On Thu, Apr 05, 2001 at 01:27:46PM +0100, Michael G Schwern wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 05, 2001 at 01:04:52PM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 05, 2001 at 12:07:41PM +0100, Michael G Schwern wrote:
> > > On Wed, Apr 04, 2001 at 11:43:48PM +0100, Piers Cawley wrote:
> > > > Remember, Britain hasn't been invaded or conquered since 1066.
> > >
> > > Methinks William of Orange would say otherwise.
> >
> > He's dead, so I can't agree with you.
> > However, I believe you're right - England hasn't been invaded since 1066
> > apart from William of Orange, and that was by invitation.
> [Lots of twisted logic about why England wasn't invaded in the 1600s]
>
> I wasn't going to drag this in, but someone eariler mentioned that
> Japan was invaded and conquered in 1945. I could go into similarly
> convoluted arguments about how no foreign invasion force made it to
> the home islands during World War II and while some outer islands of
> the Japanese Archipelago were successfully invaded, Honshu remained
> untoched. And while an American occupation force governed the islands
> for a few years, they were technically under the Emperor and his line
> remains unbroken back through all of recorded Japanese history, etc,
> etc, etc...
>
> Also remember that Germany didn't surrender in the Great War (WWI).
> They negociated a peace before foreign armies ever reached German
> soil, defeated Russia and ended with the Wermacht in arguably better
> shape than either the French and English armies (the Amercians cheated
> by coming in late and are thus disqualified).
>
>
> This sort of logic may apply to football matches (and, umm, mailing
> lists and programming languages), but not to world history.
Well, there's still a big difference. King William became only king
because of his marriage with Mary - and he didn't bring armies of troops
and civil servants with him. Nor do the Dutch claim they were invaded
by the British because William married Mary. (William was "Stadthouder"
of most of the provinces of the Netherlands at the time)
Was .nl invaded by Germany because the Dutch queen married a German in
the 60s? Will Argentinia kick out the Germans now that the crown prince
is engaged with an Argentinian woman? I have my doubts.
Abigail
