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The Fruits of Empire!
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
We have had many empires and empire-builders in the past like Alexander, Changez Khan, Tamerlane, Rome, British, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, Islamic, Abbasid, Omayyad, Egyptian.
Clearly these empires were brought about because of benefits to the conquering peoples. In ancient times they brought many slaves from Empires; Romans, Greeks, Egyptian ( Aida), etc. Another importance was that many empires provided grain, like Rome prospered on the grain from Egypt. A lot of Empires provided large tracts of free land to the conquerors. Thus the early Islamic Empire in Iraq an Syria made the early Islamic leaders very wealthy landowners in just a generation or two.
During the British Empire very effective use was made of not only the things available in the Empire, but the potential of it. In "Mutiny on the Bounty", Captain Bligh has been appointed to fulfill a great potential need of the Empire; to provide cheap breadfruit from the Island of Tahiti to the West Indies to feed the slaves, who were producing Cotton for the mills of Lancashire. So we have an interesting chain in which Breadfruit is taken from Tahiti to the West Indies to feed the slaves who toil to produce the cotton, which is shipped to England where many workers toil all day to produce yarn and then cloth, which is then exported to India and worn by Indian sons of the Empire, in the process increasing the GDP of the UK to a remarkable extent.
There are many such chains; like cultivation of tea was learnt by the Brits from China; then tea was planted in tea-gardens in suitable regions of India and Ceylon, from there exported to Europe and America ( remember the original Tea-Party in Boston harbor?) and sold to India itself, after Indians were taught to drink and enjoy tea. Originally Indians were not tea-drinkers at all.
There were many other such ventures like Rubber being grown in Travancore in the South India, Jute in East Bengal, and a kind of grass suitable to make rope in among other places, the Estates of my family in the Indian State of UP.
I am sure the enterprise of an Empire must have been extremely lucrative, since every European Country in the 19th Century was trying to emulate the Brits at this game.
Queen Victoria in 1876 was given the title of Empress of India by her then Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and graciously accepted it. It was not a hollow title either.Until just a decade or so ago there were many buildings with her name and many statues in various parks in India to the Queen-Empress, this far away matronly figure, this Grandma, with her Indian 'Munshi' and other Indian servants and occasionally wearing Indian dresses.
So if we go down the line, what were the main fruits of the various empires; or were here some empires that bore no fruit and were just a large cost to the empire builders. Were these empires kept just for the sake of prestige?
Tas -
Message 2
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
Tas,
So if we go down the line, what were the main fruits of the various empires; or were here some empires that bore no fruit and were just a large cost to the empire builders. Were these empires kept just for the sake of prestige?Ìý
A question often asked:
But seriously, empires are always for the benefit of the few at the top; if any one else benefits along the way without cutting into the big boss' pockets, then so much the better.
As for "fruits of empire," I've never quite understood what were the fruits of the Roman Empire, aside from a few ruins and stories for history buffs. -
Message 3
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
Oddly enough, Tas, there was a rerun on Radio 7 of an interview with Spike Milligan at the weekend, in which he said that during his childhood years in India (he was born in 1918) the first "Loyal Toast" was always to Queen Victoria rather than George V, the then Rex Imperator.
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Message 4
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
As for "fruits of empire," I've never quite understood what were the fruits of the Roman Empire, aside from a few ruins and stories for history buffs.Ìý
The glaring omission from the opening post of the benefits of empire (not that I dis-agreed with what was there) is the question of relative power.
Empires never exist in a vacuum. They are surrounded by other competing power bases. One of Rome's compeititors, for instance was Carthage. The British empire was largely driven by competition, specially from the accursed French.
If Britain did not grab those geographic areas un-able to defend themselves against European guns, then you could rest assured that the French, or the Spanish, or somebody, would. And, having done so, the governing power can harness the resources of that new territory, be it gold, grain, people or ports, against their enemy closer to home. -
Message 5
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
Hi Ur-Lugal,
I think Queen Victoria has always been remembered with special affection by the people of India. She was everyone's Imperial Mom. In some pictures of her, her ever present Indian 'Munshi' is always there. 'Munshi's' in the India of my time, were the accountants of large Estates; every thing financial was in their hands because the Upper classes thought it cheap to deal with money or monetary matters.
The main Railway station of Bombay, now Mumbai, was called 'Victoria Terminus.' There is still an important market in Karachi, called 'Empress Market.'
The ruler of the State where I was born, always claimed that Queen Victoria had adopted him as a son and therefore claimed higher protocol than he was entitled to by the size of his State. Many Indians volunteered for the British Indian army in WW1, to go and fight for the Queen Empress.
Gandhi was a stretcher-bearer during the Boer War.
Tas -
Message 6
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
Hi White Camry,
That You-tube clip is hilarious!
Tas -
Message 7
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
Hi Tim,
Empires never exist in a vacuum. They are surrounded by other competing power bases. One of Rome's compeititors, for instance was Carthage. The British empire was largely driven by competition, specially from the accursed French.Ìý
That is indeed very true.
However, I am wondering whether Empires are good or bad, everything considered for the Conquering country; what about the conquered peoples, are they on the whole, beneficial for the conquered country? The You-tube clip would seem to say so. And in the case of India, if you look at the costs versus the benefits, my feeling is that the benefits were many.
What would the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh say about this equation if they put aside their nationalism for a moment. I think from an outsiders perspective, the benefits were many for Scotland and for Wales. For one thing, both "countries" provided Prime Minsters for the U.K. and many members of parliament. I suspect they prospered more through the Union than they would have alone. What do you guys think. I don't wish to open a can of worms, but honestly.
Tas -
Message 8
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
I would assume the vast majority of conquered peoples would say bad with a capital B
Empire building was done to further the interests of the European powers not the conquered peoples
The UK situation is totally different as Scotland, Ireland and Wales became members of the United Kingdom not part of England -
Message 9
Posted by LairigGhru (U14051689) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
Tas,
If you get a chance to see this series, then do make sure you seize it because it is 'right up your street':
It makes the point that Britain, in effect, created India out of all the separate states by installing the immense railway system. Few Indians today are willing to be generous and acknowledge this, Sergeant found.
Regards,
LG -
Message 10
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
I would assume the vast majority of conquered peoples would say bad with a capital BÌý
Perhaps if they were the generation who'd actually been conquered. Subsequent generations could have benefitted from stability and peace brought by empire. It's only relatively recently that the majority of people would have had much say in how their country was ruled regardless of whether their ruler was foreign or local. It often opened up trade for all to profit by.
I doubt many in Britain in 410 were sitting around saying "thank goodness those romans have gone we can go back to our old ways now..." -
Message 11
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
In an age when "it is the economy stupid", it is surely obvious that Empires were almost always crucial economic complexes that created much more secure settled and structured possibilities for productive and fruitful human endeavour.
Victorian historians were very conscious of the way that such wealth was channelled into the great achievements of Civilization, but, as exemplified by the Church and Cathedral building that was the glory of the Middle Ages at its most glorious period such bulding often reflected periods of unparalleled prosperity and growth.
I have suggested that Stephen Hawkings model for a never ending reality of cycles going from Big Bang to uttermost expansion before centripetal forces begin a shrinking process that eventually compresses all of reality into a Black Hole and something the size of a pea that eventually becomes so "pregnant" with energy that there has to be another Big Bang- is just another application of the cyclical models of reality that humankind has had since time immemorial.
Thus the Europe of the Age of the Church went through that successful period when the Church building reflection thanks to God for His/Her benificence. The economic expansion produced a great increase in the population, and both contributed to the "mid-life crisis" of this Medieval Cycle, which came when the Black Death killed about a Third of the population of Europe. Attitudes to the Church and to God then changed dramatically in struggles over wealth and power.
The end of the Middle Ages was a Black Hole of violence and decline, as once again Europe was threatened with being overrun by internal violence and dessention or being conquered and oppressed by a great Empire from the East, Ottoman Turkey. The challenge and turbulence of the new Age produced a new and suitable more secular structure that could guarantee personal security, worship, trade, enterprise and property, and the Europe of the State used these energised times in order to radically change both domestic and international relations.
The evidence of the Renaissance and subsequent ages of largely more secular art suggests that new wealth could be found to be dedicated to the glorification of both religious and secular greatness, and that, though the religious wars continued to be a check on human progress- as had happened during the Dark Ages after the Fall of Rome- by the end of the Seventeenth Century religion ceased to be a 'cassus beli", and European expansion was primarily aimed at economic development and security.
Within the British sphere of influence- the outreach of its secular and economic activity- the economic growth meant that populations could grow not only within England where population more or less doubled during the eighteenth century, and doubled again during the next Fifty years, but by the same if not greater degrees in places as far apart as Ireland and India. So much so that the mid-life crises of this Europe of the State came as population pressure applied to food supplies allarming Malthus to warn of the dangers of the Natural Checks of wars, famine and disease. All of these happened and shocked Europe during the mid-life crisis of the Age of the State- the Age of Revolution 1776-1848.
And in its aftermath, as in the late Middle Ages, there were new struggles and disagreements over the distribution of wealth and power, between the grass-roots and the hierarchies, with strong Nationalist movements working against the over-arching Imperial structures, many of which endure.
