Some of those California house seats are at less than 50% counted. Completely ridiculous. I had a cursory look through some and I think we may be heading for 218-217 with either party now able to get a 1 seat majority. I think I'd price it at 60/40 in favour of the GOP to get over the finishing line but that 4/10 chance could very easily happen and the Dems may hold the onto the House.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
I'm actually reading a primary source History of the Indian Empire at the moment written in 1859, just after the mutiny. Original screenshot below for those that don't believe me. The handwritten dedication inside it is from 1860. I paid £60 for it at an antique bookshop.
What's surprised me so far is how reasoned it is, even for its time. Race is barely mentioned at all - except for the word "natives" - and its description of its subjects largely focused on religious tensions.
Its central argument is that Britain owes a debt to India and a duty as a ruler, and the argument that "what was won by the sword must be kept by the sword" is false and wicked; Britain cannot be indifferent to its Indian subjects, and it cannot let the experience of the recent mutiny blot out the debt it owes to them to fix its judicial system, land tenure system, tariffs and currency. If it does not, Britain does not deserve to retain its role. And it appeals to Parliament to do this.
It's clear that the author's deep Christianity plays a strong part in his views. But I doubt he was a lone voice, and this is quite unlike how debate would be conducted (if at all) in nations like China or Russia at the time.
Yet there WAS a colo(u)r bar in British India, which IIRC was exacerbated by the Mutiny.
Certainly by time that Prince of Wales conducted his first tour of India in 1870s anti-native racism was rampant enough to draw HRH's constant comment and disapproval.
You are right about there being many like the author of your fascinating book. However, they were clearly NOT setting the tone within the British ruling class in India.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
Some of those California house seats are at less than 50% counted. Completely ridiculous. I had a cursory look through some and I think we may be heading for 218-217 with either party now able to get a 1 seat majority. I think I'd price it at 60/40 in favour of the GOP to get over the finishing line but that 4/10 chance could very easily happen and the Dems may hold the onto the House.
I think the chance of the Democrats finishing on 218 seats is about 1%. It depends on absolutely everything breaking their way.
No, have a look through the the still to declare races, the proportion of votes still to be counted and which districts aren't reported yet. Everything is breaking for the Dems right now. The late blue wave has arrived.
Yes, I've been through them. They really are not breaking the way you think they are.
"It's possible #CA13 (Modesto) and #WA03 (Vancouver) lean slightly towards Ds at this point, and #CA41 (Riverside County) might lean ever-so-slightly towards Rs.
But #AZ01 (Scottsdale), #AZ06 (Tucson) and #CA22 (Bakersfield) are the toughest to divine at the moment."
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
This article from Dominic Sandbrook is really quite amusing on the subject. The Vikings were pretty awful, but in the popular imagination, they all looked like Henry Cavill, and Freya Allan, had marvellous sex, and loads of booze, and split the skulls of anyone who looked at them crossways.
I like stories set in more casually brutal periods or settings in particular to see how the authors decide to make the protagonist (if there is a lead figure) likeable.
Do they make them an improbably modern minded figure who was able to maintain such virtues through such times without consequence? Do they make them rigid and harsh in our eyes on some issues like punishment of sinners or slaughtering the enemy, but make sure they don't cross certain lines like raping (or even allowing soldiers under the command to do so)? Do you go full anti-hero or villain protagonist route?
Think someone like Uhtred from The Last Kingdom series - a violent, disloyal figure, and an outright murderer of unarmed people even in his own narrative, but with sufficient honour, humour and other values to make them still likeable.
It's a narrow line. You have to make them sufficiently decent, in modern eyes, to be sympathetic, without tipping them over into having completely unrealistic attitudes for their time and place.
I read some books by Giles Kristiansen about Vikings, who do Viking things, and then there's one bit where they capture the harem of a Muslim emir, and spend the winter having sex with them. Then they sell them into slavery! And in the meantime, they rape and hang a bunch of nuns, for sport. By that point, I did not care what happened to them,
Cornwell, I think, gets it basically right. Uhtred and Sharpe are both brutal men, but they don't cross lines that alienate modern readers.
I think to modern readers, rape and chattel slavery are the moral event thresholds. Uhtred actually does take slaves at one point, but later gets sold into slavery, and realises how awful it is. Viking slavery was about as bad as it got.
I've just finished reading Marc Morris The Anglo Saxons: History of the beginnings of England.
I was shocked to read that huge numbers of English were shipped off by the Vikings via eastern european intermediaries to Middle East slave markets in the 9th and 10th centuries.
Vast numbers.
I demand reparations from Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
Some of those California house seats are at less than 50% counted. Completely ridiculous. I had a cursory look through some and I think we may be heading for 218-217 with either party now able to get a 1 seat majority. I think I'd price it at 60/40 in favour of the GOP to get over the finishing line but that 4/10 chance could very easily happen and the Dems may hold the onto the House.
Are you trying to stop CR sleeping tonight?
Of course not, I hope Moon Rabbit has managed to dig herself out of the Nevada hole too. Just that this mid term looks far, far closer than we anticipated on Tuesday night. That the House hasn't been called for the GOP is an indictment of their stupid policies and MAGA tendencies. It may actually be the case that women voters have made the difference here between a slim Dem majority in the House and Senate as may end up being the case and a what was looking like a decisive Republican victory in the House and a slim Senate majority.
Yes, women have said "no" to Trump 2.0 and to losing abortion rights. It's great to see.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Some of those California house seats are at less than 50% counted. Completely ridiculous. I had a cursory look through some and I think we may be heading for 218-217 with either party now able to get a 1 seat majority. I think I'd price it at 60/40 in favour of the GOP to get over the finishing line but that 4/10 chance could very easily happen and the Dems may hold the onto the House.
I think the chance of the Democrats finishing on 218 seats is about 1%. It depends on absolutely everything breaking their way.
No, have a look through the the still to declare races, the proportion of votes still to be counted and which districts aren't reported yet. Everything is breaking for the Dems right now. The late blue wave has arrived.
Yes, I've been through them. They really are not breaking the way you think they are.
"It's possible #CA13 (Modesto) and #WA03 (Vancouver) lean slightly towards Ds at this point, and #CA41 (Riverside County) might lean ever-so-slightly towards Rs.
But #AZ01 (Scottsdale), #AZ06 (Tucson) and #CA22 (Bakersfield) are the toughest to divine at the moment."
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
This article from Dominic Sandbrook is really quite amusing on the subject. The Vikings were pretty awful, but in the popular imagination, they all looked like Henry Cavill, and Freya Allan, had marvellous sex, and loads of booze, and split the skulls of anyone who looked at them crossways.
I like stories set in more casually brutal periods or settings in particular to see how the authors decide to make the protagonist (if there is a lead figure) likeable.
Do they make them an improbably modern minded figure who was able to maintain such virtues through such times without consequence? Do they make them rigid and harsh in our eyes on some issues like punishment of sinners or slaughtering the enemy, but make sure they don't cross certain lines like raping (or even allowing soldiers under the command to do so)? Do you go full anti-hero or villain protagonist route?
Think someone like Uhtred from The Last Kingdom series - a violent, disloyal figure, and an outright murderer of unarmed people even in his own narrative, but with sufficient honour, humour and other values to make them still likeable.
It's a narrow line. You have to make them sufficiently decent, in modern eyes, to be sympathetic, without tipping them over into having completely unrealistic attitudes for their time and place.
I read some books by Giles Kristiansen about Vikings, who do Viking things, and then there's one bit where they capture the harem of a Muslim emir, and spend the winter having sex with them. Then they sell them into slavery! And in the meantime, they rape and hang a bunch of nuns, for sport. By that point, I did not care what happened to them,
Cornwell, I think, gets it basically right. Uhtred and Sharpe are both brutal men, but they don't cross lines that alienate modern readers.
I think to modern readers, rape and chattel slavery are the moral event thresholds. Uhtred actually does take slaves at one point, but later gets sold into slavery, and realises how awful it is. Viking slavery was about as bad as it got.
Interestingly in the stories set in roman times it seems to me authors seem less concerned with, for instance, making the characters not be supportive of slavery. Usually its more that they are not excessively cruel to their own slaves and might find the more brutal parts distasteful.
