Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
But it's not just other empires you should be comparing it with (although that is also relevant). And, as I said, you are judging by Enlightenment values, invented in Europe. The point is that there was no alternative nirvana destroyed by the British Empire.
I'm not really trying to compare it with anything. I'm simply saying that I think that using violence to take other people's land/ making them work for you for free/ imposing taxes on people with no representation/ ruling people so incompetently that millions of them die of famine/ deliberately wiping out people so you can use their land, all in the name of enriching yourself or because you think they are an inferior form of human, is bad.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Isn't that a bit like saying Fred West wasn't all that bad because Shipman killed more?
I mean "we were bad but it could have been worse" is hardly a great defence line.
As I said recently Fred West is a better person than Boris Johnson.
To normal apolitical people Boris Johnson is seen as worse than Fred West, to give Fred West his dues, he finally admitted to having people in his garden.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
I increasingly think that humans, unless constrained by laws, conventions, and economic interest, are often fundamentally evil. Certainly for most of history there were abominable things being done, and it's hard to name any people, anywhere in the world, which hasn't carried out horrendous acts, including genocide if they were sufficiently powerful.
The Vetinari argument.
'There are always, and everywhere, only bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.'
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Those atrocities are all Palmer’s fault.
Because communism wasn’t being done properly, obvs.
I'm not really trying to compare it with anything. I'm simply saying that I think that using violence to take other people's land/ making them work for you for free/ imposing taxes on people with no representation/ ruling people so incompetently that millions of them die of famine/ deliberately wiping out people so you can use their land, all in the name of enriching yourself or because you think they are an inferior form of human, is bad.
That's not exactly a balanced view of the British Empire, is it?
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Isn't that a bit like saying Fred West wasn't all that bad because Shipman killed more?
I mean "we were bad but it could have been worse" is hardly a great defence line.
As I said recently Fred West is a better person than Boris Johnson.
To normal apolitical people Boris Johnson is seen as worse than Fred West, to give Fred West his dues, he finally admitted to having people in his garden.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Isn't that a bit like saying Fred West wasn't all that bad because Shipman killed more?
I mean "we were bad but it could have been worse" is hardly a great defence line.
You could say that but is there much point viewing historical figures as a bunch of Fred Wests and Harold Shipmans by today's standards?
It might well be, if a modern political affiliation were to make a fetish of keeping statues of them untouched, as exemplars to whom one should aspire.
Fetish lol.
The only fetish is amongst those determined to take them down!
Okay perhaps the statue bit was a little unserious! But historical figures of sometimes decidedly mixed record are used by some political parties to justify their current policies and attitudes. And some decidedly unhistorical ones too come to think of it.
Friday night, though; artisanal sausages on the grill and sprouting broccoli and baked beans and mash to go with it. And some NZ white. Night all.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
I increasingly think that humans, unless constrained by laws, conventions, and economic interest, are often fundamentally evil. Certainly for most of history there were abominable things being done, and it's hard to name any people, anywhere in the world, which hasn't carried out horrendous acts, including genocide if they were sufficiently powerful.
Oh I have the reverse view. We are often fundamentally good.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
I increasingly think that humans, unless constrained by laws, conventions, and economic interest, are often fundamentally evil. Certainly for most of history there were abominable things being done, and it's hard to name any people, anywhere in the world, which hasn't carried out horrendous acts, including genocide if they were sufficiently powerful.
The Vetinari argument.
'There are always, and everywhere, only bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.'
I think Hobbes might have gotten in before Vetinari on the need to restrain human nature with firm rules, but it has been a long time since I read Leviathan.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
Not sure "Enlightenment Values" is correct, unless you date the Enlightenment to the middle of the Twentieth secretary.
David Graeber incidentally makes the interesting case that Enlightenment Ideas were heavily influenced by Indigenous North American critiques of European society in the 17th Century. His book "The Dawn of Everything" is absolutely fascinating, and also makes the case that plenty of past societies functioned very differently.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Isn't that a bit like saying Fred West wasn't all that bad because Shipman killed more?
I mean "we were bad but it could have been worse" is hardly a great defence line.
As I said recently Fred West is a better person than Boris Johnson.
To normal apolitical people Boris Johnson is seen as worse than Fred West, to give Fred West his dues, he finally admitted to having people in his garden.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
I increasingly think that humans, unless constrained by laws, conventions, and economic interest, are often fundamentally evil. Certainly for most of history there were abominable things being done, and it's hard to name any people, anywhere in the world, which hasn't carried out horrendous acts, including genocide if they were sufficiently powerful.
Oh I have the reverse view. We are often fundamentally good.
I do too, but still think we are easily misdirected to do great evil, not merely through forceful intimidation but by the slow drift of cultural norms. I think the idea of a 'cage of norms' formed a big part of the book The Narrow Corridor: How nations struggle for liberty.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
I increasingly think that humans, unless constrained by laws, conventions, and economic interest, are often fundamentally evil. Certainly for most of history there were abominable things being done, and it's hard to name any people, anywhere in the world, which hasn't carried out horrendous acts, including genocide if they were sufficiently powerful.
Perhaps a little overstated, Richard, although I have to say the more I see of humans, the more I like dogs.
BTW I heartily recommend a visit to Luderitz, Namibia, one of the great destination on this earth
It is haunted by the German atrocities but it is also miraculously atmospheric. The shimmering deserts meet the skeleton coast, and the strandwolves prowl the beach, between the ghost towns and the Forbidden Zone, the Sperrgebiet of the Diamond Mines
Yes, it's amazing. So is the Skeleton Coast, although very bleak.
And driving through the desert into Swakopmund is extraordinary. You suddenly go from extreme desert heat into what looks like a small provincial German provincial town in fog, where the streets seem to be air-conditioned, so drastic is the cooling effect of the Benguela Current.
My best ever holiday. Charged by an elephant, then stalked by a Leopard in Etosha while checking a puncture.
The dunes. The weird fog at the coast. A mad attempt to climb at Spitzkoppe.
Met some pretty questionable Germans in Windhoek though.
I did some mad fucking shit in Namibia
Drove off road for 60 miles for the hell of it. On my own. Got a puncture. Limped into the nearest town without dying. No one knew where I was
Drove the Fish River Canyon in 40C heat, again on my own: the sublime emptiness. Me, the vultures and the baboons
Watched the ghost Kaiser cavalry cantering through the golden dust of the Namib-Naukluft
Jesus Christ. It is practically anathema to me to condemn outright even political movements I disagree with, or judge those 'mainstream' people who still give succour to extreme actions of those movements, but the GOP really have crossed the line in so many ways.
I struggle when I cannot understand how people can self justify a course of action in a way that still means they are reasonable. I can stretch that a long way, but not to that.
They've got a nerve to keep calling themselves Republicans. Why not just declare Trump rightful Emperor of North America and have done with it?
Trump’s latest speech is truly scary.
It is instructive to remember that I thought Hilary Clinton was not a much better candidate than Trump.
I'm wrong fairly often, but I've never been wronger in my life than I was about that.
Either they get him in jail in next two years or America is totally fucked.
Jesus Christ. It is practically anathema to me to condemn outright even political movements I disagree with, or judge those 'mainstream' people who still give succour to extreme actions of those movements, but the GOP really have crossed the line in so many ways.
I struggle when I cannot understand how people can self justify a course of action in a way that still means they are reasonable. I can stretch that a long way, but not to that.
They've got a nerve to keep calling themselves Republicans. Why not just declare Trump rightful Emperor of North America and have done with it?
Trump’s latest speech is truly scary.
It is instructive to remember that I thought Hilary Clinton was not a much better candidate than Trump.
I'm wrong fairly often, but I've never been wronger in my life than I was about that.
Either they get him in jail in next two years or America is totally fucked.
Doesn't seem very likely - that wouldn't even be enough time to convict, let alone deal with all the appeals etc.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Isn't that a bit like saying Fred West wasn't all that bad because Shipman killed more?
I mean "we were bad but it could have been worse" is hardly a great defence line.
As I said recently Fred West is a better person than Boris Johnson.
To normal apolitical people Boris Johnson is seen as worse than Fred West, to give Fred West his dues, he finally admitted to having people in his garden.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
Not sure "Enlightenment Values" is correct, unless you date the Enlightenment to the middle of the Twentieth secretary.
David Graeber incidentally makes the interesting case that Enlightenment Ideas were heavily influenced by Indigenous North American critiques of European society in the 17th Century. His book "The Dawn of Everything" is absolutely fascinating, and also makes the case that plenty of past societies functioned very differently.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
Did they?
If they could, most attempted it to some degree.