The First World War and its aftermath tried to bring an end to the Age of Empires ( Russia had had its revolution in 1905, and again in 1917. China 1911.. Turkey before and after the IWW.. Germany and Austria-Hungary 1918... India "Dyarchy" as a first step in 1919).. and the result was the World Chaos notably of 1932-33 that send Humankind into a spiral of war, the worst economic catastrophe not quite equalled by the crisis of the Autumn of 2008.
During the Second World War new over-arching structures were created to fight the war- on both sides; and after 1945 the need to create new overarching economic structures was supported in two rivals camps, the Capitalist one with the IMF and the World Bank, and the Communist ones. The maintenance of overwhelming force to counter the threat of Nuclear Holocaust was a major charge upon both "Western" and "Eastern" "blocs". These could not be "Empires" because the USA and the USSR were both doctrinally "anti-Imperialist".
Until c1989 the challenge of Communism/Socialism maintained a reason for some kind of mutuality and soldidarity that would keep the citizens of the "West" convinced of just where their "best interests" lay.
But by then, compared with for example the end of the Seventeenth Century when some people started trying to figure out population totals, the economic expansion that had been achieved during this "Eurocentric" era of World History the Earth was supporting at least ten times as many people as it did before "the Age of Imperialism". And by far the greatest proportion of those being supported and/or employed by the global economy were the "common people".
And one only has to look at the current "economic miracles" in India and China that are now powering global economic growth to see that both are very much post-imperial miracles that are only possible in the aftermath of the Imperial Age.
It is therefore not just a question of comparing the lot of the "common man" at the start of the Third Millennium with his peer three hundred years ago: but also being aware of just how many more people actually "have a life", however humble, compared with earlier times.
So unless one believes that it is better to be dead, or never to have been born, it seems undeniable that the fact that the economic growth that came along with Empire has provided life opportunities for a vastly increased number of people which has greatly increased the potential of Humankind- for better or for worse, for richer of for poorer.
Whether we are capable of producing either flowers or fruits worthy to be valued by our ancestors, however, is another matter.
Cass -
Message 12
Posted by stalti (U14278018) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
whitecamry
"As for "fruits of empire," I've never quite understood what were the fruits of the Roman Empire, aside from a few ruins and stories for history buffs."
i always wonder what the romano brits thought - for nearly 300 yrs most of britain lived in the pax romano - even the peasants had a settled life and the benefits of roman rule - no raids from other tribes - markets for their crops - shops - education - fast food outlets (lol) employment etc
the elite had a superb life with benefits they couldnt have dreamed of
what did the brits think - after 200 years surely they didnt hate the roman invaders - they werent invaders then - they were mates - werent they ??
what did the romans ever do for us lol
st -
Message 13
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
T.R. Glover in his history of the Ancient World (1935) has a very glowing passage describing the "pax Romanum" established by Caesar Augustus around AD 28, when Roman power really became an instrument of peace and security. The date seems quite interesting since it is widely believed that Jesus of Nazareth was around 30 years old when he took up his teaching and gathered his disciples. It seems therefore that, with his roots in or near the old region of Greek settlement the 'deccapolis', Jesus may well have grown up with an awareness of a wider Civilization/world than the Jewish one, and that he saw the new Roman peace as a window of opportunity for humankind to live together within a wider community that would/could benefit everyone.
Thus his very clever answer to the person who asked him whether the Jews should pay taxes to Rome.. He asked to see the money that he was carrying. There may well have been some Jewish sheckels for Temple use, but obviously the man was using the Roman coinage and the economic opportunities that came with membership of the Roman Empire. If you use services you must expect to pay for or support them, so "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's".
It seems that in this "I know my rights age" there is an increasing expectation that people are entitled to live as "Free Riders".
Cass -
Message 14
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
It's a really difficult question to answer truthfully....
Emotionally, those who've thrown off the 'yoke' of colonialism will always relish their new-found independence, but what about the benefits of such colonialism? For example, it does seem that most British and French colonies benefitted from the colonialism probably more than those who were colonised by the Portuguese and the Dutch.
Let's look at a country like Ethiopia, who managed to avoid being colonised, apart from a brief conquest by Italy. Are they really better off now? And what about Haiti, who overthrew the French yoke two hundred years ago. Where are they now? Of course, international blockades against Haiti didn't help much, but I guess that was a part of world politics at the time. -
Message 15
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
<BR />Hi LairigGhru:<BR /><BR /><QUOTE>It makes the point that Britain, in effect, created India out of all the separate states by installing the immense railway system. Few Indians today are willing to be generous and acknowledge this, Sergeant found.</Quote><BR /><BR />That is what I do not like at all. You would think in Today's India that there was no history, that the period between !745 and 1947 is a big void. <BR /><BR />Why are modern Indians so ashamed of the British connection that they want to eliminate all trace of Britons in India. Why change the names of cities like Bombay to Mumbai. Is this not just an infantile way to show this is our toy, not yours, although you may have created it. <BR /><BR />Nevertheless traces of the British in India are still everywhere and the moment an Indian speaks, you can see the influence of Britain in his language. The moment he decides to have a much loved cup of his favorite 'Chai' (Tea) Liptons, you can see British influence. Even in the Hill Stations, like Mussourie, you will find old hotels with names like Savoy and Hackmans, there are confectioneries in New Delhi with names like Vingers, Clubs with names like Chelmsford. <BR /><BR />In fact the whole city of New Delhi was a British creation, all the famous buildings from the Presidential Palace, to the Parliament Building, the names of the Streets, Kingsway and Queensway and Connaught Circle. The names may be changed but what about the buildings, how do you get rid of those?<BR /><BR />Tas
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Message 16
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
Just when we were getting used to the technique for posting on this board they have gone and changed it again. So where to begin now? Tas -
Message 17
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
Tas
Was it not the British who brought the tea to India from China because of the difficulties and costs of the China trade? Those great tea-clipper races were still setting off from China with the new year's harvest.
And recent news coverage from the Irish elections featured the republics main newspapers all printed in English. Have the Hindu Nationalists abandonned the idea of reversing T.B.Macaulay's decision that in a continent of over 300 different languages that needed to catch up with its own renewed cultural life and what the West had to offer the use of English as a common language of education was the most effective way forward? In these days of globalisation I believe that the use of English has been a major factor in the inward investment into both Ireland and India.
The earlier Haiti remark also put me in mind of the importance of State-backing for travelling. There were shades of the late Victorian era in the messages coming out of the Libyan desert as British oil-workers and their families called for intervention by the British military, much as happened with Christian missionaries e.g the Uganda Martyrs.. But I am not too sure that old-retired people back in those days thought that they could just sell up and invest all they had in a yacht to go sailing around the world permamently, though the British Navy did a great deal to sweep piracy off the High Seas when 75% of the world's shipping was British.
A very good friend, who came here from Jamaica in the Fifties, and who now has inherited a house and property in Jamaica, recently said that he had no problems in waving his British passport when he arrived at Heathrow, and thus bypassed the long queues of people without British passports who had to go through processing...
My limited experience, goes along with what I have learned "second-hand" namely a British Passport makes travelling around the world much easier than many others. For the most part my ex-pupils took international travel as part of their birthright.
Cass -
Message 18
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
Hi Cass,
We are now in the post-colonial world and we can see its consequences. Like Somalia and its pirates. There are no jobs for anyone in Somalia, so these people have taken on the, to them, lucrative profession of piracy. There is no British navy or even the American Sixth or Seventh Fleet with all its aircraft carriers and airplanes to rid us of these modern-day Long John Silvers.
The English language was your greatest gift to India among many others. Not that India lacked beautiful languages of its own and wonderful poetry and literature, but there was nothing that bound Indians like this wonderful language from a foreign land, with its wonderful utility, as much in literature as in Physics, Mathematics and Engineering sciences. The only way in which some one like me from the Indian State of UP can be friends with people from South India, like Kerala and Andhra.
I think post-colonial people should grow up, instead of being ashamed of their colonial history, they should embrace and say. "We have come thus far and through this route, with this background." That is the truly adult way.
If the Indians want to deny their Colonial heritage, would they be prepared to give up that most colonial sport of Cricket. If one should propose that in today's India, one would be driven out with tar and feathers.
Would I be able to live in America, having read so much about American history and having done so much for my adopted country. Actually, to an extent, I owe it all to you Brits. I was educated at your universities, I read your newspapers for forming my ideas, I saw your plays in your West-end theaters, I read books from your public libraries and you even looked after my health. I would be truly thankless if I did not acknowledge all this, at least to myself.
Tas -
Message 19
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
Tas
And as I have said many times I have been very fortunate that having decided to come to the inner city in London, in many ways the crucible of the modern world, I have been able to have my Britishness enhanced by so many encounters from the wide world- so many pupils whose families have chosen to make ongoing British history their own perhaps most from places which, as my Jamaican rooted friend (one of many) recently commented, were taught to think of "England" as a Mother Country, but many others like pupils I can think of who families were political refugees from South America, or just conflict-refugees from places like Cambodia and Ethiopia.
A Jamaican poetess I think in the Sixties wrote a poem about "Colonialism in reverse"-- but that is what happens when you open up channels of contact, and Britain's ongoing fascination with India is consistent with the whole history of our relationship with that sub-Continent.. Next week I see there is yet another TV series in which a British TV personality realises a childhood dream to explore India.
