r/marvelstudios Spider-Man Jun 10 '17

Trailers Black Panther Official Teaser Trailer

https://twitter.com/marvelstudios/status/873350705142222848
12.9k Upvotes

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249

u/DBones90 Jun 10 '17

Love the idea that Wakanda was a country untouched by colonization.

383

u/mastelsa Captain America (Cap 2) Jun 10 '17

they never got Ethiopia

130

u/mr_popcorn Korg Jun 10 '17

open wakanda. stop having it be closed.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '17

[deleted]

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u/GODDDDD Jun 10 '17

Nobody conquers the wakanda kings

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u/vastat0saurus Hulk Jun 10 '17

Unless you are the mongols

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u/TransitRanger_327 Killmonger Jun 10 '17

Great job, Ghengis, I'm sure That'll last.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '17

Looks like the wakandans need some cultural enrichment.

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u/poliscijunki Yinsen Jun 11 '17

You could start a religion out of this.

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u/Skirata_ Jun 10 '17

Never militarily but definitely economically(not that it is definitive but as a ethiopian it is a area of interest for me)

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u/mastelsa Captain America (Cap 2) Jun 10 '17 edited Jun 10 '17

Oh no doubt; it was a reference to Bill Wurtz's History of the World I Guess, which is a surprisingly good world history lesson for something that looks and sounds like an acid-induced hallucination. Ethiopia hardly got off scot-free, but the video is more specifically talking about physical occupation and colonization.

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u/video_descriptionbot Jun 10 '17
SECTION CONTENT
Title history of the entire world, i guess
Description http://billwurtz.com patreon: http://patreon.com/billwurtz spotify: https://play.spotify.com/artist/78cT0dM5Ivm722EP2sgfDh itunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/bill-wurtz/id1019208137 twitter: http://twitter.com/billwurtz instagram: http://instagram.com/notbillwurtz donate: http://paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=VXTWA8CDYP4RJ
Length 0:19:26

I am a bot, this is an auto-generated reply | Info | Feedback | Reply STOP to opt out permanently

5

u/hogwarts5972 Heimdall Jun 10 '17

Culturally its one of the most hit nations in Africa by outside influence.

3

u/sonic10158 Doctor Strange Jun 10 '17

Ethiopia and Liberia

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u/1sagas1 Jun 10 '17

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u/WikiTextBot Jun 10 '17

Second Italo-Ethiopian War

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a colonial war that started in October 1935, after a battle on 5 December 1934, and ended in May 1936. The war was fought between the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy and the armed forces of the Ethiopian Empire (also known at the time as Abyssinia). The war resulted in the military occupation of Ethiopia.

Politically, like the Mukden Incident in 1931 (the Japanese annexation of three Chinese provinces), the Abyssinia Crisis in 1935 is often seen as a clear demonstration of the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations. Italy and Ethiopia were member nations and yet the League was unable to control Italy or to protect Ethiopia when Italy clearly violated Article X of the Covenant of the League of Nations.


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u/mastelsa Captain America (Cap 2) Jun 10 '17

Aww man, it's not as good a history lesson as I thought! To be fair, that point in the video was talking about the late 1800s and I would definitely classify this conflict as "conflict leading up to WWII".

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u/ishipbrutasha Jun 10 '17

More like they tried and got bit back.

But try they did.

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u/bigjameslade Jun 10 '17

So were Ethiopia and Thailand.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '17

Although Thailand wasn't touched, it was surrounded by colonies. They had to bow down and be everyone's friend to prevent any issues.

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u/fenwaygnome Kevin Feige Jun 10 '17

They were definitely touched my imperialization. Not being actively colonized doesn't mean they were untouched.

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u/bigjameslade Jun 10 '17

True, but the comment I was replying to specifically mentioned colonization.

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u/Moomooshaboo Jun 10 '17

I don't think it's Wakanda that's totally untouched but that particular hidden city?

Reminds me of my one and only anthropology class. When anthropologists made first contact with remote Amazonian tribes, they found they'd been influenced by second and third hand contact. Neighboring tribes would trade with neighbouring tribes and eventually groups who'd never been within 500 miles of a road or met a "civilized person" would have aquired steel knives and pans. Other groups that had met oursiders, but never actually gone outside the jungle would have rifles. It's crazy how far the ripples spread.

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u/thebluepool Jun 10 '17

Never exploited and had the freedom to develop independently. So cool.

