Thomas Jefferson Quotes
Great Britain's governing principles are conquest, colonialization, commerce, monopoly.
Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826, 3rd President of the United States (Democratic Republican, VA), Letter to William Carmichael, August 2, 1790
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
William the Conqueror. The King had come ashore and fell forward in the sand on his face and hands. Showing a sense of humor, he hade this statement. Shortly thereafter he took England militarily at Hastings and seized it politically.
When the British first colonized South Africa, the area they used was not inhabited or very sparcely so. However, some Black tribes (including the Zulus) were moving from the north and themselves were colonizing or annexing the sparcely populated areas to their kingdom. The British were most interested in Trading so did not have large land asperations. The Dutch white Boer Africanners, in contrast, wanted to farm the lands and use the range for their cattle. They wanted the land. The English policy was that there would be friendly relations with the Black tribes surrounding their Cape Colony and no one should take their land. However the Boers started attacking the Black areas and seizing their farms and villages. At first, the English assumed that the Blacks would easily be able to ward off the invasion as the Afrikanners had no professional troops like the British. However, the neighboring native tribes were not very warlike or good fighters. They were being overrun by the Zulus coming from the North and the Boers from the South. The British Government had a real problem in that they would have to have British soldiers fight the white Afrikanners if they wanted to stop the illegal white invasions. This was the root of the Boer War where the British would be fully at war with the Africanners.
Referring to the proposal to Annex Hawaii in 1887:
Bismarck articulated this throughout the German government and provided cogent reasoning as to why colonialism was a counter-productive policy. History shows him to be prescient about the difficulties of Empire. Nonetheless, in the mad scramble of the European powers for Africa, and the public opinion weighing in cavor of Empire, Germany got sucked in just like the others and Bismarck reluctantly changed his policies. He was right the first time.
The Russian communists were very ambivalent about the League (see {600375}).
There had been an era whereby the French military had conquered much of Africa without the approval of the civilian authorities.
Xerxes was as the Texans say, “All hat and no cattle.” He had delusions of grandeur and was quite unsuccessful as a conqueror.
The British had, after earlier defeats, finally had great military success in India/Afghanistan on the one hand and China on the other. Note that the objects of the military expeditions were always twofold: First to expand trade and trading opportunities for England. Second to retrieve “honor” that had been lost by earlier military defeats.
This was not the ravings of a right wing extremist. It was normative for Prussia as a whole. Right wing extremism as we think of it today was the norm of the ruling classes in Prussia and other parts of Germany. This book was a best seller in Germany. This quotation illustrates the mentality of the conservative, militarist, culture that dominated Germany at the time. The German aggression of WWI was not even considered as immoral but a God-given right.
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He had previously served as the second vice president of the United States under John Adams between 1797 and 1801. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation; he produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national levels.