My daughter-in-law is Croatian and came to the UK over 20 years ago when ex-Yugoslavia was not a "good-place" to be, and like many people she rejoices in that English tradition of the rights of the common people that existed before, and were confirmed by Magna Carta. Those people who are on the streets in North Africa demanding their right to live as human beings are part of the fruits of this very English idea that Government is instituted among men for the good of the people- not the government or the governing class.
Cass -
Message 20
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
Colonialism consisted in the main of murder,rape and theft
Not really much there to be proud of really
Yes a lot of the post colonial nations are basket cases but how
much is that due to their treatment during the colonial era?
Yes there is a lot of industrialisation, commercial activity and infrastructure in these countries that wouldn't have existed at this stage without the European involvement but possibly these countries would be happier places left undisturbed and developing at their own pace?
That has always been my belief - maybe wrong - that for instance an African would be happier living in his traditional village and following his tribal customs of thousands years as opposed to living with millions of others in disgusting shanty towns with no hope or future -
Message 21
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
Glencairn
Well belief is one thing that usually goes beyond any rational analysis of evidence..
In spite of programmes like "Neighbours" and "Â鶹ԼÅÄ and Away" it is difficult to really make out a case that places where colonies were created by the process of planting labouring populations in new lands as happened with what became "The White Dominions" saw daily life largely characterised by "murder, rape and theft"- though both with the transportion of those British people who had fallen foul of the law and their African peers the raw material often included elements that were very capable of such activities.
As one can see being realised by African-Americans getting off of planes at West African airports on trips back to "their roots" it is immediately obvious to those accustomed to the even greater technical and military might of the American non-Empire, that they as a handfull of new arrivals in a vast continent, vastly outnumbered by a thronging and vibrant population, stand absolutely no chance of succeeding by means of violent oppression, and must understand that this is not how it happened.
In fact the reality was established quite quickly in the Cortes expedition on which the coastal tribes and their leaders very quickly grasped the possibilities offered by the new arrivals about 500 strong and their particular military advantages to join them in their efforts to throw of the domination of the interior powers that had been demanding its tribute in slaves and other goods for centuries. In this case the Aztec Empire which not long before had sacrificed 20,000 slaves within a few days in dedicating a new Temple in Tenochtitlan
The tragedy, however, was that both the Spanish and Portuguese Christians had passed through the "dark side" of the post Black Death period of European History marked by (a) the acceptance of the brutality and violation of human rights involved with the Church's campaign of Inquisition to root out heresy and impose religious dogma , and (b) the embracing of the Holy War or Crusade to drive the Muslim powers and then both Islam and Judaism from Iberia.
The success of Spain and Portugal was endorsed by the Pope who allocated the whole world East and West either side of a line of longitude- ran down Latin America and split Brazil from the rest. These two powers were thus entrusted with a religious mission that, as with Medieaval Crusades, endorsed the taking of human life in the interests of religion in a way that had largely been rejected in England throughout most of the Middle Ages.
Last week's Kate Humble programme about Spices showed how the Dutch- inheritors of the traditions of the Spanish Netherlands- did use such power on the small spice islands where they could find the priceless supplies of cinamon and nutmegs. While, as she was told by the islanders she met, on another small island that the Dutch had not taken over, the English East India Company had come as a friend and in peace, and the Company and the islanders had worked together towards prosperity in a way that is still remembered with gratitude 400 years later.
In fact the "Cortes model" probably applied to what happened on the West Coast of Africa.
As a small and weak, Atlantic fringe country, England was trying to resist the oppressive and arbitrary rule of the Roman Catholic backed ambitions of the Hapbsburgs and then the Bourbons, who wished to bring what the English had a taste of in the Marian Persecutions back as the new and general way of life in the British Isles.
During the Restoration period England made a number of friendship treaties with similar small and fringe Atllantic states facing an even worse tradition- the coastal Kingdoms of West Africa, which had been subject to enslavement and domination from the rich and powerful world that spread right around the Mediterranean and across much of the Middle East- and had done so since the time of Ancient Egypt and its great slave workforces.
By the seventeenth century it had been the great Islamic Empire for a thousand years with great Muslim sub-saharan states like Ghana and Mali, that used middle men tribes like the Ashanti to "tax" the coastal states and their peoples forced into the least advanatageous coastal regions, with their backs to the wall- rather like the Arawaks in the Caribbean, who had been forced to the most far-flung islands by the fiercer Caribs.
With the new opportunites offered by the Atlantic trade the African coastal states could begin wars of Liberation. In the early eighteenth century the Muslim States of the subsahara were forced to declare a number of "jihads" or Holy Wars in order to reimpose their authority, a sure sign that things were beginning to slip..
After 1763, however, the Atlantic Trade became much more difficult to control. The Royal Africa Company had been given a monopoly of the trading rights with the African States, but, as was normal with Stuart monopolies, the Company was obliged to make sure that the trade was properly regulated and everything was done according to the law. Already, in 1764, however, the British restrictions on trade that were one of the reasons leading to the American Declaration of Independence were proving irksome. This was a great age of smuggling and the Royal Africa Company was relieved of its duty of policing. In that year a bosun on an American ship trading illegally was killed trying to trade clandestinely along the African coast with a village that had already been "conned" once and decided to compensate themselves with the goods of the next boat that called.
It was probably a crucial difference between British conduct regarding Africa, where local states were not strengthened and helped to be run better and develop, and India, which was subject to many India Acts that controlled the work of the East India Company in India and of course brought to trial and punishment in Britain some of the great servants of the Company who were judged to have misused their powers.
Cass -
Message 22
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
Empire-building often was a more subtle activity than we may inclined to credit, but also a more chaotic one. Straightforward conquest was of course a part, but there were also many people and entities that joined on a semi-voluntary basis, attracted by economic opportunities or by a good opportunity to destroy their enemies. Julius Caesar would not have been able to conquer Gaul without local allies. The same is true for the British control of India, which was a established by a complex blend of warfare and diplomacy, and often with locally recruited troops.
Of course in many cases the people who 'voluntarily' joined an empire were forced to choose between two ills, as they were in danger of being crushed between opposing forces. Perhaps there were exceptions among some of the people who migrated into the Roman empire, although many will have sought security as well as prosperity. And a subtle threat may often have been enough, as from the perspective of a ruling class, it may be better to retain its authority as a franchise of a larger empire, than to gamble everything in an effort to retain full independence.
Besides, many historical empires were not set up on a strict "in or out" basis, but with a range of shades of dependence. The difference between an ally and a protectorate was vague, and a convenient business deal might be the start of colonisation. In India the British inserted themselves in local government as tax collectors on behalf of the Mughal emperors, in Egypt they (and the French) took over the machinery of government notionally on behalf on the insolvent Khedive. They might regret it later, but at the time such deals appeared to bring benefits to the government of the colonized state: Bigger tax returns and a modern bureaucracy. -
Message 23
This posting has been hidden during moderation because it broke the in some way.
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Message 24
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
Murder, rape and theft were what colonisation were based on Cass
That is how "we" conquered these countries
Look at the history of "our" treatment of the Aborigines
How many black lives were taken in the colonisation of Africa?
Their land was raped and stolen -
Message 25
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
Glencairn99,
The history of Colonialism, like any other Human history, is a complex thing, not easily summarized. Sometimes the Colonialist stumbled into a course of action when they never intended conquest. Some of their actions of course were motivated by self-interest, but what was the aggregate result of the whole venture? Some of their actions were truly horrific, for example the behavior of the Romans to the British Queen Boadicea. However, what the Romans have contributed to British civilization is truly remarkable.
In the same manner, the Brits long occupation of India started when the young Nawab of Bengal objected to the Brits misusing the entitlement given to them by the Mughal Emperor to trade without paying any custom duties. That dispute developed into a battle of Plessey. Robert Clive of the Brits had previously bribed the Nawab's uncle Mir Jaffar to stay out of the battle at the last minute. Nevertheless, although the Nawab lost about 50,000 troops due to the defection of his uncle, he still had about 45,000 troops, with rifled Cannon provided to them by the French. Unfortunately the French trainers forgot to advise the Nawab's cannoneers to keep their gunpowder from getting wet in case of rain and nobody had provided them with any canvas. I suspect the English expression "Keep your powder dry" emanates from this battle.
In the course of the battle, it started to rain and the Nawab's men got their powder all wet and soggy while the Brits, with fewer cannon and far fewer men, about 800 Europeans and 2,200 Indian Sepoys, won the battle with the loss of about 20 men, half being Indian Sepoys.
The young Nawab, an Indian hero, died during the battle That is how your Empire started. Almost by chance, events, good diplomacy, and good luck. After you won, there was no rape of women or looting but you did get a lot of money from the treasury of Bengal, given to you by Mir Jafar, the new Nawab. This produced the first so-called 'Nabobs' in Britain.
I think you never deliberately intended to create your empire. You just used every opportunity extremely well.
Tas -
Message 26
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
Glencairn
I do not think that your two examples are very good illustrations of any general rule about the way that Empires are/were built.
