How did China survive for a thousand years after the Qin and Han empires were established? The only ancient civilization in history that has not perished is China. Three of the four ancient civilizations have perished, leaving only China. Why hasn’t China perished? Because since the Qin and Han Dynasties, China was no longer a feudal society. What all of you have absorbed into your minds is, ‘ah, the feudal system has existed in China for thousands of years.’ Incorrect. Since the Qin and Han Dynasties what we’ve had is the Centralized system, no longer the feudal system.
I mentioned just now how Germany existed as a few hundred small states before 1832, and not a single country. That's feudalism. Dispersed into many small states, that’s what’s called feudalism. I allow you to become the king of a small country, you build a little castle on the top of a hill, which would be surrounded by a few villages, and you are a king. Compared with China, maybe this king is not even equal to a village chief, but he is King, haha. This is what they have in Europe.
Europe is composed of thousands of small states, which form a so-called scattered patchwork of national politics in Europe. In China, as long as there is no unified country that can concentrate its troops, gather food and grain, and send these to the northern border via straight roads — the so-called high-speed roads, and as long as there is no Great Wall to transmit signals, the destruction inflicted upon the farming civilization would be devastating. So this is why every Chinese dynasty and all ancient Chinese cultures believed in Unification — it is because China is vulnerable.
而这套体系在西方是没有的。为什么我们说讲，你不能完全按照冷战意识形态，和后冷战意识形态思考问题？
Meanwhile, this system does not exist in the West. Why do we say, one must not view issues completely from the perspective of Cold War ideology and post-Cold War ideology?
It is because if you understand history, then you will know that the Cold War ideology is a very backward, and to some extent even ignorant, system that was only established after World War II. So far this system of discourse is so ignorant and yet, it still has control of all human beings. Especially the Chinese people, who are so intelligent and yet we are controlled by them like this. And most especially the intellectuals in colleges and universities, who if you wanted to question it, would react as if you were threatening their parents, looking utterly wretched. This is truly damnable.
One of the things I’ve noticed in fandom complaints about the ATLA comics-- namely, “The Promise”-- and subsequently, LOK’s worldbuilding, is the way the narrative handles colonization.
I see a lot about how what the Earth Kingdom chose to do with the former colonies is “none of Zuko’s (or Aang’s) business.” (I also see people talking about how Katara would never support colonialism, in any shape or form, no matter the circumstances.)
And I just.... don’t vibe with those ideas? At all?
Like, I definitely have problems with the comics-- especially “The Promise,” where all the drama centers around Miscommunications of Epic Proportions and could have been resolved in Part One if all the characters just sat down and listened to each other (not to mention that Aang would never have agreed to make that promise, nor would Zuko have asked it of him (Sokka would be a more obvious choice, but that’s a different discussion))-- but I never had any issues with their worldbuilding.
I love the idea of Yu Dao, and the fact that the narrative acknowledges that a new kind of world has new kinds of problems. It makes sense to me that we can’t always just “give back the land we took.” And I found the idea of the end solution being “give the people who live there their own country” really cool and empowering.
So I want to talk about why I feel this way. About what kind of real-world parallels can be made here. About some little-known bits of world-history that compare.
(Please note that for this meta I am only going to be discussing the relationship between Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom. As far as I am aware-- and I could be wrong-- there is no real-world genocide quite comparible to what Sozin did to the Air Nomads, and most of the people alive in ATLA were not actually around for or involved in that. And the relationship the Fire Nation has with the Water Tribes-- and that the North and South have with each other-- is worth a whole separate analysis, and doesn’t deserve to just be shoved into this one.)
(Disclaimer: While this is in response to some of the interpretations I’ve seen on this site, it is not meant to discount or invalidate those fans’ views-- I’m just trying to show my take on it. I am a firm believer in the power of active discourse, and the value of looking at the same scenes through different lenses, rather than just getting one opinion and accepting it as Absolute Truth.)
The main thing I notice in general ATLA discourse-- and not just on this topic, but in any sort of meta about the Fire Nation, colonization, and global impact-- is that the fandom mostly compares the war and its after-affects to real-world Imperialism, the Age of Imperialism, New Imperialism, and Colonization.
And I understand why that is. In the grand scheme of world history, that era is still fairly recent, and we are still dealing with the afteraffects from it. It has shaped the Western World’s worldview on every level. (Not to mention that the Euro-centric way we’re taught history means that this piece of world history is the one we’re most exposed to, and so have the most understanding of and room to analyze/criticize.)
However, there are a few issues with sticking only to this perspective.
