Wars of conquest

Wars of conquest had reduced the West to a state of stormy anarchy in which the people groaned under the triple tyranny of kings, warriors and priests but this anarchy contained the seeds of liberty within its womb. 

Hitler did not know where all the Farben equipment came from, nor did he know he was marching into territory partly Farben-controlled. But had he known, surely he would have appreciated the value to him in the coming war of Farben s past strategy of economic conquest. 

The years 640 to 720 were an era of Muslim conquests. At the end of the period, the Islamic empire stretched from Spain to Egypt and from North Africa to Persia. The Muslims engaged in wars of expansion, not in religious war. They didn t seek to convert the peoples they conquered. Although non-Muslims were taxed, they were permitted to exercise their religions freely. 

There then ensued a decade of economic, political, and social turbulence beginning with the Great Depression and followed by the Nazi takeover in 1933, the shift to national autarky, and industrial mobilization for war and conquest—all of which directed I. G. Farben s focus toward the new... 

The Thirty Years War, the last of the great religious wars of Europe. National conquest replaces religious conversion as a military aim. The loyalty of the individual is gradually transferred from the Church to the State. 

The quest In far off lands for new and different flavorings and seasonings is ages old. Explorations, wars, and conquests were a part of their history. 

With all respect to Torrey and his campaign for a Cyrus-free Deutero-Isaiah, there can be no doubt that in 41 2-5 the prophet had in mind the Persian Cyrus II whose progress was well advanced by the time the prophecies were in circulation, about a decade before the conquest of Babylon. There is no other candidate for the one said elsewhere in these chapters to be summoned from the east—as a bird of prey (4601)—and roused or inspired by Yahweh (41 25 45 13, with the same verb he ir) The description of warfare swiftly and ruthlessly conducted makes an exact fit with Cyrus conquest of Media, Sardis, Lydia and Babylon between 550 and 539 bce, whereas Abraham is represented as a warrior more by accident than choice, and onfy in the one rather peripheral incident of the War of the Nine Kings (Genesis 14). No surprise, therefore, that in the modem period practically all critical commentators find an allusion to Cyrus in this first of the two disputations with which Isaiah 40-48 opens. ... 

Then, not only would the men who set the date of attack be criminally responsible for it. No longer would war await the first bombing to be called "war." Anyone — be he Harry or Hitler, Stalin or Ivan— who prepared the threat of war to the very brink, knowing the threat would surely be used for conquest, was guilty of aggression. 

As we went on with evidence of Farben s role in enslaving the people of Europe, we emphasized that this role was part and parcel of an over-all program resulting in the death of millions as a result of the aggressive war unleashed by Germany, in which Farben shared a major responsibility. Hand-in-hand with the conquest of basic industries was the conquest of labor to make these industries work for the expansion of a war which had been brought on by prior conquests of industry and prior exploitations of labor. 

Metals, fuels, and explosives these were the spoils of the first unknown conquest in an undeclared war. Von Schnitzler described it happily to his colleagues as the fulfillment of "a long-cherished plan of uniting the chemical industry of Austria."... 

We addressed our last argument to the court. The Farben directors had almost singlehanded created the threat of war. Suppose they did believe in the back of their heads that Hitler could accomplish his conquests by threat alone — but believed that if threats didn t work, Hitler would go to war That was all the state-of-mind we had to prove. 

Thus, of course, the distinction between whiteness and nonwhiteness never fully lost its salience in American political culture. Mexican annexation, black Emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow practices, Indian Wars, Asian immigration and Exclusion, Hawaiian and Puerto Rican annexation, and Philippine conquest—all would keep whiteness very much alive in both the visual and the political economies. But upon the arrival of the massive waves of Irish immigrants in the 1840s, whiteness itself would become newly problematic and, in some quarters, would begin to... 

Francis Parkman, The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada [1851] (Lincoln University of Nebraska Press, 1994), Vol. I, pp. 41-44. For powefully racialized interpretations of U.S. history, see also John Fiske, American Political Ideas (New York Harper and Bros., 1885), The Beginnings of New England The Puritan Theocracy and its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty (London Macmillan, 1889), The Discovery of America (Boston Houghton Mifflin, 1892), and A History of the United States for Schools (Boston Houghton Mifflin, 1907). 

---