I think for Romans in particular there were slaves and then there were slaves. Tiro, the slave of Cicero, was a confidant and valued person who was eventually freed, and wrote the life of Cicero for the ages. Slaves in the mines lived the short and brutal lives of the Africans in the West Indies. I think for us it’s impossible to truly imagine such a society, yet it would have been wholly normal for them at the time. Just as for villeins in a Medieval English village, knowing their place, and what they could eat and wear depending on their station in life.
On historical ‘heroes’ in fiction, they need to have a moral code that a we can get on board with. Both Sharpe and Uhtred are indeed brutal, but rarely cruel for creulties sake. Uhtred in oarticular lived in brutal times. his father and brother were killed by vikings, he was enslaved by vikings before being adopted. He was later enslaved again. He kills enemies in battle, but he has a moral code and sense of justice. Sharpe is a less complex character in many ways. Generally he wants a simple life but his skill set is very much military. He also is unable to do pretty much anything else. His fabulous wealth after India should have set him for life, yet he loses it all to a woman who never really lived him.
As an aside, isn’t this more fun than rehashing Brexit!?
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
No. The Mughals were unbelievably sadistic
They also built a fine culture, the Taj Mahal etc
They built the Taj, that's verifiably true, and fair play to them
"Pyramids of skulls" probably apocryphal. Just Modi being a dick.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
But that's possibly because we weren't the only world power of significance. If we had been, possibly we'd have been far more tyrannical. Absolute power and all that.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
No. The Mughals were unbelievably sadistic
They also built a fine culture, the Taj Mahal etc
They built the Taj, that's verifiably true, and fair play to them
"Pyramids of skulls" probably apocryphal. Just Modi being a dick.
It's really not Modi "just being a dick"
I have a couple of friends who are well-known historians of India. I won't embarrass them by naming them. It is accepted that the Mughals were cruel and sometimes deeply barbaric. This is not a revelation: this is the 16th century, Cruelty and barbarism is what empires DO, especially back then. And India has always been a country of such scale that barbaric cruelty = millions dead
By comparison the British were enlightened (but still an empire happy to shoot people if needs be)
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
No. The Mughals were unbelievably sadistic
They also built a fine culture, the Taj Mahal etc
They built the Taj, that's verifiably true, and fair play to them
"Pyramids of skulls" probably apocryphal. Just Modi being a dick.
It's really not Modi "just being a dick"
I have a couple of friends who are well-known historians of India. I won't embarrass them by naming them. It is accepted that the Mughals were cruel and sometimes deeply barbaric. This is not a revelation: this is the 16th century, Cruelty and barbarism is what empires DO, especially back then. And India has always been a country of such scale that barbaric cruelty = millions dead
By comparison the British were enlightened (but still an empire happy to shoot people if needs be)
Dude. You're chatting to someone who actually is OF Indian heritage.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
No. The Mughals were unbelievably sadistic
They also built a fine culture, the Taj Mahal etc
They built the Taj, that's verifiably true, and fair play to them
"Pyramids of skulls" probably apocryphal. Just Modi being a dick.
It's really not Modi "just being a dick"
I have a couple of friends who are well-known historians of India. I won't embarrass them by naming them. It is accepted that the Mughals were cruel and sometimes deeply barbaric. This is not a revelation: this is the 16th century, Cruelty and barbarism is what empires DO, especially back then. And India has always been a country of such scale that barbaric cruelty = millions dead
By comparison the British were enlightened (but still an empire happy to shoot people if needs be)
Dude. You're chatting to someone who actually is OF Indian heritage.
And? I'm of British heritage. You're accusing my country of being uniquely evil to India, which is a fraudulent idiocy
Also, I sometimes leave my flat for purposes other than train travel
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
Tell that the folks of Amritsar and Derry! Oh and Tasmania. Oh, I forgot, the native Tasmanians are no longer with us!
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
No. The Mughals were unbelievably sadistic
They also built a fine culture, the Taj Mahal etc
They built the Taj, that's verifiably true, and fair play to them
"Pyramids of skulls" probably apocryphal. Just Modi being a dick.
Babur's own autobiography talks of "towers of skulls". Now that may be poetic licence. And, even if it is not, towers of skulls were just standard operating practice, back in the day. Babur was simply following the example of Timur.
The Thirty Years War, the Deluge, the entire Christian/Ottoman Conflict in the Mediterranean were conflicts of utterly horrendous brutality. In our day, the good guys in WWII were extremely brutal, but pitted against much worse guys.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
But that's possibly because we weren't the only world power of significance. If we had been, possibly we'd have been far more tyrannical. Absolute power and all that.
I don't think it's hugely necessary for people to tie themselves into knots over the issue. There have been worse Empires, but all things considered the subjugated generally would have preferred not to have been subjugated*. So context setting about the scale of the historical actions is fine, without endorsing imperium.
*there's bound to be some cases to the contrary, since the very formation of states wasn't usually a democratic exercise of where people on the ground wanted to end up, yet many ended up happy with our nation state boundaries.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
Tell that the folks of Amritsar and Derry! Oh and Tasmania. Oh, I forgot, the native Tasmanians are no longer with us!
One of the issues is that the winners won. So they get the stigma of all the acts they did to enable them to win. Most societies in history have been pretty brutal. Even in the paradise of Tahiti they would often murder unwanted babies.
Some of those California house seats are at less than 50% counted. Completely ridiculous. I had a cursory look through some and I think we may be heading for 218-217 with either party now able to get a 1 seat majority. I think I'd price it at 60/40 in favour of the GOP to get over the finishing line but that 4/10 chance could very easily happen and the Dems may hold the onto the House.
I think the chance of the Democrats finishing on 218 seats is about 1%. It depends on absolutely everything breaking their way.
No, have a look through the the still to declare races, the proportion of votes still to be counted and which districts aren't reported yet. Everything is breaking for the Dems right now. The late blue wave has arrived.
Yes, I've been through them. They really are not breaking the way you think they are.
"It's possible #CA13 (Modesto) and #WA03 (Vancouver) lean slightly towards Ds at this point, and #CA41 (Riverside County) might lean ever-so-slightly towards Rs.
But #AZ01 (Scottsdale), #AZ06 (Tucson) and #CA22 (Bakersfield) are the toughest to divine at the moment."
That would require every single toss up (by definition 50:50) to go to the Dems.
Even if you give the Dems a standing advantage in each basic statistics suggests that if you compound a 60% advantage six times on a random distribution you get to well under a 10% chance of all going there way.
The ambiguity over #AZ06 is I presume because of Pima County (Tucson), which has a Dem lilt but not an overwhelming one and is 85% counted. For it to change depends on the remaining 15% of the votes having a much stronger Dem lilt to overturn the Rep lead.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Some of those California house seats are at less than 50% counted. Completely ridiculous. I had a cursory look through some and I think we may be heading for 218-217 with either party now able to get a 1 seat majority. I think I'd price it at 60/40 in favour of the GOP to get over the finishing line but that 4/10 chance could very easily happen and the Dems may hold the onto the House.
I think the chance of the Democrats finishing on 218 seats is about 1%. It depends on absolutely everything breaking their way.
No, have a look through the the still to declare races, the proportion of votes still to be counted and which districts aren't reported yet. Everything is breaking for the Dems right now. The late blue wave has arrived.
Yes, I've been through them. They really are not breaking the way you think they are.
"It's possible #CA13 (Modesto) and #WA03 (Vancouver) lean slightly towards Ds at this point, and #CA41 (Riverside County) might lean ever-so-slightly towards Rs.
But #AZ01 (Scottsdale), #AZ06 (Tucson) and #CA22 (Bakersfield) are the toughest to divine at the moment."
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
It's quite a common refrain in Indian households.
And yet India's #1 tourist attraction, the Taj, was built by those naughty Muslim folks!
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
It's quite a common refrain in Indian households.
And understandably, if you read the history
Yes, my parents have said in the past that independence day for India isn't just about being free of the British Empire but the Muslim Empires that ruled over a Hindu nation before that and slaughtered millions of Hindus because they refused to convert.
