How England Sees Itself

[droid]

Droid, what I meant was I'd read some things here and there, enough to form an impression, but not enough to write a detailed essay on the subject. I hope that's not an inherent contradiction. Also I'm not denying that textbooks in British schools have presented, or still present, a biased account.

And has Japan been pacifist since WWII out of an abiding commitment to global human rights, or because it found out at first hand what happens when you piss off Uncle Sam?

Whats all this about anyway? Why are you so obsessed with demonising Japan?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Whats all this about anyway? Why are you so obsessed with demonising Japan?

Droid, FFS. Would you accuse someone of "demonising" Germany by talking about Nazi war crimes? OK, so I get that you're mirroring my comment about your "defence" of Japan, which I'll admit was a bit flippant. But even so, I think Japanese denial about the country's recent past, despite their defeat in WWII, provides an interesting counterpoint to your argument that Britain's historiographical whitewash is connected with our not having been invaded or occupied in modern times.

 

[droid]

Droid, FFS. Would you accuse someone of "demonising" Germany by talking about Nazi war crimes? OK, so I get that you're mirroring my comment about your "defence" of Japan, which I'll admit was a bit flippant.

Yes, its a ludicrous thing to say. Thats what I was highlighting

But even so, I think Japanese denial about the country's recent past, despite their defeat in WWII, provides an interesting counterpoint to your argument that Britain's historiographical whitewash is connected with our not having been invaded or occupied in modern times.

I dont think you've established that this is the case at all, and I also think you've basically acknowledged your lack of knowledge.

Maybe there is a widespread denial of the acts of WWW2 in Japan. I cant say with certainty either way. My impression is that there is a general sense of shame regarding their involvement in the war even if some details have been whitewashed. There is certainly a deep commitment to pacifism, so the practical result is a nation state that is almost unique in history in completely renouncing war.

Now compare that attitude to Britain. The very idea that Britain has committed multiple acts of near genocide (the Indian famines of 1770, 1876-78 and 1943, the Irish famine) over the last 250 years would be laughable and offensive to most British people... in fact, the idea of the 'benevolent empire' has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years. Unpleasant acts in history havent just been minimised in Britain, they simply didn't happen or are retroactively justified.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Well I've heard of most of those things - certainly the Irish famine, the Amritsar Massacre...at school we studied British colonialism in North America, Australia and New Zealand pretty extensively, along with the consequences for native people, and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, obviously. And I only did history up to GCSE (this would be the mid-90s in an ordinary state comp). OTOH that doesn't mean that people older me were taught the same things in their history lessons, and I can well believe there still is widespread denial. If Cameron's rhetoric is anything to go by, I guess it would be optimistic to expect this to change much in the near future.

But yeah, at least as far as my own education went, I don't remember the British Empire being painted as anthying to be particularly proud of.

Liverpool has an entire slavery museum. I've been there. It doesn't pull any punches.

 

[luka]

please show me a British textbook that calls Cromwell and the subsequent pacifications in Ireland 'genocide'

when oliver helped you with this you ignored him. my a-level coursework was on cromwells massacres in ireland. i got the best mark in the class. (i still failed though.)
i know a lot of japanese people. ive been to japan. a lot of my cousins have lived there. did you know until very recently japanese people with korean heritige had to carry spcial identity cards? or talk to a chinese person about japans attitud to its history if you like. i would, boradly spaking agree with zhaos charactrisation of britain although why he thinks it should be him redressing historical wrongs im not sure.....
its disengenuouos of droid to streess teas obvious ignorance when h is the one quoting from wikipedia for fucks sake. its a pub argument, dont get on your high horse.

 

[luka]

actually droid, i think that comese across as overly agressive on my part and i would like to apologise. i think you do recognise that it is a pub dbate and you ar observing pub debate rules. it is acceptable even obligatory to accuse your interlocutor of ignorance in a pub debate regardless of thee state of your own knowledge. i think i was a bit strong there and im sorry. your point about japans pacificsm is important. i agree with it, they been very well bhaved and i love the place dearly.

 

[droid]

when oliver helped you with this you ignored him. my a-level coursework was on cromwells massacres in ireland. i got the best mark in the class. (i still failed though.)

Sure, but what about the post-Cromwell period? The widespread ethnic cleansing, massacres and enslavement - 'to hell or connaught'? Im genuinely interested, and to be fair, although Cromwell is demonised, there is a general reticence here with regard to this part of irish history - possibly because of Republican Nationalist co-option.

i know a lot of japanese people. ive been to japan. a lot of my cousins have lived there. did you know until very recently japanese people with korean heritige had to carry spcial identity cards? or talk to a chinese person about japans attitud to its history if you like.

Yes, I did know that. Also their appalling treatment of the Ainu and general xenophobia. The question was not in regard to racism though.

i would, boradly spaking agree with zhaos charactrisation of britain although why he thinks it should be him redressing historical wrongs im not sure.....
its disengenuouos of droid to streess teas obvious ignorance when h is the one quoting from wikipedia for fucks sake. its a pub argument, dont get on your high horse.

I can only speak of my perception of Britain's self-image through how Britain portrays itself in media and culture, which Ive been subjected to my entire life - Eccentric, civilised, slightly superior, nationalistic, mildly apologetic yet also proud it's history and relatively 'benevolent' empire.

Obviously most of the British people I know are generally a bit more clued in.

I also dont keep a list of Japanese apologies in my head, or claimed any special authority, I simply posted the link as Tea was apparently too lazy to google!