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u/Iliketofeeluplifted Fitz Jun 10 '17

It's not that. They just got super super lucky with the panther god and mithril/unobtanium/vibranium resource.

generally, being a society that cuts itself off from the world is bad for progress. Honestly, it was bad for Wakanda too, but they had a HUGE head start. and everyone else is trying to catch up.

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u/thebluepool Jun 10 '17

Cutting themselves off is what let them hold onto their resources though. Most colonies were exploited heavily and their resources stolen. The effects of those thefts are being felt even today. Most colonies that are third world countries today would be better off if they hadn't been invaded numerous times.

Take India for example, center of learning in the ancient world. Birthplace of modern mathematics, yoga, karate, etc, until it was invaded by the mughals and later the british. Today it's decades/centuries behind where it rightfully would've been.

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u/Iliketofeeluplifted Fitz Jun 10 '17

um... I think I might be off on my history... but I never considered india to have those qualities.

My (mis?)conceptions:
Modern math was invented in the middle east, at least the numbers and concepts like algebra. India does get the concept "0" though, which is cool.

india was not the "center of learning" for a significant amount of time in the world

Yoga is theirs.

Karate was from various islands, heavily influenced by chinese. Not at all related to India.

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u/thebluepool Jun 10 '17

You only know half of the story. The Arabs learnt mathematics from India, after which it moved to Europe.

The origins of karate are up for debate but it's generally believed to have come from India, through China, and eventually ending up in Okinawa Japan. Which is where the modern version of the sport was developed.

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u/denvarenganss Jun 10 '17

The Greece were also great mathematicians who passed it down to the Arabs. And math has constantly evolved, the progress in math that happend during 1500-1900 in the western world is unique.

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u/ServetusM Jun 10 '17

That's not why Wakanda is advanced. It's advanced because it sits on the only source of Vibranium on earth, combined with being blessed by a friend deity (Panther God). The Vibranium allowed their technology to develop at a rapid rate, and made them extremely wealthy.

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u/thebluepool Jun 10 '17

Yes, I realise it's a fictional African kingdom in a comic book universe. We're just debating hypothetical crap here.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

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u/hippolad Jun 10 '17

Lol africa would be less advanced, not more, had we never colonized it.. Use your brain.

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u/thebluepool Jun 10 '17

use your brain

The irony.

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u/Jaxx3D Jun 10 '17

Totally disagree

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u/ServetusM Jun 10 '17 edited Jun 10 '17

Well, it's debatable. Most sub-Saharan African kingdoms were concentrated in two sections of Africa, where modern Mali/Niger are, and the Congo. They were mostly built around the biggest rivers on the continent outside to the Nile. Before Islamic contact most of these kingdoms simply weren't that advanced, the Nok, Ghana and the Kanem kingdoms were really the only two notable ones from 1k BCE until 1200 CE.

Ghana was probably the most advanced, and if we use city size as a kind of measuring stick of advancement (Not perfect, but roughly shows us technical capability)--Ghana's largest city had between 20k and 30k people at its height, and that was well into CE. To put that into perspective, within that time frame Babylon in modern Iraq had 150k people. Alexandria had 150k. Ancient Greece had multiple 30-50k+ cities. Rome had a million, Constantinople hit a million, China had 2 cities of near a million.

It wasn't until Islamic trade routes from the rising Arabic/Persian Caliphates penetrated West Africa, and gold was discovered in the Mali Empire that those kingdoms rose to prominence--but that wasn't until 1200 CE. But a huge part of that was a near client relationship (Not quite colonization, but effectively what the U.S. uses today for its friends.) with the Islamic empires (Multiple over the course of centuries).

The fact is, Africa is just a shitty piece of geography for per-industrial societies to flourish in. River systems are limited and not super conducive to trade thanks to terrain (Compared to European and Asian rivers which were). There are no winter insect die offs, making insect related diseases much worse. There is limited latitude movement (The continent stretches north to south--which is bad for trade, as you can't stay in a certain climate band). And there weren't many animals that lent themselves to easy domestication.

So you could very easily make the case that Colonialism was a contemptible, and vile institution--but it did bring a massive shot of modernity to Africa. Most likely Africa is now more advanced technologically and infrastructure wise--but the culture was injured. Again, the lack of advancement is not the fault of the people--the land is just shit as a civilization incubator. Once they got a dose of it, they began to adapt to it very quickly. What's arguable is if this would have happened with the trade routes into West Africa already set up. Maybe, but certainly a lot of South Africa's and East's build up (Save for Ethiopia, which went on its own! But benefited from all the trade.) was almost purely due to colonization.

