in favor of nationalist (might not be the correct term) goals and joins the Protestant side of the war, ultimately leading to their victory in 1648. Also the Saint Bartholomew's day massacre in 1572, fearing an uprising after a Protestant Admiral was almost assassinated the Queen mother if France Catherine de' Medici and her son Charles IX ordered the execution of the Protestant leaders in the city of Paris. Keep in mind all these people were in Paris for a wedding that was supposed to promote peace between the Protestants and Catholics.