(a) The situation of the Aborigines was a particular one, and for example the tragic events that happened when some "hard-core" criminals were sent to found a new and more isolated community in Tasmania shows just how vulnerable these people who had apparently lived with a whole continent just to themselves for thousands of years were once "outsiders" had found a way their to land and wealth within their mindset that the Aborigines had no real effective structures to defend and protect. In fact one could say that the treatment of the Aborigines certainly in the early pre-colonial phase of Australian history is proof of the benefit of Imperialism rather than the reverse.
During the convict settlement of Australian History the place was merely treated as a dumping ground to get transported criminals out of the UK and in the case of those who were never to be allowed back a great Outback of cheap land on which they might subsist. As neither the Convicts nor the land nor the indigenous people were considered to have any particular asset value as part of any Empire the conditions were ripe for all manner of evil.
But the book of early Australian History documents that I have suggests that there was no call for any "conquest" of the Aborigines. In keeping with what seems to have happened universally when Europeans arrived in new lands the local people were interested by just what this new opportunity could bring. Early records from the convict settlements suggest that Aborgines, who had a long tradition as hunter-gatherers- very quickly adapted to the richer pickings to be had in the vicinity of the newcomers, and being accustomed to a very spartan and frugal existence, but not to alcohol, were soon looked down upon by these convicts- already dogs who had been given a bad name- and hence transported by the fury of the law- as even lower forms of the human species than they were themselves.
As William Cobbett said of the poverty of the Irish that shocked him when he visited with his friend Daniel O'Connell in 1834, they could never have been brought down so low without having neglected their rights as loyal subjects of the English Crown and subject to the protections of the law. But ten years earlier one of those many Scots who served the British Empire, Secretary Munro, wrote a minute about the 'ryots' the poor peasants of India that there was no point in passing laws to protect them as if they were Englishmen accustomed to demanding their rights when confronted by oppressive landlords and upper castes.. Nevertheless the rule of law is one of the principle features of any Empire.
(b) In refering to "the colonisation of Africa" you are presumably referring to that very brief and exceptional period of about 10-20 years when the Continent went from being totally "uncolonised" to almost totally "colonised". Prior to that it is very difficult to characeterise relations between Europe and Africa in that general way. Even the Portuguese, once they got South of the Islamic outreach to find the King of the Congo in the late fifteenth century made a treaty of friendship with him, and he sent his son to be educated in the ways of these people whose capabilities were very different to those of the Congo. And those who have studied the papers of the Royal Africa Company note the generally friendly relations based upon equality and respect between those who handled trade relations between England and the African Kingdoms.
Even the early settlents of the Boers happened relatively uneventfully, and neighbouring tribes, realising that these white men had no cattle suited to the region let them have some, as was customary neighbourly practice in Africa. Unfortunately as Dutch people, when they failed on African protocol and did not give back the first calves, and the neighbours came to take what was rightfully their by African law, the Boers shot them as cattle thieves.
But the during the 1860's there was a major change in European and American culture, with a new Darwinian emphasis on the struggle for the survival of the fittest inspired by the new exploits of the USA and Germany in industrialised warfare and massacre, with what was referred to an an "Anglo-Saxon contagion" reflected in a worship of old warrior codes and roots- as in Wagnerian opera. Power became a new gospel and incidents like the case of the Uganda Martyrs and the killing of General Gordon created a new impetus towards "a use it or lose it" attitude to wealth and power.
I started reading Niall Ferguson's "Colossus" this evening. It is his case that the USA was and is an Empire, and he said that Rudyard Kipling wrote his comment about "The White Man's Burden" specifically to encourage the USA to seize the Phillipines.
It was the current Archbishop of York, himself from Uganda, who asked me almost 20 years ago whether I knew the story of the Uganda Martyrs.
During the 1870's the King of Buganda, where there was a longstanding local religion, decided that it worth be worth learning more about the wider world, so he invited Muslims, Protestants and Roman Catholics to send missionaries to Buganda. What they discovered appalled them. The King had a serious medical condition that in African medicine required a boy being killed every day in order to supply him with the body parts that he needed. It did not save him.
There was a new king, and some of the King's "page boys" were allowed to attend Bible readings with a Scottish missionary. Many of them decided to become Christians. And as a Christian one day one of the boys refused to have sex with the King. The King had his arms and legs chopped off and roast him on a spit over an open fire.
The other boys stayed solid, and, rather like that famous scene with the Cathars, they went to be burned alive all together all singing hymns and praising God.
The Missionary was now in a pretty desperate position and tried to get out messages to get him rescued to safety. Eventually he made it out of Buganda and was able to tell his story to the world. Naturally enough the reading public were absolutely incensed that such things should be happening in their world; and there was public support for doing something to rescue such oppressed people from misrule.
As I say, following Media coverage of events in Libya I was reminded of that kind of outcry that says, whatever costs or benefits are involved, there is a clear Humanitarian (they would have said Christian) duty.
Cass -
Message 27
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Glencairn
Surely the logic of your belief that it is standard human nature to resort to murder rape and theft whenever disparities of power arrive to understand that human intelligence of the weak would incline people to seek the aid of the powerful ones who might "deliver us from evil". Hence the emergence of governmental structures capable of dealing with violations of "the peace", either from within or without.
In this regard there was I believe a clear difference between colonialism and imperialism, and the former in British history owed a great deal to the Scottish tradition of treating some peoples as in effect "vermin" who stood in the way of a more virtuous and providential use of "God's bounty". This seems to have been a feature of Stuart kiingship in Scotland as it sought to extend its authority to the Hiighlands and islands, and it applied to the Protestant plantations in Ireland and in some cases North America. In an ideal situation what was desired was a kind of "Edinburgh New Town" solution when it would be possible to start with a plain canvas: and wherever people wanted to make permanent plantations on lands that had supported unsettled populations be they the Aborigines in Australia, the Plains Amerindians or African tribes there was a tendency to operate a policy of "clearance". This I would not call "Imperialism" but expansionism.
Imperialism applied to places where the existing economic system had real value, which would be increased by being brought within a wider State system. Hence the British Empire like the Roman often worked by bringing Native Rulers within its structures.
The alternative for example during the Scramble for Land in Africa was when Cecil Rhodes created his own company to go into try to get hold of the gold and gems of Matabeleland without any sanction by the British government. When he realised what was going on, and how vulnerable he was Lubelangola, the King of the Matebele, tried to send a message to Queen Victoria asking for his Kingdom to be brought under her protection as the Queen/Emperor. But Rhodes' friends made sure that the message did not get through.
Cass -
Message 28
Posted by chefone (U14431437) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Hi CASS...
Just popping in to say Hello to you and to wish you well....
Chef...
-
Message 29
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 4th March 2011
chefone
Thanks for that... I thought that with my computer out of action for a month, it was a good moment to wean myself off of the MB.. But not quite it seems.
It gave me the chance to read through and bring to overall coherence the "Towards a View of History for Our Own Times" project that I had worked on for about 18 months.. And start trying to find a publisher. Having worked "towards" getting to the end it seemed appropriate to call it "History For Our Own Times " -- not "A History.." or THE History".. One rejection letter this week so far.
Cass -
Message 30
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Tas
And as I have said many times I have been very fortunate that having decided to come to the inner city in London, in many ways the crucible of the modern world, I have been able to have my Britishness enhanced by so many encounters from the wide world- so many pupils whose families have chosen to make ongoing British history their own perhaps most from places which, as my Jamaican rooted friend (one of many) recently commented, were taught to think of "England" as a Mother Country, but many others like pupils I can think of who families were political refugees from South America, or just conflict-refugees from places like Cambodia and Ethiopia.
A Jamaican poetess I think in the Sixties wrote a poem about "Colonialism in reverse"-- but that is what happens when you open up channels of contact, and Britain's ongoing fascination with India is consistent with the whole history of our relationship with that sub-Continent.. Next week I see there is yet another TV series in which a British TV personality realises a childhood dream to explore India.
My daughter-in-law is Croatian and came to the UK over 20 years ago when ex-Yugoslavia was not a "good-place" to be, and like many people she rejoices in that English tradition of the rights of the common people that existed before, and were confirmed by Magna Carta. Those people who are on the streets in North Africa demanding their right to live as human beings are part of the fruits of this very English idea that Government is instituted among men for the good of the people- not the government or the governing class.
°ä²¹²õ²õÌý
That was Louise Bennett, who wrote 'Colonisation in Reverse', and I recently quoted it to my daughter....
It's a form of revenge, in a way. -
Message 31
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Colonialism proceeded in accordance with what the government in London thought and what the political process allowed or was vociferously for at the time.
Let us look at a few events: First General Gordon and the Mahdi of Sudan. This illiterate, ex soldier of the Government suddenly got a call from God to be the 'Great Teacher' or Mahdi of the Muslims and got a large following. 6,000 Britons were marooned in Khartoum and Gladstone in his final administration was required to relieve them.
Instead of sending a relief force, some wise guy in the Government proposed General Gordon, who, by force of his character and his Christian principles will relieve Khartoum. General Khartoum was speared to death in his palace and eventually a force had to be sent under Kitchener and succeeded. and the so-called Mahdi died a natural death. With that, Britain got the added responsibility for Sudan.