I always enjoy white liberals who love telling me it was the British that are behind Hindu/Muslim violence in India when it's a 500 year old blood fued based on Muslim colonialism and slaughter of peaceful Hindus.
Some of those California house seats are at less than 50% counted. Completely ridiculous. I had a cursory look through some and I think we may be heading for 218-217 with either party now able to get a 1 seat majority. I think I'd price it at 60/40 in favour of the GOP to get over the finishing line but that 4/10 chance could very easily happen and the Dems may hold the onto the House.
I think the chance of the Democrats finishing on 218 seats is about 1%. It depends on absolutely everything breaking their way.
No, have a look through the the still to declare races, the proportion of votes still to be counted and which districts aren't reported yet. Everything is breaking for the Dems right now. The late blue wave has arrived.
Interesting time for someone to have a bet on the Democrats winning control of both houses of congress.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
But that's possibly because we weren't the only world power of significance. If we had been, possibly we'd have been far more tyrannical. Absolute power and all that.
I don't think it's hugely necessary for people to tie themselves into knots over the issue. There have been worse Empires, but all things considered the subjugated generally would have preferred not to have been subjugated*. So context setting about the scale of the historical actions is fine, without endorsing imperium.
*there's bound to be some cases to the contrary, since the very formation of states wasn't usually a democratic exercise of where people on the ground wanted to end up, yet many ended up happy with our nation state boundaries.
I think it goes without saying that we'd all prefer to live under modern liberal democracies.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
It's quite a common refrain in Indian households.
And understandably, if you read the history
Yes, my parents have said in the past that independence day for India isn't just about being free of the British Empire but the Muslim Empires that ruled over a Hindu nation before that and slaughtered millions of Hindus because they refused to convert.
I always enjoy white liberals who love telling me it was the British that are behind Hindu/Muslim violence in India when it's a 500 year old blood fued based on Muslim colonialism and slaughter of peaceful Hindus.
Though going back further, the whole caste system is about lighter skinned folk conquering darker skinned folk.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
It's quite a common refrain in Indian households.
And yet India's #1 tourist attraction, the Taj, was built by those naughty Muslim folks!
I'm guessing Polands equivalent is probably Auschwitz, so I am not sure where that leaves your point.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
It's quite a common refrain in Indian households.
And understandably, if you read the history
Yes, my parents have said in the past that independence day for India isn't just about being free of the British Empire but the Muslim Empires that ruled over a Hindu nation before that and slaughtered millions of Hindus because they refused to convert.
I always enjoy white liberals who love telling me it was the British that are behind Hindu/Muslim violence in India when it's a 500 year old blood fued based on Muslim colonialism and slaughter of peaceful Hindus.
Though going back further, the whole caste system is about lighter skinned folk conquering darker skinned folk.
And of course the colonization of South India by the Hindi-speaking Brahmins of the Gangetic plain.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
The world is better for the British Empire, is my belief. Because, if it hadn't been us, it would have been Russia or Germany or Japan or China that took over 1/3 of the world, and it would have been worse by orders of magnitude
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
The thing is, one can't avoid the context of the times in which people lived.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
I'm actually reading a primary source History of the Indian Empire at the moment written in 1859, just after the mutiny. Original screenshot below for those that don't believe me. The handwritten dedication inside it is from 1860. I paid £60 for it at an antique bookshop.
What's surprised me so far is how reasoned it is, even for its time. Race is barely mentioned at all - except for the word "natives" - and its description of its subjects largely focused on religious tensions.
Its central argument is that Britain owes a debt to India and a duty as a ruler, and the argument that "what was won by the sword must be kept by the sword" is false and wicked; Britain cannot be indifferent to its Indian subjects, and it cannot let the experience of the recent mutiny blot out the debt it owes to them to fix its judicial system, land tenure system, tariffs and currency. If it does not, Britain does not deserve to retain its role. And it appeals to Parliament to do this.
It's clear that the author's deep Christianity plays a strong part in his views. But I doubt he was a lone voice, and this is quite unlike how debate would be conducted (if at all) in nations like China or Russia at the time.
Yet there WAS a colo(u)r bar in British India, which IIRC was exacerbated by the Mutiny.
Certainly by time that Prince of Wales conducted his first tour of India in 1870s anti-native racism was rampant enough to draw HRH's constant comment and disapproval.
You are right about there being many like the author of your fascinating book. However, they were clearly NOT setting the tone within the British ruling class in India.
I'm not denying it didn't exist at all. I am putting the perspective of a contemporary historian across, which is much more considered than we often hear about those of that period.
Society was much more stratified and conformist then and governed by rules on class, gender, religion and race where the merits of the individual wouldn't usually be canvassed nor even considered relevant if they were. People's views were conditioned by their position in society, and their faith, to an extent we can't really appreciate today.
However, within that, there were plenty of shades of grey of opinion and those who queried or challenged it - usually the most socially secure.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
But that's possibly because we weren't the only world power of significance. If we had been, possibly we'd have been far more tyrannical. Absolute power and all that.
I don't think it's hugely necessary for people to tie themselves into knots over the issue. There have been worse Empires, but all things considered the subjugated generally would have preferred not to have been subjugated*. So context setting about the scale of the historical actions is fine, without endorsing imperium.
*there's bound to be some cases to the contrary, since the very formation of states wasn't usually a democratic exercise of where people on the ground wanted to end up, yet many ended up happy with our nation state boundaries.
I think it goes without saying that we'd all prefer to live under modern liberal democracies.
I think there's a very good argument that the gradual development of liberalism is predominantly an Anglic tradition, with due hat tips to the Dutch and French. You can therefore say the Empire was an autocratic betrayal of good British Whig values.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
It's quite a common refrain in Indian households.
And understandably, if you read the history
Yes, my parents have said in the past that independence day for India isn't just about being free of the British Empire but the Muslim Empires that ruled over a Hindu nation before that and slaughtered millions of Hindus because they refused to convert.
I always enjoy white liberals who love telling me it was the British that are behind Hindu/Muslim violence in India when it's a 500 year old blood fued based on Muslim colonialism and slaughter of peaceful Hindus.
Where was the Muslim homeland, the mother country, during this half a millennium of Muslim "colonialism"?
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
But that's possibly because we weren't the only world power of significance. If we had been, possibly we'd have been far more tyrannical. Absolute power and all that.
I don't think it's hugely necessary for people to tie themselves into knots over the issue. There have been worse Empires, but all things considered the subjugated generally would have preferred not to have been subjugated*. So context setting about the scale of the historical actions is fine, without endorsing imperium.
*there's bound to be some cases to the contrary, since the very formation of states wasn't usually a democratic exercise of where people on the ground wanted to end up, yet many ended up happy with our nation state boundaries.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
It's quite a common refrain in Indian households.
And yet India's #1 tourist attraction, the Taj, was built by those naughty Muslim folks!
I'm guessing Polands equivalent is probably Auschwitz, so I am not sure where that leaves your point.
I think his point is that great things can be achieved by people who would - in our times - be considered pretty brutal.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
My guess is it was driven far more by economics, even greed if you like, than it was white supremacy.
Even though I should have known it, I can avoid embarrassment by being 15 years younger than Just One Look in its earliest form
I'm very glad you liked the Bonnie Raitt live recording. I've listened to it more than anything else since I found it. It's cool how well this ginger bird has utterly mastered the Blues by the age of twenty-one
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
But that's possibly because we weren't the only world power of significance. If we had been, possibly we'd have been far more tyrannical. Absolute power and all that.
Didn't seem to worry Leopold of Belgium in his rule of the Congo.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
Absolute fucking nonsense. And racist nonsense.
It's not nonsense at all. All imperialism is wrong and immoral, but the death by government rates for the British Empire are substantially lower than most empires, whether you compare to the German, French, Portuguese, Belgian, Russian, Mughal, Japanese, Muslim Caliphate, Chinese or Mongol.
Even though I should have known it, I can avoid embarrassment by being 15 years younger than Just One Look in its earliest form
I'm very glad you liked the Bonnie Raitt live recording. I've listened to it more than anything else since I found it. It's cool how well this ginger bird has utterly mastered the Blues by the age of twenty-one
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
It's quite a common refrain in Indian households.
