No.265195[Reply]
Throughout the entire 19th century, British scholars and journalists regarded all things German with remarkable sympathy—German history as much as its culture and institutions.
For a long time, Germany was seen in England as a land of freedom: as a federal union of states, with parliamentary traditions, autonomous cities, Protestantism, and a principle of freedom carried into the Slavic East by German settlers.
In contrast, the Romance states were associated with authoritarian forms of rule, which manifested themselves in the papacy of Italy, the Spanish Inquisition, or the militarized France of the Bonapartist dictatorships.
It was only in the 20th century that this perception fundamentally reversed, giving way to the notion, still widespread today, that Germany had always been the aggressor and the natural enemy of Europe.
The idea that Germany was once above all a land of freedom will undoubtedly one day itself become the subject of historical research—not least because it apparently was closely linked to a shift in British foreign policy.
Even into the first years of the 20th century, when Anglo-Saxon historiography reached its peak with scholars like Lord Acton and Frederic William Maitland, the admiration of English historians for Germany can scarcely be overestimated; they openly acknowledged understanding themselves as its pupils.
The British writer Thomas Arnold, too, did not see Germany as a state with a particular inclination toward authoritarian systems of government and rigid order-structures, but rather as a place where law and justice, virtue and freedom had taken their origin, and he regarded it as a distinction of the first rank that the English belonged to the family of Germanic peoples.
Accordingly, up to the beginning of the First World War, an image of Germany as a peaceful land of fairy tales and dreamy castles, populated by industrious, law-abiding, and disciplined people, shaped the perception of the world in the 18th and 19th centuries.
5 posts and 1 image reply omitted. Click reply to view. No.265218
Lmao, I just remembered David Myatt who is an Al Qaeda/ satanist nigga
No.265221
>>265216No point in trying to understand reality anymore it feels like
I wonder why I stayed a good anglo kid instead of joining a cult like that or anything
I always had my fists up and hated these niggers, I struggle to understand inborn traits versus traits created by psychological conditioning and trauma
No.265250
Before unification, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was not some backward hell hole. Prior to the Risorgimento, the South had Italy’s largest industrial base at the time (shipyards, arms factories, textiles), Naples was one of the largest cities in Europe and the Kingdom had low public debt, low taxation and a solid treasury.
After Garibaldi and his army unified the country, the south experienced severe economic shocks. Taxes increased dramatically and southern Italian industries were outcompeted or dismantled in favor of northern ones.
Tariffs favored industries in the north, public investment was directed north in the form of railways, ports and factories. Church lands in the south were seized by the new government and sold off to wealthy individuals and families.
New laws were handed down by the new government in Turin, then Rome. The south’s young men conscripted to the new Italian army and the south revolted.
Something akin to a civil war took place between 1861-1870 with heavy handed tactics doled out by the northern dominated government. To many in the south, the country wasn’t unified, but a foreign power overthrew the Bourbons and now dominated their lives.
The result of this economic and cultural devastation was millions of immigrants leaving southern Italy for the US, Canada, South America and Australia.
So no…they didn’t look out at Portofino and decide Hoboken New Jersey was preferable.