Second, Gladstone had bought the idea of Irish Â鶹ԼÅÄ Rule and there was this chap named Parnell who had almost sold it to Ireland. So in the 1880s, the whole Irish question was close to a solution acceptable by all sides. Unfortunately, Mr. Parnell got involved in some kind of sex scandal and lost all his credibility.
The same thing happened in India; when there appeared to be a solution in sight under Lord Irwin, later Lord Halifax, that 'Dominion Status' should be granted to India, the concept was put aside until it was too late.
The same thing happened in the 13 American colonies. Instead of explaining to the Americans that a lot of funds had been exhausted by Britain in the Anglo-French wars and that it was time for them to foot some of the bill; that henceforth there would be some American Members of Parliament to look after American interests, the Government of George III stumbled into the Boston Massacre, and a series of battles, like Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and eventually Yorktown.
So the history of Colonialism is a series of too little, too late, and many things happened not from the volition of the Government of the time.
Tas -
Message 32
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 4th March 2011
shivfan
I did see her read it on TV and it was done with a certain amount of irony rather than the kind of malice that Glencairn has described.. It rather goes along in my mind with a couple of Christian missionaries from India I encountered in the mid-Sxities who decided to make it their mission to bring back a vital form of Christianity to a formerly Christian Britain that had lost its way.. Dr Sentamu is just one of many African Christians who have taken up that challenge more recently.
As a Cricket lover you may well appreciate that Mark Butcher's mother, who I saw with his dad Alan at the parents evenings at our sons' school, was recently quoted on the death of her own mother who had come here to Croydon in the Fifties, that she had always brought up her children with "English values".. And indeed the Windrush Generations main complaint is that they found an England that did not live by the English values that they had been taught to expect.
Cass -
Message 33
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Glencairn,
That has always been my belief - maybe wrong - that for instance an African would be happier living in his traditional village and following his tribal customs of thousands years as opposed to living with millions of others in disgusting shanty towns with no hope or futureÌý
Would a European? -
Message 34
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 4th March 2011
A propos the ambitions of Africans perhaps Glencairn should read or re-read Chief Luthuli's "Let My People Go"., in which, as leader of the African National Congress he explained that he knew of no instance in which African people given exposure to the wider world Civilization which was not the property of the White Man but represented a coming together of many streams- had not reached out with open-arms to embrace those possibilities.
In 1960 Luthuli was leading the still peaceful ANC campaign against the SA Nationalist Party Government's policies of imposing on the "bantu" exactly the kind of situation that Glencairn has postulated..
The erosion of the "Bantu" culture and way of life that had been going on, the predominantly Boer Party, touched the still resentful Boers who remnered the way that British culture had been imposed upon them- notably with the abolition of slavery in 1833 (which prompted the Great Trek to preserve the Boer Way of life). Dr. Malan had taken South Africa down the road of Apartheid with special reserves or Bantustans, not unlike the Amerindian reservations, where Black South Africans would be encouraged to carry on as before the white men ever came.
Luthuli explained just what the ANC thought of that, and in particular, as a teacher and a teacher training college lecturer, what he thought of the Bantu Education Act which meant black children no longer being educated in English, and thus gaining access to one of the, if not the, greatest fund of modern literature.
Cass -
Message 35
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Ever since the days of jean Jacques Rousseau, we have been talking about the "Noble Savage." Actually if you ask the savages, savagery is not noble at all. If any savages are shown a better way, they respond immediately.
In the context of India, a very ancient civilization, as soon as the Indians got a whiff of English and Western culture, they tried to emulate it. One of the greatest men of 19th century India, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, when he saw Oxford for the first time, was completely enchanted and tried to create an Oxford in Aligarh India as Aligarh University.
I think what harmed the British presence in India, was the arrogance of some people with small minds, who always tried to show their superiority, sometimes in obnoxious ways.
I guess you have all heard the story of Gandhi, then a young English-educated barrister, was thrown off a train in South Africa, when he had a First Class ticket in his pocket. The First Class at that time was supposed to be for Europeans only. These thoughtless actions by a group of idiots made many men like Gandhi thorns in the side of those governments and eventually lost India to the Brits.
I think you can try and understand the psychology of these thoughtless people; they had gone to India from typically lower-middle classes and there were treated like near royalty. It got to their heads.
Tas -
Message 36
Posted by Harpo (U14643022) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Nicholas Simpson, Glaslogh, Co Monaghan, speaking in 1641 shortly after the rebellion and in reference to the English in Ireland said:
‘The horse had been a long time atop the rider, but that now, God be thanked, the rider had gotten atop the horse again’.Ìý
Unfortunately for the Irish, their culture, their political and economic development, and their language, it was a short-lived respite. The effect of British rule in Ireland was not completely detrimental although generally the whole enterprise was essentially a dishonest one. It was always portrayed otherwise, of course, and that spin has been generally accepted by the English themselves and still is being peddled about. The Irish quickly learned how things got done the self-serving English way: by bribery, corruption, double-dealing, hypocrisy, apartheid, and spin. The biggest travesty of justice and good governance was when all opposition to the Union of 1801 was simply bought off. When the centre of Cork city was deliberately burned down by British auxiliaries and Black and Tans with the aid of the British Army only 90 years ago the government publically blamed it all on Irish rebels. They told bare-faced lies about it to a public who willingly accepted the official ‘truth’. And look at Northern Ireland and the web of deceit and duplicity that characterised British involvement there. It is quite astonishing how gullible the English are at believing the propaganda that emanates from their political and religious masters. They never question its veracity if it has authority.
And then there’s the whole story of British democracy! Should I go there? The Irish never wanted British rule. ‘Deliver us from evil’ was not on the people’s lips, although it may have been on the lips of some of their native oppressors seeking to re-establish their tyranny over them. Dermot MacMurrough, for example. King’s looking out for their own. Another one fled to the side of Agricola. No! When it comes to the people and democracy the British enterprise in Ireland had no empathy or interest. ‘These Irish vermin’ were spoiling the party. Dirty, ungrateful, illiterate, and work shy ne’er-do-wells. If as part of my exploitation all I can trade is my labour I will sell it as dearly as I can and give as little as possible to my exploiter. Every man has a sense of his own dignity and self-worth. Those who exploit others, like those who kill without conscience in war, have to see their victims as less than themselves.
The fruits of empire, like the wages of sin in the bible, is death. Apologist for empire are fabricators of a 'whited sepulchre'. Like the British enterprise and government in Ireland it has a veneer of civilty in which style is more important than substance. -
Message 37
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Harpo
As you start with the date of 1641 I would suggest that the true roots of the worst episodes of British/Irish History- which have cast such a long shadow- have very little to do with what I have described as Imperialism as a general historical phenomenon and almost everything to do with that terrible period of religious crusading associated with the Protestant Reformation and the Roman-Catholic Counter-Reformation, the latter with its crusading edge that took the Jesuits across Europe and all the way to Japan not in the name of any secular or Imperial power but in support of the Church and the idea of the Pope's possession of the keys to heaven.
Both sides of those religious wars tended to put all emphasis on life after death, rather than Life on Earth, and seem to have believed that a taste of Hell might help to save eternal souls: attitudes that were, and had long been, anathema to English Christianity.
William Cobbett visiting Ireland in 1834 as a guest of his good friend Daniel O'Connell was shocked at the extreme poverty around Dublin and recommended that the Irish should lend their weight to his campaign to save the old Elizabethan Poor Law, that made the plight of the poor the responsibility of every Anglican parish community. Such poverty, he said, could not have happened, had the Irish people used their rights as loyal subjects of the Crown to make sure that the interests of all the people were being looked after in accordance with the rights accorded in Magna Carta. And earlier Cobbett had campaigned against the changes in the local parish council elections that came into force c1817 and gave extra representation to wealth and power to the detriment of "the little man".
The men of wealth and power, Cobbett wrote, then employed as poor law overseers the same kind of men, educated Scots Protestants, who were already their prefered estate managers, just as they were favourite slave-drivers on the plantations in the New World.
England too was changing. And the tragic events of Ireland 1798 showed quite clearly how the impact of the religious divide engineered by James VI/I in the early Seventeenth Century had left such savage and brutal legacies on both sides of the religious divide that the kind of mechanics of civil government to which Cobbett was referring just could not operate.. But he and O'Connell shared a hope that the situation might yet be saved by political and constitutional means.
But the mingling of embattled religion from earlier ages and politics in this "fag -end" of the Age of the State has left us with seemingly insoluble problems in many parts of the World.
Cass -
Message 38
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Friday, 4th March 2011
On the rise and fall of empires I found this to be a quick but informative (and wry) study:
-
Message 39
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 4th March 2011
But quite apart from the whole question of the religious wars and the associated global Roman Catholic Crusade, the other ongoing factor in Ango-Irish relations which do not aplly to the simple Imperialist model of of a powerful state making itself more powerful by expansion and aggrandisement- and thus getting itself involved in "other people's business", was the fact that Ireland was often perceived as a very real threat to the very survival of England as a place for English values and the English way of life.
Henry Tudor's successful campaign that began with his landing in Pembrokeshire was a very real reminder of previous invasions of England from the west.. This was repeated by challenges to the Tudor throne during the reign of Henry VII, and the fear of Armies loyal to the Crown or the Pretender to the Crown crossing the Irish Sea troubled crisis moments throughout much of the Seventeenth Century.
