How the World Sees England

droid

Well-known member
Quite, or as Monbiot put it:

Deny the British empire's crimes? No, we ignore them

...Elkins reveals that the British detained not 80,000 Kikuyu, as the official histories maintain, but almost the entire population of one and a half million people, in camps and fortified villages. There, thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died.

The inmates were used as slave labour. Above the gates were edifying slogans, such as "Labour and freedom" and "He who helps himself will also be helped". Loudspeakers broadcast the national anthem and patriotic exhortations. People deemed to have disobeyed the rules were killed in front of the others. The survivors were forced to dig mass graves, which were quickly filled. Unless you have a strong stomach I advise you to skip the next paragraph.

Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping off testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women's breasts. They cut off inmates' ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/apr/23/british-empire-crimes-ignore-atrocities


craner said:
Well, that's fine, you consider Britain to be analogous to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
A few years ago I'd have sided with Craner on this sort of issue, or maybe tried to tread some kind of middle ground, but these days I'm more inclined just to agree with droid. I mean, Nazi Germany's concerted effort to eradicate an entire race of people may be unique in modern history* but in terms of the sheer awfulness of some of the things that were done we're up there with the worst of them, and the scale and longevity of the empire makes the comparisons quantitative as well as qualitative. At the very least, the British Empire was often no better than those of the other major European colonial powers and in some instances may well have been worse.

But in any case, to react with "But-but-but, the French! And the Belgians! And the terrible, terrible Germans!" starts to look like just the sort of whataboutery people on the hard Left are often accused of (sometimes not without cause, it has to be said) when the topic under discussion is Russia or militant Islamism.

*and then again, it may not, considering the Kurdish holocaust of 1915, the Herero massacre of 1904 - though of course that's Germany again - and even the policies of the Australian government with regard to Aboriginal people until well into the last century
 

craner

Beast of Burden
But I've never made one single argument in support of the British Empire, so I'm a bit confused about what's actually going on here.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
The early European empires where based on economic and trade plunder; supremacism and racism where part of it, but not the motivating factor. Communism was based on a humanist ideology; its crimes where not central to the theory. Even early Fascism, in its Italian form anyway, was not necessarily racist or anti-Semitic, although it was nationalist and elitist.

However, Nazism and Japanese Imperialism were both defined by their racist and genocidal aims. They wouldn't have existed without those defining aims.

So that's the distinction I would make. Maybe it's a fine one, maybe not. If you think I'm letting Italian Fascism off the hook here, it's possibly too fine for you.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
See your comment earlier about Germany and Japan. It's the need to follow up any admission of "Yeah, I guess we were pretty bad" with "But come ooon, we weren't that bad."

It's something people of all political persuasions do all the time, and I know I've done it myself. Lots of people like to do it in reverse about their own country and/or the USA.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
But how far do you take it? I'm with you, and to an extent Droid. But also Britain destroyed its Empire and finances fighting Fascism, and America almost tore itself apart over the issue of slavery during the civil war. So, no, whatever their crimes, I do not think they are in the same bracket as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
 

droid

Well-known member
The British empire was without question far, far worse than imperial Japan. It would have taken the Nazis decades to match it's death toll.

Britain codified and exported systems of racist control and hierarchy that remain in place today. The empire deliberately committed repeated acts of genocide.

Kenya was less than 60 years ago. Malaya was the model for Vietnam.

The legacy is manifold & insidious.
 

droid

Well-known member
However, Nazism and Japanese Imperialism were both defined by their racist and genocidal aims. They wouldn't have existed without those defining aims.

I dont think this is true, but if this is true for Germany and Japan, it must also be true of the colonisation of the US.

Imperialism is implicitly racist.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Britain had a choice. Many in Chamberlain's cabinet were eager go cut a deal with Hitler, and even in Churchill's.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Sorry, I missed the point of your post Droid. The colonisation of the American territory after the Lousiana Purchase, the Wild West, all that. Again, though, different argument. See your point, however.
 

droid

Well-known member
Not to state the obvious but Id go even further.

We live in a world irrevocably shaped by European colonialism and systems of dominance developed over 500 years of brutality. This dominance was carefully shifted to the economic, financial and industrial realms in the post WWII period. The periodic 'military misadventures' of the West are attempts to enforce this dominance. It is only in the very recent past that the developing world has begun to escape from this paradigm.

There may be quibbles about body counts etc, but what has never been counted is the opportunity cost of colonialism. The nations and peoples utterly destroyed, taking with them diversity in thought, political & economic systems, philosophies, ways of doing things. Entire societies strangled in the cradle.

Britain was a fundamental, and arguably, the most important actor in all of this.
 
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droid

Well-known member
And even for those who escaped annihilation, its very difficult to explain the psychological effect colonialism has on its victims. Look at race in the US.

Id say it will take another century at least before the scars fade here, but we're an unusual case.
 

droid

Well-known member
Britain had a choice. Many in Chamberlain's cabinet were eager go cut a deal with Hitler, and even in Churchill's.

Sure, but lets dispense with the idea that the war was based on any moral imperative or opposition to fascism, it was about geopolitics.

Had Hitler expanded first to the East and set about eliminating the Slavs, I doubt the rest of Europe would have been too bothered, in moral terms certainly.

Agree that Italian fascism had little to do with race.
 
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