And yet India's #1 tourist attraction, the Taj, was built by those naughty Muslim folks!
I'm guessing Polands equivalent is probably Auschwitz, so I am not sure where that leaves your point.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
It's quite a common refrain in Indian households.
And understandably, if you read the history
Yes, my parents have said in the past that independence day for India isn't just about being free of the British Empire but the Muslim Empires that ruled over a Hindu nation before that and slaughtered millions of Hindus because they refused to convert.
I always enjoy white liberals who love telling me it was the British that are behind Hindu/Muslim violence in India when it's a 500 year old blood fued based on Muslim colonialism and slaughter of peaceful Hindus.
Where was the Muslim homeland, the mother country, during this half a millennium of Muslim "colonialism"?
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
The world is better for the British Empire, is my belief. Because, if it hadn't been us, it would have been Russia or Germany or Japan or China that took over 1/3 of the world, and it would have been worse by orders of magnitude
You are free to disagree. We are British
That's like burgling someone's house and saying look, they didn't have the strongest lock in the world, which isn't your fault, and if you hadn't burgled them someone else would have. So f*ck 'em for whingeing.
Which is certainly some people's take on those who are outside their gang.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
This article from Dominic Sandbrook is really quite amusing on the subject. The Vikings were pretty awful, but in the popular imagination, they all looked like Henry Cavill, and Freya Allan, had marvellous sex, and loads of booze, and split the skulls of anyone who looked at them crossways.
I like stories set in more casually brutal periods or settings in particular to see how the authors decide to make the protagonist (if there is a lead figure) likeable.
Do they make them an improbably modern minded figure who was able to maintain such virtues through such times without consequence? Do they make them rigid and harsh in our eyes on some issues like punishment of sinners or slaughtering the enemy, but make sure they don't cross certain lines like raping (or even allowing soldiers under the command to do so)? Do you go full anti-hero or villain protagonist route?
Think someone like Uhtred from The Last Kingdom series - a violent, disloyal figure, and an outright murderer of unarmed people even in his own narrative, but with sufficient honour, humour and other values to make them still likeable.
It's a narrow line. You have to make them sufficiently decent, in modern eyes, to be sympathetic, without tipping them over into having completely unrealistic attitudes for their time and place.
I read some books by Giles Kristiansen about Vikings, who do Viking things, and then there's one bit where they capture the harem of a Muslim emir, and spend the winter having sex with them. Then they sell them into slavery! And in the meantime, they rape and hang a bunch of nuns, for sport. By that point, I did not care what happened to them,
Cornwell, I think, gets it basically right. Uhtred and Sharpe are both brutal men, but they don't cross lines that alienate modern readers.
I think to modern readers, rape and chattel slavery are the moral event thresholds. Uhtred actually does take slaves at one point, but later gets sold into slavery, and realises how awful it is. Viking slavery was about as bad as it got.
I've just finished reading Marc Morris The Anglo Saxons: History of the beginnings of England.
I was shocked to read that huge numbers of English were shipped off by the Vikings via eastern european intermediaries to Middle East slave markets in the 9th and 10th centuries.
Vast numbers.
Dublin, under Norse rule, was Europe's main slave market in the 10th and 11th centuries.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
But that's possibly because we weren't the only world power of significance. If we had been, possibly we'd have been far more tyrannical. Absolute power and all that.
I don't think it's hugely necessary for people to tie themselves into knots over the issue. There have been worse Empires, but all things considered the subjugated generally would have preferred not to have been subjugated*. So context setting about the scale of the historical actions is fine, without endorsing imperium.
*there's bound to be some cases to the contrary, since the very formation of states wasn't usually a democratic exercise of where people on the ground wanted to end up, yet many ended up happy with our nation state boundaries.
I think it goes without saying that we'd all prefer to live under modern liberal democracies.
I think you'll find a growing number of people who are starting to disagree. Quite a lot of French people would like a strong leader and the noisy left in our universities is increasingly hostile to the enlightenment.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
But that's possibly because we weren't the only world power of significance. If we had been, possibly we'd have been far more tyrannical. Absolute power and all that.
I don't think it's hugely necessary for people to tie themselves into knots over the issue. There have been worse Empires, but all things considered the subjugated generally would have preferred not to have been subjugated*. So context setting about the scale of the historical actions is fine, without endorsing imperium.
*there's bound to be some cases to the contrary, since the very formation of states wasn't usually a democratic exercise of where people on the ground wanted to end up, yet many ended up happy with our nation state boundaries.
I think it goes without saying that we'd all prefer to live under modern liberal democracies.
I think there's a very good argument that the gradual development of liberalism is predominantly an Anglic tradition, with due hat tips to the Dutch and French. You can therefore say the Empire was an autocratic betrayal of good British Whig values.
Majestically convoluted self righteousness in the face of the evidence. I salute you.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
The thing is, one can't avoid the context of the times in which people lived.
They did not think as we do.
Yes, I'm not talking about applying today's mores to people of long ago and finding them deficient. That's not what I mean.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
Number 2 is inaccurate historically. The formation of the Empire was driven by commercial exploitation. Yes, this was largely done by white people to non-white people, but it wasn't 'driven by white supremacy'. In actual fact, the idea of the racial superiority of whites was only really solidified in the later part of the 19th century.
This is in line with all empires. They often develop a 'creed', but the bottom line is that they are about a set of people who become stronger than their neighbours (often due to having plentiful food, meaning that they had time for other endeavours), and therefore end up exploiting others less fortunate because they can. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Ottomans, the Dutch, the Spanish, were all of this type. The Americans too, if we look at informal spheres of influence as opposed to formal colonisation (though they have done some of that also).
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
It's quite a common refrain in Indian households.
And understandably, if you read the history
Yes, my parents have said in the past that independence day for India isn't just about being free of the British Empire but the Muslim Empires that ruled over a Hindu nation before that and slaughtered millions of Hindus because they refused to convert.
I always enjoy white liberals who love telling me it was the British that are behind Hindu/Muslim violence in India when it's a 500 year old blood fued based on Muslim colonialism and slaughter of peaceful Hindus.
My mum (and my late dad, were he still with us) will point out to you that 25% of Kerala's population are Muslim who (apart from the brief Mappilah Uprising of the 1920s) have lived peacefully among their Christian (20%) and Hindu (55%) neighbours since long before the Mughals arrived.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
Absolute fucking nonsense. And racist nonsense.
It's not nonsense at all. All imperialism is wrong and immoral, but the death by government rates for the British Empire are substantially lower than most empires, whether you compare to the German, French, Portuguese, Belgian, Russian, Mughal, Japanese, Muslim Caliphate, Chinese or Mongol.
Utterly refuse to believe there's reliable data for any of that.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
Tell that the folks of Amritsar and Derry! Oh and Tasmania. Oh, I forgot, the native Tasmanians are no longer with us!
Yes, and it's interesting you can't name any other examples.
They were shocking precisely because they were so rare compared to other empires.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
The world is better for the British Empire, is my belief. Because, if it hadn't been us, it would have been Russia or Germany or Japan or China that took over 1/3 of the world, and it would have been worse by orders of magnitude
You are free to disagree. We are British
That's like burgling someone's house and saying look, they didn't have the strongest lock in the world, which isn't your fault, and if you hadn't burgled them someone else would have. So f*ck 'em for whingeing.
Which is certainly some people's take on those who are outside their gang.
I wish that back in the day, people who lived then, had shared the values of modern, liberal, democracies.
But, we just have to accept that they did not. The world was a much poorer place than it is now, and most people thought you prospered by seizing the land of weaker people.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
Today, we do anything but: we condemn them as ignorant, wicked and stupid and endow ourselves with a sanctimonious and self-satisfied superiority as we virtue-signal our enlightenment against them.
It's remarkably arrogant and, ironically, very ignorant.
But don't worry, future generations - in their infinite wisdom - will be able to look down on us as ignorant and stupid.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
But that's possibly because we weren't the only world power of significance. If we had been, possibly we'd have been far more tyrannical. Absolute power and all that.
I don't think it's hugely necessary for people to tie themselves into knots over the issue. There have been worse Empires, but all things considered the subjugated generally would have preferred not to have been subjugated*. So context setting about the scale of the historical actions is fine, without endorsing imperium.
