British empire worse then the Nazis

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Aituk7 said:
The question for me is how far back do we go?
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As I said, there are old people living now who experienced the negative impact of Imposed British rule, and their kid's lives have been massively shaped by it. The British Empire did bad things within living memory and it was the same institution who 100 years before used and prospered from using slaves. The British population and diaspora is shaped by the British Empire far more than it is by anything else. Its not distant history at all.

I'm not arguing that there isnt a statue of limitations on historical events but it dosent apply to something that people would identify as being contemporaily important to them. As I've said elsewhere, if people want others to get over slavery they should also get over feelings of pride in relation to say the Spanish Armada or Waterloo, both of which occurred while slavery did. It's either all fair game to talk about or not at all.
 


Some Random Guy said:
It was great for British interests, but that doesn't make it a force for good.
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It was a force for massive change in knowledge, technology and development of the modern world. Without it the world would have been a very different place.
Whether that is seen as good or not is a different matter.
 
sonson said:
As I said, there are old people living now who experienced the negative impact of Imposed British rule, and their kid's lives have been massively shaped by it. The British Empire did bad things within living memory and it was the same institution who 100 years before used and prospered from using slaves. The British population and diaspora is shaped by the British Empire far more than it is by anything else. Its not distant history at all.

I'm not arguing that there isnt a statue of limitations on historical events but it dosent apply to something that people would identify as being contemporaily important to them. As I've said elsewhere, if people want others to get over slavery they should also get over feelings of pride in relation to say the Spanish Armada or Waterloo, both of which occurred while slavery did. It's either all fair game to talk about or not at all.
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Nah I disagree on treating them the same.

The british empire did bad things to loads of people, it did bad things to british people. Life was shit for most people back then. It was just a case of level of shitness. If it wasn't our empire it would have been somebody elses, the world behaved that way to each other.
 
Harry Angstrom said:
It was a force for massive change in knowledge, technology and development of the modern world. Without it the world would have been a very different place.
Whether that is seen as good or not is a different matter.
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Totally agree. I'm just thinking about the damage we did over time, the lasting geopolitical issues today... don't necessarily agree with him but I can see the thought process.
 
Harry Angstrom said:
It was a force for massive change in knowledge, technology and development of the modern world. Without it the world would have been a very different place.
Whether that is seen as good or not is a different matter.
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True. But it also became a philosophy, Positivism. We became the Empire of Reason where all things (from our point of view) would be solved. It pretty much ended with WWI (sorry) and help sow the seeds for WWII although I definitely agree that we can't be held responsible for that. The Germans took that ball and ran with it.
 
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sonson said:
Mate stop with the shite. Theres a significant difference between 3 generations and 30. Can you really not see that? Britain didnt even exist as a political entity until 500 years after the viking conquests. People at that point didnt give a shit about them anymore because theres a difference between recent history and a half millennia. Course no-one cares about the Vikings, it's over a millennia ago.

Theres tens of millions alive now who had parents, grandparents or great grandparents who have their lands and property taken from them, religion and laws imposed on them, who were raped or killed by British soldiers and grandees, who died fighting in wars that had nothing to do with them. You seem to think the experience of someone's dead parent or grandparent is only as relevant to today as that of someone who lived 1000 years ago though for some thick reason.
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The British empire plundered, enslaved and killed. Examples include, internment camps in South Africa, aboriginal suppression and murder in Australia, suppression and putting down Indian uprisings, starved the Irish etc
Meanwhile back in good old Britain the rich got very rich and the working class lived in squalor, deprivation, slums but could look at pink bits on the map if they got an education.
 
PJH said:
The Empire did do a lot of bad and has screwed up parts of the world for a long time, some areas probably still not really fully recovered from it. We should not hide from the horrors of the Empire.

But worse than the Nazi's? Just no.
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Not really our fault we were better at it than everyone else though.
 
CEF said:
Africa was worse than the Nazis?

Saving the world from Nazi Germany.
Probably the best ending of an Empire ever
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That wasn't the end mate.

