On the contrary, the Romans consistently spoke about the spread of Roman welfare; but more important, the more involved they got in various places like Egypt, France, etc., the more trouble they got into, and the more necessary to the future of Rome the suppression of revolt was. Even more strikingly, in the case of the Spaniards, after the initial voyages, they deliberately got blessing from the Pope and were officially acting as his emissaries, bringing Christianity to the New World. They would stand at the entrance to villages, reading (in Spanish that the villagers could not understand) an order to the villagers to submit to being Christianized, and if they did not, they would be butchered. So controversial was their mission, that they -- extraordinarily -- held a conference in Spain in the early 1550s, at which Bartolomme de Las Casas fought against Sepulveda as to the justice of Spanish conquest. I know of very few cases where pure conquest is openly stated as the goal (in fact, I can't think of any): there is always a dusting of "goodness".


I thought it was blindingly obvious that the United States is out to conquer Iraq. Conquer, in my dictionary, means to beat into submission.

yours, Peter T.