*there's bound to be some cases to the contrary, since the very formation of states wasn't usually a democratic exercise of where people on the ground wanted to end up, yet many ended up happy with our nation state boundaries.
I think it goes without saying that we'd all prefer to live under modern liberal democracies.
I think you'll find a growing number of people who are starting to disagree. Quite a lot of French people would like a strong leader and the noisy left in our universities is increasingly hostile to the enlightenment.
For sure. The desire to go back to older ethics is always there.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
It's quite a common refrain in Indian households.
And yet India's #1 tourist attraction #1 tourist attraction, the Taj, was built by those naughty Muslim folks!
I'm guessing Polands equivalent is probably Auschwitz, so I am not sure where that leaves your point.
Um, Not sure what YOUR point is?
That the origin of #1 tourist attractions tells us nothing.
I’m on record on PB from time ago saying neither Trumpton nor Biden will be nominee. I realised then, as I realise now, that that makes me a hostage to fortune. But, I stand by it.
(It’s the ultimate sportsman’s bet as I have no money backing it up)
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
But that's possibly because we weren't the only world power of significance. If we had been, possibly we'd have been far more tyrannical. Absolute power and all that.
I don't think it's hugely necessary for people to tie themselves into knots over the issue. There have been worse Empires, but all things considered the subjugated generally would have preferred not to have been subjugated*. So context setting about the scale of the historical actions is fine, without endorsing imperium.
*there's bound to be some cases to the contrary, since the very formation of states wasn't usually a democratic exercise of where people on the ground wanted to end up, yet many ended up happy with our nation state boundaries.
I think it goes without saying that we'd all prefer to live under modern liberal democracies.
I think there's a very good argument that the gradual development of liberalism is predominantly an Anglic tradition, with due hat tips to the Dutch and French. You can therefore say the Empire was an autocratic betrayal of good British Whig values.
Majestically convoluted self righteousness in the face of the evidence. I salute you.
Do you have a counter theory for the origins of liberalism?
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
It's quite a common refrain in Indian households.
And yet India's #1 tourist attraction #1 tourist attraction, the Taj, was built by those naughty Muslim folks!
I'm guessing Polands equivalent is probably Auschwitz, so I am not sure where that leaves your point.
Um, Not sure what YOUR point is?
That the origin of #1 tourist attractions tells us nothing.
The Taj had a SLIGHTLY different purpose than that of Auschwitz.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
The world is better for the British Empire, is my belief. Because, if it hadn't been us, it would have been Russia or Germany or Japan or China that took over 1/3 of the world, and it would have been worse by orders of magnitude
You are free to disagree. We are British
I neither agree nor disagree with that. Seems a suspiciously facile way to justify our deeply malign colonialism and its toxic legacy but if it works for you, fine.
Anyway I don't know why you're talking to me when you've said - just today - that I'm not "brilliant and nasty and vitriolic". This on top of previous comments likening me to an "old clock".
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
Tell that the folks of Amritsar and Derry! Oh and Tasmania. Oh, I forgot, the native Tasmanians are no longer with us!
Yes, and it's interesting you can't name any other examples.
They were shocking precisely because they were so rare compared to other empires.
That's hardly of consolation to the families of the dead.
Wouldn't it be nice if Britain were sufficiently "sovereign" as not to follow France and Germany by introducing barcoded postage stamps, and if it had a fourth estate that was sufficiently independent not to parrot the government line that the scheme is really seriously about "modernisation" and about allowing receivers of letters to watch videos? Right now you can watch a Shaun the Sheep video, apparently. I call that well modern.
Not only this, but soon you won't be able to send a letter without using a barcoded stamp. They're saying either use your non-barcoded stamps fast or send them in and get them replaced for barcoded ones. I had an envelope full of old stamps, some of which were probably more than a decade old, and I sent them in to swap them under the "Swap Out Scheme". I didn't expect to hear anything back. I mean the NHS is sh*t and various other bits of the state are practically non-functioning, so who'd have expected "Swap Out" actually to work? I'd have thought it would be a case of a nice software contract if you can get it, but if you took it seriously as a punter you'd be a fool. But amazingly they did actually send me some brand new barcoded stamps in return.
How long before you won't be able to send a letter without them knowing (and telling Google) who you are? A year? Two?
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Isn't that just BJP anti-Muslim propaganda?
I was interested to read about Modhi denouncing "five hundred years of foreign occupation" which must be a real swipe at the Muslim population.
It's quite a common refrain in Indian households.
And understandably, if you read the history
Yes, my parents have said in the past that independence day for India isn't just about being free of the British Empire but the Muslim Empires that ruled over a Hindu nation before that and slaughtered millions of Hindus because they refused to convert.
I always enjoy white liberals who love telling me it was the British that are behind Hindu/Muslim violence in India when it's a 500 year old blood fued based on Muslim colonialism and slaughter of peaceful Hindus.
Though going back further, the whole caste system is about lighter skinned folk conquering darker skinned folk.
No such thing as the so-called "Aryan Invasion". It's been debunked for decades. If you go to south India, say Kerala or Tamil Nadu, the Brahmin priests are dark-skinned.
Wouldn't it be nice if Britain were sufficiently "sovereign" as not to follow France and Germany by introducing barcoded postage stamps, and if it had a fourth estate that was sufficiently independent not to parrot the government line that the scheme is really seriously about "modernisation" and about allowing receivers of letters to watch videos? Right now you can watch a Shaun the Sheep video, apparently. I call that well modern.
Not only this, but soon you won't be able to send a letter without using a barcoded stamp. They're saying either use your non-barcoded stamps fast or send them in and get them replaced for barcoded ones. I had an envelope full of old stamps, some of which were probably more than a decade old, and I sent them in to swap them under the "Swap Out Scheme". I didn't expect to hear anything back. I mean the NHS is sh*t and various other bits of the state are practically non-functioning, so who'd have expected "Swap Out" actually to work? I'd have thought it would be a case of a nice software contract if you can get it, but if you took it seriously as a punter you'd be a fool. But amazingly they did actually send me some brand new barcoded stamps in return.
How long before you won't be able to send a letter without them knowing who you are? A year? Two?
We exited the EU. There wasn't a referendum for ditching our statist, globalist, civil service and governing class. You work with what you're given.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
But that's possibly because we weren't the only world power of significance. If we had been, possibly we'd have been far more tyrannical. Absolute power and all that.
I don't think it's hugely necessary for people to tie themselves into knots over the issue. There have been worse Empires, but all things considered the subjugated generally would have preferred not to have been subjugated*. So context setting about the scale of the historical actions is fine, without endorsing imperium.
*there's bound to be some cases to the contrary, since the very formation of states wasn't usually a democratic exercise of where people on the ground wanted to end up, yet many ended up happy with our nation state boundaries.
I think it goes without saying that we'd all prefer to live under modern liberal democracies.
I think there's a very good argument that the gradual development of liberalism is predominantly an Anglic tradition, with due hat tips to the Dutch and French. You can therefore say the Empire was an autocratic betrayal of good British Whig values.
Majestically convoluted self righteousness in the face of the evidence. I salute you.
Do you have a counter theory for the origins of liberalism?
Of course he doesn't. If he had actual counter arguments, he would have voiced them. Instead he just resorts to vague criticism. It's the ideological equivalent of "computer says no".
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
The thing is, one can't avoid the context of the times in which people lived.
They did not think as we do.
Thank goodness we can dispense witth self-exculpating bleating about the virtuous British resisting the slave trade after being such enthusiastic participants. These people just did not think as we do.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
Absolute fucking nonsense. And racist nonsense.
It's not nonsense at all. All imperialism is wrong and immoral, but the death by government rates for the British Empire are substantially lower than most empires, whether you compare to the German, French, Portuguese, Belgian, Russian, Mughal, Japanese, Muslim Caliphate, Chinese or Mongol.
Utterly refuse to believe there's reliable data for any of that.
That may well be true. Empires might surprise on how bureaucratically they noted the levels of devastation and death they wreaked, but a complete analysis of the tally probably isn't possible, nor particularly useful.
