Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com, Sat Mar 27 01:13:13 PST 2004:
>
> >>What did the Athenians do with the expropriated people and the land
> >>expropriated from them, however?
> >
> >Killed or enslaved them. In the good cases, they were allowed to
> >rule themselves but had to hand over tribute. In mixed cases, some
> >Athenians mixed with some natives and stole some of their land. But
> >all colonies either handed over tribute or were expropriated and
> >repopulated.
This sounds simply bizarre to me. I've read a good deal of Athenian history, and I know of several massacres, but I know nothing at all about such a systematic practice as Michael describes here. I would not trust a word of it until he gave substantial citation of sources in the major historians. Certainly Finley, Ostwald, and Osborne, for example, suggest no such systematic policy. The only examples of mass killings I know of occurred during the Peleponnesian War, _not_ as part of Athenian colonial policy during the growth of the empire. That tribute Michael speaks of does _not_ come from colonies, it comes from "allies" in the alliance (which is what the empire was officially). Athens empire included only "allies," not "colonies," and those allies were pretty independent as long as they sent in their annual dues to the alliance. Those dues could be either in cash or in ships and men; Athens encouraged them to send cash, because that meant that more and more of the alliance's military (sea) power was made up of Athenian ships. The alliance was originally formed after the second Persian invasion to prepare for a third invasion. The treasury was kept at Delos (and later shifted to Athens). It was an Athenian empire but an extremely loose one, and no meaning of colony (old or new) is of any relevance to the Athenian Empire. (I can't remember the official name of the alliance just now and I'm too lazy to get Finley off the shelf and check.)
The Greek word for a colony is only by accident the same as the modern word for colony: there is simply no relationship. And it is more than that they weren't capitalist colonies. They weren't colonies in any sense that implies exploitation.
Repeat: The Athenian empire exploited in dependent allies, not colonies.
Carrol