I'm mulling this over, and I don't think it's true. Not when you look to the individual level. Many historical empires did not have proper democracies even in the home country. To what extent to we hang that on the farmers, coopers, and joiners who rarely even set foot outside their own county? I hope you don't find this an overly pedantic question, because I think it plugs into fundamental questions about the dynamics that drive imperialism. Motives and opportunities vary widely within a society.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
This is embarrassing, historically illiterate drivel, of the first water
The Aztecs colonised and conquered their neighbours precisely so they could bring back to Tenochtitlan as many living human captives as possible, who could then be sacrificed on chac mools by having their beating hearts ripped from their chests. This was done in front of the gathered Aztec people, on top of their temples, thus ensuring, by the propitiating loss of human blood and life, that the sun would reappear the next day. Which was the absolute obsession of the insane Aztec religion
The dead bodies of the sacrificial victims would then be rolled down the pyramid steps, sometimes hundreds or even thousands in a day, the human meat was then fed to the sacred jaguars in the imperial menagerie, the blood scattered over noble cakes to be consumed later, and the skins of the more important victims would be flayed and used as suits by the high priests
This is not a classic description of British imperialism, however awful Britain seems to you
Honestly, stick to the doctoring shit. Jesus F Christ
BTW I heartily recommend a visit to Luderitz, Namibia, one of the great destination on this earth
It is haunted by the German atrocities but it is also miraculously atmospheric. The shimmering deserts meet the skeleton coast, and the strandwolves prowl the beach, between the ghost towns and the Forbidden Zone, the Sperrgebiet of the Diamond Mines
Yes, it's amazing. So is the Skeleton Coast, although very bleak.
And driving through the desert into Swakopmund is extraordinary. You suddenly go from extreme desert heat into what looks like a small provincial German provincial town in fog, where the streets seem to be air-conditioned, so drastic is the cooling effect of the Benguela Current.
My best ever holiday. Charged by an elephant, then stalked by a Leopard in Etosha while checking a puncture.
The dunes. The weird fog at the coast. A mad attempt to climb at Spitzkoppe.
Met some pretty questionable Germans in Windhoek though.
I did some mad fucking shit in Namibia
Drove off road for 60 miles for the hell of it. On my own. Got a puncture. Limped into the nearest town without dying. No one knew where I was
Drove the Fish River Canyon in 40C heat, again on my own: the sublime emptiness. Me, the vultures and the baboons
Watched the ghost Kaiser cavalry cantering through the golden dust of the Namib-Naukluft
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
This is embarrassing, historically illiterate drivel, of the first water
The Aztecs colonised and conquered their neighbours precisely so they could bring back to Tenochtitlan as many living human captives as possible, who could then be sacrificed on chac mools by having their beating hearts ripped from their chests. This was done in front of the gathered Aztec people, on top of their temples, thus ensuring, by the propitiating loss of human blood and life, that the sun would reappear the next day. Which was the absolute obsession of the insane Aztec religion
The dead bodies of the sacrificial victims would then be rolled down the pyramid steps, sometimes hundreds or even thousands in a day, the human meat was then fed to the sacred jaguars in the imperial menagerie, the blood scattered over noble cakes to be consumed later, and the skins of the more important victims would be flayed and used as suits by the high priests
This is not a classic description of British imperialism, however awful Britain seems to you
Honestly, stick to the doctoring shit. Jesus F Christ
Well obviously different to British, or indeed any other Imperialism, but fundamentally based on the idea of conquest, subjugation and killing to serve the aims of the Imperial metropolis.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
This is embarrassing, historically illiterate drivel, of the first water
The Aztecs colonised and conquered their neighbours precisely so they could bring back to Tenochtitlan as many living human captives as possible, who could then be sacrificed on chac mools by having their beating hearts ripped from their chests. This was done in front of the gathered Aztec people, on top of their temples, thus ensuring, by the propitiating loss of human blood and life, that the sun would reappear the next day. Which was the absolute obsession of the insane Aztec religion
The dead bodies of the sacrificial victims would then be rolled down the pyramid steps, sometimes hundreds or even thousands in a day, the human meat was then fed to the sacred jaguars in the imperial menagerie, the blood scattered over noble cakes to be consumed later, and the skins of the more important victims would be flayed and used as suits by the high priests
This is not a classic description of British imperialism, however awful Britain seems to you
Honestly, stick to the doctoring shit. Jesus F Christ
Well obviously different to British, or indeed any other Imperialism, but fundamentally based on the idea of conquest, subjugation and killing to serve the aims of the Imperial metropolis.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
Did they?
If they could, most attempted it to some degree.
I'm mulling this over, and I don't think it's true. Not when you look to the individual level. Many historical empires did not have proper democracies even in the home country. To what extent to we hang that on the farmers, coopers, and joiners who rarely even set foot outside their own county? I hope you don't find this an overly pedantic question, because I think it plugs into fundamental questions about the dynamics that drive imperialism. Motives and opportunities vary widely within a society.
I think cultures that reach a certain size come into conflict with others, and seeking dominance where this is an option for them is normal human behaviour. The individual may not care about such things, but even small islands have been racked by inter tribal conflicts. Imperialism is only different in scale, and that's around ability to project power when the opportunity arises, technologically or otherwise. The precise details vary and some will be worse than others.
I won't call anything overly pedantic on PB, but I don't see the value of looking 'to the individual level'. Humans as a group vs humans as individuals react in different ways, like huge masses vs tiny particles.
Are we still on track for reaching 54 letters in a few days time, like we were last week? Just asking
AS with nuclear fusion (20 years) and automated driving (5 years) we are always less than a week away from the 54/55 letters required to trigger a VONC in Bozo's leadership.
I'm in Phoenix right now. I just tried to get a Google autonomous ride. No joy :-(.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
This is embarrassing, historically illiterate drivel, of the first water
The Aztecs colonised and conquered their neighbours precisely so they could bring back to Tenochtitlan as many living human captives as possible, who could then be sacrificed on chac mools by having their beating hearts ripped from their chests. This was done in front of the gathered Aztec people, on top of their temples, thus ensuring, by the propitiating loss of human blood and life, that the sun would reappear the next day. Which was the absolute obsession of the insane Aztec religion
The dead bodies of the sacrificial victims would then be rolled down the pyramid steps, sometimes hundreds or even thousands in a day, the human meat was then fed to the sacred jaguars in the imperial menagerie, the blood scattered over noble cakes to be consumed later, and the skins of the more important victims would be flayed and used as suits by the high priests
This is not a classic description of British imperialism, however awful Britain seems to you
Honestly, stick to the doctoring shit. Jesus F Christ
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
My own view is that Empire and Colonialism will always exist in some form, they are natural recurring forces. Britian was not uniquely evil, and there was much that it achieved that was positive - largely as a consequence of the enlightenment.
But it is all in the past. The British nation that we know is largely a post colonial construct.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
WTAF?
Perhaps ask some Tibetans how they feel about Mao "not being an imperialist". China is historically an empire. That's what it IS. It seeks to restore imperial possessions. Like Tibet
Or ask some Tatars, or the Baltic states, about life under Stalin. Another inheritor of empire. The Russian Empire
Seriously. This is a series of mortifyingly stupid comments. Cringeworthy
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
If you visit Moscow, you can see palatial metro stations depicting bucolic scenes of peasant life, built during the Stalin era while said peasants were being starved to death. How does that not fit your definition of imperialism?
BTW I heartily recommend a visit to Luderitz, Namibia, one of the great destination on this earth
It is haunted by the German atrocities but it is also miraculously atmospheric. The shimmering deserts meet the skeleton coast, and the strandwolves prowl the beach, between the ghost towns and the Forbidden Zone, the Sperrgebiet of the Diamond Mines
Yes, it's amazing. So is the Skeleton Coast, although very bleak.
And driving through the desert into Swakopmund is extraordinary. You suddenly go from extreme desert heat into what looks like a small provincial German provincial town in fog, where the streets seem to be air-conditioned, so drastic is the cooling effect of the Benguela Current.
My best ever holiday. Charged by an elephant, then stalked by a Leopard in Etosha while checking a puncture.
The dunes. The weird fog at the coast. A mad attempt to climb at Spitzkoppe.
Met some pretty questionable Germans in Windhoek though.
You’ve been hanging about on PB too long, you’ve been infected by Leon’s novelettish style.
"Jonathan Van-Tam: the penalty shoot-out with Covid ‘could in the end be 5-3 to us’ The right sub came on and we’ve got almost to the end, the deputy chief medical officer for England says"
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
This is embarrassing, historically illiterate drivel, of the first water
The Aztecs colonised and conquered their neighbours precisely so they could bring back to Tenochtitlan as many living human captives as possible, who could then be sacrificed on chac mools by having their beating hearts ripped from their chests. This was done in front of the gathered Aztec people, on top of their temples, thus ensuring, by the propitiating loss of human blood and life, that the sun would reappear the next day. Which was the absolute obsession of the insane Aztec religion
The dead bodies of the sacrificial victims would then be rolled down the pyramid steps, sometimes hundreds or even thousands in a day, the human meat was then fed to the sacred jaguars in the imperial menagerie, the blood scattered over noble cakes to be consumed later, and the skins of the more important victims would be flayed and used as suits by the high priests
This is not a classic description of British imperialism, however awful Britain seems to you
Honestly, stick to the doctoring shit. Jesus F Christ
You’ve been watching Apocalypto again.
