@Lawrence: history is highly time-consuming, so cut 'n paste wisdom
won't get you anywhere; that said, may I invite you to do as you've so
often demanded, namely, to read messages with a certain amount af
attention? My comments were short and straight to the point, yet I
suspect that you even didn't read the wiki cut in your own post at hand,
on which I'll comment separately.
Lawrence Helm schrieb:
Huh? I did not even mention WW I. I said that the hole story was about the Great Powers fighting for prey & dominance (like dubya in Mesopotamia), not about them silly Catholics and Protestants, who at best served to deliver pretexts and desinformation (and, indeed, contributed a lot of hatred and venom), much like the embedded media of our times. I say it again: THE GREAT EUROPEAN WAR WAS NOT, OR AT LEAST NOT SIGNIFICANTLY, A WAR OF RELIGION. That's true even if it's called so in most handbooks
(...)
I write that Catholics and Protestants would after the Peace of Westphalia settle their differences by diplomacy rather than war. And you produce World War I and a number of other wars not involving religious differences as arguments against what I have written.
You do realize that wars are seldom, if ever, fought for religious reasons, even if religion may add much to the hatred und cruelty involved?
You do realize that World War One, et al were not fought for religious reasons, don't you?
This is like: "Now the Prince met a White Unicorn, kissed her and then, they lived happily ever after."
Catholics and Protestants fought wars against each other on a regular basis up until the Peace of Westphalia. After that they settled their differences peacefully.
You know what started the Great War? You know what the Restitutionsedikt really meant, why and how Richelieu kept the war boiling, bribed the Svedes into it etc etc...? The Peace weakened not only the Holy Empire, but also Habsburg in Germany and Spain, making room for Louis XIV's belingerent landgrabbing, which meant another 50 years of foreign atrocities for the western parts of the Empire. Do you even know what you're talking about?
The subject Irene broached was the nature of the Peace of Westphalia. I was taking issue with what Irene said. The Peace of Westphalia did not cause additional wars. Read what it did. It settled things in such a way that wars would never again in Europe have to be fought for religious reasons.
I'm at a loss as to what those ideas could be - they sound vague and commonplace like a quote from the Watchtower magazine.
I never said that it eliminated all war. Yes wars would be fought for other reasons in the future, but the Peace of Westphalia did not cause them (unless you entertain the idea of German Imperialism, Socialism or Fundamentalist Islam).
"It clicked into place", okay. That's how history works. Reality suxx, shareholder value rulez.
Years later when the threats of Fascism and Communism were eliminated it clicked into place as an important milestone. One can now say in Europe that war has been eliminated: in Europe and in the Western Democracies. We see it as comprising an important difference between the West and Islam.
You might consider that, apart from those imaginary "segments of thought", there's the vast learned guilde of historians, most of whom would merely shrug their shoulders at such simpleminded speculations.
I know of only three segments of thought that would agree with what Irene said. Those who felt Germany was being inhibited from coming together as a great empire, and the Socialists who thought that nation states would become irrelevant when the dictatorship of the proletariat conquered Capitalism. One can add the Islamist Ummah as defined by Sayyid Qutb.
I speak only for myself. The development that shows in the Treaty led to the decay of the hitherto leading power in Europe, and further to the aggressive expansion of France, which thereafter caused quite a lot of rather troublesome conflicts. That may be absurd, but such are the facts. So I'd suggest you, to your and this list's benefit, to consult a primer on the history of the 17th and 18th centuries - you know who the Duke of Marlborough was, don't you? And Prince Eugenius, who'd be your hero 'cause he fought quite a lot of wars against "Islamism"...
You and Irene imply that the Peace of Westphalia, the treaty that ended the Thirty Years War caused the wars that followed, but this is absurd. The peace of Westphalia eliminated war for religious reasons in Europe.
Hampered was the peaceful development of the German nation, as well as that of the whole continent, cause it favoured the ambitions of those who meant to grab what others had, which could only mean war, and war, and war.
The only thing it hampered was German Imperial ambitions, Socialism & Islamism. If you have evidence to the contrary, produce it.
Here is another article from Wikipedia (...)
on which I will comment later - perhaps you use the time and read it.
Et maintenant, je suis très très fatigué,
Joerg Gruel
former Érémite de Thunder-ten-tronckh
