History

Religion wasn't the main reason for colonialism . Other, more major, reasons for colonialism were:

- Financial gain: Acquiring resources that were not available at home to fuel industrialisation & acquiring raw materials to sell. 
- Prestige: If everyone has a colony except you people may start to question your status in the world. 
- Strategic reasons: Planting your flag on islands and regions that are situated near your rivals colonies would allow you a springboard on which to attack them in war.  
- Cause they could: If you had an opportunity to expand your territory massively why wouldn't you? Many European nations colonised because they had both the means and the opportunity to colonise places and saw no reason not to.
- Living space: Some places were colonised because they seemed like nice places to live and to set up communities.  

Another reason that applied to some (but not all or a majority of) colonialists:

- Cause they were evil:  A few select people like Leopold II colonised for the sake of brutalising and oppressing the natives. They didn't care about religion and spreading of culture. They just wanted to take things and if they thought it necessary, commit atrocities to make their point.  In the case of Leopold, people around the world were so shocked by the way he treated the natives he was actually forced to relinquish control of his colony in Congo. 

I think it is also important to note that the destruction of native civilizations were caused by disease as well as European aggression. And in some instances natives worked with Europeans to get revenge on other native tribes/civilizations that they despised. For example, the Spanish had considerable support from tribes that hitherto were being terrorised by the Aztecs to defeat them.

As to whether it was justified or not it depends on what way you look at it and the way you think colonialism changed the world.  I think Europeans and other nations had a right to act in their own interests (ie. To act to retain their position in the world) but I don't think it should have been done at the expense of so many people's lives and with such brutality.    Colonialism wasn't all bad or all good but I think that in some ways it changed the world for the better  and helped it move forward.   Because whether people like to admit it or not the Western countries did establish law and order to places that were once lawless and tribal.

Either way I think people need to move on from colonialism .  For too long has this topic been used by white-guilt promoting race-baiters to justify hating the Western world. Here and now is what matters.

. (Replace Romans with Europeans or Westerners ).   .  It fits this topic so well.

The anthem of the German Reich sounds familiar...

I should add that this person fled for the Iraq government because they had some of his family executed and he does/did in no way support Sadam Hussein.

Well. he arrived in the Netherlands 20 years ago. The information is no longer relevant. He only said he saw nuclear weapons, or thought he saw them though, not sure how much he actually knows. But before he was granted access to the Netherlands the Dutch police interrogated him and his family, not sure what he told them exactly.

Because he wasn't a threat? I don't see how having some information about the Iraq government would make him a threat. After the first Iraq War begun some of his family members were executed by the Iraq government because they had connections to the UN and they were a minority (both ethnic and religious). Obviously he did not like the Iraq government...

The stuff I have to study now is probably the most interesting I have ever had to study. It's about the end of the Cold War and the Paris Charter for a New Europe. It's really interesting how Gorbachev had an alternative vision for the European Integration project. He wanted to reform the European Conference of Security to a new united Europe, which included the Soviet-Union... Western Europe agreed to it, but then went behind his back to create the European Union, which excluded Russia. And that is apparently why a lot of Russians, including Putin, are against the EU and would love to see it collapse.

This is the only kind of history I care about. The kind that makes you understand the present.

Anyways got my history exam on Friday. It's basically 3 questions.

Part A is focused on Unit 3 only and the same format as Unit 1 and 2 tests, have to answer 2/5 questions provided.

Part B is an essay question for the entire course. 3 options, we got to pick 1

The present is extremely boring and filled with incompetence IMO... will be interesting how they teach 1990-2016 in 100 years... stupid shit like Political drama and dumbass refugees are the highlights.

Only a year late... but Germany declared war on the US for a couple reasons. The biggest reason was because Japan joined the "Axis" as we would call it in late 1940. Since Japan decided to attack the United States, Germany joined in as a show of good faith. There was always an idea that Japan and Germany would be able to meet up in the Middle East but Japan wasn't able to successfully get past India at any point in the war and for Germany that plan fell apart by late 1942 when the war in Africa became fairly one sided.

Now for the second reason, although the USA was technically neutral before late 1941 they were however still trading with Britain and the US ports were being used by the allies for supplies. Germany attacking a neutral country wouldn't look good so by declaring war it makes the U-Boat campaign look a lot more official in the Atlantic.

Japan never stood a chance against the United States, but the US attacking Japan was inevitable due to the Japanese goal of conquering the Pacific and the US at the time had quite a lot of interest in the area specifically in the Philipines which they owned. Japan figured a preemptive strike was their only possible chance, try and catch them off guard by taking out a large portion of their Pacific fleet specially the 3 aircraft carriers that were supposed to be stationed at Pearl Harbor. However none of those Aircraft carriers were present, one was away on a "supply run" and the others were away on "training excerises" because all of the aircraft carriers were coincidently absent at the time of the Japanese attack this has raised a question of conspiracy that the United States knew the attack would happen and allowed it to proceed to give them justification to enter the war as a means of defense rather then as an aggressor. The US had no real ties to the European countries by supporting a position of neutrality so they didn't have an obligation to enter the war in 1939.

Germany didn't really want to fight the US, in fact Hitler respected them more then the Europeans for the most part but war with them was inevitable especially after Japan's first strike at Pearl Harbor and because looking at History the US likely would have joined mid ways through the war anyways similar to how they joined WW1 in 1917. If for no other reason they would have joined to be a deterrent to Russia most likely.