Apocalypto actually UNDERPLAYED the craziness of the Aztecs (as well as being stupidly ahistorical in multiple other ways)
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
I think this is rather splitting hairs and putting too much onto the purported motivations of such people rather than simply looking at their actions. Whatever they might claim about the intent of their actions, it made no difference, it's the same faulty logic that is done to argue various atrocities are not the same because one was trying to do x and one was trying to do y.
I'm not really trying to compare it with anything. I'm simply saying that I think that using violence to take other people's land/ making them work for you for free/ imposing taxes on people with no representation/ ruling people so incompetently that millions of them die of famine/ deliberately wiping out people so you can use their land, all in the name of enriching yourself or because you think they are an inferior form of human, is bad.
That's not exactly a balanced view of the British Empire, is it?
Imperialism is fundamentally racist. Those who "celebrate" Imperialism are themselves racist.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
Did they?
If they could, most attempted it to some degree.
I'm mulling this over, and I don't think it's true. Not when you look to the individual level. Many historical empires did not have proper democracies even in the home country. To what extent to we hang that on the farmers, coopers, and joiners who rarely even set foot outside their own county? I hope you don't find this an overly pedantic question, because I think it plugs into fundamental questions about the dynamics that drive imperialism. Motives and opportunities vary widely within a society.
Yes, I think that a good point. British and other European societies were in the imperial period run by elites that brutalised and dispossessed the poor of these islands first.
To use our own history as an example, the Norman conquest, Elizabethan clearances for sheep, Cromwell in Ireland, the Highland Clearances, the English Enclosure movement, Irish famine etc were all carried out by an elite that considered the lives and livelihoods of others fairly inconsequential while enriching themselves.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
If you visit Moscow, you can see palatial metro stations depicting bucolic scenes of peasant life, built during the Stalin era while said peasants were being starved to death. How does that not fit your definition of imperialism?
Quite besides anything else, the fourteen non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union all buggered off the moment the centre lost the strength and the willpower to hold onto them. Not that the non-imperial phase lasted very long, of course. Tsar Vladimir has been meddling with the neighbours (and enthusiastically carving chunks off some of them) for years.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
This is embarrassing, historically illiterate drivel, of the first water
The Aztecs colonised and conquered their neighbours precisely so they could bring back to Tenochtitlan as many living human captives as possible, who could then be sacrificed on chac mools by having their beating hearts ripped from their chests. This was done in front of the gathered Aztec people, on top of their temples, thus ensuring, by the propitiating loss of human blood and life, that the sun would reappear the next day. Which was the absolute obsession of the insane Aztec religion
The dead bodies of the sacrificial victims would then be rolled down the pyramid steps, sometimes hundreds or even thousands in a day, the human meat was then fed to the sacred jaguars in the imperial menagerie, the blood scattered over noble cakes to be consumed later, and the skins of the more important victims would be flayed and used as suits by the high priests
This is not a classic description of British imperialism, however awful Britain seems to you
Honestly, stick to the doctoring shit. Jesus F Christ
You’ve been watching Apocalypto again.
Apocalypto actually UNDERPLAYED the craziness of the Aztecs (as well as being stupidly ahistorical in multiple other ways)
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
Did they?
If they could, most attempted it to some degree.
I'm mulling this over, and I don't think it's true. Not when you look to the individual level. Many historical empires did not have proper democracies even in the home country. To what extent to we hang that on the farmers, coopers, and joiners who rarely even set foot outside their own county? I hope you don't find this an overly pedantic question, because I think it plugs into fundamental questions about the dynamics that drive imperialism. Motives and opportunities vary widely within a society.
Yes, I think that a good point. British and other European societies were in the imperial period run by elites that brutalised and dispossessed the poor of these islands first.
To use our own history as an example, the Norman conquest, Elizabethan clearances for sheep, Cromwell in Ireland, the Highland Clearances, the English Enclosure movement, Irish famine etc were all carried out by an elite that considered the lives and livelihoods of others fairly inconsequential while enriching themselves.
I don't see what 'societies are typically run by elites' as an insight really has to do with anything. Of course Jane and Joe Normal Person is not filled with imperalist fervour, but tribes, cultural groups and nations do compete with one another. Imperialism is no more than that competition and conflict with a victor, adopting one form of control/destruction over the other. And one side dominating another when they had the chance is as old as history.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
WTAF?
Perhaps ask some Tibetans how they feel about Mao "not being an imperialist". China is historically an empire. That's what it IS. It seeks to restore imperial possessions. Like Tibet
Or ask some Tatars, or the Baltic states, about life under Stalin. Another inheritor of empire. The Russian Empire
Seriously. This is a series of mortifyingly stupid comments. Cringeworthy
There's a fascnating film on MUBI at the moment, about the events surrounding Stalin's funeral around the Soviet Union. I highly recommend it to anyone - it was filmed as a type of propaganda by diverse local filmmakers, but left behind a kind of unintentional social history instead.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
If you visit Moscow, you can see palatial metro stations depicting bucolic scenes of peasant life, built during the Stalin era while said peasants were being starved to death. How does that not fit your definition of imperialism?
Mao and Stalin were Emperors of multinational empires, which they ruthlessly exploited and suppressed. Smashing the various local cultures was apart of what they did - following on from their predecessors. Very Imperialistic - within existing empires.
Pol Pot was, in part, following an agenda of homogenising Cambodia - eliminating all other cultures to create a a single, unified state of slaves subservient to him and his rule.
It has been pointed out that one of the virtues of the British Empire was exporting the concept of the rule of law (including equality under the law) to so many countries.
Which makes it even more tragic that our current government is currently treating those concepts with contempt.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
I think the Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Finns, Poles, Moldavians and Volga Germans might disagree with the first, and the Tibetans and Manchurians with the second.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
WTAF?
Perhaps ask some Tibetans how they feel about Mao "not being an imperialist". China is historically an empire. That's what it IS. It seeks to restore imperial possessions. Like Tibet
Or ask some Tatars, or the Baltic states, about life under Stalin. Another inheritor of empire. The Russian Empire
Seriously. This is a series of mortifyingly stupid comments. Cringeworthy
There's a fascnating film on MUBI at the moment, about the events around the Soviet Union on Stailn's funeral. I highly recommend it to anyone - it was filmed as a type of propaganda by diverse local filmmakers but left behind a kind of unintentional social history, instead.
I shall bookmark it for tomorrow. I must abed. It is 1am in sultry Sri Lanka, and I have more work tomorrow. But good, satisfying work. And tomorrow the bars re-open. Huzzah!
Are we still on track for reaching 54 letters in a few days time, like we were last week? Just asking
AS with nuclear fusion (20 years) and automated driving (5 years) we are always less than a week away from the 54/55 letters required to trigger a VONC in Bozo's leadership.
One day a Conservative leader can look forward to leaving Downing Street for the last time in an autonomous fusion-powered car.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
If you visit Moscow, you can see palatial metro stations depicting bucolic scenes of peasant life, built during the Stalin era while said peasants were being starved to death. How does that not fit your definition of imperialism?
Mao and Stalin were Emperors of multinational empires, which they ruthlessly exploited and suppressed. Smashing the various local cultures was apart of what they did - following on from their predecessors. Very Imperialistic - within existing empires.
Pol Pot was, in part, following an agenda of homogenising Cambodia - eliminating all other cultures to create a a single, unified state of slaves subservient to him and his rule.
I think that Stalin, Mao Pol Pot etc could only be considered Imperialists if you consider all state sanctioned mass violence as Imperial in nature.
I think their reasons were to violently reorganise their own societies, not other societies. Evil yes, Imperialist no.
Actually, that’s fair enough. A friend of mine is a cop and he had to be with a murder suspect whilst they received treatment in hospital. A nurse asked him “do you really have to be here?” and then my friend told her the details... she soon shut up!
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
WTAF?
Perhaps ask some Tibetans how they feel about Mao "not being an imperialist". China is historically an empire. That's what it IS. It seeks to restore imperial possessions. Like Tibet
Or ask some Tatars, or the Baltic states, about life under Stalin. Another inheritor of empire. The Russian Empire
Seriously. This is a series of mortifyingly stupid comments. Cringeworthy
There's a fascnating film on MUBI at the moment, about the events around the Soviet Union on Stailn's funeral. I highly recommend it to anyone - it was filmed as a type of propaganda by diverse local filmmakers but left behind a kind of unintentional social history, instead.
I shall bookmark it for tomorrow. I must abed. It is 1am in sultry Sri Lanka, and I have more work tomorrow. But good, satisfying work. And tomorrow the bars re-open. Huzzah!
Night night
Goodnight Leon.
My I say how much I have enjoyed reading your posts today.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
If you visit Moscow, you can see palatial metro stations depicting bucolic scenes of peasant life, built during the Stalin era while said peasants were being starved to death. How does that not fit your definition of imperialism?