Fears of Irish arrnies during the Popish Plot and the crisis year of the reign of James II may have been irrational and exaggerated. Fears often are. But they were real enough, as I know, having lived through IRA bombing campaigns that threatened the life of my own children and my pupils. It was perhaps fortunate that only one of my pupils had her father killed in London by a bomb, her mother, as she later told me having ironically grown up in and survived Beirut, and believing that she might be safe in London.
It was only Marlborough's victory at Blenheim that really put an end to the ambitions of Louis XIV of France to make himself the Sun King of a European Roman Catholic hegemony: and the alliance that defeated that great scheme was forged by William of Orange, one of the most divisive figures in Irish History both in the island of Ireland and parts of the Irish diaspora.
Cass -
Message 40
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Yes Cass I have read Luthuli's book and many more on African history and culture
In fact I lived in South Africa and Glencairn was my South African location rather than a Scottish one
My point was that the indigenous population would have been happier left unmolested to develop at their own pace and continuing their own traditions
It is crass to compare this with the apartheid Bantustan system which was designed to train the African for a lifetime of subservience
Giving the native population the worst 10% of the country for 90% of the population and with a tiny budfget for education compared to the Europeans cannot possibly be compared to not being invaded in the first place
The system was meant to prevent Africans being educated "above their station"
You are obviously a learned and well read man and I am an avid reader of your postings but you cannot claim to be 100% correct in everything you write?
Do you think the Aboriginal population of Australia who were shot, raped and mutilated by the white settlers, including the virtual genocide of the Tasmanian Aboriginals, were better off after colonisation?
My point is that in some cases there may have been benefits to the indigenous population after colonisation but this was an unplanned side effect as the whole purpose of the colonistion was to benefit the colonisers not the colonised
Anyway right or wrong these are my thoughts on the subject -
Message 41
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Friday, 4th March 2011
WhiteCamry
Sorry not sure what your point is
Cass
As I have said I respect your views but you infer that the disgraceful treatment of the Aboriginals was due to the criminal class transported there
This is patently not the case as most of the massacres were carried out by the Army or Police and it was the official policy to exterminate them in areas that we wanted and the Aboriginals would not leave
The black man in those days was seen by many as inferior and practically sub human and this was by all classes
Also I find it quite amusing how you manage to fit in a dig at the Scots in practically whatever thread you are commenting on!
What terrible people we must be!
It was the Scottish tradition to treat people as "vermin"?
You may remember in 1746 that it was Cumberland who gave the order "no quarter" that lead to the deaths of many unarmed men, women and children
The Jacobite Army never gave this order
It wasn't just the Germans in South-West or the Belgians in the Congo who have the blood of thousands on their hands
The British do as well -
Message 42
Posted by Harpo (U14643022) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Cass,
I don’t value labels like imperialism, colonialism, etc. I prefer to consider things for what they were without the academic labels. These terms, I feel, are like straight-jackets and constrain discussion along certain prejudicial lines. We have already fallen into this pattern. You refer to ‘British/Irish’ history whereas I used the term ‘Irish-English’. The die is well and truly cast between the Irish and the English before sufficient numbers from the wider British family are impacting the situation to justify your characterisation of the relationship as British. However, since this thread and your posts use such words I shall have to deal in the same terms.
You say I start the worst of the Irish-English (or ‘British/Irish’ to use your term) affair with 1641 when the ‘true roots’ lie earlier. I did not. It was the quote about the man and the horse that I chose and it chose the year. I agree with you, though, that the true character of the relationship had already manifested itself before 1641. Your contention that the ‘worst episodes’ of that relationship had nothing to do with ‘Imperialism’ and everything to do with religion is not well made. English policy of extending its power into Ireland by force (‘imperialism’ if you wish) predates the religious crusade of the Protestant Reformation. The religious issue only added further poison to pre-existing English attitudes to Ireland and the Irish. Even though the Scots and Welsh suffered from similar attitudes they considered themselves a cut above the Irish and that is what made them such effective administrators and abettors of empire. Of course, the many Irish would in time themselves join in the game.
save the old Elizabethan Poor Law, that made the plight of the poor the responsibility of every Anglican parish communityÌý
What Anglican community? In the majority of Irish parishes there was no Anglican community but there was always an Anglican minister who by law was supported by the Roman Catholics to whom he did not minister. Those same people supported their priests willingly.
Such poverty, he said, could not have happened, had the Irish people used their rights as loyal subjects of the Crown to make sure that the interests of all the people were being looked after in accordance with the rights accorded in Magna Carta.Ìý
How was an Irish peasant going to exercise his right as a loyal subject to further his interests. The Crown was actively complicit in denying any rights to an Irish peasant. They had not the right to practice their religion, educate their children as they wished, own a horse worth more than £5, bequeath their property as they saw fit, practice certain professions, engage in certain businesses and trades, take leases securing their holdings to their posterity, protect themselves against violent attack, marry when and whom they liked, etc..
Cobbett was a lone voice. After the Union Catholic Emancipation was reneged on by the British government and strongly opposed by the king. O’Connell famously said:
'My days – the blossom of my youth and the flower of my manhood – have been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land – in the land of my sires – I am degraded without fault as an alien and an outcast.'Ìý
You also seem to have a very misguided view of Magna Carta if you believe that Irish peasants could invoke it to better their situation. Magna Carta was not a peasant charter. The Irish had two irredeemable faults In the eyes of those English who viewed them with vested interests, the Irish were invested with two irredeemable faults that would be used to justify much: firstly, they were a ‘barbarous race’, unworthy of the benefits nature had bestowed upon them; and secondly, after Henry VIII’s reformation, they were priest-ridden, superstitious infidels. By Cobbett’s day they were being described by some commentators as ‘ni—ers’ and referred to as deserving their lot. It was easy for the great British public (speaking generally), their media, and their political leaders to justify the starvation of the Irish in the Great Famine as the ‘righteous judgement of God on these barbarous wretches’, to quote another Englishman, Cromwell.
I am being deliberately emotive in my choice of language here for a purpose. Your rose-tinted view of England, and of the British Empire, is not tenable and is not shared by many with good reason. Let’s stop the canting nonsense about the fruits of empire and the English being God’s chosen people. ‘Fruits of Empire’ – where did that come from? The Bible? ‘By their fruits …’. Trees bear fruit in the fullness and goodness of time, not empires. Empires are wrought by force and the vanquished are losers. This is self-evident. The fruits belong to the victor or to those of the vanquished who choose to identify with the victor.
Harpo -
Message 43
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Friday, 4th March 2011
"Aboriginals, were better off after colonisation?"
Indeed many are still no better off after colonisation. Whilst it is true that a great many Aboriginals have adapted well to the western lifestyle forced upon them there are a great many who have not to this day. The suicide rate amongst male Aboriginals in police custody and jails is appauling simply because they have no way of coping with close confinement.
Keep up the good work Glencairn, it is good to see someone pricking the Anglo centric bubble. -
Message 44
Posted by Harpo (U14643022) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Henry Tudor's successful campaign that began with his landing in Pembrokeshire was a very real reminder of previous invasions of England from the west..
Ìý What previous invasion from the west? I didn’t know the Irish ever invaded Britain. Are you thinking of what most English nationalist historians refer to as the ‘pirate raids’ of the early medieval period, in one of which St Patrick was abducted?
I could accept that argument if the English/British were being truly defensive of their little island but they were the aggressors abroad and it was their actions which gave rise to the threats from abroad. Even today it is Britain’s active role in foreign politics which draws upon itself unwelcome (one could hardly say, unsolicited) attention. I doubt that Ireland was ever perceived as a truly genuine threat to Britain. Ireland was a pawn in international rivalries and the fact that we sided with Britain’s enemies speaks volumes about Britain’s role in Ireland. We could have been your best ally if you had treated us with respect and due deference as a foreign country with a different culture and language. Instead, speaking generally, we were something to be taken. Ireland of, and in, itself never posed a threat to Britain. No Irishman that I am aware of ever held ambitions to conquer or in any way injure Britain or its people except only in wanting revenge for a wrong.
Fears of Irish arrnies during the Popish Plot and the crisis year of the reign of James II may have been irrational and exaggerated. Fears often are. But they were real enough, as I know, having lived through IRA bombing campaigns that threatened the life of my own children and my pupils.Ìý
Such fears were irrational and exaggerated. There was no Irish army of any kind. There were no footsoldiers, no arms, no ammunition, no nothing, but that did not stop your political and religious leaders and the public media claiming that there were. And the highest ranking Roman Catholic ecclesiast in Ireland was hung drawn and quartered at Tyburn for his role in organising and recruiting this phantom army. But, as the judge told him when sentencing, it was not the treason that the court had ‘proved’ that he was being convicted of but the fact that he was a Roman Catholic prelate.
Fears are real enough when there is actual evidence to give them substance. The IRA are a case in point. They bombed, killed and maimed. I hate everything they did. Some of them were my own countrymen; others were UK citizens. They did not emerge out of a vacuum. There is some history, some form, there. The IRA were not putting bombs in New York or Beijing.
