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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9854689" data-attributes="member: 18">Ooof wow that's pretty bad. Particularly as there were a lot of real pagan places (in Central/Eastern Europe particularly) being attacked by Christian invaders at that time, but very much Britain wasn't one of them.Also the Normans were really awful (c.f. The Harrying of the North, which was arguably a genocide*), but this was very much Christian-on-Christian violence.* = There's a weird and very non-objective, agenda'd-seeming argument by a number of historians that it wasn't a genocide, but the archaeological evidence supports a truly massive and very unusual population destruction and replacement, contrary to their claims, and some of them are reduced to stuff like "Well at that time a lot of conflicts were incredible brutal, so it's not a genocide", which is childishly dumb stuff, because even if true (and archaeology shows it was unusual), what that would actually show is "genocidal conflicts were not uncommon in that era", rather than that this wasn't one genocidal. A particularly sad argument was made by one which essentially was "Well sure okay maybe people remembered how horrific and exceptional this conflict was for centuries in a way that makes it highly distinct from other conflicts of the era, but they were just being dramatic!", which is borderline DARVO. Given a lot of the people who argue against it being a genocide have made entire careers cheering later Norman rulers as basically making/saving (from whom?) Britain, or even William himself, it's hard to see them as being entirely honest here. Hardly the first genocide a few posh British and US historians decided to work hard to deny, I guess. Any white-people-involved genocide will have a lot of historians** rushing up to say it wasn't a genocide, just like any conflict where a lot of people died but white people weren't involved, the same historians will rush to say "Oh yes definitely genocide, those barbarians!" (I'm looking at you, Dan Snow).** = To be fair, as someone trained primarily in archaeology, and secondarily in history, I hold the profession of "historian" (esp. if they write for the public) in a degree of contempt. The number of times they've proven dead wrong (or uncharitably, "liars") by actual archaeological evidence is truly beyond counting, and it's almost aways when the historians themselves were calling actual primary/secondary sources liars.</blockquote>

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