History Memes

Full title: Until the late 18th century, France had approximately 20 different languages spoken by millions of Europeans. The policy of centralization and discrimination against other European cultures and languages within France led to the almost complete extinction of all other languages by 20 century

It’s quite curious: if you look at modern definitions of genocide (which include the destruction or prohibition of a people’s language as part of an effort to eradicate their identity) and then examine the laws and government decrees of many centralized 19th-century European states, you arrive at the conclusion that, by today’s definition, almost all of those European states committed cultural genocide against their own populations.