Partitions I

Nobody asked but …

I hope to make an appearance on Skyler’s podcast soon.  I am scheduled for the evening of February 21.  Let’s hope that holds up.  I hope to talk about the historical statist practice of dividing and re-combining territory.  Our current attitude toward the Earth is a conviction that it needs to be marked up with borders, divisions, and brands.  This attitude is historical, and can be traced back in the Western world to Alexander the Great, nay even further to instances in the Cradle of Civilization, Mesopotamia.  But earlier examples are not as clearly linked to the bright web that starts with Alexander.

The biggest dog in the fight was the Roman Empire, followed by the British Empire, the European Hegemony, and the American Empire.  But the first is gone.  The second is waning.  And the last two are in full sway, regarding the Western hemisphere.

There is something in the DNA of the West that makes it OK to engage, via the elites, in a giant game of Risk.  It is appropriate that the current box for this game depicts images reminiscent of the Crimean War, for the Crimea has been a past site of aristocratic land grabs, as is the case again today, with different players.

I plan, in a series of blogs, to examine some notable aristocratic re-shuffling of land without due regard for the people thereof:

  • Iraq, from the Ottoman Empire, which had crammed Kurds, Sunni, and Shia into a single state.
  • The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, artifacts of the British Empire.
  • India and the Pakistans, more artifacts of English imperialism.
  • Catalonia, and other fragments on the edges of Spain.
  • Vietnam.

— Kilgore Forelle

 

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