We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch

This post has 17 comments with rating of 3.8/517

• 
  Alpine59
  June 15th, 2020
  

  

  Pop culture Empire apologist light.

  The very worst form of journalism or historic writing is when you start with an idea and look for the evidence to support it, rather than gathering data and letting the information dictate the conclusions.

  This subject is very contentious - however this book does nothing to add to the discourse.

  Read “We kicked you arse, took your stuff while standing with our finely polished boots on you throats, but we were very well dressed & polite about it. And in return we gave you polo and cricket and lots and lots of little mongrel children who we now disavow.”

  The world will be a better place when we have no kings, no gods and no empires. Loosing all the Trumps would be a nice bonus as well.

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  caesar963
  June 15th, 2020
  

  

  Afua Hirsch is certainly no defender of the blood-soaked British Empire. Slight category error there. A quick look at the schedule of interviewees suggests that there will be no inappropriate boosting during the recording.

  Such analyses are badly needed given the state of historical knowledge in Britain. With the wholly false merits routinely ascribed to the empire - essentially absolving it of all sanguinary culpability - actually knowing nothing at all would be more socially preferable & beneficial.

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  aronar
  June 15th, 2020
  

  

  The British Empire was pretty great.

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  ehead
  June 15th, 2020
  

  @aronar,

  Ha ha… there was a curious inversion of values somewhere along the line with regards to empire. The Romans, Persians, Ottomans, Mongols, and Spanish (initially at least) had no compunction in celebrating how they stomped everyone else’s ass. Times have changed. I think Nietzsche had something to say about this.

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  Gort1951
  June 15th, 2020
  

  Its amazing the prejudice and ignorance of people extolling the ‘virtues’ of imperialist colonialism still persists. I shall leave it to Lord Macaulay’s address to British parliament on 2nd February 1835 to make you all blush with a little shame for your hypocrisy. He said: “I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief, such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre that i do not think we would ever conquer this country unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage and therefore i propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation”.

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  LeechyLad
  June 16th, 2020
  

  

  An interesting read and gives a lot to think about, I am a big advocate to introducing placing an emphasis on the British Empire in school.

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  pred8or_rock8
  June 16th, 2020
  

  The British Empire was a moral good

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  akk92
  June 16th, 2020
  

  @Gort1951…. The speech of 2nd Feb 1935… historically speaking would have been literally impossible to have occurred in the British Parliament… As he was in Calcutta at that time… He went to Britain in 1838 only… The speech may have occurred in Calcutta.. There is a record of Macaulay’s minutes of 2nd February 1835…

  —Quote— Macaulay was undoubtedly a colonial apologist and racist who passionately believed there was no ‘culture’ beyond Europe. This is evident even from his ‘minutes of 2nd Feb, 1835’ where he said, “…a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia…’’ and

  “… I certainly never met with any orientalist who ventured to maintain that the Arabic and Sanscrit poetry could be compared to that of the great European nations.But when we pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded and general principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England…’’ Is it believable that the same man would utterly contradict himself in the same speech by saying, “…we break the very backbone of this nation which is her spiritual and cultural heritage….” —Unquote—

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  caesar963
  June 16th, 2020
  

  It is quite remarkable how the richest, longest, bloodiest empire in history failed to lift all boats in the “mother” country. Anything but, in fact. Featuring, as it did, India as the jewel in the crown, Britain possessed some of the most unutterable poverty and destitution. All of its cities, notably including London and Glasgow, hosted some of the most dire, unimaginable indigence. This condition permeated the entirety of Britain. London, during the Victorian age, had 150,000 prostitutes.
  In fairness, expenses were considerable, inclusive of organised massacres, concentration camps, the intentional spread of disease, managed/forced famines, et cetera.

  This destitution continues into the post-colonial phase. The North of England was abandoned to stagnation and decline decades ago; life expectancy in parts of Scotland is amongst the worst in the world; Wales, considered apart, is the poorest country in Europe.

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  caesar963
  June 16th, 2020
  

  …exorbitant cost also attached to the full erection of all that imperialist public art. All of those slaver statues - the numerous racists, mass murderers & enormous thieves - their marble adoration really eats into the old pocket book. Now they’re losing their marbles.

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  iraqois
  June 17th, 2020
  

  The British empire saved more lives than any other force in the history of the world.

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  caesar963
  June 17th, 2020
  

  …except it didn’t. Because that was not its purpose, nor was it even an accidental outcome. Silly claims subvert your cause. Theft, plunder, profit, power, coercion and gain - these comprised the scope of the business. Mass murder to give effect to these aims - well, history is not silent on this subject. Nor should it ever be. As Flannery O’Connor wisely observed “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.”

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  iraqois
  June 17th, 2020
  

  You can’t condemn the entire experiment as entirely good or bad, that would be simplifying it to the extreme. One thing liberals fail to take note of is good these lands operated prior to British intervention. Large swathes of Africa were still in the stone age and practised cannibalism. In Nagaland it was fashionable to shrink your neighbour’s head for wall decor. In the South Pacific tribal warfare and brutality read endemic and in North America the natives practised ritualised torture. The British empire was the first force that ever brought them common law, protected free trade, destroyed piracy and slavery and from 1900 most people’s lives across the world improved due to its global economy. It also saved more lives than any other institution due to the colonial service which taught the natives basic sanitation and inoculation. Without the British empire the USA Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore would still be obscure backwaters. South America has far more natural wealth but because it inherited the Spanish and Portuguese way of doing things it is corrupt, despotic and poor.

