Influence of EMPIRES on RACE.

[AWAR]

Throughout history, there have been numerous states so influential, rich and large they were labeled as empires.

Persia, Rome, China, the Mongols etc. all have established huge states that encompassed teritories in which different races and subraces lived.

These empires also had large and important cities that attracted people from all corners of these empires.

Like the city of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine empire, a city that also was a bridge between the continents of Europe and Asia.

What is your opinion on the importance of ancient empires in the ethnical and racial structure of today's people?
Did these empires all ( and at all times ) act as melting pots which 'destroyed' the ingredients to create a new, imperial ethnicity?

What was the REAL ammount of racial and subracial mixing that went on in these states.

[Dienekes]

Interesting ideas. Great Empires can work towards preserving racial elements as well, since they represent a barrier to settlement, and since often the provinces are neglected: capital cities may attract a large population, but most of the territory -which forms the backbone of the population- remains little changed.

For example, if the Romans hadn't curbed the expansion of the barbarian tribes for many centuries, southern Europe would be much less distinctive today racially and linguistically.

[Arawn]

Would depend on the Empire, but i would say they certainly have an influence on the movement of peoples, whether by expelling groups from within the borders or preventing groups from moving in, or by facilitating movement of peoples from the peripheries of the empire to the core, or to other parts or the empire in general ; movement of people to the main city/cities as traders along trade routes, people attracted by percieved opportunities, slavery, recruitment of soldiers Empire wide, and so on.


I guess this would be most noticable in the urban areas, with comparitivly little change in the rural areas, and even in cities it would have been relativly insignificant, with most groups being assmilated in to the general fabric of urban life over time.
In London in the 14-1500s there was a sizeable populaton of 'blackmoors', but during that time laws were passed so that no more of them could move in, and over time they were just swallowed up by the native population, leaving little to indicate there were ever there.

I'd say that in the long term, racialy the importance is small, assuming that the newcomers are a minority and they end up being swallowed up by the majority.
But for culture things are different, certain habits stay long after the people who originaly introduced them cease to be distinct from the rest of the population.

[galvez]

There is a lot of discussion of the alleged absorption of Blacks in Portugal, but evasion on the fact that Britain had a sizeable population of Blacks in the 18th-century -- a lot of them slaves or descendants of slaves -- who were to a great extent absorbed into the British gene pool.

"Black people were an integral part of 18th-century British society. They worked in a wide variety of occupations, reacted to atrocities, campaigned to end slavery, became political activists, and had a lively social life."

"Black and White people were also getting married. A report in 1578 declared 'I myself have seene an Ethiopian as black as cole...taking a faire English woman as wife [they] begat a sonne in all respects as blacke as the father.' James Albert Gronniosaw (an African prince, enslaved at 15, who served in the British army and later wrote his memoirs) married an English weaver and settled in Colchester."

www.pro.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/work_community/relationships.htm

[Arawn]

There were small populations of black people in many port cities over much of Europe from the 1500s onwards, though many people seem eager to forget this.
You could find peoples from virtualy all over the British Empire in London from the 1700s onwards, from Indian women who married English traders, to Chinesemen who worked on the merchant ships, and so on, again conviently forgotten. Some idiots would have you believe they all arrived yesterday clinging on to the underside of the Eurostar train

[AWAR]

French painter of neo-classicism Theodore Gericault ( I think ) made sketches called 'Brittish boxers' where it's obvious that black people were present in Britain.

I don't know how common they were there in the turn of 18-19th century.

His sketches and paintings show Blacks in France also.

Historical evidence shows that there were Blacks even in Germany, but they were sterilized by the NS authorities.