A Subjective Thread

 

The Timeline:

BC (Before Christ)

600:  A Greek settlement on the hill of Pizzofalcone is rebranded as Neapolis (new city)

89: Start of the Roman Republic.

27: End of the Roman Republic, start of the Roman Empire

AD (Alto Domini)

0043: ~ 40,000 Romains invade England under the command of Roman general Aulus Plautius

0395: End of the Roman Empire

            Lots of Duchies and Kingdoms are given birth and die in the name of Napoli

0827: Muslim invasion of Sicily and southern Italy.

0902: Muslim occupation of Sicily ends, the Normans invade as part of the First Holy Crusade

1861: Kingdom of Italy starts.

1911: The Italo-Turkish War

1913: The Balkan Wars end

-          The Ottoman Empire is loosing territory to the European states

1918: World War 1 ends, November 11th.

-   Yugoslavia starts out as The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

1922: The USSR begins on December 28.

1929: Name changed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia on the 3^rd of October.

1939: WW2 starts, September 1^st.

1941: Yugoslavia is invaded by the Axis powers.

1943: The Yugoslavian partisan resistance renamed the country to Democratic Federal Yugoslavia.

1945: Yugoslavia is one again renamed to Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia

-          Josip Broz Tito becomes President as leader of a communist government.

-          Italia gives up Istria, Rijeka, and Zadar to the FPRY

1946: The Kingdom of Italy ends and the Republic of Italy starts, ciao La Casa di Savoy

1963: Yugoslavia was renamed again, as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

1980: President Josip Broz Tito dies.

1991: The Yugoslav war starts.

            -    December 31^st, the USSR officially dissolves

2001: The Yugoslav war ends, with the dissolution of Yugoslavia, where the provinces finally become independent states.

2017: Yugoslav War crime trials conclude with the final charge being issued on November 17^th.

2022: 45,755 of mostly fighting age men crossed the English Channel to request asylum in the UK.

  

 

 

 

The Conversation:

In that forewarned is forearmed, I’m not a historian and I’ve never played one on TV; therefore this is just my opinion based on observation and should not be considered a deep dive into the subject matter.

 

The ancient city of Napoli (Naples) is best known for three things: shipping, hand gestures and pizza. As a city based on a natural port, Napoli saw many peoples from many cultures and countries come and go for the purpose of commerce. The goal of all of the people involved was commerce and so they had to work out how to communicate; this is where the hand gestures came into play. As for pizza, in general the Italian cuisine speaks for itself; just consider what other European countries did with that tiny fruit typically called a Tomato that Cristoforo Colombo brought back from his explorations.

 

In the port city of Napoli, groups of people came together under the common goal of commerce and made things work because they both wanted and needed a path for their survival and enrichment; this common goal on both sides of the ‘contract’ meant that the mutual need set the stage for a mutually cooperative relationships, regardless of any social differences; it is remarkable how people will adapt when it comes to money.

 

Yugoslavia historically, was a mere yarn or thread in time when compared to the historically rich tapestry that is Napoli. King Peter I of Serbia was the original monarch of what was to become known as Yugoslavia after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which happened just four years after the end of WW1; it should be noted that the Ottoman empire was already being eaten away at by the Italo-Turkish and Balkan Wars.

 

With WW2 following quite quickly on the heals of WW1, about 21 years, the new country of Yugoslavia never really got a chance to settle in its skin as it were, before the Axis armies invaded so the Slavic peoples were once again under the heal of an ‘absent prince’ to borrow a phrase from Machiavelli. For me this caused a social/political problem in that the government was changed more local than Istanbul to the new remote ‘Prince’ who ruled from Berlin; self-determination and autonomy was once again outside of the Slavs control. The defeat of the Axis powers which could have allowed for the nearby USSR to step in as yet another absentee prince, was rejected by Tito who implemented a less centralized and repressive form of communism.

 

Post The USSR, when Yugoslavia’s neighbours became freer states, within 11 years Yugoslavia started to fall apart. Almost every state/province decided to leave Yugoslavia outside of Serbia who worked towards maintaining its hegemony over the region. The religious and ethnic cleansing during the Yugoslav war reached levels to where the war-crime trials over genocide lasted for about 15 years; this once again provided another kick in the pants for the Slavs and the Slavic region.

 

It is my understanding that the Romans didn’t have slaves, they had property, as the term slave didn’t exist back then; a distinction without a difference. The term slave is rooted with the use of Slavs as property, or so I understand, yet again a distinction without a difference. It seems to me that living on the land bridge between Europe and the Middle East seems has never been in a pleasant situation seeing as tribal expansion has always been a human trait regardless of time or place of birth.

 

Naples, while being a major port is effectively off the beaten path; face it, the peninsula of Italy is literally a dead end. Conversely, in the Slavic region which includes Belarus, Croatia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, and more; there never was a well rooted commonality due to the constant foot traffic. Of course historically those feet carried goods for trade, swords and shields, bows and arrows, and even guns.

 

So, why did I write this piece, since the inception of the phrase ‘diversity is our strength’, I’ve asked for the qualifier of ‘what is our commonality.’ At the micro and macro level, and everything in between, a community can only exists with at least a smidgen of some commonality.

 

At the most micro community level, the family, the commonality is the familial tie. At one in-between level, sports fans cheering for the same team will be buddies at the sports bar while the game is on. At a grander scale, one can look to nations where the people will gladly stand with pride under a flag. And, at the most macro-level to date, Science-Fiction has informed me that humans regardless of skin colour, gender, religion, language, or political persuasion will band together when the other tribe challenges; and, typically those have been called aliens in Science-Fiction.

 

I guess this exploration is why does one do when they are one of the aliens or one of an already established community? This world can not and must not be approached myopically, regardless how many people seem to feel that is the only option.

 

Napoli has been standing nearly 2,500 years to date, and yet Yugoslavia no longer stood after about 80 years. I posit that the difference between Naples or Italy at large, and Yugoslavia is that due to the lack of ‘foreigner’ traffic for any great length of time. Italy once did, and to this day still does have some contention between the north and the south.  

Conversely, the Slavic area boarders two unique cultures and as such is a mixture of both, which only gained peace via war.

 

I don’t know if I’m right in this analysis, I just did my best to follow my understandings.