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<blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 9393963" data-attributes="member: 32164">To me, there is a world of difference between colonialism and conflict. Not everyone views it similarly, but here’s my distinction. “Colonialism” is the exploitation of an indigenous people (or their land) by an imperialist power on a quest for resources, usually a technologically superior one. When two powers of a roughly equivalent level of technological advancement battle over land, that’s not colonialism, because it’s not merely a resource-stripping move. Also, I’ll acknowledge the definition of “indigenous” gets awfully muddy the closer you get to the modern era. So the Crusades? Not colonialism, because we’ve got roughly equal imperial powers fighting a land war. Which is nothing new in the Levant, going back to Rome, Egypt, Persia, Macedonia, and Assyria before that. It’s a history of cultural, religious and ethnic strife, and one conquering power after another, right up until the Crusades (and after, but that’s not the point).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="JohnSnow, post: 9393963, member: 32164"] To me, there is a world of difference between colonialism and conflict. Not everyone views it similarly, but here’s my distinction. “Colonialism” is the exploitation of an indigenous people (or their land) by an imperialist power on a quest for resources, usually a technologically superior one. When two powers of a [I]roughly equivalent[/I] level of technological advancement battle over land, that’s [I]not[/I] colonialism, because it’s not merely a resource-stripping move. Also, I’ll acknowledge the definition of “indigenous” gets awfully muddy the closer you get to the modern era. So the Crusades? Not colonialism, because we’ve got roughly equal imperial powers fighting a land war. Which is nothing new in the Levant, going back to Rome, Egypt, Persia, Macedonia, and Assyria before [I]that[/I]. It’s a history of cultural, religious and ethnic strife, and one conquering power after another, right up until the Crusades (and after, but that’s not the point). [/QUOTE]

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