Mao and Stalin were Emperors of multinational empires, which they ruthlessly exploited and suppressed. Smashing the various local cultures was apart of what they did - following on from their predecessors. Very Imperialistic - within existing empires.
Pol Pot was, in part, following an agenda of homogenising Cambodia - eliminating all other cultures to create a a single, unified state of slaves subservient to him and his rule.
I think that Stalin, Mao Pol Pot etc could only be considered Imperialists if you consider all state sanctioned mass violence as Imperial in nature.
I think their reasons were to violently reorganise their own societies, not other societies. Evil yes, Imperialist no.
Further complicated by the fact many of these "Imperialists" weren't actually from the "home" nation.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
I think the Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Finns, Poles, Moldavians and Volga Germans might disagree with the first, and the Tibetans and Manchurians with the second.
Pol Pot I will give you.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again (that's my PB tip for increasing your post count), but I remain astonished that Pol Pot was still alive when I was 11 years old.
Given the magnitude of the destruction his regime wreaked, in so short a period, and so recently, it beggars belief that he died peacefully of old age not 25 years ago, and that he and it are not much more of a global cultural reference point for evil.
BTW I heartily recommend a visit to Luderitz, Namibia, one of the great destination on this earth
It is haunted by the German atrocities but it is also miraculously atmospheric. The shimmering deserts meet the skeleton coast, and the strandwolves prowl the beach, between the ghost towns and the Forbidden Zone, the Sperrgebiet of the Diamond Mines
Yes, it's amazing. So is the Skeleton Coast, although very bleak.
And driving through the desert into Swakopmund is extraordinary. You suddenly go from extreme desert heat into what looks like a small provincial German provincial town in fog, where the streets seem to be air-conditioned, so drastic is the cooling effect of the Benguela Current.
My best ever holiday. Charged by an elephant, then stalked by a Leopard in Etosha while checking a puncture.
The dunes. The weird fog at the coast. A mad attempt to climb at Spitzkoppe.
Met some pretty questionable Germans in Windhoek though.
I did some mad fucking shit in Namibia
Drove off road for 60 miles for the hell of it. On my own. Got a puncture. Limped into the nearest town without dying. No one knew where I was
Drove the Fish River Canyon in 40C heat, again on my own: the sublime emptiness. Me, the vultures and the baboons
Watched the ghost Kaiser cavalry cantering through the golden dust of the Namib-Naukluft
Mate, I did it in a 1 litre Polo. (Still the best car I've ever driven - thing floated over the sand).
"Under no circumstance end up in the desert after sun down"
It's 11pm, my teeth are smashed by the corrugated road service, pass an oil tanker on its side, furiously trying to get the fuel off the windscreen.
Massive drink when we get to the camp site with its "Lion proof fence". You can hear them roaring just outside the perimeter.
A photo.
One of my biggest regrets was having done 2 weeks on horse in the Okavango I was offered the chance to ride-in 30 new horses from Namibia - a long ride camping each night - unfortunately I would have been sacked if I had stayed out there.
The riding was incredible as it was exhilarating and dangerous as semi-flooded but could get much closer to the wildlife. Even accidentally rode into the middle of a set of lionesses stalking a pair of innocent looking antelope.
Definitely no perimeter fences in the camp though - strange feeling when you are in your tent and can literally smell the elephant a couple of meters away eating! And bless the tent ladies bringing morning tea banging pots to scare the animals away!!
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
If you visit Moscow, you can see palatial metro stations depicting bucolic scenes of peasant life, built during the Stalin era while said peasants were being starved to death. How does that not fit your definition of imperialism?
Mao and Stalin were Emperors of multinational empires, which they ruthlessly exploited and suppressed. Smashing the various local cultures was apart of what they did - following on from their predecessors. Very Imperialistic - within existing empires.
Pol Pot was, in part, following an agenda of homogenising Cambodia - eliminating all other cultures to create a a single, unified state of slaves subservient to him and his rule.
I think that Stalin, Mao Pol Pot etc could only be considered Imperialists if you consider all state sanctioned mass violence as Imperial in nature.
I think their reasons were to violently reorganise their own societies, not other societies. Evil yes, Imperialist no.
In both cases they were ruling multi-ethnic empires - the *Empires* of Russia and China respectively.
They both carried out racist policies of destroying sub-cultures and giving power to the dominant group.
Just because all of this was happening next door and not overseas.....
What do you call what is *happening now* in Chechnya and Xinjiang? It looks and feels like full on, hard core colonialism.....
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
Did they?
If they could, most attempted it to some degree.
I'm mulling this over, and I don't think it's true. Not when you look to the individual level. Many historical empires did not have proper democracies even in the home country. To what extent to we hang that on the farmers, coopers, and joiners who rarely even set foot outside their own county? I hope you don't find this an overly pedantic question, because I think it plugs into fundamental questions about the dynamics that drive imperialism. Motives and opportunities vary widely within a society.
I think cultures that reach a certain size come into conflict with others, and seeking dominance where this is an option for them is normal human behaviour. The individual may not care about such things, but even small islands have been racked by inter tribal conflicts. Imperialism is only different in scale, and that's around ability to project power when the opportunity arises, technologically or otherwise. The precise details vary and some will be worse than others.
I won't call anything overly pedantic on PB, but I don't see the value of looking 'to the individual level'. Humans as a group vs humans as individuals react in different ways, like huge masses vs tiny particles.
Yes but again you're talking about what you think is a normal pattern for societies (I'm still dubious about that even) and mapping it to the individual level. The people who lead tend to be (in the neutral sense) extraordinary, and above the tribal level even those who actively fight are a small minority in almost all cases. Even in the 18th-20th century world of levees en masses and general conscription, it was still a minority under arms. The original thesis was that "Enlightenment values" have impaired imperialism because of a changing morality. That Enlightenment ethic, made concrete in documents such as The Declaration of the Rights of Man, the American Declaration of Independence, Locke's Two Treatises of Government, and the Geneva Conventions amongst others, emphasise individual agency and rights. Surely, in this spirit, it makes sense for us to then at least look through the lens of the individual and decide whether the evidence of inter-group conflict is really evidence about the nature of humans in general. And if the evidence isn't there, we needn't assume that this how people are.
The question is meaningful and not abstract. We have made huge improvements in the systems that govern us and the way we make our choices felt. Peace is attainable because, fundamentally, most people want it. It depresses me that someone can look at the behaviour of a minority and use it to draw conclusions about human nature when it seems, to me at least, that the conclusions really apply to societies and VERY much depends on the way those societies are organised. You only need to see the very variable levels of violence in the world today to know that this is true.
Staving another human's head in is, fundamentally, a waste of time and calories. Most people most of the time aren't inclined to try.
‘When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of six million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis. No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.’
I'm not in favour of cancellation, but it's pretty repulsive. Substitute 'gays' for 'Gypsies' and a lot more would be offended.
It's just plain nasty.
A dark joke could be made about the kind of people who, being racist about Gypsies, would agree with such a statement.
But that "joke" isn't about that. It's just plain racism.
Yeah, if thats the full "joke" then he has not crossed the line but obliterated it.
Edit - seen suggestions downthread there is more context, which would make more sense.
I'm not sure context helps much. If he added "actually, some of my best friends are Gypsies...."?
It probably wouldn't help but enough for me to reserve judgment. On its own it doesn't really make any sense for an experienced TV comedian to think it worth saying.
You never heard of the Aristocrats joke? There was a good docco about it back in the day. Comedians competing to tell their version of the worlds most offensive joke. Gilbert Gottfried won it for me. Though Cartman’s was also top notch. What is it with everyone getting triggered now? So tedious.
No not heard of any of that, unless Cartman is the one from Southpark? Who suddenly reminds me a little of a less successful Boris Johnson.....
Yeah the South Park guys had Cartman do his version. It’s always the same format, about a family walking into a talent agent to do their act.
I've just found out today from some family history research that my favourite elderly relative of my childhood, my great grandma Elsie (my mum's mum's mum) was largely, or possibly entirely, of gypsy stock.
I've so far found court and prison records for five of her grandparents and great grandparents. Three of them also have press cuttings attached to them describing them as gypsies. I don't know if this necessarily makes them Roma, or if that was just used as a generic term for the traveller community, but I'm suddenly feeling an eighth "gypsy" either way. I didn't find Jimmy Carr's joke particularly funny anyway, he's done much better, but I still don't want him cancelled for it.
Most of my jailed gypsy ancestors were inside for larceny, but there are some other interesting stories that come up. My gt-gt-gt-gt-gt grandfather Vandelo (!?!?!?) Stanley was arrested for many things (lighting a fire on a public road, living with his family in a tent by a public road, chopping branches off an oak tree belonging to a Duke, with his daughter attacking a beer seller's wife after a race meeting at Goodwood, and there was a story about him being attacked by someone else wielding a sledgehammer), but for some reason this one stuck.
In 1864 he was charged and fined (and paid immediately) for cutting somebody else's grass!