It was more like the end of Return of the King when after the the ring gets destroyed in a moment of triumph then there's about 20 minutes of lesser scenes and you're sat there waiting for the credits so you can go for a piss.
 
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Some Random Guy said:
That wasn't the end mate.

It was more like the end of Return of the King when after the the ring gets destroyed in a moment of triumph then there's about 20 minutes of lesser scenes and you're sat there waiting for the credits so you can go for a piss.
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Meh. Every empire has a lingering demise. The Ottomans walked around a long time before they realised they were dead.
CEF said:
Africa was worse than the Nazis?

Saving the world from Nazi Germany.
Probably the best ending of an Empire ever
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I love that second point. I'm gonna use that.

In Africa we left a legacy of anti gay culture which continues to be destructive to this day. Our colonial laws put that culture there where it wasn't before. We have left a poor legacy in some pockets around the empire that the sun never set on.
 
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rapscallion said:
The Brittas Empire had its moments too
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Nah it was shite
Some Random Guy said:
That wasn't the end mate.

It was more like the end of Return of the King when after the the ring gets destroyed in a moment of triumph then there's about 20 minutes of lesser scenes and you're sat there waiting for the credits so you can go for a piss.
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Estimated one million died in 1947 when India was handed back and Pakistan created, because we fucked it up so badly and ignored native wisdom on the matter of religion, tribes, caste etc in favour of good old British common sense and opened all sorts of Pandoras boxes. 14 million displaced. It was pretty grim. Certainly not the sort of thing to be proud of. It's like being proud of Rwanda because your country only facilitated the entirely predictable and warned against violence rather than perpetrating it.
 
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sonson said:
Nah it was shite

Estimated one million died in 1947 when India was handed back and Pakistan created, because we fucked it up so badly and ignored native wisdom on the matter of religion, tribes, caste etc in favour of good old British common sense and opened all sorts of Pandoras boxes. 14 million displaced. It was pretty grim. Certainly not the sort of thing to be proud of. It's like being proud of Rwanda because your country only facilitated the entirely predictable and warned against violence rather than perpetrating it.
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It's not like the Belgians to be the centre of an evil empire :eek::lol:
 
Some Random Guy said:
That wasn't the end mate.

It was more like the end of Return of the King when after the the ring gets destroyed in a moment of triumph then there's about 20 minutes of lesser scenes and you're sat there waiting for the credits so you can go for a piss.
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Suez :confused:
 
JonMc said:
True. But it also became a philosophy, Positivism. We became the Empire of Reason where all things (from our point of view) would be solved. It pretty much ended with WWI (sorry) and help sow the seeds for WWII although I definitely agree that we can't be held responsible for that. The Germans took that ball and ran with it.
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Was creaky even before WW1. Gladstone's resignation and the contradictions over Ireland and home rule, the humiliation of the Boer War and the Concentration Camp solution to it and wider public disquiet over colonialism (as seen in likes of Heart of Darkness) and the internal disputes around social welfare and rights of the working population that led to the birth of Labour all torpedoed positivism really. The simple fact is that the British Empire was not sustainable as anything other than an upper class vehicle, as soon as it was made accountable to its British subjects it fell to pieces. It is one of the few empires which nonetheless permitted that to occur.

I think also as with many Empires and Great Nations that a final victory over an ancient and classically less democratic enemy (France) lead to a general malaise and complacency. There was a lot of stupid (Crimea, ME) and despicable (Opium Wars) Imperial misadventure once France were out the picture which basically came from just being big enough to be in everyone's business but without any justifiable reason to be involved.
pillars of hercules said:
There are apparently more slaves today than there were back in the day. The British Empire also actively stopped the Atlantic slave trade since the 1830s
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Slavery today is not a state sanctioned and supported cornerstone of the economy of the major world powers though. Theres a substantial difference between criminals trafficking humans and a government openly doing it and enacting policy around it.

But as I said elsewhere, human trafficking today has fuck all to do with the history of British slavery. Totally irrelevant thing to bring up.
 
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