Is there any [group of people sharing a culture and geography] (country, nation, whatever word(s) you think fit best) who have never conquered anyone nor been conquered? Has there ever been?
If you stretch the definition sufficiently, one of the Inuit populations might qualify. Also, we might find a South American or Polynesian tribe that would fit that description...
Yes, I agree -- probably the Greenland Inuit. I would say that the North American Inuit/Aleut groups were effectively taken over by European North Americans. But the Dutch (the nation that "owned" Greenland; at least, I think it was the Dutch) were actually extremely conscientious concerning the culture and language of the Greenland Inuit.
I grant that perhaps what I said was too generous, but if I stick the word "relatively" in there, I think it still stands. The Danes perhaps weren't perfect, but they were exceedingly better than the European North Americans when it came to dealing with Inuit peoples.
It's been passed back and forth between Norway and Denmark, and there was this nasty bit where the Lutherans killed all the Catholics...I don't see a violent conquering, though. Hard to fight in that much warm clothing, I suspect :)
My father worked for several years with the international arctic atmosperic sciences research program, spending a month at a time up on the ice each year. His home movies of the people up there clearly show a shared culture. I'd expect it is even more true of a group for researchers on a permanent base for 6 months at a time. But now that I look at the web sites for the bases, they are run by individual nations, which probably nixes the deal.
Yeah, Inuit is as close as you'll get. Inuit is really the only one I'd name without some hardcore documentation. Plus, I read a paper some years ago regarding the same subject that named them with some compelling evidence. Not that I could name the author now for the life of me.
My expectation, absent actual research data, would be 'No.' South American and South Pacific societies that we think of as having little or no contact with the outside world tend to have very high internal and internecine rates of violence (cf Guns, Germs, and Steel). Certainly no culture groups in Europe, Asia, or Africa can qualify. I could see Inuit, although I can't remember what the environmental conditions were like when they crossed the Bering straight - sure, they may not be expansionist now, but they wouldn't have gotten there in the first place if they weren't expansionist back in the (admittedly very distant) day.
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Date: 2009-05-31 07:07 am (UTC)If so, then...
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Date: 2009-06-01 04:52 am (UTC)That was what I had in mind.
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Date: 2009-06-10 04:29 pm (UTC)South American and South Pacific societies that we think of as having little or no contact with the outside world tend to have very high internal and internecine rates of violence (cf Guns, Germs, and Steel). Certainly no culture groups in Europe, Asia, or Africa can qualify.
I could see Inuit, although I can't remember what the environmental conditions were like when they crossed the Bering straight - sure, they may not be expansionist now, but they wouldn't have gotten there in the first place if they weren't expansionist back in the (admittedly very distant) day.