But I still think people overreact to any attempt to contextualise things, as if even thinking of doing so is unacceptable. Yes, there will be some just doing apologia and denial, but it still seems to have some value, since even when looking at atrocities some are clearly more heinous than others, in the historical context, even if an atrocity always remains an atrocity. The reign of the Khmer Rouge was more brutal and impactful in a very short time than other communist states, the Belgian Congo is always brought up, and a antiquity conqueror who exterminated entire peoples was probably seen as worse than one who merely oppressed.
Of course, another angle in measuring impact might be how well conquered cultures were able to survive their domination by others. Not necessarily through the desire of beneficence of their overlords, but possibly just as an oversight or lack of caring about such things. Cultures have been able to overcome terrible losses in people, even if it cannot but transform them to some degree.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
The thing is, one can't avoid the context of the times in which people lived.
They did not think as we do.
Thank goodness we can dispense witth self-exculpating bleating about the virtuous British resisting the slave trade after being such enthusiastic participants. These people just did not think as we do.
Well, no they did not. Most 19th century abolitionists would come over as appallingly bigoted by the standards of 2022 (Abraham Lincoln, for example). Progress comes by fits and starts. What else would you expect?
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Why should I try to put myself in the shoes of my >15-greats ancestors rather than other people's?
Of course slavery was and is wrong. All dehumanisation of people on the basis of race, or for that matter on any other basis, is wrong. It's not sanctimonious to think that. I think that because I love humanity. Slavery in the Americas and everywhere else was a crime against humanity. It should be called that more. And no, there shouldn't be any monuments to slaveowners or slave traders any more than there should be monuments to Hitler.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
But that's possibly because we weren't the only world power of significance. If we had been, possibly we'd have been far more tyrannical. Absolute power and all that.
I don't think it's hugely necessary for people to tie themselves into knots over the issue. There have been worse Empires, but all things considered the subjugated generally would have preferred not to have been subjugated*. So context setting about the scale of the historical actions is fine, without endorsing imperium.
*there's bound to be some cases to the contrary, since the very formation of states wasn't usually a democratic exercise of where people on the ground wanted to end up, yet many ended up happy with our nation state boundaries.
England was certainly forged by the sword.
I was trying to think of how many countries (even ones within a wider grouping like England) cleave fairly accurately to boundaries as they were forged/identified around 1000 years ago (even without concepts of the nation state to make it directly equivalent).
It cannot be many, not least due to the interference of external forces.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Why should I try to put myself in the shoes of my >15-greats ancestors rather than other people's?
Of course slavery was and is wrong. All dehumanisation of people on the basis of race, or for that matter on any other basis, is wrong. It's not sanctimonious to think that. I think that because I love humanity. Slavery in the Americas and everywhere else was a crime against humanity. It should be called that more. And no, there shouldn't be any monuments to slaveowners or slave traders any more than there should be monuments to Hitler.
"I thank thee Lord, that I am not as other men ..."
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
Today, we do anything but: we condemn them as ignorant, wicked and stupid and endow ourselves with a sanctimonious and self-satisfied superiority as we virtue-signal our enlightenment against them.
It's remarkably arrogant and, ironically, very ignorant.
But don't worry, future generations - in their infinite wisdom - will be able to look down on us as ignorant and stupid.
And of course, activists are always very confident about which things they will look down us for, and thus being on the 'wrong side of history' about. Usually contradictory though so you can take your pick.
It's our declining religious belief/discrimination against trans persons/acceptance of gay people/promotion of or denial of legal euthanasia/eating other animals/etc etc
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
Number 2 is inaccurate historically. The formation of the Empire was driven by commercial exploitation. Yes, this was largely done by white people to non-white people, but it wasn't 'driven by white supremacy'. In actual fact, the idea of the racial superiority of whites was only really solidified in the later part of the 19th century.
This is in line with all empires. They often develop a 'creed', but the bottom line is that they are about a set of people who become stronger than their neighbours (often due to having plentiful food, meaning that they had time for other endeavours), and therefore end up exploiting others less fortunate because they can. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Ottomans, the Dutch, the Spanish, were all of this type. The Americans too, if we look at informal spheres of influence as opposed to formal colonisation (though they have done some of that also).
A racist AND exploitative undertaking. I'll take that edit.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
This article from Dominic Sandbrook is really quite amusing on the subject. The Vikings were pretty awful, but in the popular imagination, they all looked like Henry Cavill, and Freya Allan, had marvellous sex, and loads of booze, and split the skulls of anyone who looked at them crossways.
I like stories set in more casually brutal periods or settings in particular to see how the authors decide to make the protagonist (if there is a lead figure) likeable.
Do they make them an improbably modern minded figure who was able to maintain such virtues through such times without consequence? Do they make them rigid and harsh in our eyes on some issues like punishment of sinners or slaughtering the enemy, but make sure they don't cross certain lines like raping (or even allowing soldiers under the command to do so)? Do you go full anti-hero or villain protagonist route?
Think someone like Uhtred from The Last Kingdom series - a violent, disloyal figure, and an outright murderer of unarmed people even in his own narrative, but with sufficient honour, humour and other values to make them still likeable.
It's a narrow line. You have to make them sufficiently decent, in modern eyes, to be sympathetic, without tipping them over into having completely unrealistic attitudes for their time and place.
I read some books by Giles Kristiansen about Vikings, who do Viking things, and then there's one bit where they capture the harem of a Muslim emir, and spend the winter having sex with them. Then they sell them into slavery! And in the meantime, they rape and hang a bunch of nuns, for sport. By that point, I did not care what happened to them,
Cornwell, I think, gets it basically right. Uhtred and Sharpe are both brutal men, but they don't cross lines that alienate modern readers.
I think to modern readers, rape and chattel slavery are the moral event thresholds. Uhtred actually does take slaves at one point, but later gets sold into slavery, and realises how awful it is. Viking slavery was about as bad as it got.
I've just finished reading Marc Morris The Anglo Saxons: History of the beginnings of England.
I was shocked to read that huge numbers of English were shipped off by the Vikings via eastern european intermediaries to Middle East slave markets in the 9th and 10th centuries.
Vast numbers.
Dublin, under Norse rule, was Europe's main slave market in the 10th and 11th centuries.
Revisionist Narrator: Dublin in the 10th and 11th centuries was a thriving international hub for human resources at the centre of an interconnected European market.
Actually, the biggest news of the day is Italy defeating Australia at the rugger
If Italy finally becomes a mature, puissant rugby nation that changes EVERYTHING
Eh, they weren't entirely terrible like 15 years ago, and occasionally were not bottom of the Five and Six Nations, but then devolved.
This is a very new Italy, full of young talent, and with real intent
They can become regular major players now, I reckon. Surpassing Scotland and possibly Wales or even Ireland
It makes the Six Nations a marvellous competition, if it happens. You get to go to Edinburgh, London, Paris and Rome, for the major games, four of the most compelling and beautiful cities on earth (in very different ways). Plus the fun of Dublin and the fervour of Cardiff
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
My guess is it was driven far more by economics, even greed if you like, than it was white supremacy.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
The thing is, one can't avoid the context of the times in which people lived.
They did not think as we do.
Thank goodness we can dispense witth self-exculpating bleating about the virtuous British resisting the slave trade after being such enthusiastic participants. These people just did not think as we do.
Well, no they did not. Most 19th century abolitionists would come over as appallingly bigoted by the standards of 2022 (Abraham Lincoln, for example). Progress comes by fits and starts. What else would you expect?
I have low expectations about a lot of stuff, they’re mostly confirmed by those who like to attach their nation (for want of a better word) to the virtuous parts of its history while averting their eyes from the crappy bits.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
The thing is, one can't avoid the context of the times in which people lived.
They did not think as we do.
Thank goodness we can dispense witth self-exculpating bleating about the virtuous British resisting the slave trade after being such enthusiastic participants. These people just did not think as we do.
Well, no they did not. Most 19th century abolitionists would come over as appallingly bigoted by the standards of 2022 (Abraham Lincoln, for example). Progress comes by fits and starts. What else would you expect?
I have low expectations about a lot of stuff, they’re mostly confirmed by those who like to attach their nation (for want of a better word) to the virtuous parts of its history while averting their eyes from the crappy bits.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Ours was actually exceptionally unevil.