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
I increasingly think that humans, unless constrained by laws, conventions, and economic interest, are often fundamentally evil. Certainly for most of history there were abominable things being done, and it's hard to name any people, anywhere in the world, which hasn't carried out horrendous acts, including genocide if they were sufficiently powerful.
Perhaps a little overstated, Richard, although I have to say the more I see of humans, the more I like dogs.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
I think the Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Finns, Poles, Moldavians and Volga Germans might disagree with the first, and the Tibetans and Manchurians with the second.
Pol Pot I will give you.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again (that's my PB tip for increasing your post count), but I remain astonished that Pol Pot was still alive when I was 11 years old.
Given the magnitude of the destruction his regime wreaked, in so short a period, and so recently, it beggars belief that he died peacefully of old age not 25 years ago, and that he and it are not much more of a global cultural reference point for evil.
If he did. He died at a mysteriously convenient time.
An enigma in life, an uncertainty in death.
And an utter thoroughgoing irredeemable bastard who should have been smothered at birth.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
I increasingly think that humans, unless constrained by laws, conventions, and economic interest, are often fundamentally evil. Certainly for most of history there were abominable things being done, and it's hard to name any people, anywhere in the world, which hasn't carried out horrendous acts, including genocide if they were sufficiently powerful.
Perhaps a little overstated, Richard, although I have to say the more I see of humans, the more I like dogs.
You obviously haven't met our dogs.
Are they horrible?
Trick question. Of course they're horrible. They're dogs.
"Jonathan Van-Tam: the penalty shoot-out with Covid ‘could in the end be 5-3 to us’ The right sub came on and we’ve got almost to the end, the deputy chief medical officer for England says"
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
If you visit Moscow, you can see palatial metro stations depicting bucolic scenes of peasant life, built during the Stalin era while said peasants were being starved to death. How does that not fit your definition of imperialism?
Mao and Stalin were Emperors of multinational empires, which they ruthlessly exploited and suppressed. Smashing the various local cultures was apart of what they did - following on from their predecessors. Very Imperialistic - within existing empires.
Pol Pot was, in part, following an agenda of homogenising Cambodia - eliminating all other cultures to create a a single, unified state of slaves subservient to him and his rule.
I think that Stalin, Mao Pol Pot etc could only be considered Imperialists if you consider all state sanctioned mass violence as Imperial in nature.
I think their reasons were to violently reorganise their own societies, not other societies. Evil yes, Imperialist no.
In both cases they were ruling multi-ethnic empires - the *Empires* of Russia and China respectively.
They both carried out racist policies of destroying sub-cultures and giving power to the dominant group.
Just because all of this was happening next door and not overseas.....
What do you call what is *happening now* in Chechnya and Xinjiang? It looks and feels like full on, hard core colonialism.....
Certainly minorities were particularly vulnerable under Communist purges, but the majority of Communist mass expropriation and murder was for internal economic reasons, so perhaps more similar to the Highland clearances or dissolution of the monasteries in intent, though obviously more violent.
It does still strike me that arguing all state sanctioned violence against different ethnicities is Imperialist in motivation is a rather odd defense of British Imperialism.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
If you visit Moscow, you can see palatial metro stations depicting bucolic scenes of peasant life, built during the Stalin era while said peasants were being starved to death. How does that not fit your definition of imperialism?
Mao and Stalin were Emperors of multinational empires, which they ruthlessly exploited and suppressed. Smashing the various local cultures was apart of what they did - following on from their predecessors. Very Imperialistic - within existing empires.
Pol Pot was, in part, following an agenda of homogenising Cambodia - eliminating all other cultures to create a a single, unified state of slaves subservient to him and his rule.
I think that Stalin, Mao Pol Pot etc could only be considered Imperialists if you consider all state sanctioned mass violence as Imperial in nature.
I think their reasons were to violently reorganise their own societies, not other societies. Evil yes, Imperialist no.
I’d argue that is not true for Stalin. Look at Eastern Europe after 1945. I’d say those states became part of the empire.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
I increasingly think that humans, unless constrained by laws, conventions, and economic interest, are often fundamentally evil. Certainly for most of history there were abominable things being done, and it's hard to name any people, anywhere in the world, which hasn't carried out horrendous acts, including genocide if they were sufficiently powerful.
Perhaps a little overstated, Richard, although I have to say the more I see of humans, the more I like dogs.
You obviously haven't met our dogs.
With apologies to Indy:
"Snakes Dogs! Why did it have to be snakes dogs?!"
"Jonathan Van-Tam: the penalty shoot-out with Covid ‘could in the end be 5-3 to us’ The right sub came on and we’ve got almost to the end, the deputy chief medical officer for England says"
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
If you visit Moscow, you can see palatial metro stations depicting bucolic scenes of peasant life, built during the Stalin era while said peasants were being starved to death. How does that not fit your definition of imperialism?
Mao and Stalin were Emperors of multinational empires, which they ruthlessly exploited and suppressed. Smashing the various local cultures was apart of what they did - following on from their predecessors. Very Imperialistic - within existing empires.
Pol Pot was, in part, following an agenda of homogenising Cambodia - eliminating all other cultures to create a a single, unified state of slaves subservient to him and his rule.
I think that Stalin, Mao Pol Pot etc could only be considered Imperialists if you consider all state sanctioned mass violence as Imperial in nature.
I think their reasons were to violently reorganise their own societies, not other societies. Evil yes, Imperialist no.
In both cases they were ruling multi-ethnic empires - the *Empires* of Russia and China respectively.
They both carried out racist policies of destroying sub-cultures and giving power to the dominant group.
Just because all of this was happening next door and not overseas.....
What do you call what is *happening now* in Chechnya and Xinjiang? It looks and feels like full on, hard core colonialism.....
Certainly minorities were particularly vulnerable under Communist purges, but the majority of Communist mass expropriation and murder was for internal economic reasons, so perhaps more similar to the Highland clearances or dissolution of the monasteries in intent, though obviously more violent.
It does still strike me that arguing all state sanctioned violence against different ethnicities is Imperialist in motivation is a rather odd defense of British Imperialism.
Not necessarily. The Holdomar and the Great Famine of 1958-60 were caused by a collectivisation programme designed to bring rebellious populations under political control.
They had no economic benefit - quite the contrary, they did irreparable damage to the agricultural systems of both countries.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
Did they?
If they could, most attempted it to some degree.
I'm mulling this over, and I don't think it's true. Not when you look to the individual level. Many historical empires did not have proper democracies even in the home country. To what extent to we hang that on the farmers, coopers, and joiners who rarely even set foot outside their own county? I hope you don't find this an overly pedantic question, because I think it plugs into fundamental questions about the dynamics that drive imperialism. Motives and opportunities vary widely within a society.
I think cultures that reach a certain size come into conflict with others, and seeking dominance where this is an option for them is normal human behaviour. The individual may not care about such things, but even small islands have been racked by inter tribal conflicts. Imperialism is only different in scale, and that's around ability to project power when the opportunity arises, technologically or otherwise. The precise details vary and some will be worse than others.
I won't call anything overly pedantic on PB, but I don't see the value of looking 'to the individual level'. Humans as a group vs humans as individuals react in different ways, like huge masses vs tiny particles.
Yes but again you're talking about what you think is a normal pattern for societies (I'm still dubious about that even) and mapping it to the individual level.
Er, no I'm not. That's the opposite of the point I was making. I even said on an individual level I am optimistic about the goodness of human nature. I said I think people are easily misdirected.
I think the confusion is because I was responding to the suggestion that 'everyone did it' in terms of Empire etc, and responding to the query 'did they?' to which my answer would be, yes, by and large all societies have, though not actually to the point of having an empire per se, but by indulging in the kind of competition for dominance that means they'd have something like it if they could have.
I wasn't looking at the behaviour of a minority and using it draw conclusions about human nature. I'm looking at the behaviour of society as a whole - that might well be driven by a minority or by the entire mass of it, but that was irrelevant to my point. It doesn't matter whether that societal competition was driven by a mass of individuals or elites, it happened and happens. And since we are always run by elites of one kind or another - like empires, some are better than others - a question of whether that struggle occurs does not rely on the question of if individuals are nice.
As it happens since I think people are nice, and want an easy life, it can be hard to make them do bad things. Hence the power of cages of norms and ideologies to make them.
I didn't agree with all the conclusion of Rutger Bregmen's Humankind - despite questioning the evidence of 'people are inherently bad' studies he then repeatedly seems to rely on nothing but supposition for an idealistic vision of pre-civilisation humanity - but fundamentally I agreed with the concept that people are better than cynics think.
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
If you visit Moscow, you can see palatial metro stations depicting bucolic scenes of peasant life, built during the Stalin era while said peasants were being starved to death. How does that not fit your definition of imperialism?
Mao and Stalin were Emperors of multinational empires, which they ruthlessly exploited and suppressed. Smashing the various local cultures was apart of what they did - following on from their predecessors. Very Imperialistic - within existing empires.
Pol Pot was, in part, following an agenda of homogenising Cambodia - eliminating all other cultures to create a a single, unified state of slaves subservient to him and his rule.
