Historical myths

[Steppe Merc]

Agreed, that was what was quite amazing about the Mongols. They used an ancient, practically unchanged style of warfare to conquer great amounts of lands and peoples.

Timur, Turkish... Hmmm... I seem to recall something about his mother was Turkish and his father Mongol. Well at least he was mixed at a relatively short distance.
And just because he fought Mongols didn't mean he wasn't one. As noted earlier Kublai had no trouble fighting other Mongols.

I could be wrong. But I'm pretty sure for example he never adopted the term Khan (I think he was highest at an Amir, or similar Muslim title). And my point about fighting Mongols was that I don't think he was one of the Khans of the Mongol Empire at large, which I think was sort of still together more or less, despite the break up between multiple Khans.

[Kraxis]

Ahh of course. He wasn't a khan, that is for sure. But he wasn't the first non-khan ruler of some piece of dirt. The simple fact that he respected the khan title enough to not use it at least indicates that he viewed himself as a mongol. Until the time he had conquered enough to be called khan.

[conon394]

Hm... That is a point, but even back then it must have been known that America was big big big, and the 13 colonies were a mere pinprik in it all. Of course it could have been a political agenda, in that they would call the citizens Americans to gather support among the rest of the colonies, even among foreign colonies. You know along the lines, "we are all Americans, they are all Europeans." But I have heard no such claims.

Personally I just believe the people who did it simply didn't think about it. "United States of America sounds good, don't you think Jefferson?" "Sure it does! And we should call ourselves Americans to make certain that those Brits know we are not like them, we are from another continent. We belong free." But not a single one considered the fact that there were millions more Americans out there, who would not belong in their state. A simple oversight.

Admittedly there was quite a bit of America outside of the U.S. But at least in the 18th and 19th centuries the U.S did spend a considerable amount of time trying to add at least most of (or perhaps all, if I recall correctly Seward wanted to conquer Canada and Mexico with the Union army for example) of N. America to the U.S.

By the 20th century American for citizen of the U.S. is really just an inculcated historical artifact. Nobody calls people from the Netherlands Netherlanders, but rather the Dutch (or maybe somebody does since MS Word actually corrected the word…).

[Kraxis]

Admittedly there was quite a bit of America outside of the U.S. But at least in the 18th and 19th centuries the U.S did spend a considerable amount of time trying to add at least most of (or perhaps all, if I recall correctly Seward wanted to conquer Canada and Mexico with the Union army for example) of N. America to the U.S.

By the 20th century American for citizen of the U.S. is really just an inculcated historical artifact. Nobody calls people from the Netherlands Netherlanders, but rather the Dutch (or maybe somebody does since MS Word actually corrected the word…).

Argh, now you make it sound as if the Founding Fathers had an ulterior motive for the name. 'Conquer in the name of... well yourself.'
Damn, I didn't know they had been that ruthless and shrewd.

I was actually going to name some peoples who were not named as their contry but couldn't remember any...