ABOUT FACTS NET War

Benevolent is defined as having or showing or arising from a desire to promote the welfare of others. This definition doesn't exactly fit what I had in mind while talking about the more humane conquerors. For our purposes lets just say if your country wasn't sacked and burned and you were eventually given some rights that you didn't previously have, than your conqueror was benevolent, after all he could have destroyed your country.

Through out history, nations have been conquered. Sometimes these nations brought this upon themselves by attacking other nations and sometimes these nations were the ones who were attacked first. It really doesn't matter who was at fault in this context because what we are interested in are not the nations themselves but the people that conquered them. There were many tyrants but there was also that rare person that improved the lot of the nation he conquered. Sometimes he would be kind to some nations but ruthless to others. An example of this is Alexander the Great. If you agreed to serve him and his empire there was a very good chance that he would leave the government of the conquered nation intact and take their word that they would be faithful to him. If you did not agree than all bets were off as we say now. Your buildings would be burnt and many people would be executed. The last kind of conqueror was benevolent to all conquered nations. General McArthur fits this bill.

General McArthur accepted the Japanese surrender in 1945 and was put in charge of the reconstruction of that country. He decided to treat the Japanese kindly and helped them rebuild their country into one of the most powerful industrial nations in the world. He gave them a constitution that was anti war and pro democratic. Even the Emperor was left in place. The fact that no one was quite sure of the role that the Emperor had played in Japan's attacks on other countries, including the attack on Pearl Harbor, may also have had something to do with letting him stay. McArthur's transformation of Japan was so successful that in 1975 the Emperor visited the U.S. where President Ford greeted him and he met John Wayne. He was given a Mickey Mouse watch that he wore for many years.

Sometimes it wasn't such a bad thing to be conquered by the Romans. If your country was made part of Rome than you became a Roman citizen with all its privileges. If you saw the movie 'Gladiator' than you remember that Russell Crowe played a general in the Roman army, yet he was from Spain, a conquered Roman territory. Rome brought culture to many a country. Being a citizen of Rome brought prestige and the right to travel to Rome anytime you wanted.

Incredible photograph of USS Maine in Havana harbor before it sunk
Photo Source: U.S. Navy

Another time that the U.S. was benevolent to a conquered country was during the Spanish American War. I am not exactly talking about a country but about a territory. We entered the Spanish American War fueled by newspapers calling for revenge for the sinking of the Maine, a battleship that blew up in Havana Harbor on 15 February 1898. We know today that the ship blew up because of a tragic accident on board which killed three fourths of her crew. At the time, a Spanish mine was blamed for the explosion and we declared war on Spain. When the war was over we gained the Philippine Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico and Spain received twenty million dollars. As a U.S. possession things improved considerably for the Philippine people. One of the reasons the U.S. wanted to acquire the Philippines was that they feared that Germany would get them if we didn't. President McKinley issued the Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation on December 21, 1898 acquiring them. In the beginning we were at war with the people of the Philippines. William H. Taft was the first Governor and he established a democratic rule over the land. His adopted a "Philippines for the Filipinos" policy and prevented the country from being ravaged by fortune seekers. He purchased and resold over 400,000 acres of land to poor Filipinos at very easy terms. In 1902 the Cooper Act was passed by Congress and gave a bill of rights to the Filipinos and allowed them to have two commissioners to represent them in Congress (who had no voting rights) and a Philippine Assembly.

He was one of eight children and excelled in math and science. He became an artillery officer during the French Revolution. Napoleon Bonaparte was to make the most of his situation and the opportunity that history would afford him. When Napoleon was made the ruler of France, war still raged. Napoleon crossed the Alps and defeated the Austrian Army, this was one of his greatest victories. He restored religion to France and instilled the Civil Code, parts of which are still in use today. One of the things Napoleon stated was that power stemmed from the state and not from the Church as was previously thought in France. In 1804 he was named Emperor for life. It seems that many times, after he would conquer an army, he would form an alliance with that country. An example of this was when he defeated the Russians at Friedland in 1807 and then he formed an alliance with the Tsar. Little did he know that Russia would eventually be his downfall. Napoleon used the threat of his army to get the Spanish king to abdicate so his brother could take the throne. The British sent troops to aid the Spanish but were driven out by Napoleon's army. Of course the idea in Napoleon's time was to acquire land that would supply you with wealth of one sort or another, not to destroy the land or the people who worked it. We all know what happened to Napoleon in the end but he still remains a romantic figure to this day.

I am afraid that things are entirely different today. If a conqueror arose today, he would try and conquer by fear. He would most likely set off a nuke and destroy part of a country to try and bring it to it's knees with the threat of more nukes to come if it didn't surrender. Some conquerors wouldn't even want to conquer a country but to destroy it. Ah, what ever happened to the good old days when you fought a war and even if you lost the people might not have even notice the difference?