I think that Stalin, Mao Pol Pot etc could only be considered Imperialists if you consider all state sanctioned mass violence as Imperial in nature.
I think their reasons were to violently reorganise their own societies, not other societies. Evil yes, Imperialist no.
I’d argue that is not true for Stalin. Look at Eastern Europe after 1945. I’d say those states became part of the empire.
Yes, and obviously so. And it's not just violence. The extractive nature of the Russian administration of Ukraine was behind the Holodomor. The USSR was an empire, no question.
"Jonathan Van-Tam: the penalty shoot-out with Covid ‘could in the end be 5-3 to us’ The right sub came on and we’ve got almost to the end, the deputy chief medical officer for England says"
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
If you visit Moscow, you can see palatial metro stations depicting bucolic scenes of peasant life, built during the Stalin era while said peasants were being starved to death. How does that not fit your definition of imperialism?
Mao and Stalin were Emperors of multinational empires, which they ruthlessly exploited and suppressed. Smashing the various local cultures was apart of what they did - following on from their predecessors. Very Imperialistic - within existing empires.
Pol Pot was, in part, following an agenda of homogenising Cambodia - eliminating all other cultures to create a a single, unified state of slaves subservient to him and his rule.
I think that Stalin, Mao Pol Pot etc could only be considered Imperialists if you consider all state sanctioned mass violence as Imperial in nature.
I think their reasons were to violently reorganise their own societies, not other societies. Evil yes, Imperialist no.
In both cases they were ruling multi-ethnic empires - the *Empires* of Russia and China respectively.
They both carried out racist policies of destroying sub-cultures and giving power to the dominant group.
Just because all of this was happening next door and not overseas.....
What do you call what is *happening now* in Chechnya and Xinjiang? It looks and feels like full on, hard core colonialism.....
Certainly minorities were particularly vulnerable under Communist purges, but the majority of Communist mass expropriation and murder was for internal economic reasons, so perhaps more similar to the Highland clearances or dissolution of the monasteries in intent, though obviously more violent.
It does still strike me that arguing all state sanctioned violence against different ethnicities is Imperialist in motivation is a rather odd defense of British Imperialism.
Do you think the forced migration of ethnic groups in the Soviet union was for economic reasons?
Incidentally, why are you defining 'internal' at the border of the empire in one case but not in the other?
I didn't get as far as Sri Lanka or Namibia but did make it to Reigate in the rain. I confess to a morsel of envy for those whose life seems to take them to exotic venues while I have to potter round the Home Counties to earn a living.
Chacun a son gout - apparently.
Back to politics and the notion of Boris Johnson also pottering around a deserted No.10 bereft of friends and allies was also how Margaret Thatcher was famously depicted in her last days.
I'm not sure I care very much whether he survives or not - those who idolise him and voted for him (as distinct from the Conservative Party in 2019) will stand with him until the very end and possibly beyond (and there are four or five on here who also seem happy to stand, Alamo-like, beside Boris Johnson (perhaps they should be his new advisers)).
The core support, as we've seen with Trump, will stand unwavering and loyal, irrespective until he departs the political scene, and perhaps for years after - who knows?
The image of a divided Conservative Party will resonate and that will do far more damage than any individual issue for, as we know, divided parties rarely prosper whether the perception of division mirrors the reality.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
Did they?
If they could, most attempted it to some degree.
I'm mulling this over, and I don't think it's true. Not when you look to the individual level. Many historical empires did not have proper democracies even in the home country. To what extent to we hang that on the farmers, coopers, and joiners who rarely even set foot outside their own county? I hope you don't find this an overly pedantic question, because I think it plugs into fundamental questions about the dynamics that drive imperialism. Motives and opportunities vary widely within a society.
I think cultures that reach a certain size come into conflict with others, and seeking dominance where this is an option for them is normal human behaviour. The individual may not care about such things, but even small islands have been racked by inter tribal conflicts. Imperialism is only different in scale, and that's around ability to project power when the opportunity arises, technologically or otherwise. The precise details vary and some will be worse than others.
I won't call anything overly pedantic on PB, but I don't see the value of looking 'to the individual level'. Humans as a group vs humans as individuals react in different ways, like huge masses vs tiny particles.
Yes but again you're talking about what you think is a normal pattern for societies (I'm still dubious about that even) and mapping it to the individual level.
Er, no I'm not. That's the opposite of the point I was making. I even said on an individual level I am optimistic about the goodness of human nature. I said I think people are easily misdirected.
I think the confusion is because I was responding to the suggestion that 'everyone did it' in terms of Empire etc, and responding to the query 'did they?' to which my answer would be, yes, by and large all societies have, though not actually to the point of having an empire per se, but by indulging in the kind of competition for dominance that means they'd have something like it if they could have.
I wasn't looking at the behaviour of a minority and using it draw conclusions about human nature. I'm looking at the behaviour of society as a whole - that might well be driven by a minority or by the entire mass of it, but that was irrelevant to my point. It doesn't matter whether that societal competition was driven by a mass of individuals or elites, it happened and happens. And since we are always run by elites of one kind or another - like empires, some are better than others - a question of whether that struggle occurs does not rely on the question of if individuals are nice.
As it happens since I think people are nice, and want an easy life, it can be hard to make them do bad things. Hence the power of cages of norms and ideologies to make them.
I didn't agree with all the conclusion of Rutger Bregmen's Humankind - despite questioning the evidence of 'people are inherently bad' studies he then repeatedly seems to rely on nothing but supposition for an idealistic vision of pre-civilisation humanity - but fundamentally I agreed with the concept that people are better than cynics think.
Ok, then we're probably close to agreement over all this. That means I don't have to stave your head in nor you mine.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
Did they?
If they could, most attempted it to some degree.
I'm mulling this over, and I don't think it's true. Not when you look to the individual level. Many historical empires did not have proper democracies even in the home country. To what extent to we hang that on the farmers, coopers, and joiners who rarely even set foot outside their own county? I hope you don't find this an overly pedantic question, because I think it plugs into fundamental questions about the dynamics that drive imperialism. Motives and opportunities vary widely within a society.
I think cultures that reach a certain size come into conflict with others, and seeking dominance where this is an option for them is normal human behaviour. The individual may not care about such things, but even small islands have been racked by inter tribal conflicts. Imperialism is only different in scale, and that's around ability to project power when the opportunity arises, technologically or otherwise. The precise details vary and some will be worse than others.
I won't call anything overly pedantic on PB, but I don't see the value of looking 'to the individual level'. Humans as a group vs humans as individuals react in different ways, like huge masses vs tiny particles.
Yes but again you're talking about what you think is a normal pattern for societies (I'm still dubious about that even) and mapping it to the individual level.
Er, no I'm not. That's the opposite of the point I was making. I even said on an individual level I am optimistic about the goodness of human nature. I said I think people are easily misdirected.
I think the confusion is because I was responding to the suggestion that 'everyone did it' in terms of Empire etc, and responding to the query 'did they?' to which my answer would be, yes, by and large all societies have, though not actually to the point of having an empire per se, but by indulging in the kind of competition for dominance that means they'd have something like it if they could have.
I wasn't looking at the behaviour of a minority and using it draw conclusions about human nature. I'm looking at the behaviour of society as a whole - that might well be driven by a minority or by the entire mass of it, but that was irrelevant to my point. It doesn't matter whether that societal competition was driven by a mass of individuals or elites, it happened and happens. And since we are always run by elites of one kind or another - like empires, some are better than others - a question of whether that struggle occurs does not rely on the question of if individuals are nice.
As it happens since I think people are nice, and want an easy life, it can be hard to make them do bad things. Hence the power of cages of norms and ideologies to make them.
I didn't agree with all the conclusion of Rutger Bregmen's Humankind - despite questioning the evidence of 'people are inherently bad' studies he then repeatedly seems to rely on nothing but supposition for an idealistic vision of pre-civilisation humanity - but fundamentally I agreed with the concept that people are better than cynics think.
Ok, then we're probably close to agreement over all this. That means I don't have to stave your head in nor you mine.
If a fascist dictator makes you I forgive you, you had little option.
"Jonathan Van-Tam: the penalty shoot-out with Covid ‘could in the end be 5-3 to us’ The right sub came on and we’ve got almost to the end, the deputy chief medical officer for England says"
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
I think the Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Finns, Poles, Moldavians and Volga Germans might disagree with the first, and the Tibetans and Manchurians with the second.
Pol Pot I will give you.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again (that's my PB tip for increasing your post count), but I remain astonished that Pol Pot was still alive when I was 11 years old.
Given the magnitude of the destruction his regime wreaked, in so short a period, and so recently, it beggars belief that he died peacefully of old age not 25 years ago, and that he and it are not much more of a global cultural reference point for evil.
If he did. He died at a mysteriously convenient time.
An enigma in life, an uncertainty in death.
And an utter thoroughgoing irredeemable bastard who should have been smothered at birth.
