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I was going to start of with discussion about American History, but I felt it would be more interesting to bring topics from one's own countries and others. Maybe we could talk about one country and move on to another as soon as someone else brings it up... I don't know.

I'm just wondering what people's knowledge of American History, and how it impacts you/makes you feel. The reason why I ask is because i'm interested about foreign opinions on America even though I'M from America... (I'm not gonna sulk though, I'm gonna try and make it all better somehow)

I'm learning more about it and it's very interesting. Land of the free? HA, what a laugh. I'll bring a little bit more substance in a bit.

I know a lot about American history for I have spend four years in the country. I don't think all of it is interesting, considering an average 500 page history book will have at least 200 dedicated purely to laws and amendments and terms and.... ehhhhh.

America's history is boring, Canada's is even more boring aside from the fact that we have loads of totem poles standing about all over the place.

Sadly, the History classes in here focus much more in our country and in Europe in general. You talk very few about America. We only talked a little about the "Crazy 20s" in the History of C. and Arts class of last year.

A brief summary of Norwegian history:
Before 800 CE - Nothing interesting happened.
800 - 1100 - We owned everyone in Europe and discovered America.
1100 - 1397 - Nothing interesting happened.
1397 - 1524 - We were united with Sweden and Denmark in the Kalmar union.
1524 - 1814 - We were Denmark's bitch.
1814 - 1905 - We were Sweden's bitch.
1905 - 1940 - Boring peacetime as a neutral, sovereign nation.
1940 - 1945 - We were Germany's bitch.
1945 - present - We discovered oil and became richer than everyone else in the world.

1998 - We beat Brazil in the 1998 FIFA World Cup
2011 - Oslo bombing and Utøya murders.

Poland has seen some shit.

Rulez wrote:Poland has seen some shit.

They were quite massacrated in the World War II.

What mostly comes to my mind when I think about the history of Finland is the Winter War against the Soviet Union. We little twerps invented the Molotov cocktail and totally owned the bigger guys.

So back in the 900's this old guy named Gorm decided to take out his royal competition and put an actual country together.

In 2006 some angry Muslims burned our flags. That was mildly inconvenient.

Some other stuff happened too I think...

El Dango wrote:So back in the 900's this old guy named Gorm decided to take out his royal competition and put an actual country together.

In 2006 some angry Muslims burned our flags. That was mildly inconvenient.

Some other stuff happened too I think...

And where do you live?

I'm at the point where I realize the foundation of the country isn't really as 'noble' as I was told all these years. In the recent weeks/months I have realized how racist Abraham Lincoln actually was. I have realized that the Quakers were for Abolition yet had conflicting ideals about black men not being equals to them. I have learned that black slaves have joined the British army to gain freedom (I forget which war, most likely the revolutionary war). They also joined the American Army of course for the Civil War. I learned that the Dominant culture seems to skew the history to it's favor. They make themselves seem that much more 'awesome' then they actually had been.

I also learned more about the origin's of slavery, and the middle passage. Usually with American history you would get more history about the times near the abolition of slavery, not really when it started or even before. Before there were black men in villages owning HOUSES without any conflicting relationships between others of different colors. Just another man. It's also funny how George Washington had slaves and never even considered their freedom, while America was fighting from freedom from Europe. He didn't want them joining his army because he knew that would make them think they were also fighting for freedom. WHILE AMERICA WAS TRYING TO BREAK FROM THE CHAINS OF BONDAGE FROM EUROPE HAHAHA.

Honestly it makes me want to read more and see more dvd's of American History to really understand why America is in the shits as it is right now.

Of course, I live here. So I can't just be a hater to my own country. I'll not respect what things it has done to make it successful (come on we all know it's successful because of slavery), but I will try to make it a better place as no country can be that pure right? I think some of the things we are doing is ass-backwards and we need to fix that. Healthcare, education? (To be popular you need to not care about education? )

So far, my sources are "A shining thread of Hope" by Darlene Clark Hine. Sort of gives personal aspects of history with historical facts. Of course I skipped most of the stories and poems and went towards the facts as those were more interesting to me. (I might re-read them though as now I have more time)

A dvd I watched that was very interesting is called "500 years later". I just rented on amazon. Starts slow but gets better as it touches some important topics imo.

Haruka wrote:Sadly, the History classes in here focus much more in our country and in Europe in general. You talk very few about America. We only talked a little about the "Crazy 20s" in the History of C. and Arts class of last year.

No worries. It's been the same here. I don't know much about Europe's history either. Like sure I have learned of Henry the 8th and others (in fact I love the Tudors) but I don't remember much else they might have taught. I think I need a refresher as well.

Ah right, Canada does have that one thing:

- We made a bunch of Asians build our railroad, the longest one in the world, stretching horizontally across almost the whole country.

If you want to get a good laugh, watching "America: The Story of Us" is a good one to try. It's an American documentary series that basically shoves aside everything the country has done wrong but will dedicate entire episodes to how amazing America is for things like... inventing barbed wire. It's really a shame that they present things in such a way. I have no problem with wanting people to have pride for their own country, I like my country a lot too, but I find that US history is too focused on smashing the idea of "The world sucks, America is utopia" in people's heads.

Didn't they also invent archery or something?

Adsolution wrote:Didn't they also invent archery or something?

I don't fucking know. All I do is sit and wait for a teacher go over the exact same history they've been teaching us for years now. Basically, the Civil War and American revolution take up 90% of the yearly history, and the other things are quickly rushed through. We went over all the history from the 1600's - 1750 in about two weeks and spend one day learning about World War II.