  Compare the British to the Japanese, Russians, Germans or Belgians, which is the only realistic comparison, and they are far fairer than their counterparts.

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  caesar963
  June 17th, 2020
  

  Destroyed piracy, by practicing piracy at State level. Ended torture, by torturing people systematically in concentration camps. Civilised cannibals & head-hunters, by practicing mass murder. Introduced free trade, by freely trading in the common inheritance of subject peoples. Destroyed slavery, by actually dealing in slavery for centuries. Introduced common law, by expunging existing legal codes, in order to provide a “legal” basis for exploitation. Further on the economic record, the British deliberately adopted policies that caused as many as 29 million Indians to starve to death in the late 19th century. And there were many other infamous famines.

  Many former British colonies remain corrupt, despotic and poor. Several have a legacy of inhumanly draconian British laws against homosexuality. These include torture and execution. As we know, much of the colonial legacy is utterly appalling. However, we have to fully acknowledge these evils and not seek to “bury” or ignore them.

  The reasons that the American Founding Fathers detested the British Empire are essentially the same as the reasons Adolf Hitler admired it, and wanted to model his empire on that existing paradigm of mass victimisation and oppression, inclusive of concentration camps, torture and starvation. They’re also the reasons why Roosevelt insisted that the British divest themselves of colonies; and why Eisenhower observed their withdrawal with undisguised joy.

  When we study history, we have to be very careful not to groundlessly assert definitively what would have happened had a set of circumstances not existed. A common error. These factors are imponderable and inestimable. There is not only one single path.

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  iraqois
  June 17th, 2020
  

  Blaming the British for famines in the 19th C is a bit desperate, how exactly were the British meant to prevent a mass famine in a country with such a vast population, with primitive infrastructure and a primitive understanding of economics? No doubt revisionists will ignore the fact that the British were building the largest irrigation network in the world precisely to prevent that kind of thing from happening. A similar claim can be said of Ireland, if a population expands exponentially and its main consistency food is attacked through potato bight, then a famine is inevitable. You might as well blame the U.S. government for Katrina.

  Former British colonies remain corrupt because they abandoned British policies which made Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, NZ and America great to begin with. Incidentally, I can’t help but notice how far you go out of your way to criticise the empire, using such sacred institutions as free speech and the ability to complain freely and without constraint. I would be most obliged if you could tell me, where did those high ideals come from in the first place and which institution was it that allows so much of the world to hold those things sacred to this day? Oh yes, the British Empire. The very freedom that you have to complain about its history is due to the freedom you inherited from the its legacy. No other empire in history would have allowed you such freedom. Do you honestly think that any other empire in the history of the world would have tolerated a man like Gandhi, allowed him to preach his message and even visit the capital city and government? How do you think the Russians, Japanese or Germans would have dealt with him? The British Empire made the modern West and the freedom you have today to disagree is entirely due to its existence. Go to China, Saudi Arabia, Russia or South America – legacies of different empires, and you will be arrested for airing such views.

  That the Americans viewed the disintegration of the B.E. with an eye to liberty is laughable. Who is it who inherited the empire? The Americans of course, and that’s exactly why they wanted to destroy it. The Americans wanted power to trade with the world in their own terms, not liberty for the world.

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  caesar963
  June 17th, 2020
  

  The gravitational pull of such historical ignorance within a culture is not consequence-free. It is a destructive form of illiteracy; with societal damage caused by an imagined, fictitious past, as people act, vote, and make decisions based on a wholly false, erroneous, and misleading conception of history. Such pseudo-facts are deployed to finance & support insalubrious agendas like racism, xenophobia & hatred of immigrants (”others” are depicted as reverse-imperialists, invading a virginally pure Britain).

  Sole operators (the “we murdered them in order to civilise them” brigade) on the internet generate these bogus historical factoids without any basis whatsoever in the factual historical record. They are then shared amongst like-minded inventors, as they continue to gull the unsophisticated, susceptible, and education-lite demographic.

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch
• 
  caesar963
  June 17th, 2020
  

  

  The point: British economic imperatives, policies, and management caused and intensified the late 19th C famine. Again, embarrassingly wrong about the Irish case. The event was wholly gratuitous. This is not a controversial point. The blight occurred in Britain as well, but relief efforts resulted in a death toll of zero. Criminal negligence in the governing of Ireland caused 1.5 million deaths, and the same number in terms of emigration. Clearing the Irish people off their own land and rationalising estates (profits) was the objective here.

  There was a supply of food being generated domestically; however, throughout the 5 years of famine, food exports continued - under armed guard. A telling point, even for the historically untutored. The Great Hunger was managed & used. The British govt have apologised for all of these abuses and more - for what that’s worth.

  We Need to Talk About the British Empire - Afua Hirsch

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