I have a piece of Pol Pot’s patio, on my living room shelf, back home in Camden
Collected by me from his final lair in remote Anlong Veng, Cambodia
One of the most sinister corners of a deeply troubled country
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
I think the Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Finns, Poles, Moldavians and Volga Germans might disagree with the first, and the Tibetans and Manchurians with the second.
Pol Pot I will give you.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again (that's my PB tip for increasing your post count), but I remain astonished that Pol Pot was still alive when I was 11 years old.
Given the magnitude of the destruction his regime wreaked, in so short a period, and so recently, it beggars belief that he died peacefully of old age not 25 years ago, and that he and it are not much more of a global cultural reference point for evil.
If he did. He died at a mysteriously convenient time.
An enigma in life, an uncertainty in death.
And an utter thoroughgoing irredeemable bastard who should have been smothered at birth.
I have a piece of Pol Pot’s patio, on my living room shelf, back home in Camden
Collected by me from his final lair in remote Anlong Veng, Cambodia
One of the most sinister corners of a deeply troubled country
Obligatory 'I'm sure your place in Camden is not THAT bad' joke.
"Jonathan Van-Tam: the penalty shoot-out with Covid ‘could in the end be 5-3 to us’ The right sub came on and we’ve got almost to the end, the deputy chief medical officer for England says"
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
If you visit Moscow, you can see palatial metro stations depicting bucolic scenes of peasant life, built during the Stalin era while said peasants were being starved to death. How does that not fit your definition of imperialism?
Mao and Stalin were Emperors of multinational empires, which they ruthlessly exploited and suppressed. Smashing the various local cultures was apart of what they did - following on from their predecessors. Very Imperialistic - within existing empires.
Pol Pot was, in part, following an agenda of homogenising Cambodia - eliminating all other cultures to create a a single, unified state of slaves subservient to him and his rule.
I think that Stalin, Mao Pol Pot etc could only be considered Imperialists if you consider all state sanctioned mass violence as Imperial in nature.
I think their reasons were to violently reorganise their own societies, not other societies. Evil yes, Imperialist no.
In both cases they were ruling multi-ethnic empires - the *Empires* of Russia and China respectively.
They both carried out racist policies of destroying sub-cultures and giving power to the dominant group.
Just because all of this was happening next door and not overseas.....
What do you call what is *happening now* in Chechnya and Xinjiang? It looks and feels like full on, hard core colonialism.....
Certainly minorities were particularly vulnerable under Communist purges, but the majority of Communist mass expropriation and murder was for internal economic reasons, so perhaps more similar to the Highland clearances or dissolution of the monasteries in intent, though obviously more violent.
It does still strike me that arguing all state sanctioned violence against different ethnicities is Imperialist in motivation is a rather odd defense of British Imperialism.
Do you think the forced migration of ethnic groups in the Soviet union was for economic reasons?
Incidentally, why are you defining 'internal' at the border of the empire in one case but not in the other?
Foxy seems to believe that empires only count as empires if he doesn’t like them. That is his level of argumentation here
Those who attack, or even more bizarrely, are 'ashamed' of, the British empire never seem to get round to telling us what counterfactual they are comparing it with. Presumably not a French, Dutch, or German empire, so I guess they must be dreaming about some fantasy world where the alternative in all the places the British ended up ruling was a cross between a Rousseauesque noble-savage purity and a Swedish social democracy, magically combining democratic self-rule with the advances of the industrial revolution and the values of the European Enlightenment.
Reader, that wasn't the alternative.
Aren't these two separate questions? Whether something was a good or bad thing in principle, and whether something was better or worse than the thing that would have happened in its place? Personally I think the British empire was a criminal enterprise, built on and sustained by grotesque ideas of racial superiority and driven by greed. I don't feel ashamed of it because it had nothing to do with me in a moral sense. I do think we should learn about it because it shapes the world we live in today - my children wouldn't exist if it hadn't happened. And I am quite willing to believe that other empires were worse, although I think some people are a little too ready to assume that was the case. The sheer reach and longevity of the British Empire means we had ample opportunity to do bad stuff all over the world for a long time.
Indeed. The fact that some other empires wore worse is classic whattaboutery. We weren't responsible for those.
Worth noting too that the excesses of German, Italian and Japanese empires in the Twentieth centuries weren't different in principle to what we, the French, Russian, Spanish, Aztec or Islamic empires had got up to a century or two earlier. They were different more in time than intent.
It's revealing that you write out the atrocities committed in the name of communism from your roll call of 20th century 'excesses'. Is that because the intent was different?
Certainly so. The mass slaughters of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were some of the greatest evils ever, but weren't by any reasonable definition due to those leaders Imperial ideas.
I think the Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Finns, Poles, Moldavians and Volga Germans might disagree with the first, and the Tibetans and Manchurians with the second.
Pol Pot I will give you.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again (that's my PB tip for increasing your post count), but I remain astonished that Pol Pot was still alive when I was 11 years old.
Given the magnitude of the destruction his regime wreaked, in so short a period, and so recently, it beggars belief that he died peacefully of old age not 25 years ago, and that he and it are not much more of a global cultural reference point for evil.
If he did. He died at a mysteriously convenient time.
An enigma in life, an uncertainty in death.
And an utter thoroughgoing irredeemable bastard who should have been smothered at birth.
I have a piece of Pol Pot’s patio, on my living room shelf, back home in Camden
Collected by me from his final lair in remote Anlong Veng, Cambodia
One of the most sinister corners of a deeply troubled country
Obligatory 'I'm sure your place in Camden is not THAT bad' joke.
Everyone did it, until it was decided - largely because of Enlightenment values - that it was morally (and often economically) unsustainable.
I’m not even sure I’d call it fundamentally evil, unless one believes humans to be fundamentally evil.
Did they?
If they could, most attempted it to some degree.
I'm mulling this over, and I don't think it's true. Not when you look to the individual level. Many historical empires did not have proper democracies even in the home country. To what extent to we hang that on the farmers, coopers, and joiners who rarely even set foot outside their own county? I hope you don't find this an overly pedantic question, because I think it plugs into fundamental questions about the dynamics that drive imperialism. Motives and opportunities vary widely within a society.
I think cultures that reach a certain size come into conflict with others, and seeking dominance where this is an option for them is normal human behaviour. The individual may not care about such things, but even small islands have been racked by inter tribal conflicts. Imperialism is only different in scale, and that's around ability to project power when the opportunity arises, technologically or otherwise. The precise details vary and some will be worse than others.
I won't call anything overly pedantic on PB, but I don't see the value of looking 'to the individual level'. Humans as a group vs humans as individuals react in different ways, like huge masses vs tiny particles.
Yes but again you're talking about what you think is a normal pattern for societies (I'm still dubious about that even) and mapping it to the individual level. The people who lead tend to be (in the neutral sense) extraordinary, and above the tribal level even those who actively fight are a small minority in almost all cases. Even in the 18th-20th century world of levees en masses and general conscription, it was still a minority under arms. The original thesis was that "Enlightenment values" have impaired imperialism because of a changing morality. That Enlightenment ethic, made concrete in documents such as The Declaration of the Rights of Man, the American Declaration of Independence, Locke's Two Treatises of Government, and the Geneva Conventions amongst others, emphasise individual agency and rights. Surely, in this spirit, it makes sense for us to then at least look through the lens of the individual and decide whether the evidence of inter-group conflict is really evidence about the nature of humans in general. And if the evidence isn't there, we needn't assume that this how people are.
The question is meaningful and not abstract. We have made huge improvements in the systems that govern us and the way we make our choices felt. Peace is attainable because, fundamentally, most people want it. It depresses me that someone can look at the behaviour of a minority and use it to draw conclusions about human nature when it seems, to me at least, that the conclusions really apply to societies and VERY much depends on the way those societies are organised. You only need to see the very variable levels of violence in the world today to know that this is true.
Staving another human's head in is, fundamentally, a waste of time and calories. Most people most of the time aren't inclined to try.
The instinct for dominance is within all of us, and competition between states is ultimately a product of this. It is not something that is limited to a wayward minority of violent individuals. Nor can it be overcome by thought and reason. It will always exist, as it is essentially the engine of evolution and human history. If a society tries to withdraw from this competition, it may succeed for a short while, but will eventually get defeated or colonialised by a stronger force.
Comments
It has got me into trouble in the past.
'There are always, and everywhere, only bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.'
Because communism wasn’t being done properly, obvs.
Friday night, though; artisanal sausages on the grill and sprouting broccoli and baked beans and mash to go with it. And some NZ white. Night all.
We are often fundamentally good.
David Graeber incidentally makes the interesting case that Enlightenment Ideas were heavily influenced by Indigenous North American critiques of European society in the 17th Century. His book "The Dawn of Everything" is absolutely fascinating, and also makes the case that plenty of past societies functioned very differently.
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/314/314162/the-dawn-of-everything/9780241402429.html
"Under no circumstance end up in the desert after sun down"
It's 11pm, my teeth are smashed by the corrugated road service, pass an oil tanker on its side, furiously trying to get the fuel off the windscreen.
