Which is the Greater Symbol for Evil?

[Dr Strangelove]

The British played a very active role in suppressing the effects of the caste system while we were there. We didn't manage to eradicate it, but it wasn't from a lack of trying. The Chinese thing? Yeah, our bad.

One of the main reasons the people of India were so eager to get rid of you was that you imported an additional caste system, one based on color instead of social position.

Just remind me again how many native Americans you slaughtered?

There weren't that many left by 1783. Counting the "Trail of Tears" maybe a couple hundred thousand?

[molly bloom]

Britain had slavery, too, for far longer than the 5 years of the CSA and far wider scope,

As extensive as the Arab/Islamic slave trade ? I suppose that did (inadvertently) result in a black African becoming ruler of an Indian state, and the Revolt Of The Zanj, and mixed race populations in India, Iran, Pakistan... and it lasted in Mauretania until the end of the 20th Century.

plus a ton of other ****ty things.

Ah yes, your usual scrupulous attention to detail. A. J. P. Taylor has nothing to fear, I think.

British behavior during the Mau Mau revolt alone would place them among the worst criminals in history.

Yeah, that's right up there with the attempted extermination of Jewish European culture/civilization for instance.

Let's not white-wash history. Britain was ****ing terrible and for a very long time.

I work week in, week out, with Africans from different states and different backgrounds. Many of them seem to be quite keen on various aspects of the Commonwealth and even the British Empire. It's not to deny that a lot of very bad things were done (sometimes even for what appeared to be good reasons) but more than a few of my friends are thoroughly sick of the 'blame everything on the Colonial powers' schtick. It's much easier to parrot that reflexively than address modern day corruption, kleptocracies, clannishness, et cetera.

[molly bloom]

The British profited from slavery for a very long time before they abolished it.

That was surely the point of slavery, British, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Arab, Chinese, et cetera. Of course the Atlantic slave trade couldn't have existed without the enthusiastic cooperation of the African coastal kingdoms.

Irish

Yes, I feel terribly oppressed. I must be a self-hating second generation immigrant. I shall speak only Erse from now on.

[kentonio]

One of the main reasons the people of India were so eager to get rid of you was that you imported an additional caste system, one based on color instead of social position.

An American lecturing an Englishman on the horrors of social structures based on race? Seriously?

[MrFun]

I voted the Nazi flag. But the Confederate flag is second.

[Sava]

Wow... Mobius is a Brit apologist. Somehow I missed that before.

Also, guess what country those yanks came from. Even now... most of our inbred hill people are the descendants of inbred island scum.

[Dinner]

I voted for the Confederate flag just to piss off our southern posters.

[DaShi]

I voted the Nazi flag. But the Confederate flag is second.

I'm regretting not just posting the two of them now. A good case could be made either way.

[molly bloom]

Clearly I'm not the only person that thinks the same thing...

It was a stupid cliche when the WRP and SWP & their ilk used to run caricatures of Menahem Begin dressed as a Nazi, decades ago.



Labour Herald of 25 June 1982

I didn't like Begin, either as terrorist or leader of Israel, but the trite Israel = Nazi Germany is not only a racist slur, but not even a comparison that bears a moment's consideration. If the Israelis had been intent on eradicating as many Palestinians as they possibly could, through conventional warfare or through the industrialized assembly line machineries of death the Nazis used, there'd have been a lot more space for the Israelis to have occupied since 1948.

[molly bloom]

Also, guess what country those yanks came from.

Scotland in quite a few important cases. About 11 or 12 Presidents are of Scots-Irish stock, from what is now Northern Ireland, the descendants of Scots who emigrated to the plantations in Ulster. They brought their delightful version of Presbyterianism with them, exhibiting such tolerance that the Irish rose up and massacred more than a few of them. Thus encouraged, some of them migrated further west, bringing that same kind of brotherly love to North America and the Indians.

Andrew Jackson is a good example:

Jackson was the first (and remains, arguably, the greatest) of a long line of Ulster-Scots presidents. The 7th President’s parents hailed from Boneybefore, near Carrickfergus, County Antrim

http://www.ulsterscotsagency.com/what-is-ulster-scots/famous-ulster-scots/person/6/andrew-jackson-1767-1845/

[molly bloom]

One of the main reasons the people of India were so eager to get rid of you was that you imported an additional caste system, one based on color instead of social position.

Actually one of the things which exercised the minds of the East India Company directors was the degree of intermarriage between the white British and Hindu and Muslim Indians, as detailed in William Dalrymple's 'White Mughals' :

In Dalrymple's eyes, Kirkpatrick attempted something riskier: he not only converted to Islam and married Khair un-Nissa, a young girl - a "minor" in contemporary terms - from a Muslim aristocratic family, but also began to question the more brazenly imperialist policies of his bosses.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2002/oct/05/highereducation.books1

I think you'd really enjoy reading it, if you haven't already. It's not strictly true to say that the British imported skin colour discrimination, as the ruling classes in the north and Bengal tended to be fairer skinned and of Turkic/Mongol/Iranian/Afghan/Arab mixtures- even the Afro-Indian ruler of Ahmednagar is shown with a rather fair complexion.

http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africansindianocean/img/Gallery%20Breakdown/Deccan/large/12_36.jpg

[molly bloom]

Hell, look at historical internal conflicts in Africa, India and China.

