The immigration debate then and now....

[carolinw]

I've noticed something interesting as I'm working on my historical novel set in the 6th century AD in the Italy of the Ostrogoths.  The immigration/assimilation questions the Ostrogroths faced are frighteningly similar to the ones our various illegal/legal immigrants face now in the United States

Comments

[carolinw]

I think the original problem here is that the construct is artificial to begin with. Theoderich planted his Goths next to the Romans, and similar things happened in other places. The whole thing wasn't organic to begin with, a bigger power decreed that such and such ethnicities had to live next/with each other. And generally, some catalyst destroyed the whole construct. And the result is what we call so euphemistically now "ethnic cleansing" - call it by its true name - "mass murder," why don't we???

Don't know whether we can prevent "delamination," as you so aptly call it. The voice of reason seems to lose out consistently when faced with mob violence.... Why fight a 25 year war in Italy? Why fight a 30 year war in central Europe? What is won???

And, yeah, Theoderich was way before his time with his vision - only too depressing that it took forever for somebody else to understand the same thing, that tolerance is the only thing that can prevent war and its attendant cruelties.

Amazing how little mankind has changed over the millenia - we just have better tools to spread prejudice and kill each other with. Listening to Loreena Mc Kennitt right now, and her melancholy music from "The Book of Secrets" suits my mood when I contemplate mankind, my less and less favorite species....

[yakalskovich]

Not every such experiment has to fail - Frederick the Great successfully settled French Huguenots and Dutch artisans in Prussia, and that never fell apart. Frederick, however, fought lots of wars, but those were 18th century wars against neighbours, not really those brutal 'ethnic cleansing' affairs that people had in the 20th century, and in the 6th.

I think I said somewhere that I suspected Felix Dahn didn't fully realise how horrible such all-out war was, and quite comprehend what sort of atrocities people would commit on each other in such situations. In one of those 18th and 19th centuries for territory, you'd try not to break too much or unsettle the entire population, as you wanted them later.

[carolinw]

No, I don't think Dahn realised this at all - if you believe Procopius, starvation got so bad in some sieges that there were instances of cannibalism. Also think of the sack of Milan or Tibur (that one by Totila), where pretty much the whole male population got killed and what was left of the women was either sold into slavery or given wholesale to the Franks in the case of Milan. Dahn doesn't go there... but then he wouldn't, as that kind of thing wasn't openly discussed in his time.

I'll use some of that, and also in a modified version something I heard today on the news, of a theatre company run by Iraq vets presenting plays depicting the reality of war in Iraq. This ex-marine was talking about how he was watching this Iraqi die; both of his legs had been taken off American fire, and the guy begged him with gestures and cries to shoot him, put him out off his misery. Our marine, thinking of a buddy he'd lost a couple of days before to an IED, unpacked his lunch and ate it while watching the Iraqi die slowly - he said he wanted to see him suffer. Now, naturally, he has to live with that and tries to show in plays what war does to people. It was pretty stunning to listen to.... The marine corps, by the way, isn't happy about him putting stuff like that in his plays....

Nothing you'd find in Dahn, either, but you'll find stuff like that in my version - Teja will have to put at least a couple of his own buddies out of their misery, a common custom in the "good old days." That'll generate some soul-searching....

[yakalskovich]

Dahn doesn't quite understand how dark the dark ages really were, I fear. Having lived for parts of the 20th century (and just the parts that I have been alive for have been pretty bloody, from Vietnam over ex-Yugoslavia, the wars in the Near East, Iraq, Afghanistan, Rwanda -- to say nothing of WWII my grandmother has been telling me about), we see ourselves forced to put some of the blood and gore back into his sanitised, heroic tales when reading them.

And then there's the whole question of rape and random cruelty and the things humans will do to each other (like your tale of the Iraq veteran) when their inhibitions fall, and they are allowed to do such things with impunity. People will do anything when they get away with it; the 'eleventh commandment' of Thou Shalt Not Allow Yourself To Be Caught seems to be the strongest of them all, mutatis mutandis...