Massive drink when we get to the camp site with its "Lion proof fence". You can hear them roaring just outside the perimeter.
It is still unfurling.
It’s possible that meat eating will be considered genocidal barbarism at some point in the future.
I hope you don't find this an overly pedantic question, because I think it plugs into fundamental questions about the dynamics that drive imperialism. Motives and opportunities vary widely within a society.
The Aztecs colonised and conquered their neighbours precisely so they could bring back to Tenochtitlan as many living human captives as possible, who could then be sacrificed on chac mools by having their beating hearts ripped from their chests. This was done in front of the gathered Aztec people, on top of their temples, thus ensuring, by the propitiating loss of human blood and life, that the sun would reappear the next day. Which was the absolute obsession of the insane Aztec religion
The dead bodies of the sacrificial victims would then be rolled down the pyramid steps, sometimes hundreds or even thousands in a day, the human meat was then fed to the sacred jaguars in the imperial menagerie, the blood scattered over noble cakes to be consumed later, and the skins of the more important victims would be flayed and used as suits by the high priests
This is not a classic description of British imperialism, however awful Britain seems to you
Honestly, stick to the doctoring shit. Jesus F Christ
You're good on oximeters, tho, I grant you that
I won't call anything overly pedantic on PB, but I don't see the value of looking 'to the individual level'. Humans as a group vs humans as individuals react in different ways, like huge masses vs tiny particles.
Britian was not uniquely evil, and there was much that it achieved that was positive - largely as a consequence of the enlightenment.
But it is all in the past. The British nation that we know is largely a post colonial construct.
Perhaps ask some Tibetans how they feel about Mao "not being an imperialist". China is historically an empire. That's what it IS. It seeks to restore imperial possessions. Like Tibet
Or ask some Tatars, or the Baltic states, about life under Stalin. Another inheritor of empire. The Russian Empire
Seriously. This is a series of mortifyingly stupid comments. Cringeworthy
The right sub came on and we’ve got almost to the end, the deputy chief medical officer for England says"
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jonathan-van-tam-the-penalty-shoot-out-with-covid-could-in-the-end-be-5-3-to-us-kn6mn6bd7
Highly entertaining tho, One of his best movies.
To use our own history as an example, the Norman conquest, Elizabethan clearances for sheep, Cromwell in Ireland, the Highland Clearances, the English Enclosure movement, Irish famine etc were all carried out by an elite that considered the lives and livelihoods of others fairly inconsequential while enriching themselves.
https://www.gbnews.uk/news/romanian-who-suffered-hand-injuries-while-attempting-to-murder-wife-is-awarded-17500-after-suing-nhs/220173
But it’s an American film.
And it is not a documentary.
https://mubi.com/films/state-funeral
Pol Pot was, in part, following an agenda of homogenising Cambodia - eliminating all other cultures to create a a single, unified state of slaves subservient to him and his rule.
Which makes it even more tragic that our current government is currently treating those concepts with contempt.
Pol Pot I will give you.
Night night
I think their reasons were to violently reorganise their own societies, not other societies. Evil yes, Imperialist no.
My I say how much I have enjoyed reading your posts today.
You are really quite engaging when sober.
Stalin, Hitler... Blair
Given the magnitude of the destruction his regime wreaked, in so short a period, and so recently, it beggars belief that he died peacefully of old age not 25 years ago, and that he and it are not much more of a global cultural reference point for evil.
The riding was incredible as it was exhilarating and dangerous as semi-flooded but could get much closer to the wildlife. Even accidentally rode into the middle of a set of lionesses stalking a pair of innocent looking antelope.
Definitely no perimeter fences in the camp though - strange feeling when you are in your tent and can literally smell the elephant a couple of meters away eating! And bless the tent ladies bringing morning tea banging pots to scare the animals away!!
They both carried out racist policies of destroying sub-cultures and giving power to the dominant group.
Just because all of this was happening next door and not overseas.....
What do you call what is *happening now* in Chechnya and Xinjiang? It looks and feels like full on, hard core colonialism.....
The question is meaningful and not abstract. We have made huge improvements in the systems that govern us and the way we make our choices felt. Peace is attainable because, fundamentally, most people want it. It depresses me that someone can look at the behaviour of a minority and use it to draw conclusions about human nature when it seems, to me at least, that the conclusions really apply to societies and VERY much depends on the way those societies are organised. You only need to see the very variable levels of violence in the world today to know that this is true.
Staving another human's head in is, fundamentally, a waste of time and calories. Most people most of the time aren't inclined to try.
I've so far found court and prison records for five of her grandparents and great grandparents. Three of them also have press cuttings attached to them describing them as gypsies. I don't know if this necessarily makes them Roma, or if that was just used as a generic term for the traveller community, but I'm suddenly feeling an eighth "gypsy" either way. I didn't find Jimmy Carr's joke particularly funny anyway, he's done much better, but I still don't want him cancelled for it.
Most of my jailed gypsy ancestors were inside for larceny, but there are some other interesting stories that come up. My gt-gt-gt-gt-gt grandfather Vandelo (!?!?!?) Stanley was arrested for many things (lighting a fire on a public road, living with his family in a tent by a public road, chopping branches off an oak tree belonging to a Duke, with his daughter attacking a beer seller's wife after a race meeting at Goodwood, and there was a story about him being attacked by someone else wielding a sledgehammer), but for some reason this one stuck.
In 1864 he was charged and fined (and paid immediately) for cutting somebody else's grass!
He was later jailed for larceny and died inside.
An enigma in life, an uncertainty in death.
And an utter thoroughgoing irredeemable bastard who should have been smothered at birth.
Trick question. Of course they're horrible. They're dogs.
https://www.yoox.com/uk/11822350UC/item#dept=women&sts=sr_women80&cod10=11822350UC&sizeId=-1
It does still strike me that arguing all state sanctioned violence against different ethnicities is Imperialist in motivation is a rather odd defense of British Imperialism.
"Snakes Dogs! Why did it have to be snakes dogs?!"
How very uninformed can a Newscaster be!
They had no economic benefit - quite the contrary, they did irreparable damage to the agricultural systems of both countries.
I think the confusion is because I was responding to the suggestion that 'everyone did it' in terms of Empire etc, and responding to the query 'did they?' to which my answer would be, yes, by and large all societies have, though not actually to the point of having an empire per se, but by indulging in the kind of competition for dominance that means they'd have something like it if they could have.
I wasn't looking at the behaviour of a minority and using it draw conclusions about human nature. I'm looking at the behaviour of society as a whole - that might well be driven by a minority or by the entire mass of it, but that was irrelevant to my point. It doesn't matter whether that societal competition was driven by a mass of individuals or elites, it happened and happens. And since we are always run by elites of one kind or another - like empires, some are better than others - a question of whether that struggle occurs does not rely on the question of if individuals are nice.
As it happens since I think people are nice, and want an easy life, it can be hard to make them do bad things. Hence the power of cages of norms and ideologies to make them.
I didn't agree with all the conclusion of Rutger Bregmen's Humankind - despite questioning the evidence of 'people are inherently bad' studies he then repeatedly seems to rely on nothing but supposition for an idealistic vision of pre-civilisation humanity - but fundamentally I agreed with the concept that people are better than cynics think.
And it's not just violence. The extractive nature of the Russian administration of Ukraine was behind the Holodomor. The USSR was an empire, no question.
Incidentally, why are you defining 'internal' at the border of the empire in one case but not in the other?
I didn't get as far as Sri Lanka or Namibia but did make it to Reigate in the rain. I confess to a morsel of envy for those whose life seems to take them to exotic venues while I have to potter round the Home Counties to earn a living.
Chacun a son gout - apparently.
Back to politics and the notion of Boris Johnson also pottering around a deserted No.10 bereft of friends and allies was also how Margaret Thatcher was famously depicted in her last days.
I'm not sure I care very much whether he survives or not - those who idolise him and voted for him (as distinct from the Conservative Party in 2019) will stand with him until the very end and possibly beyond (and there are four or five on here who also seem happy to stand, Alamo-like, beside Boris Johnson (perhaps they should be his new advisers)).
The core support, as we've seen with Trump, will stand unwavering and loyal, irrespective until he departs the political scene, and perhaps for years after - who knows?
The image of a divided Conservative Party will resonate and that will do far more damage than any individual issue for, as we know, divided parties rarely prosper whether the perception of division mirrors the reality.
That means I don't have to stave your head in nor you mine.
Collected by me from his final lair in remote Anlong Veng, Cambodia
One of the most sinister corners of a deeply troubled country
She trails Marine Le Pen by three points in the battle to join Macron in the second round run off.
Macron is on 25.5%, Le Pen 18%, Pecresse 15%, Zemmour 13% and Melanchon 10%.
That's the worst polling for Pecresse since she won the LR nomination.
Certified as completely accurate and above board by the Serbian Health Ministry.
Very moving interview with James Brokenshire's widow, I thought.