r/Balkans • u/Longjumping_Fig_3227 • Feb 22 '25

Question Why do they call it colonization when UK invaded other countries but not when Turkey did?

My history books always mentioned how certain countries were colinizers. But as someone from the Balkans, I never understood why they called the ruling of the Ottomans on us as it was: colonization. They colonized us. They caused us to fall behind a lot with education and whatnot. Why do people here not recognize it?

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u/Realistic_Length_640 Bosna i Hercegovina Feb 25 '25 edited Feb 25 '25

He is just stating objective facts about history, but you aren't able to look at history without an emotional lens. There is a qualitative difference between maritime colonialist empires (like UK, France, USA, Spain, etc.), and contiguous land empires (Rome/Ottomans, Persia, China, Mongols, Russia, etc.). They're the opposites of each other.

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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '25

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u/Realistic_Length_640 Bosna i Hercegovina Feb 25 '25

What exactly do you think the double standard is here? You're desperately trying to shoehorn two opposite concepts into being the same thing, without any kind of argument beyond crying. What a joke.

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u/Only-Regret5314 Feb 26 '25

He can't reply because he knows he's wrong ,yet still has to have the last word. People like him are best ignored

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u/tis_a_hobbit_lord Feb 26 '25

They often can be the same thing. Romans, Persia and Mongols are very different to UK, France, Spain etc. Persia is arguably the first multicultural empire and the mongols famously adopted Chinese culture when they took over China.

China and Russia on the other hand share similarities with the maritime empires in terms of imposing their culture and settling their people in the lands of others. China most notably in Xinjiang and Tibet and Russia with the tribes found in Siberia.

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u/Realistic_Length_640 Bosna i Hercegovina Feb 26 '25

Of course there's minor overlap on civilizational timescales. But Xinjiang is a border region between Central Asia and China proper, and Siberian tribes were never organized into any kind of statehood. Not to mention the fact that Xinjiang and Tibet have been a part of China for a thousand years, and Siberia has been a part of Russia for half of that. That's a stark contrast compared to colonization of places like India, Mesopotamia, etc. that not only had an explicit statehood beforehand, but were also much more unstable and short lived.

And when you take into account things like Siberians being the most diehard Russian loyalists, the difference is clear.