First off, the Age of Imperialism was a direct response to the Age of Exploration. This was the period of time when white Europeans sailed around the world acting as though they were discovering new places and pretending that there weren’t already existing civilizations there.
[ID: Two dots meme, edited so that Guy A says “i’ve discovered a NEW WORLD,” Guy B replies “you didn’t discover ****,” and Guy A insists “i’ve discovered it” / End ID.]
Now, I’ve mentioned this in passing, but the world of ATLA doesn’t appear to have had an Age of Exploration. There’s no vast “undiscovered” land masses, the four nations have always known about each other, and they all have a shared language.
The whole foundation for the Age of Imperialism was “oh, look, there are all these ‘unexplored’ lands with resources ripe for the picking (who cares about the indigenous people, they’re just simplistic savages who don’t know what’s best for them), let’s see which European country can grab the most land first.”
This was a race. This was sudden. This was Europeans coming in and taking over while viewing the natives as bothersome pests. This was about multiple major world powers competing over resources.
This was not 100 years of active warfare between a single conquering country and the very people they were trying to conquer.
The parallels don’t hold up.
Secondly, by focussing only on this one kind of historical narrative, we ignore any others.
I will admit that I have used the word “imperialism” in reference to the Fire Nation a time or two. However, upon further reflection, I realize I didn’t really mean imperialism, which is actually a fairly modern concept. What I feel the Fire Nation is really an example of is centralism and expansionism-- two ideaologies that have been a way of life for conquering empires throughout history.
(I am in no way qualified to explain the differences between these concepts-- I recommend doing your own research if you’re curious.)
The Persian Empire. The Greek Empire. The Roman Empire. The Byzantine Empire. The Mongolian Empire. The Russian Empire. The First French Empire.
You could take any of these (or numerous others) and make an interesting analysis between the similarities and differences between their behaviors and that of the Fire Nation. And maybe I’ll do that someday.
However, I started this to talk about Yu Dao and all of the other so-called colonies (I really feel like territories would be a better word, but, again, that’s a whole ’nother discussion), and I’d like to focus on that.
FYI, here’s a basic history refresher: If two countries are at war, and then they decide to end the war, neither country is required to return captured territories. They can make a treaty and agree to do so, but there is no obligation to. The Fire Nation didn’t just march in and say, “this is our land now”-- they fought for it. They captured that land. Just because the war is over doesn’t mean they need to just give it back.
Like it or not, that is the way the world operated for thousands of years, and so that is the interpretation I’m working with here.
In any case, “The Promise” actually presents this as a three-way conversation. There’s Zuko (and, by default, the Fire Nation), Kuei (and, by default, Ba Sing Se and the Earth Kingdom), and the people of Yu Dao themselves.
(My understanding of the Earth Kingdom’s style of government is that it’s made up of a large collection of different ethno-cultural regions who all answer to Ba Sing Se.)
I’ll let Sokka explain it:
[ID: Comic panel from Part Three of “The Promise.” Sokka and Katara are talking, both in obvious states of agitation, while Suki and Toph are looking at something in the background. Sokka is saying, “Let me see if I got this. The protestors and the Earth Kingdom Army want the colonials to go, the Fire Nation Army wants the colonials to stay, and the Yu Dao Resistance just want their city to be left alone?” Katara responds, “Yes!” / End ID.]
The people of Yu Dao don’t care about the war. They don’t even really care who’s in charge. They just want to be left alone.
This speaks to me on a very personal level, so I’m going to make another real-world comparison here:
My ancestors first came to America to escape from the poverty and opression they were experiencing in a place known as “White Russia”-- that is, Belarus. To be clear, I am not talking about the country “Belarus,” but the region, which includes the modern-day countries of Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia and Moldova, as well as parts of Poland and Russia.
I looked up White Russia, trying to find out how much information someone who didn’t grow up hearing stories about what it was like (that is, most of the people reading this,) might have. I didn’t find much. Most of what I found talked about political ideologies and such-- things that your average poor peasant, struggling just eke out a living, didn’t have much energy to care about. So let me paint a(n oversimplified) picture for you.
Imagine you’re a poor shoemaker in a small town on the Russian border. You spend your days hard at work, trying to earn a living to support your wife and nine children. You’ve never left the town you were born in. One day you get the news: Russia and Poland are fighting again. Your two oldest sons (ages 15 and 17) are forcibly drafted off to fight in the Russian army; you never see them again and have no way of knowing if they’re dead or alive (they’re probably dead). Poland wins-- this time. Congratulations, your town is now part of Poland.