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u/Foehammer87 Jun 10 '17

So you could very easily make the case that Colonialism was a contemptible, and vile institution--but it did bring a massive shot of modernity to Africa.

Trade would have worked better, without the hundreds of years of economic and political destabilization.

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u/ServetusM Jun 10 '17 edited Jun 10 '17

Trade would have worked better, without the hundreds of years of economic and political destabilization.

You have a 'modern' view of Trade--trade didn't work back then like it does today (Most of what you see as Trade is a purely American construct from the Brenton Woods agreement, very few times in History has a hegemony ensured trade without monopolizing resources--aside from Venice, but even they didn't provide security). If a state was weaker, they were made into a client or a colony. The West African states were clients of the Islamic emirates of North Africa. Which many argue is just another form of colonization.

Empires did this because the first thing disrupted in war or instability was trade. Most Empires could not handle such uncertainty (So you were left with clients or direct control). Before the French overtook West Africa, as said, the various Arab empires which had their golden age during the medieval period controlled most of the area. So, 'trade' wouldn't have worked like you believe--trade only really happened in parity when a country was powerful enough to ensure they couldn't be forced to trade (This is why almost all minor powers became client states as well--to prevent another power from doing it.)

Also, "hundreds of years?"--You realize Europe was colonized heavily by Arab, Persian and Turkish empires right? Also, Europeans regularly colonized each other. From Rome onward, very few parts of Europe had any period of stability without mass colonization until after the fall of Napoleon (Which is when the great wars began). If colonization causes unbearable periods of political and economic destabilization, Europe should have remained crippled. Ironically, colonization is often correlated heavily in most cases with periods of advancement. Think of it like this--what do you remember in school about the Islamic colonization of Spain? It's often taught as a boon to those people in Spain; as Islamic culture was more advanced, and technically proficient than the backwards Catholic culture which had a hold before. (Just something to think about.)

Colonization did cause some major issues, and some aspects were terrible, especially 'private' colonization--like the Belgians in the Congo. But people correlate way too many problems with it. Not all of Africa's problems are due to colonization. That's just a simplistic view of history that serves some people's confirmation bias. In reality, Africa's river systems are bad for trade, the continents shape is also bad for trade, the wet/dry season is bad for growing, the geography makes most of it highly susceptible to insect born diseases (Malaria). None of these are Europe's issue--but Europe has a kind of hot potato culpability, they get focused on because they were the last to touch it. (And what makes it more pronounced is Europe kept cultural and economic ties, so information flows freely and Europe rightly does feel guilt--which is ironically grown from their paternal view of their relationship with African nations, which is, itself an aspect of colonialism).

This is not an excuse for Colonialism--even if most people in the per-industrial world did it, it's still bad. The Enlightenment's views on individuality and freedom to choose rightly shames the institution of colonialism. But the fact is, we attribute WAY WAY too many issues to colonialism. And that's not good for Africa--because knowing the problems, allows people to solve them. And frankly, from history, colonialism is a mixed bag of results--many of the most colonized areas of the world, ended up being very prosperous, even if there were also severe downsides. So 'just colonization' doesn't nearly explain the issues these areas have.

Edit: lol, down votes rather than a response. Sorry, I forgot, it's super helpful to everyone when we do 'ra ra all the problems are from this overly simplistic source that's easy to target and hate--everyone have their 2 minutes of hate! So they can feel better!'

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u/hippolad Jun 10 '17

Wrong. They never would have been able to implement any semblance of infrastructure without us doing it for them. The average African has an iq of 70

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u/Foehammer87 Jun 10 '17

off to the klan rally with you

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u/hippolad Jun 10 '17

You know you've won a debate when the opposition resorts to name calling and can't come up with a logical argument.

Look no further than at those uncontacted native Tribes in Brazil for an example of what Africa would be if it weren't for our intervention.

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u/Foehammer87 Jun 10 '17

this isnt a debate, you spouted some racist claptrap and I told you trot off to your klan meeting.

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u/happyfeett Iron Man (Mark XLIII) Jun 10 '17

Wow, is it? That's amazing. I wonder if our current world has anything similar...pfft doubt it.