>Romans invade many European peoples
>enslave them
>genocide, crucify, and torture minorities and sometimes entire populations
>forcefully integrate them
>give them civilization
>build aqueducts, teach them reading and writing, build roads, infrastructure etc.
>said european nations are better off because of this to this day and are all eternally grateful to the Romans and suck them off in history classes
>said Europe nations do the same thing to other people for a shorter amount of time with less slavery (outside of Africa)
>this is a bad thing and those people now eternally hate Europeans despite getting exponentially more advancement, comfort, and resources from the Europeans compared to Romans
If you ask almost any modern historian, they will admit that what the Romans did was just as bad as African colonization.
But yet they would generally have a lot more positive things to say about Romans outside of Latium than Europeans outside Europe in a regular conversation if you hadn't sprung that question on them prior putting them on the defensive
A thousand years of time perhaps? You never know OP, people might be sucking European Imperialist cock in a thousand years.
I should hope they do because if you look at history objectively they brought everyone into the modern comforts we have now. Without colonization we could not have this conversation right now. Not only would you have to throw out the whole internet and electricity but America wouldn't exist meaning Moot likely wouldn't have existed due to overpopulation in England and no LULZ would be made.
Because Rome was the first empire to allow its subjects to be relatively independent so long as they remain loyal to the Roman empire. Countries conquered by Rome didn't feel enslaved, they felt like they were contributing to a greater whole. It's what America is doing today with the UN. It's actually genius.
Greeks and Persians already did that before and it's possible Egyptians and Sumerians did as well but we don't have as much hard evidence that far back
Most of Latin America was eager to adopt Spanish ways after a generation, they became Catholic mostly willingly and assimilated in other ways.
It is interesting how the US has had world hegemony for 70 years now. I wonder if in the future they will show maps with all the NATO nations and countries that obey the UN depicted as US satellite states. Same with the EU under Germany.
>Greeks
Yes, but their empire didn't last. It split into pieces and then Rome came along.
>Persians
Yes, but nobody cares about Arabian lands. Plus, they were conquered by the Greeks and then the Romans. So why would any country claim to be the continuation of the Persian Empire when they can claim to be the continuation of the Greek/Roman Empires instead?
The Greek successor empires acted the same way though and those lasted for a while
Greeks also colonized tons of lands around the Mediterranean prior to Alexander
>Arabian lands
Persia is based out of Iran though and only held a small amount of Arabia proper
They were conquered by the Greeks who then adopted a ton of things they innovated in regards to ruling many peoples and governors and so forth
Cyrus the Great was like Alexander before Alexander and he and many other ancient ambitious men looked up to him
Only issue with your argument is that Romans, especially during the imperial age, allowed virtually anyone to be Roman and attain some modicum of power and stability if you accepted their law. Colonial subjects of late European empires were never viewed as English or French, not afforded the same rights and were relegated to 2nd class citizens within their own lands many of the times.
>not afforded the same rights and were relegated to 2nd class citizens within their own lands many of the times.
This happened all the time in Roman territories though. Gauls were considered second class and barbarians for hundreds of years after they were conquered. In the same span of time most colonies had already seceded from their imperial hosts so we didn't get to see them play out long enough for them to become citizens of their imperial nation.
Unironically Christian morality
>aqueducts
Rivers
>reading and writing
Only nerds need that
>roads
Already existed
>Infrastructure
such as?
Realizing the romans were built on slavery and tax extortion
Goofy take
Aqueducts are there for when you're not settled literally right on a river and you want water
They also help with things like baths, fountains, sewage systems, watering crops, you know, all markers of civilization beyond subsistence farming?
Literacy improving a civilization goes without saying
Roads barely existed in most of the lands Rome took over outside of the Middle East. And these roads were not Hardy and smartly designed like Roman roads which last to this day and are still used. Not to mention they increased roads a thousand fold.
The infrastructure was mentioned above but I can go on with buildings that weren't huts, better metal casting techniques, buildings higher than one story, theaters, coliseums, mines, forts, wells, bridges, city walls...
>were built on slavery and tax extortion
literally the angloids
might have something to do with the fact that the romans existed literal millenia ago back when national identities were pretty much non-existent, population of said peoples were significantly lower, group organization was so primitive they had practically zero concept of even premodern statehood, and the only people recording anything about what went down in these areas were the romans anyways so everything we know about the time is known vicariously through them.
People like to connect themselves to the romans because they were the only people achieving anything at the time. They'd much rather see themselves as those who were civilized than those who were humiliated enslaved and conquered. Either way they don't really have a choice in the matter because it already happened thousands of years ago in an age so far beyond any living memory of what might of actually happened. And frankly they are probably right too. I'd be willing to bet the modern european man, wherever they live, shares significantly more in common with your average roman than your average hut dwelling germanic tribesman of the time.
I very heavily doubt any people who was actually beaten and enslaved by romans back then had very fond feelings for the empire.
world wars doomed European hegemony. prior to them the colonized pretty much got in line because Europeans were seen as a force of nature. even the nations that weren't colonised just started pretending to be European so that they would be left alone. after the world wars and the rise of American hegemony that literally had a "no more empires allowed ' mentality all states had to stop being openly imperialistic.
>shorter amount of time
That's the difference
Rome ruled its empire long enough to Romanize it to the point where the old ways were forgotten and eagerly incorporated local elites as citizens
Euros mostly didn't, France is the only one who really tried, and not coincidentally their empire's the one that kind of stuck around
invade many European peoples
them
, crucify, and torture minorities and sometimes entire populations
integrate them
>>give them civilization
aqueducts, teach them reading and writing, build roads, infrastructure etc.
>>said european nations are better off because of this to this day and are all eternally grateful to the Romans and suck them off in history classes
>>said Europe nations do the same thing to other people for a shorter amount of time with less slavery (outside of Africa)
>>this is a bad thing and those people now eternally hate Europeans despite getting exponentially more advancement, comfort, and resources from the Europeans compared to Romans
Literally none of that happened be it 100 or 1000 years ago
>Literally none of that happened be it 100 or 1000 years ago
Wrong
Nobody actually admires the romans except Americans, because they like larping as an empire. God literally pushed their shit in for being gay and enslaving my people, and he is doing the same to gay Americans today.
>inb4 god doesn't real
Haha, just going to jerk off to perseus now.
Have you ever heard of a little thousand year reich called the "Holy Roman Empire"?
>Nobody actually admires the romans except Americans
Everyone from Spain to Russia and the Ottomans, and everything in-between, has larped as them