 

[pattycakes_]

watch the intro to this

 

[Mr. Tea]

(actually droid, I found those links before you posted them, I just didn't want to be all like "hey, it says on Wikipedia..." - think luka might be onto something about the pub-like nature of this debate)

 

[droid]

(actually droid, I found those links before you posted them, I just didn't want to be all like "hey, it says on Wikipedia..."

Uh huh. That single link that was simply a list of formal apologies with almost no attached editorial content, which I posted when you specifically asked for information on 'formal apologies'? I was really bringing the tone down there...

- think luka might be onto something about the pub-like nature of this debate)

Sure. Well done. All credit where its due.

 

[mrfaucet]

Going back to the original post, surely Niall Ferguson deserves a mention. Has anyone ever bothered to read any of his books? Can't say that I have, but I did watch an interview with him on the Wall Street Journal website that was shockingly bad. I'm yet to hear or read anything from him that is insightful about China, which could be a bit of a problem given that it's become something of an obsession for him.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n21/pankaj-mishra/watch-this-man

 

[Benny Bunter]

Going back to the original post, surely Niall Ferguson deserves a mention. Has anyone ever bothered to read any of his books? Can't say that I have, but I did watch an interview with him on the Wall Street Journal website that was shockingly bad. I'm yet to hear or read anything from him that is insightful about China, which could be a bit of a problem given that it's become something of an obsession for him.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n21/pankaj-mishra/watch-this-man

I read empire without knowing anything about the guy, it really pissed me off actually. then I found out who he was on wikipedia. i don't think I would have read it if I'd known.

 

[droid]

Going back to the original post, surely Niall Ferguson deserves a mention. Has anyone ever bothered to read any of his books? Can't say that I have, but I did watch an interview with him on the Wall Street Journal website that was shockingly bad. I'm yet to hear or read anything from him that is insightful about China, which could be a bit of a problem given that it's become something of an obsession for him.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n21/pankaj-mishra/watch-this-man

Linked to him briefly up thread. He's kind of an exhibit A for the prosecution.

Mercilessly ripped to shreds by (of all people) Johann Hari here:

http://johannhari.com/2006/06/12/there-can-be-no-excuse-for-empire/

The subsequent correspondence in the pages of the Independent are worth a read too. Briefly redeemed Hari in my eyes after his Iraq & Chomsky debacles

 

[Slothrop]

Going back to the original post, surely Niall Ferguson deserves a mention.

"A mention" isn't what I'd say he deserves...

There's alread a thread on Dissensus called "the odious Niall Ferguson", I think.

 

[Slothrop]

i hope the Dissensus response will not be like the one to Black Athena: "everyone knows this already", ("everyone" must meaning blogger friends because there is only too much evidence in the real world to the contrary)

how exactly would you characterize contemporary Britain's relationship to something like the 30 million Indian deaths due to starvation because of British self serving agricultural policies? or similar things in Ireland? or these kinds of control and repressive mechanisms in general, largely invented by the English?

I like the way that you don't even get around to asking the question before telling people not to bother answering if they don't agree with your preconceived idea of what their answer should be. Good research methodology there.

Seriously, though, I'm probably biased by the fact that most of my mates are fairly educated left-liberal types, but my impression is that a lot of people are in general aware that a lot of very bad things happened in the name of the British Empire (and of european colonialism generally), that they aren't hyper-aware of the specifics except in a few cases - so most people will know about the horrors of the slave trade but not necessarily about the Siege of Drogheda (this doesn't bother me that much in general, although Drogheda is perhaps a bad example) and that they think that all this stuff ended about the beginning of the twentieth century and we've been pretty groovy since then (which does bother me, a lot).

Edit: Or to put it another way, I think a lot of the British view of our colonial past could be summed up as "that was quite bad, isn't it good that we don't do anything like that any more."

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yeah, that thread got a bit ridiculous - at one point zhao was more or less telling those of us from the UK what we had and hadn't been taught in GCSE History. :slanted:

The thing about a complete list of horrors committed by imperial Britain (or probably any European country with an overseas empire, or the countries founded by European settlers in the New World) is that it would be far too long for any normal person to memorise...

I think possibly more people than you might think are aware of recent and current 'crypto-imperialist' goings-on, though - I mean, look at the scale of the protests against the Iraq war, for instance. OK, so obviously the protesters were outnumbered by non-protesters, but there were probably a lot of people who were against the war but couldn't physically attend the protests for whatever reason.

But again, as with WWII, it's easy to make an emotionally appealing pro-war case because of the apparently "absolute evil" of the enemy.

 

[luka]

craner was so taken with fergusons 'empire' he read it twice. i think its on the what are you reading thread, he says he's rereading empire which blew my mind.... reading it is one thing but re-reading?

 

[gumdrops]

niall ferguson should just be a daily mail columnist. doesnt deserve as much credit as he gets.

 

[...]

It's a good book! The idea that it's simply an apologia for Empire is...wrong. I would suggest you haven't actually read the book with any attention whatsoever. There's a lot of narrow-minded, blinkered, knee-jerk prejudice on this forum, I find.

 

[zhao]

i would, boradly spaking agree with zhaos charactrisation of britain although why he thinks it should be him redressing historical wrongs im not sure.....

well if talking about subjects which interest me happen to amount to "redressing historical wrongs" then so be it.

edit: and it's not just about "redressing history" is it? i'm talking about the very contemporary phenomenon of a large part of the British population feeling pride with regard to their imperialist past. large enough for BBC to give someone like Fergusson a 4 part mini series to spread his bullshit.

been enjoying the conversations and reading most of the linked articles, even though i have neither too much time or things to add at the moment.

There's a lot of narrow-minded, blinkered, knee-jerk prejudice on this forum, I find.

at times i might agree with this, but from the exact opposite side of the room.