posted
Yesterday was 200 years since a deal was struck between Thomas Jefferson and Naploleon.
In exchange for some cash to keep Napoleon's army in the black, the US got a large chunk of the North American Continent.
Of course, this was a chunk belonging to Spain, but Spain was a puppet of Napoleon so they agreed.
The natives, who's property had just been sold out from under them, did not get a chance to comment on the deal.
Yesterday, the cheif of the Osage Nation, who claims 95% of his people died as a result of this sale, along with the Spanish Ambassador and the French Ambassador came to my city and honored the occasion.
It was the French Ambassador who was the most interesting. He described the sale as a great investment for France. The money may have quickly vanished into the wars of Napoleon, but by giving the land to the young US, we were able to grow food that would feed the world, and brave men who would later die for France's freedom. He proclaimed that France will never forget those sacrifices.
The Spanish Ambassador was given a minute of silence for those killed by the train bombings.
On how history comes around, IIRC much of that money that Napoleon recieved went to pay for troops to stop a bloody revolution in the small country of Haiti.
Hatian slaves, outnumbering there masters at several hundred to one, were tired of the brutal living conditions, and inspired by the revolutions in France and the US, ousted their owners.
It was not pretty.
Napoleon, hearing the Hatian leader clame to be the Napoleon of the west, sent an army to retake Haiti.
France lost.
Yet the cost to Haiti was enormous, to the point that the following peace treaty was the first time in known history where the winning side paid reparations to the losers.
Kind of like the US rebuilding Iraq.
The revolution was so bloody that many US Slave owners began fearing that it would spread, and that all slave freeings would result in massacares of the owners. This fed the paranoia of the south whenever abolition was mentioned, and may be one of the causes for the civil war, and ongoing racial tensions.
History is not linear. History is a net.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Dude, I was just on Neal Stephenson's Metaweb site and it lets you edit other people's posts! I would so love to be able to correct all the spelling/typo problems I see and have mine corrected as well!
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quote: Yet the cost to Haiti was enormous, to the point that the following peace treaty was the first time in known history where the winning side paid reparations to the losers.
Kind of like the US rebuilding Iraq.
But totally different.
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