No, only the evil white British expanded their empire through brute force, chicanery and a postal system. All other empires (especially Asian, African, Pre-Columbian, Islamic....blah, blah blah.....) used kissograms, muffin gift baskets and group hugs.

Of course when Timur's armies erected pyramids of skulls they were in fact sugar skulls, not human ones. And when Nader Shah sacked Delhi (which had of course been sacked by the Mongols, and Timur's armies previously) the inhabitants weren't really killed, they just became, erm, 'challenged' lifewise.

And when the Mongols sacked Baghdad, they used Interflora and Tuvan throat singing Pop Idol. The destruction of Tenochtitlan was vital for road widening works, and thus keenly welcomed by the newly liberated Aztecs. And Shaka established a Zulu Co-Prosperity sphere in southern Africa. Yes, some hundreds of thousands may have died, but omelettes require eggs be broken.

I recommend the 'Twentieth Century Book Of The Dead'- it's a hoot.

The dead he numbers, whom he calls the "nation of the dead," his phrase which attempts to personalize the deaths, consists of about 100 million persons. He estimates that 150 million would not be completely unreasonable (p.1), and this only takes into account up to 1972! Elliot imaginatively interweaves narrative and factual analysis. He creatively displays for his readers death through the eyes of World War I trench soldiers, Russian and Chinese peasants, a Jewish tailor, a small boy in Hiroshima, and a travelling "irregular" from Mexico (my favorite for its biting satire) who gets himself in many of the small skirmishes around the two World Wars. Mass death throughout the 20th century has taken a certain shape, a pyramid shape--what Elliot calls the "shape of violence" (p.29). Occupying the top of this pyramid are, quite surprisingly (since this means that they are least in number), the military deaths. Occupying the second tier are "semi-official" deaths (public terror, civil, guerrilla). The third tier contains "demographic violence," that violence which is, for a time, "as habitual amongst a massive section of the people as, say, the habit of buying bread" (p.32). These are the everyday deaths small in number locally (yet spread across a country of millions quickly add up) that lose their significance over time. The final two tiers, constituting the pyramid's base, are "immediate" and "long-term privation." He undoubtedly proves this pyramid thesis throughout the book in his various descriptions of "total war," an analysis which is most excellent.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Twentieth-century-book-dead-Elliot/dp/0684131153

Of course he missed out on the revised totals for Stalin's purges, the Russian Civil War, Mao's Great Leap Forward, The Cultural Revolution, the dead of Darfur, the Ethiopian wars and famines, the Balkan Wars, the Rwanda/Burundi genocides, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea....

[Dr Strangelove]

The real reason the British conquered India is that they promised not to force Christianity down the natives' throats. The French, Spanish and Portugese had deployed Jesuits to the subcontinent and had or were attempting to enforce Roman Catholicism as a state religion in their enclaves. The day before the battle of Plassey Robert Clive was faced by a massive army of French and allied troops. He met with some of the leaders of some of the natives allied with the French and promised them that the British East India Company would keep missionaries out of India in exchange for their non-participation. The next day the French discovered that a sizeable portion of their allied troops wouldn't fight.

[Dinner]

I'm pretty sure there wasn't a single Empire or even country in the world which wasn't built on the back of violence at some time or another.

[molly bloom]

The real reason the British conquered India is that they promised not to force Christianity down the natives' throats.

They also had, as Lenin put it, many 'willing fools'- the native rulers of many of the states had had their fill of the Mughals- Aurangzeb's disastrous reign being the real nail in the coffin. The Rajahs and Sultans and Ranis had nice incomes, the zamindars brought in the taxes, the salt tax was enacted with the help of (bizarrely) the Great Hedge Of India- I kid you not- it was guarded by 10,000+ men and would have reached from London to Istanbul:

The Great Hedge of India is a book of history and travel. It tells of my chance discovery, in 1995, of a reference to a gigantic 1500-mile long hedge that the British had grown across nineteenth-century India. It describes my efforts to find its remains. There are no previous books about this hedge.

More than a search for a piece of forgotten history though, the book describes a personal quest. Chapters on the history of the customs hedge, and tales of the men who built it, are interspersed with chapters on my hunt for its remnants. The book tells of my searches - at the beginning, merely on a whim; later as an obsession. It tells of how I looked for the elusive hedge, first in libraries and archives, and then on the ground in India. I took lessons in Hindi, and taught myself land navigation. As my researches progressed, I found that the hedge I had thought merely a piece of eccentricity was actually an instrument of oppression. It was used to collect a tax on salt set so high that many Indians suffered from salt starvation.

There were three trips to India. These involved journeys to remote villages and bandit-infested places, and meetings with many unusual people. There were humorous incidents, but many disappointments. It seemed that all traces and memories of the customs hedge had disappeared until, on the final expedition in 1998, my perseverance was rewarded

http://www.roymoxham.com/page4.htm

I confess until I bought the book I'd never heard of the Hedge or seen a mention in any history of the Raj or India.

One Indian princeling even made it to the House Of Lords at the end of the 19th beginning of the 20th Century.