Tell that the folks of Amritsar and Derry! Oh and Tasmania. Oh, I forgot, the native Tasmanians are no longer with us!
Yes, and it's interesting you can't name any other examples.
They were shocking precisely because they were so rare compared to other empires.
That's hardly of consolation to the families of the dead.
It's very hard to console those whose family members have been killed through any injustice.
Such atrocities were routine in the Japanese, Chinese, Russian and even German empires and not only would they have passed without much comment but they wouldn't even have been recorded; Gandhi and Nehru - and others - would have been shot early on.
In the British Empire it went against what we said the empire stood for and, whilst in the case of both Amritsar and Bloody Sunday (both of which were renegade actions) the inquiries were whitewashes they also led to political change in fairly short order.
She can do no wrong from my point of view; at least she belongs to the human race and after the Sharon Stone episode she became more noticeable as being nicely flirty just by existing.
But I enjoyed this bit of the Sky piece:
"I had my boob job on my 30th birthday," she told the Financial Times.
as I recall the days when FT people would have no idea what a boob job was.
A story that gets people thinking about Rayner's tits sounds like smart politics.
For Labour.
Why Tories would want to make them an issue, perhaps yet another sign of CUP political dementia?
Yes, that's what I meant. It is Rayner herself who has put the story out there.
That's NOT what I meant
Or rather, think that Rayner mentioning her boob job is NOT a political demerit in the slightest.
What IS dumb, is for Tories to start bringing it up, in tones of ersatz outrage.
Angela's self-"expose" shows that top Labourite is a regular person who is with it (if the kids are still saying that!) but not pushing the envelope.
Any tabloid appeal to demographics NOT tuned into PB & etc. being a PLUS.
Opposite is true of Conservative efforts to turn this into The Scarlet Letter.
Unless they think old, dumb, misogynist AND hypocritical is a good look?
If Angela Rayner had a boob job, I don't know what the issue it.
A willingness to borrow to fund consumption with marginal utility and what it implies for her being a good steward of the taxpayers resources?
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
The thing is, one can't avoid the context of the times in which people lived.
They did not think as we do.
Thank goodness we can dispense witth self-exculpating bleating about the virtuous British resisting the slave trade after being such enthusiastic participants. These people just did not think as we do.
Well, no they did not. Most 19th century abolitionists would come over as appallingly bigoted by the standards of 2022 (Abraham Lincoln, for example). Progress comes by fits and starts. What else would you expect?
I have low expectations about a lot of stuff, they’re mostly confirmed by those who like to attach their nation (for want of a better word) to the virtuous parts of its history while averting their eyes from the crappy bits.
Well, yes, that does get a bit overblown, especially when any nation starts going on about supposedly universal values of their nation. Unless your nation came into being within the last few years there's going to have been some pretty iffy values that were displayed at some point previously.
Anyway, ok, the British Empire, a malign endeavour driven by greed and white supremacy racism with a toxic legacy, widespread and persisting to today ... BUT NOT UNIQUELY EVIL.
1) It wasn't until the 1970s we joined the EU, and until the 00s there wasn't a massive imbalance in the wealth of countries with freedom of movement. 2) Immigration (especially from the third world) grows exponentially. Each immigrant generates more immigrants as potential immigrants have mpre contacts in the host country. 3) Immigrants need a certain amount of resource to get started. Back in the 50s, much of the world was simply too poor to move.
Yes. In the days of the Empire, hundreds of millions of people from the colonies had the legal right to reside in the UK, but couldn't afford to pay the fare. Quite a substantial proportion of immigrants from the colonies came as stowaways.
And whilst I know a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me I would contend that Britain was and is a better place for those stowaways (or however else they got here)
Perhaps so, but there is an upper limit on the foreign born population above which the country ceases to have a sense of national community and solidarity. You end up feeling like Dubai or Manhattan or central London, where everyone is packed in and says they like the dynamism, but they almost all have social isolation and rates of depression/anxiety rocket.
Of course the upper limit is fuzzy depending on how quickly the immigrants integrate, which is largely a function of education and proximity of their culture of origin.
Indeed so what we should be doing is not concentrating on how many are arriving but on our abilities to integrate them. Look at a country like Norway which has a massively successful system for integrating immigrants. They have a much larger number of migrants in proportion to their population settling each year (equivalent to around 1% of their population every year) and yet have few of the issues or antipathy that we have in the UK.
Or you can do an "all of the above" approach. Keep a close eye on levels of integration and immediately limit immigration for a few years when tensions get so high. Observe integration levels by country of origin group (e.g. clustering in residence, intermarriage rates, adoption of democratic values) and filter immigration to those that are already integrated. Within national groups, filter towards those most likely to integrate (high education, religiously secular).
Yep I can see the point with that, although I am more in favour of immigration than others arguing here and think Norway shows that you don't have to do that if you have a strong enough integrationist policy. The trouble is we don't even start to try to do that. We work from a policy of immigration being bad and do nothing to encourage or facilitate integration. We set ourselves up to fail.
But this is just another chapter in the Sanders of the River self aggrandisement narrative. First we enslave millions of them, yay us! Then we stop enslaving them, Wilberforce, west Africa squadron, yay us!!! Then we welcome and integrate them as immigrants, yay us * 3!!!! And let them drive buses! Whereas unreconstructed racists like me think west Africans are probably best left in West Africa in the first place, unless they have a voluntary wanderlust.
I think there are many things we would all do differently, if we could travel back five hundred years back in time. But, we are where we are.
Should our ancestors have settled the Americas? Or Australia or New Zealand?
Well, it honestly doesn't matter now. It happened. GM Fraser put it best "When frightened, selfish, men, that is, the majority of humanity, meet in the wilderness, the weakest go under."
Sure we can't unwind the past, but we do have a duty to be honest about it.
Emulate our ancestors' virtues, and avoid their vices. That's all we can do.
But emulate and avoid often becomes lionise and ignore.
All nations lionise their great military leaders. That's just a fact of life. And, that's as true of non-Europeans as it is of Europeans. But, gradually, the view has taken hold that right of conquest is not a good basis upon which to found one's rule.
Yes. But I meant more generally about our colonialism. I realize we aren't unique in having such a history but it's quite recent and it is ours - hence of most relevance to us - and we were massive in the imperial exploitation space, with correspondingly deep legacy. I think we tend to twist and strain to avoid admitting that the legacy is overwhelmingly negative on the people and places colonized.
Nonsense. It's a weird kind of English exceptionalism
Yes, lots of countries built empires, but ours was exceptionally evil!
About two centuries before the British took India, the racist supremacist Muslim Mughals took India, and built pyramids out of skulls. The Mughals were far far worse than the British. By some estimates they killed 40-80 million Indians. Others go higher
Etc.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
The thing is, one can't avoid the context of the times in which people lived.
They did not think as we do.
Thank goodness we can dispense witth self-exculpating bleating about the virtuous British resisting the slave trade after being such enthusiastic participants. These people just did not think as we do.
Well, no they did not. Most 19th century abolitionists would come over as appallingly bigoted by the standards of 2022 (Abraham Lincoln, for example). Progress comes by fits and starts. What else would you expect?
I have low expectations about a lot of stuff, they’re mostly confirmed by those who like to attach their nation (for want of a better word) to the virtuous parts of its history while averting their eyes from the crappy bits.
Comments
Certainly by time that Prince of Wales conducted his first tour of India in 1870s anti-native racism was rampant enough to draw HRH's constant comment and disapproval.
You are right about there being many like the author of your fascinating book. However, they were clearly NOT setting the tone within the British ruling class in India.
They also built a fine culture, the Taj Mahal etc
I think for us it’s impossible to truly imagine such a society, yet it would have been wholly normal for them at the time. Just as for villeins in a Medieval English village, knowing their place, and what they could eat and wear depending on their station in life.
On historical ‘heroes’ in fiction, they need to have a moral code that a we can get on board with. Both Sharpe and Uhtred are indeed brutal, but rarely cruel for creulties sake. Uhtred in oarticular lived in brutal times. his father and brother were killed by vikings, he was enslaved by vikings before being adopted. He was later enslaved again. He kills enemies in battle, but he has a moral code and sense of justice.