Does suddenly being Polish make a difference to your life? Not in the slightest. Two or three years down the line, you’ll go back to being part of Russia again. This is the third or fourth time you’ve seen your town switch hands, and you can’t say you prefer one government over the other. It doesn’t really matter who’s in charge-- you’re still faced with crippling taxes, forced drafts, and various other forms of oppression. (It doesn’t help that you happen to be part of a persecuted minority.)
(This is why I have many ancestors who may never have left the town they were born in, and yet records show that they were born in one country, got married in another, and died in a third.)
This is the kind of worldview through which I am looking at Yu Dao. (Obviously, it’s not an exact parallel, but neither is the standard “colonizers vs oppressed natives” lens.)
My ancestors eventually got fed up with the treatment they were receiving from their respective governments, and left to build a new life, in a new place. But the citizens of Yu Dao don’t have anywhere to go. The only two real world powers in this story are the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom, neither of which has ever before expressed any true interest or concern in the actual people of Yu Dao.
The Earth Kingdom didn’t really care about the city before the war-- they were just another poor, struggling town, whose citizens were barely able to make ends meet. And while the Fire Nation may have helped the place grow into a bustling town, they also established a hierarchy that did not serve in the citizens’ best interests.
And so, in “The Promise,” these citizens’ frustrations come to a head. “Enough,” they say, “we don’t want to be used as a pawn in your games anymore.”
And Zuko and Kuei (and Aang) actually listen. They say “we need to start thinking about these people as people, not as symbols of one side or the other. It’s time to give them a say in their future.”
And a new country-- a new way of life-- is born.
(Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it is constantly evolving and changing, trying to do better, be better. And that’s more than you can say about most of the other countries in this world.)
The current drama within the Party for Socialism and Liberation (American Marxist-Leninists) is a good example of the interpersonal problems which can easily result from centralization of power within a political body.
When you depend heavily upon a large population agreeing to follow a specific cadre (vanguard) of individuals, a strong incentive forms to uphold the illusion that the central committee is infallible. Acknowledging abusers or bigotry within their ranks threatens to shatter the support and scatter the followers on the breeze.
Decentralization offers us an opportunity to diversify the options of who to support in such a way that toxic groups may be abandoned without dissolving an entire movement.
While there will always be interpersonal power dynamics in human society, we can reduce their potential for harm in political groups by minimizing the importance of singular individuals within mass movements.
(Additionally - dependence upon the vanguard creates a massive singular target which can be eliminated or usurped by counter revolutionary forces; thus creating an existential threat to the entire movement in a way simply not possible in a sufficiently decentralized environment.)
The labor movement has been characterized in these last years by a dispersed, atomistic, and indisciplined activity. What happened was very sad. When one of the great capitals was at white heat, the rest were cold... All [struggles] were isolated combats impregnated with an excess of localism that made a unified [revolutionary] movement impossible.
Joaquín Maurín, on the Spanish workers’ movement after 1917.
I love Proles of the Round Table | Ep 37: Communist Democracy, let's play it!
https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-c3gwq-6cf0b3f
Of all the experiments in the early years of the October Revolution, from Anarchist communities, to tenuous DSA style attempts to have reconciliation with Bourgeois reactionary forces, only the Bolsheviks Democratic Centralism proved strong enough and flexible enough to survive the Civil War and establish Soviet Democracy forming the Soviet Union.
Did the Bolsheviks do everything perfect? No, of course not. But considering everything they were up against, despite the Reactionary forces of Imperialism that united against the Bolsheviks, it's a testament to the strength and dynamism of Marxism-Leninism that the Bolsheviks won the war and United the vast Soviet Union under one Socialist banner.
I don't care what your tendency is, the accomplishments of the Bolsheviks in the early years after the October Revolution is astounding, and could not have been accomplished without the backing of the vast masses of the Soviet peoples. This was NOT a Revolution from Above. This was true Proletarian unity in an alliance with the peasants who'd endured the worst of the Tsrist years. The Bolsheviks could not have won through totalitarianism as the Bourgeoisie would like you to believe. Only millions of people rising up in glorious revolt could ever have given the Bolsheviks the strength and numbers they needed to win the Civil War and come out on top to form the CCCP.
V.I. Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik party, wrote ‘The State and Revolution’ after being forced underground to avoid arrest in August-September 1917. Although the pamphlet was not published until 1918, its conceptions were key to the Great October Socialist Revolution of October 25, 1917 [November 7 on the modern calendar], which was then only weeks away. Because ‘The State and Revolution’ retains…
