A "disclaimer": I'm not a professional social psychologist nor an historian. I possess a little knowledge about a wide range of subjects. So without further ado, I will start writing about bullying from an historical viewpoint.
HISTORICALLY SPEAKING
I suppose the first bully was Cain who slew Abel. That was just the beginning. History is full of famous, or rather infamous, bullies. Caesar, Genghis Khan, Francisco Pizarro, Cortez, George III of England, Geronimo, Napoleon, Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Tito, Hiro Hito, Joseph Stalin, Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, George Wallace, Pol Pot, Sadam Hussein and Bin Laden are just a few of many well-known bullies throughout the breadth of human history. These bullies did not bully in isolation. They were men of power because they had the support of large numbers of people or at least the support of others in power.
A number of these bullies led their countries to invade non-aggressive countries to occupy and/or to depose the legitimate leadership of the non-aggressive countries. Such invasions are examples of organized bullying on a grand scale. In the first half of the twentieth century, Germany tried twice to bully the rest of Europe; Japan invaded China and Manchuria; Russia took possession of much of eastern Europe; and China invaded and took possession of Tibet.
Bullying has been and continues to be widespread throughout our world. It is hard to imagine what life on earth would look like without the influence of the bullies that have shaped and continue to shape human history. I believe that, without bullying, more human energy would have gone into positive creativity that could have eliminated poverty, diseases, and unnecessary pollution; preserved natural wilderness; and beautified cities.
Children are not taught in school what might have been if it had not been for the infamous bullies and massive organized bullying that they study in history class. They are aware, on some level, that infamous bullies, while not being well-known scientists, nor great diplomats, nor notable inventors, nevertheless have shaped human history to varying degrees and have made their names memorable in the process.
Some American students may even be smart enough to realize that if it weren't for bullying in this country's past, their families would not be enjoying their current socio-economic status. Where would the many families in this country be if their ancestors had not been bullies? Perhaps Spain or France could have afforded to pay fair market value for the American real estate they claimed as their own. Instead of paying the Native Americans for what the land was worth, they just took it by force of occupation. The newly formed government of the United States which had yet to impose an income tax on its citizens could not afford to pay a fair price to the natives whose land was being occupied by its citizens. Instead of paying the tribes for their land, the U.S. government beat them into submission through violence, starvation, disease, and broken promises. Having confined the survivors to reservations, the government attempted cultural genocide by integrating native Americans, particularly children, many of whom were forcibly separated from their parents, into white society.
The nineteenth century doctrine of Manifest Destiny claiming that continued expansion of the Republic was its obvious destiny, was a thinly veiled rationalized justification for bullying the Indian tribes west of the Mississippi River as well as aboriginal peoples of some Pacific and Caribbean Islands.
Would the greatest nation on Earth still be so great if it weren't for bullying? How many American fortunes were made through the Slavery, Tobacco, and Firearms trade? The institution of slavery was a form of bullying from which some of the founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, profited financially. The slave owners of the South were dependent on slaves for their socio-economic status and this was a factor in their decision to secede from the Union rather than give up slavery.
Even after Emancipation former slaves and their descendants were still treated like second-class citizens thanks to Jim Crow laws. As late as the 1970s "undesirable" poor black men and women in states like California and Arkansas were sterilized without their permission. This was certainly a form of tyranny. One could argue that this practice resulted in smaller welfare rolls which benefits all taxpayers.
There are intelligent human beings who believe that bullying is a manifestation of the natural law of survival of the fittest. Wasn't that Hitler's solution-to create a master race by weeding out the weakest? One could also argue that children bullying one another is a way of establishing a pecking order, similar to animals in which the strongest gets the most to eat. As long as adults give any validity to these notions, bullying by children is inevitable.