Sharpe is a less complex character in many ways. Generally he wants a simple life but his skill set is very much military. He also is unable to do pretty much anything else. His fabulous wealth after India should have set him for life, yet he loses it all to a woman who never really lived him.
As an aside, isn’t this more fun than rehashing Brexit!?
"Pyramids of skulls" probably apocryphal. Just Modi being a dick.
I have a couple of friends who are well-known historians of India. I won't embarrass them by naming them. It is accepted that the Mughals were cruel and sometimes deeply barbaric. This is not a revelation: this is the 16th century, Cruelty and barbarism is what empires DO, especially back then. And India has always been a country of such scale that barbaric cruelty = millions dead
By comparison the British were enlightened (but still an empire happy to shoot people if needs be)
Also, I sometimes leave my flat for purposes other than train travel
The Thirty Years War, the Deluge, the entire Christian/Ottoman Conflict in the Mediterranean were conflicts of utterly horrendous brutality. In our day, the good guys in WWII were extremely brutal, but pitted against much worse guys.
*there's bound to be some cases to the contrary, since the very formation of states wasn't usually a democratic exercise of where people on the ground wanted to end up, yet many ended up happy with our nation state boundaries.
Most societies in history have been pretty brutal. Even in the paradise of Tahiti they would often murder unwanted babies.
Even if you give the Dems a standing advantage in each basic statistics suggests that if you compound a 60% advantage six times on a random distribution you get to well under a 10% chance of all going there way.
The ambiguity over #AZ06 is I presume because of Pima County (Tucson), which has a Dem lilt but not an overwhelming one and is 85% counted. For it to change depends on the remaining 15% of the votes having a much stronger Dem lilt to overturn the Rep lead.
Otherwise, the Reps are on 218.
Note that Republican won the Election Day poll vote handily (77%) while the Democrat did well with early ballot (57%).
Believe it is the later category that's still being counted.
I always enjoy white liberals who love telling me it was the British that are behind Hindu/Muslim violence in India when it's a 500 year old blood fued based on Muslim colonialism and slaughter of peaceful Hindus.
1. The world is long and complex, sure we did bad things but so did lots of others and we did good too. Plus some of the people and places we oppressed and exploited would likely have been even worse off if we hadn't bothered.
2. Colonialism was a fundamentally malign endeavour driven by white supremacy racism and we were the leading exponent of it in recent times. Rather than just own that plain fact we too often seek to contextualise and 'big picture' it away by talking as in 1.
Probably wouldn't have been before Musk took over.
You are free to disagree. We are British
They did not think as we do.
Society was much more stratified and conformist then and governed by rules on class, gender, religion and race where the merits of the individual wouldn't usually be canvassed nor even considered relevant if they were. People's views were conditioned by their position in society, and their faith, to an extent we can't really appreciate today.
However, within that, there were plenty of shades of grey of opinion and those who queried or challenged it - usually the most socially secure.
Bonnie Raitt in Studio Concert - The Wonderland Tape - Aug 5, 1977
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfOlQCZy8mc
My personal favorite - "Angel from Montgomery" by late great John Prine
Which is certainly some people's take on those who are outside their gang.
This is in line with all empires. They often develop a 'creed', but the bottom line is that they are about a set of people who become stronger than their neighbours (often due to having plentiful food, meaning that they had time for other endeavours), and therefore end up exploiting others less fortunate because they can. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Ottomans, the Dutch, the Spanish, were all of this type. The Americans too, if we look at informal spheres of influence as opposed to formal colonisation (though they have done some of that also).
Mrs Violet Brayter
Vi
Vi Brayter
They were shocking precisely because they were so rare compared to other empires.
But, we just have to accept that they did not. The world was a much poorer place than it is now, and most people thought you prospered by seizing the land of weaker people.
Arizona
Big Iron - Marty Robbins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NuX79Ud8zI
Take It Easy - The Eagles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v8KEbQA8kw
Nevada
Viva Las Vegas - Elvis Presley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ihOQNPKG1A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X06PAFeOSg
https://twitter.com/washoecounty/status/1591562626555052033?t=fluy21jLK2p2VSNRHXGncQ&s=19
(It’s the ultimate sportsman’s bet as I have no money backing it up)
Anyway I don't know why you're talking to me when you've said - just today - that I'm not "brilliant and nasty and vitriolic". This on top of previous comments likening me to an "old clock".
Wouldn't it be nice if Britain were sufficiently "sovereign" as not to follow France and Germany by introducing barcoded postage stamps, and if it had a fourth estate that was sufficiently independent not to parrot the government line that the scheme is really seriously about "modernisation" and about allowing receivers of letters to watch videos? Right now you can watch a Shaun the Sheep video, apparently. I call that well modern.
Not only this, but soon you won't be able to send a letter without using a barcoded stamp. They're saying either use your non-barcoded stamps fast or send them in and get them replaced for barcoded ones. I had an envelope full of old stamps, some of which were probably more than a decade old, and I sent them in to swap them under the "Swap Out Scheme". I didn't expect to hear anything back. I mean the NHS is sh*t and various other bits of the state are practically non-functioning, so who'd have expected "Swap Out" actually to work? I'd have thought it would be a case of a nice software contract if you can get it, but if you took it seriously as a punter you'd be a fool. But amazingly they did actually send me some brand new barcoded stamps in return.
How long before you won't be able to send a letter without them knowing (and telling Google) who you are? A year? Two?
Bonaza Opening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQjb_QiFbJE
Bonanza 1959 - 1973 Opening and Closing Theme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ClYLw-ayM8
If Italy finally becomes a mature, puissant rugby nation that changes EVERYTHING
Although their successors have tried to clean up after them, Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul still have work to do.
(Fun fact: de Blasio changed his name legally -- twice. No, I don't know why, or why he remained a Boston Red Sox fan as mayor of New York.
If I knew more about your football teams, I would offer an analogy. I would be grateful if one of you would fill in that gap.)
But I still think people overreact to any attempt to contextualise things, as if even thinking of doing so is unacceptable. Yes, there will be some just doing apologia and denial, but it still seems to have some value, since even when looking at atrocities some are clearly more heinous than others, in the historical context, even if an atrocity always remains an atrocity. The reign of the Khmer Rouge was more brutal and impactful in a very short time than other communist states, the Belgian Congo is always brought up, and a antiquity conqueror who exterminated entire peoples was probably seen as worse than one who merely oppressed.
Of course, another angle in measuring impact might be how well conquered cultures were able to survive their domination by others. Not necessarily through the desire of beneficence of their overlords, but possibly just as an oversight or lack of caring about such things. Cultures have been able to overcome terrible losses in people, even if it cannot but transform them to some degree.
Of course slavery was and is wrong. All dehumanisation of people on the basis of race, or for that matter on any other basis, is wrong. It's not sanctimonious to think that. I think that because I love humanity. Slavery in the Americas and everywhere else was a crime against humanity. It should be called that more. And no, there shouldn't be any monuments to slaveowners or slave traders any more than there should be monuments to Hitler.
It cannot be many, not least due to the interference of external forces.
It's our declining religious belief/discrimination against trans persons/acceptance of gay people/promotion of or denial of legal euthanasia/eating other animals/etc etc
They can become regular major players now, I reckon. Surpassing Scotland and possibly Wales or even Ireland
It makes the Six Nations a marvellous competition, if it happens. You get to go to Edinburgh, London, Paris and Rome, for the major games, four of the most compelling and beautiful cities on earth (in very different ways). Plus the fun of Dublin and the fervour of Cardiff
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1591572930575495169?t=yTK4cuUKQJJG7qpLji2zCQ&s=19
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Such atrocities were routine in the Japanese, Chinese, Russian and even German empires and not only would they have passed without much comment but they wouldn't even have been recorded; Gandhi and Nehru - and others - would have been shot early on.
In the British Empire it went against what we said the empire stood for and, whilst in the case of both Amritsar and Bloody Sunday (both of which were renegade actions) the inquiries were whitewashes they also led to political change in fairly short order.
But it's still a useful exercise.
That's a wrap.