15 Comments
Oct 1Liked by Andrew Smith

It's kind of wild to think that seemingly random "one moment in time" decisions can have pretty profound and long-lasting consequences on how entire countries and societies develop.

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And, so often, these moments involve imaginary lines on maps.

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What a pleasure to read you, Andrew! I’m happy to be back on Substack with your words.

As an aficionado of Spanish and Portuguese, this was a real treat! Thank you for the time travel and for considering history. That moment of pause in the text was much appreciated and mindful.

I will read this piece again; it is definitely one to keep as a masterclass in brilliant writing.

Here’s a little example of this magical blend:

https://open.spotify.com/track/2r4zhMrN1cQEXNWNG2SkXW?si=XL-HL66CSE2U-YOAPgOxFQ

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I just started a Samba station on my Pandora feed!

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Well done! I join the dance daily 📻

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É um bom dia!

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If only I spoke portuguese! But, I understood a little! É verdade!

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It's all Latin anyway! :)

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Yes, indeed! Some Tower of Babel lessons in there.

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Of the two major colonized continents, South America was chiefly controlled largely by Spanish and Portuguese interests, whereas Africa was chiefly divided between English, French, German and Dutch interests. The easiest way to tell who controlled what and where is observing which language is the most dominant one besides the Indigenous ones- a major part of colonization was the colonizers "educating" the Indigenous people in the colonizers' native tongue.

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Excellent observation. I might add that the Portuguese were unique insofar as they had a very prominent early presence in both Africa and the Americas. It's no coincidence that Brazil brought more human slaves over than any other nation.

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What a weird world it must’ve been with uncharted worlds. Too bad the earth isn’t flat, we could’ve just kept on exploring

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Well hey, the universe does seem to be flat (at least as far as we can tell).

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Flat earthers were right! They just had the scale wrong

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"See? That's what we actually meant in the first place."

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