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The Roman Empire built lots of roads wherever they went and the British Empire built lots of rail networks.

nephihaha 10mo ago
The Roman Empire merely improved roads in many places. Gaul already had a road system, and the Greek and Egyptian spheres did too.
- lawlessone 10mo ago
  >The Roman Empire merely improved roads in many places. why did they invest in those roads? They weren't a charity.
  - nephihaha 10mo ago
    So that they could move troops and goods from one place to another.
    - lawlessone 10mo ago
      Yes, and more specifically so they could move resources back to Rome.
  - AngryData 10mo ago
    Rome was entirely reliant upon the looting and expansion of the empire to support them. Without building up those roads Rome would have starved and fallen apart.
    - lawlessone 10mo ago
      That's my point :-) , people in the thread are acting like their hegemony enablement technology is a selfless gift.
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
  > Roman Empire merely improved roads in many places /s? This is literally a Monty Python sketch.
  - nephihaha 10mo ago
    Like most Python material that ceased to be funny decades ago thanks to people quoting it endlessly... The Romans were true imperialists. They considered their opponents to be barbarians, and claimed they lived in wastelands. The truth is more complex. In many places — yes, including Judaea — they inherited infrastructure and buildings. Judaea was previously occupied by the Greeks and a number of other civilisations had left behind remains. The idea that it was terra nullis or a tabula rasa is nonsense. Even Gaul which was considered to be a frontier already had a road system (some of which has been only rediscovered in recent times), and what is now Marseilles was a Greek city going way back before the Roman conquest. Romanes eunt domum indeed.
    - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
      > Romans were true imperialists. They considered their opponents to be barbarians The Romans also aggressively appropriated from and integrated the people they conquered, extending the concept of citizenship and thus what it meant to be Roman in the process. Nobody is saying the Romans came across terra nullis. But describing their engineering and culture as "merely improving roads" is silly.
      - nephihaha 10mo ago
        They stole literature and architecture from the Greeks, chariot building techniques from the Gauls, their identity from the Etruscans and Latins, and probably more than they would ever admit to from the Carthaginians. When I was growing up we were taught the Romans' own imperial myth that they had built upon nothing. The Monty Python film even promotes that as a joke. There are cities in the Holy Land like Jericho which were inhabited before Rome was even founded. p.s. Do I get downvotes for pointing out archaeological and historical fact here? When I said "merely improved roads", I was talking about their road network not their entire civilisation.
bigfishrunning 10mo ago
What I'm saying is this: there's nothing stopping you from using communication methods that aren't controlled by Americans. All of the protocols that the internet uses are documented.
- tehjoker 10mo ago
  This is exactly what China and North Korea do shrug but they get a lot of criticism for it.
  - bigfishrunning 10mo ago
    There's a big difference between setting up a national intranet (which is really what I was describing) and walling off your nation to maintain totalitarian control of your people. It's the difference between facilitating internal communication and hindering external communication. China and North Korea deserve every bit of criticism they get, and then some.

The Roman Empire merely improved roads in many places. Gaul already had a road system, and the Greek and Egyptian spheres did too.

lawlessone 10mo ago
>The Roman Empire merely improved roads in many places. why did they invest in those roads? They weren't a charity.
- nephihaha 10mo ago
  So that they could move troops and goods from one place to another.
  - lawlessone 10mo ago
    Yes, and more specifically so they could move resources back to Rome.
- AngryData 10mo ago
  Rome was entirely reliant upon the looting and expansion of the empire to support them. Without building up those roads Rome would have starved and fallen apart.
  - lawlessone 10mo ago
    That's my point :-) , people in the thread are acting like their hegemony enablement technology is a selfless gift.
JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
> Roman Empire merely improved roads in many places /s? This is literally a Monty Python sketch.
- nephihaha 10mo ago
  Like most Python material that ceased to be funny decades ago thanks to people quoting it endlessly... The Romans were true imperialists. They considered their opponents to be barbarians, and claimed they lived in wastelands. The truth is more complex. In many places — yes, including Judaea — they inherited infrastructure and buildings. Judaea was previously occupied by the Greeks and a number of other civilisations had left behind remains. The idea that it was terra nullis or a tabula rasa is nonsense. Even Gaul which was considered to be a frontier already had a road system (some of which has been only rediscovered in recent times), and what is now Marseilles was a Greek city going way back before the Roman conquest. Romanes eunt domum indeed.
  - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
    > Romans were true imperialists. They considered their opponents to be barbarians The Romans also aggressively appropriated from and integrated the people they conquered, extending the concept of citizenship and thus what it meant to be Roman in the process. Nobody is saying the Romans came across terra nullis. But describing their engineering and culture as "merely improving roads" is silly.
    - nephihaha 10mo ago
      They stole literature and architecture from the Greeks, chariot building techniques from the Gauls, their identity from the Etruscans and Latins, and probably more than they would ever admit to from the Carthaginians. When I was growing up we were taught the Romans' own imperial myth that they had built upon nothing. The Monty Python film even promotes that as a joke. There are cities in the Holy Land like Jericho which were inhabited before Rome was even founded. p.s. Do I get downvotes for pointing out archaeological and historical fact here? When I said "merely improved roads", I was talking about their road network not their entire civilisation.

bigfishrunning 10mo ago

What I'm saying is this: there's nothing stopping you from using communication methods that aren't controlled by Americans. All of the protocols that the internet uses are documented.

tehjoker 10mo ago
This is exactly what China and North Korea do shrug but they get a lot of criticism for it.
- bigfishrunning 10mo ago
  There's a big difference between setting up a national intranet (which is really what I was describing) and walling off your nation to maintain totalitarian control of your people. It's the difference between facilitating internal communication and hindering external communication. China and North Korea deserve every bit of criticism they get, and then some.