It was only Marlborough's victory at Blenheim that really put an end to the ambitions of Louis XIV of France to make himself the Sun King of a European Roman Catholic hegemony: and the alliance that defeated that great scheme was forged by William of Orange, one of the most divisive figures in Irish History both in the island of Ireland and parts of the Irish diaspora.Ìý
If Blenheim ended the foreign threat to England why did it then herald the beginning of some of the worst anti-Irish, anti-Catholic excesses of British rule in Ireland? The British government did put a brake on some of these draconian laws aimed solely at Catholics. For instance, they would not agree to a law sanctioning the castration of priests and friars. We should, I suppose, be thankful for small mercies!
I agree that William of Orange is a divisve figure but he is so only because of an existing division, and ‘ne’er the twain shall meet’ is the watchword of the orange side of that divide. And it is that side that are well and truly steeped in their scorn for all things Irish, be it Roman Catholicism. the Irish language, Irish culture, the Republic of Ireland. It was also from that quarter that the most flagrant lies about De Valera’s government in WWII emanated and were given currency. I love that old saying about the lie being half way round the world before the truth has gotten out of bed. The anti-Irish propaganda of WWII is just another example of the attitude of sections of the British media and establishment to Ireland. Their hypocrisy was also evident in the use thye made of Irish labour during the war only to turn on the same people after it.
Harpo -
Message 45
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Glencairn
There is a case to be made that the developments that have made it possible for so many more people to have life on Earth with the process of globalisation has been made have been negative..
I have used elsewhere a book entitled "The Way Ahead" published in the early 1990's which was produced with entries from many "visionaries" (and no historians) about their visions for the New Millennium. One Amerindian spoke for the Native Peoples of the Earth who could see how modern Civilization had violated Mother Earth and how about 90% of the world's population would have to perish in a "Great Purification" that would restore things to a natural balance.
That seems to be about right.. But actually very few people seem to be so keen to forego those benefits of the modern system that they value- as for example for Old Age Pensioners like me the right to have my life,and conditions of life prolonged by modern medicine, and to live by means of the pension generated by modern Finance.
I have to say, as some people seem to think that I am an advocate of some glorious history, that I am a very powerful critic of the human record and of the kind of decisions that have been made. To anyone born in 1944 growing up with Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Belsen, the 1947 massacres in India. Mau Mau terroris, Bikini etc the challenge of history was to try to understand if possible how human beings came to create so much evil in the world. It was very obvous that Humankind hopefully "could do better".
So my burden as an historian is to try to understand the problems that confronted previous generations, and to consider how options that were not viable in the past. might still serve in different circumstances- like Leonardo Da Vinci's science fiction inventions, in the age of the motor and the ball-bearing.
One of the options that people did not and do not have, however, was just to stay isolated and "doing their own thing"..as you have advocated
As a schoolteacher I know from experience that children who just go to school being told by their parents to ignore everyone and just "mind their own business" are perforce making themselves very vulnerable-and will often end up getting bullied because nice people are offended by their rejection and nasty people are attracted by their isolation and vulnerability.
Human beings are "social animals" and only survive by being able to interrelate with all of their environment, through all of its changes; and managing a territory with its limits is a fundamental life skill for many species. Even the Chinese and the Japanese who perhaps made greater efforts than most peoples to exclude "foreign devils" eventually had to deal with them. So the question really came down to having some kind of effectively lawless domination as of the pirates of the Barbary Coast or some kind of government that offered some kind of law and order protection etc.
A useful example of non-imperialist Imperialism is the story of the White Rajas of Sarawak, the Brook Family, who went to Sarawak in the early nineteenth century and rescued the area from its Hellish exposure to piracy, headhunting and exploitation.
Thanks to the Victorian millionairiess Miss Couts (of the bank fame) private funds were available to equip and send an British man of war to go and clear the seas and make the region safe for the people of Sarawak, who duly elected the Brooks as their Rajahs. A position that the family held until the Japanese invaded during the 2WW and massacred many of the people. After the War Sarawak became part of the new state of post-colonial Indonesia.
But across the world, from such places to my wife's native France to the Spice Islands visited by Kate Humble, what we see is the desertification of villages and old labour intensive ways of life. As Luthuli said of the Bantu who were supposed to stay in the Batustans, they wanted a better life for their children, and that meant more than just subsistence but money for education and other things.
As for your general point about colonisation, I think that I did make a distinction between "virgin lands" colonisation which started really with the plantations of the early Seventeenth Century in North America, Ireland and South Africa.-and Imperialism, which sought to bring the local population within the new and developing economy.
My Atlas of African History published in the 1990's by an Ugandan historian shows that the population distribution in Africa was mottled/localised with much open land: and this was typical of that period of colonisation. Even at the time of the Great Trek this was the case, though as you are probably aware the adoption and adaptation of European military methods by the Zulu had resulted in the creation of the Zulu Empire of Shaka Zulu, and the consequent terrible period of blood-letting the "Lifaquane" that meant that traders like Schoon and McLuskie who went with trade goods and an ox-cart into the land of the Matabele in the 1830' s found the land heavily covered with skeletons.
This wider impact of European contact also impacted upon Amerindians before the period of colonialism/Imperialism. A recent reading of the Chronicle of the Founding Fathers made it apparent that a whole century of European visits to Cape Cod for fishing, had already impacted upon the local population who were already adjusting to the trade possibilities offered by the Europeans, and seem to have for example increased their maize production so that there were supplies available to trade. This would have been in return no doubt for useful goods like iron or steel blades, blankets etc. By the time that French explorers got all the way across North America to modern Vancouver they found that the Haida Indians were so rich and successful that family status was bound up with how much wealth a family could afford to destroy in the 'potlach" ceremonies.
But shades of European history and the Black Death, the place at Cape Cod where "God's destiny" placed the Pilgrim Fathers, where they could find an Amerindian called Tisquanto who had lived in England and spoke English, just happened to have had its indigenous population wiped out by disease not long before the Mayflower sailed. The Pilgrim Fathers became a replacement resource for the Cape Cod fishing fleets.
But the real Amerindian Revolution probably came from the horses that escaped from the Spanish in Central America and found an ideal new home on the Great Plains. Like many tragedies of the last five hundred years, change lifted the Plains Indians up as they were able to replicate the horse-revolution that had impacted other parts of the world a couple of thousand years before. The great pageant of huge travelling tribes harvesting at will, and fighting over, the seemingly infinite bounty of the Great Plains created very proud people, who were then confronted by the land demands of the Westward expanding USA.
I do not subscribe to Human helplessness in the face of the dynamic of history. There is a tide in the affairs of man etc, and none of us has been able individually or collectively get things 100% right in any "real" way.. {Hence I do not claim to get everything right] I had a friend who got 200% in a Maths Masters examination.. But that just meant that he did the calculations exactly as the examiner would have done them.
But in the same way I regard all previous human experience as a bank of knowledge which we may hope to use wisely. So just in case I am taken for a prophet of "Progress" in the Victorian sense, back in 1973 when Dr Schumacher produced "Small is Beautiful" and was spearheading the "Intermediate Technology" movement, having the good fortune to have his private address, I wrote to him complimenting him on his ideas, but stressing that it was important that this message of sustainable and renewable technology, and "economics as if people really mattered" needed to be spelled out as the Way Forward for what was then called the First World, and not offered just as a cheap option for the "Third World"..
In the case of the latter it would be rejected by the elite of the leaders of the "Third World" who would continue to pour funds into personal vanity and prestige projects that so often ended up as expensive "White Elephants". Hence having defended the role of States in getting Humankind through the last five hundred years, about ten years ago I wrote a piece entitled "The Rediscovery of Social Man", because I believe that in that late Nineteenth Century Age of Imperialism the Human Story dipped into the tragic and the evil that resulted in what Eric Hobsbawm called "The Age of Catastrophe 1914-1945".. But in order for Human Beings to have been able to create such catastrophe, we also , by definition, created the possibility of creating a better period of History than has ever happened before.
We have been given the tools and we need to finish the job.
Cass -
Message 46
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Friday, 4th March 2011
I never once mentioned that anyone should remain isolated and have no interaction with others
What I said is that surely anyone would rather progress, interact with others and adapt to change of their own volition and not be conquered /enslaved by some other nation and having no say in their future and then be left to pick up the pieces
Its basic common sense / its the human condition
As for the British colonies - the zulus have some nice land lets kill them and take it, ditto the Aborigines, the Kikuyu etc etc That was the Bitish attitude to the black man in those days
And Albert Luthuli's attitude to colonisation? I think the title of his book "Let My People Go" says it all -
Message 47
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 4th March 2011
harpo
Thank you for your post.. You may or may not be as cheered as I was a couple of hours ago to hear that Queen Elizabeth is to make a state visit to the Irish Republic, one of only three states in the world that she has not visited.. After what I have just written, I still think that States (like Churches and other faiths) have a role.
(a) As for the "English" in Ireland my perception as an English commoner is that at the start of the Second Millennium "we" had to realise that the tide of history was leading us through stormy waters, and that English ways were not enough. We were finally conquered by Vikings and were ruled over by a number of Viking Kings, including the half-Viking Harold Godwinson. Clearly there was a need for a much stronger and more powerful military ruling elite, and we got one with the Anglo-Norman dynasty and its associated barons.. After 20 years William I realised that England seemed to be being defended at Norman expense so he carried out the Domesday survey. The Anglo-Norman line led to Civil War, and then England became part of the Angevin Empire with a new dynastry and barons with new ambitions, including Longbow who persued his personal glory into Ireland.
