I'm glad I discovered Volcano Discovery this last year. They do some really good long reads not only about volcanos but the role they play in society and history.

The one day I was in that area of the North Island I had a difficult choice: visit Rotorua or Hobbiton. Follow my passion for geology or Tolkien?

Imposing culture never works. Adopting, adjusting, incorporation sometimes does. Doesn't make it right, though. The greatest perpetrators of this were not governments, but the Catholic Church. They, over two thousand years, learned to incorporate local traditions and beliefs. Like to celebrate the harvest and remember the dead at the end of October? Fine. We'll make that a holy day. Have a famous local person who had visions? Fine, they're a saint now and it is okay to ask for their intercession. A Catholic church in the US or Europe is vastly different than one in Latin America. Oh sure, they are laid out the same but the iconography is different. You'd never see the bones of a saint on display in the US but quite common elsewhere. The crucifix in the US is sterile. In Mexico they show the blood from the nails, the sword, and the crown of thorns.

The British Empire tried to make everywhere a slice of England.