Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

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Futurist
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Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#1

Post by Futurist » 05 Jan 2021, 10:04

Which ideologies or concepts were comparable to Lebensraum? I could think of Spazio vitale, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Manifest Destiny, Nam tien, Chuang Guandong, the Russian colonization of Siberia, and the Ostsiedlung, but what else was there?

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Re: Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#2

Post by Futurist » 05 Jan 2021, 10:04

Among less well-known examples, I could also think of the Great Migrations of the Serbs, Bantu expansion, Oromo migrations, Pashtun colonization of northern Afghanistan, and Out-of-Africa.


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Re: Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#3

Post by wm » 05 Jan 2021, 10:57

Wasn't Zionism an example of that too?
Modern Israel looks eerily like pre-war Poland - if we disregard the structural poverty.

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Re: Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#4

Post by Futurist » 05 Jan 2021, 21:27

wm wrote:
05 Jan 2021, 10:57
Wasn't Zionism an example of that too?
Modern Israel looks eerily like pre-war Poland - if we disregard the structural poverty.
That was certainly a settler colonialist project, but it didn't involve the expansion of the territory of an existing country; rather, the hope was to create a homeland for a specific diasporic European people. Now, Israel's settlement project in the West Bank could be viewed as being more comparable to Lebensraum since it involves an expansion of Israeli Jewish settlement beyond Israel's existing borders.

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Re: Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#5

Post by wm » 06 Jan 2021, 00:20

Lebensraum didn't require initial territory. You could start from scratch - because only the final result counts.

Actually, according to Hitler, the Jewish state existed:
The Jewish State has never been delimited in space. It has been spread all over the world, without any frontiers whatsoever, and has always been constituted from the membership of one race exclusively.
That is why the Jews have always formed a State within the State. One of the most ingenious tricks ever devised has been that of sailing the Jewish ship-of-state under the flag of Religion and thus securing that tolerance which Aryans are always ready to grant to different religious faiths.
Mein Kampf

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Re: Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#6

Post by Futurist » 06 Jan 2021, 05:22

Did Jews actually pursue the Zionist project because they needed even more space, though? Because they could get more bang for the buck in regards to space in places such as Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Re: Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#7

Post by wm » 06 Jan 2021, 09:59

Although Lebensraum was about adequate space, not more space for space's sake.

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Re: Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#8

Post by Sid Guttridge » 06 Jan 2021, 15:03

Hi Guys,

While many mass migrations in history were accompanied by results akin to what was desired of Nazidom's "lebensraum", I am not sure that many of them can be described as "ideologies" in the same way.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#9

Post by Futurist » 07 Jan 2021, 01:07

wm wrote:
06 Jan 2021, 09:59
Although Lebensraum was about adequate space, not more space for space's sake.
More space to become a great power, to become self-sufficient, and to be able to sustain a much larger population, no?

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Re: Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#10

Post by Futurist » 07 Jan 2021, 01:07

Sid Guttridge wrote:
06 Jan 2021, 15:03
Hi Guys,

While many mass migrations in history were accompanied by results akin to what was desired of Nazidom's "lebensraum", I am not sure that many of them can be described as "ideologies" in the same way.

Cheers,

Sid.
Which ones do you think can be described as ideologies or concepts akin to Lebensraum?

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Re: Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#11

Post by wm » 07 Jan 2021, 19:07

Futurist wrote:
07 Jan 2021, 01:07
wm wrote:
06 Jan 2021, 09:59
Although Lebensraum was about adequate space, not more space for space's sake.
More space to become a great power, to become self-sufficient, and to be able to sustain a much larger population, no?
It was generally about spreading the existing population more evenly and fairly.

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Re: Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#12

Post by Sid Guttridge » 07 Jan 2021, 19:46

Hi Futurist,

I don't think there were any self-identifying, political and ideological "-isms" before about the 18th Century.

European colonialism in the Americas and Australasia was preceded by waves of European diseases that killed the great majority of the indigenous populations ahead of them. Therefore the proponents of Manifest Destiny and British settlement could convince themselves that the land to be occupied was largely empty.

Lebensraum is rather different as it required the supplanting of a population that was relatively dense and not pre-culled by Old World diseases, and was motivated by a political and ideological "-ism". So I think it is something of a modern departure.

British and Dutch settlement in Southern Africa has proved transitory, because the African population grew much faster and was not vulnerable to Old Word pathogens. I guess the attempt to restrict African residence to the Bantustans of the Apartheid era approximated to Lebensraum.

Zionism has turned into something similar, though on a much smaller scale, with a great deal less homicide and rather more enduring success than Nazism's Lebensraum.

Russia (through the USSR) tried to similarly seed the Baltic States and other areas, such as the Donbas, with Russians and Russian-speakers from other SSRs. Had Russian and Russian-speaking immigration to Latvia continued at pre-1990 levels, then Latvia would now be majority Russian, with Estonia not far behind.

I guess Kaliningrad is the classic piece of "reverse Lebensraum".

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#13

Post by Futurist » 08 Jan 2021, 02:00

wm wrote:
07 Jan 2021, 19:07
Futurist wrote:
07 Jan 2021, 01:07
wm wrote:
06 Jan 2021, 09:59
Although Lebensraum was about adequate space, not more space for space's sake.
More space to become a great power, to become self-sufficient, and to be able to sustain a much larger population, no?
It was generally about spreading the existing population more evenly and fairly.
That could have simply been done by taking away the Junkers' estates and building much more huge cities in eastern Germany. No need for further German territorial expansion.

Now, if Germany wanted to have 200+ million people, then it would have been a different story!

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Re: Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#14

Post by wm » 08 Jan 2021, 06:15

If a nation confines itself to 'internal colonization' while other races are perpetually increasing their territorial annexations all over the globe, that nation will be forced to restrict the numerical growth of its population at a time when the other nations are increasing theirs.
This situation must eventually arrive. It will arrive soon if the territory which the nation has at its disposal be small.
Now it is unfortunately true that only too often the best nations or, to speak more exactly, the only really cultured nations, who at the same time are the chief bearers of human progress—have decided, in their blind pacifism, to refrain from the acquisition of new territory and to be content with 'internal colonization.'

But at the same time nations of inferior quality succeed in getting hold of large spaces for colonization all over the globe. The state of affairs which must result from this contrast is the following:
Races which are culturally superior but less ruthless would be forced to restrict their increase, because of insufficient territory to support the population, while less civilized races could increase indefinitely, owing to the vast territories at their disposal.
In other words: should that state of affairs continue, then the world will one day be possessed by that portion of mankind which is culturally inferior but more active and energetic.
Mein Kampf

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Re: Ideologies comparable to Lebensraum?

#15

Post by wm » 08 Jan 2021, 07:16

Sid Guttridge wrote:
07 Jan 2021, 19:46
Lebensraum is rather different as it required the supplanting of a population that was relatively dense and not pre-culled by Old World diseases, and was motivated by a political and ideological "-ism". So I think it is something of a modern departure.
Actually, according to Hitler and Goebbels, the colonization of Russia was going to be modeled on the British colonization of India.
As few as possible administrators ruling over masses of natives.
Goebbels wrote a few times in his diary that the Germans would have to learn from the British because what was going on in Russia was wasteful and unacceptable.

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