Interestingly, however, the Angevins were confronted by an English revolt that insisted that military dues to the Crown could only be used for the defence of England from attack , not for any adventures of purely personal aggrandisement.. And the subsequent development of the Irish Pale in the area around Dublin represented such adventures by a monarchical and military class, and those who wished to "hitch their stars " to theirs. Of course the English people realised that there were potential advanatages in having famous warrior kings, but ideally great Christian knights like Richard the Lionheart, who spared England his actual presence for much of his reign.
It was really only after the end of the Hundred Years War against France that Kings of England in effect became specialist Kings of England and able to give England undivided attention, as opposed to their extensive lands in France and elsewhere. Historians nornally date the emergence of the English Nation State with the Tudor accession, partly for convenience. And as I have said before this was the time when the invasion of England by Ireland became a real prospect- and in fact a reality.
(b) My reference to the Anglican community was obviously a reference to English conditions. The Anglican Church created as much as anyone by Thomas Cranmer was and is unique in its ability to allow all Christians of goodwill to worship as one in the spirit of English Commonweal. Thus Lord Clarendon was able to urge the Restoration Parliament to try to get England back to its tradition of "Good Naturedness"- the tradition in which, for example, in Tudor times anyone holding a feast automatically made sure that the actual guests would only scratch the surface of the food, trying a bit of each dish, leaving enough to feed the various layers of staff and the whole community- according to a couple of Tudor documents explaining how things should be done that I read recently. And the duty of all within the Parish to look after the Poor lasted variously until 1834, when the new law said that poverty should not be relieved merely destitution.
In Scotland and Ireland it seems that people could be given licences to go begging, and in the 1690's Fletcher of Saltoun, a Scottish nationalist, estimated that 20% of the Scots population was roaming around as "soarners" able-bodied beggars that had become a civil danger. Saltoun recommended that many of them should be made into slaves. But the Scottish Parliament passed a law saying that every kirk should have an elementary school.. Someone commented (ID) on my "digs"at the Scots. Well by the late Eighteenth Century the world was being reshaped by "academic" and "Intellectual" ideas rather than human experience,and Scottish learning was foremost in shaping the age- most obviously Adam Smith who created "economics and if people do not matter at all" (Highland Clearances etc)
But yes was it not Swift who summed up the tragedy of the post Boyne settlement in Ireland with the dangerous social divide in which Roman Catholics- staying true to the faith that still allarmed the English- were reduced to being "mere hewers of wood and drawers of water".
As for the list of what people could not possibly do a great deal depends upon the relationship of trust. Many years ago when I was writing about this ongoing situation I used the notes of the Second Viscount Palmerston when he first went to visit his estates in Ireland at about the age of 22. His notes show the mundane reality of his role as a largely absentee landlord, and a great deal of naivity over the agent who handled all of his Irish affairs, and was a "few too many" for this naive and well-meaning English peer.
These were difficult times for men and women of goodwill, not the least because moments of national danger were chosen by some of the Irish as convenient moments to make things worse.
Hence in October 1764, just after the end of the Seven Years War there were reports of clashes betweeb soldiers and Whiteboys in Kilkenny. Lord Chesterfield who had been Lord Lieutenant in 1745 and had kept Ireland calm in that crisis wrote to the Bishop of Waterford-" I see that you are in fears again from your Whiteboys, and have destroyed a good many of them: but I believe, that if the military force had killed half as many landlords, it would have contributed more effectually to restore quiet. The poor people of Ireland are used worse than negroes by their Lords and Masters, and their Deputies of Deputies of Deputies. For there is a sentiment in every human breast that asserts man's natural right to liberty and good usage, and that will, and ought to rebel when oppressed and provoked to a certain degree".. Chesterfield consistently supported the cause of developing Irish industry.
(c) It is hard to say that William Pitt reneged on the question of Roman Catholic Emancipation. He insisted as much as he could. It was the King who was implacable and Pitt resigned over the issue. It is difficult to see how he could do more.
(D) Magna Carta had a trickle down clause that laid down that the rights to fair treatment by the King that were recognised for the barons, should be accorded by them to their inferiors, and so all the way down the social ladder. Once Ireland was united with England the Irish people were presumably entitled to claim the same status as other loyal subjects.
(E) As for the English being God's chosen people, I do not think that I have ever claimed such a thing. But rightly or wrongly the way that I see the world must perforce be rooted in England and in an ideal of Englishness. Though I have studied widely in world history and have been wedded to France since 1965 still have to grow from where I was first planted in Oxford , England, and I have always been aware that it was a particular window on the world. Matthew Arnold summed it up as a place of "sweetness and light". Perhaps that is why Ieft Oxford to learn the grim reality of the post-war world, but Oxford is still there as an age-old testimony to Human aspiration to make the most ,and the best of, this world.
Cass -
Message 48
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Glencairn
I am really at something of a loss for an historical example- outside of the RC Jesuit global mission and its Dutch derivatives - "Give me the child and I will give you the man"- for a situation during that modern era and before the particular circumstances of the end of the Nineteenth Century, when your kind of model of military conquest followed by forced change into the modern world actually applied.
Britain outside of India, where the army was predominantly Indian, hardly had any army capable of major conquest. Out in China the foreign merchants chipped together to fund a "Western" army to fight to re-establish the rule of the Chinese Emperor during one very dangerous revolt. This "Ever Victorious Army" was commanded by "General" Gordon a Scottish mercenary acting quite outside British policy.. This, as Tas has mentioned, led to the idea of Gordon being able to do something similar in the Sudan, avoiding any British Imperial involvement. Gordon's death created a public outcry for military intervention with all kinds of stories about what might have been done to Gordon's body parts.
The greatest part of the British Empire, for example, was the Indian sub-continent and Europeand went there because it was the fabulous Orient and a residue of an Ancient era of Civilization that Europeans had been taught to look back on as a Golden Age. The East India Company servants took full advantage of both intellectual and other delights that just did not exist in Europe. Their fascination with ancient Hindu Civilization was a major cause of the Hindu revival in the Nineteenth Century. All missionary work was forbidden until c1811-12 when the two religious societies were granted permission to go to India, as long as they taught basic elementary skills to the children. Lancaster and Bell for the two societies soon afterwards brought the monitorial system into England, for no-one was seriously bothering to teach English children.
But the new contract given to the East India Company at I think the accession of Victoria laid it down that all positions in the company service should be allocated purely on the basis or merit quite independently of any considerations of nationality, race, religion, creed, or colour: and in order to make it possible for indigenous people to climb up through the Company's ranks it was necessary to establish a system of schooling such as was being created to form a new Meritocracy in Britain.
Subsequently, though some Indians (like Gandhi) came to University in Britain major Universities were established at Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, initially with British educated staff. In the 1880's the University lecturers suggested that their students should meet together in a huge congress in order to articulate and form Indian ideas and attitudes about the Government of India.. This became the annual Indian National Congress, which Gandhi was able to transform into a British kind of political party in the years immediately after the Amritsar Massacre in 1919.
As for the Zulus at the time of the Great Trek and the famous battle at Blood River, the Boers were not an army but a colony on the move like one of the wagon trains that became so familiar in Westerns. They even made the same kind of circle, and they were not seizing Zulu land, just passing through.
Around 1960 I had the chance to listen to an old man, the ex-bishop of Zululand who recounted how he had gone to these people for whom he retained a great affection and respect. It was the time of the Wind of Change, and he showed us his most cherished cross. It was beaten out of the Assegai of the Zulu King that he had converted to Christianity and the ways of peace rather than war.
Cass -
Message 49
Posted by Harpo (U14643022) on Friday, 4th March 2011
Cass,
I am very pleased that relations between our two countries are such that the Queen feels able to visit us – finally. I fully expect the Irish people to give her a genuinely warm welcome. The fact that we are one of three states in the world she has not visited says it all about Irish-English relationships.
As for the English being God's chosen people, I do not think that I have ever claimed such a thing. But rightly or wrongly the way that I see the world must perforce be rooted in England and in an ideal of Englishness. Though I have studied widely in world history … I was first planted in Oxford , England, and I have always been aware that it was a particular window on the world. Ìý
Indeed, it is your right and entitlement to take an English view but what I find mystifying is your inability, despite your professed education, to take a balanced view.
Matthew Arnold summed it up as a place of "sweetness and light". Perhaps that is why I left Oxford to learn the grim reality of the post-war world, but Oxford is still there as an age-old testimony to Human aspiration to make the most, and the best, of this world. Ìý
That human aspiration is something to which everybody can lay claim. A ninth century Irish monk had something to say about that a long time before Oxford ever existed [ ].
Harpo -
Message 50
Posted by Harpo (U14643022) on Saturday, 5th March 2011
PS - The translator of that 9th century Irish poem was an Englishman, Robin Flower [ ] and Keeper of MSS at the British Museum.
He was a true scholar, a very learned man and an alumnus of Oxford. He was one of the few who saw beyond the popular and academic prejudices of his time and made Old Irish and Anglo-Saxon his field of study.
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