The English started the slave trade

[Annamaria14]

I just saw a black American woman post online,

"The English started the slave trade. They caused all our problems, they hurt generations of people. I will never set foot in that country".

What do you think? I felt a bit guilty, because the English did cause a lot of problems around the world. Have we learned from our past. How can we do better in the future

@BovaryX

I do worry though that, in their haste to get rid of street names, statues and anything else which protesters think represents something of which we should be ashamed, the events of history will be diminished or lost entirely

There is a Year Zero impulse here. It is the desire to deconstruct and it means consigning things which don't meet the Manichean certainties of the 21st century to the dumpster. Complex historical figures, which includes all of them, are increasingly precarious. This also includes literary texts, street names etc. It runs in parallel to the redefinition of words. This is not about a critical assessment of history. It's about obliterating objects which cause offense. How does that elucidate anything?

You are just too smart with words, Bovary - it's too clever for me.
I don't understand what you are saying.

If you mean that we need to get rid of offensive names, etc then I agree but that doesn't mean we are protected from people turning this round and using it to say these things didn't happen once those names have gone. One doesn't cancel out the other but we do need to ensure that the other sides history is firmly placed in the cultural memory of the nation.

I think Ireland does this well with their famine statues in Dublin. They are haunting, uncomfortable elongated statues - they are met by another set in Newfoundland, Canada, I think.

They are in the heart of the financial district and you cannot avoid taking something in from them. We can do this, too. I always wanted to see the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square have a working man up there - one of the labourers who rebuilt London in the 40s or a nurse who came in the 60s. We can do these things.

@MockersxxxxxxxSocialDistancing i think that you do not know your history. Isn't it amazing how these things are glossed over in school. The British did starve the Irish

1. By taking land from Irish people, and then renting the land back to them at extortionate prices, making many people fall into extreme poverty.
2. During the famine, while Irish people were starving, British people actually exported food out of Ireland, causing the famine to become much worse.

@MockersxxxxxxxSocialDistancing

The British did not 'starve the Irish.' They sat back and let the Irish starve. Not much of a distinction if it's you starving, admittedly.

And now you seem to be suggesting the British were responsible for deaths in Belsen rather than what they did which was to save more lives there than anyone else acheived in any other camp.

And the British did indeed invent concentration camps in South Africa, and they were, by comparison, holiday camps compared to what the locals had to suffer at the hands of the Afrikaaners.

All based on your very poor taste suggestion that there was something redeemable about the British involvement in the Irish famine (that it taught then how to treat starving people in Belsen).

That is a disgusting conflation to make. You are reducing these events to a learning exercise for the British, as though their intentions were benign and they made mistakes but learned from them and moved on to not make mistakes the next tragedy.

I am simply pointing out that starving a nation/letting a nation starve is a distinct position to take and that to do so because in the future it provides experience on how to deal with others suffering such tragedies is not an excuse or justification most English historians would think plausible or at all reasonable. That you do, speaks volumes.

You also compare the English camps to the Afrikaan camps. I have heard similar, that the English camps were better run and preferred, however that is a view that exists in a time of war not in a time of historical hindsight when we can see that encampment full stop was wrong. Degrees of barbarity aside, it was wrong.

And actually @Mockers your comment is really offensive - therefore I am out of this debate.

You can fucking well teach the history of white supremacy and slavery and imperialism without a bunch of hideous statues in a museum. Throw them all in the ocean.

Germany tore down all its Nazi statues, they still do a very good job of teaching what Nazism was and why it's bad.

If you have never before encountered people from other parts of the world expressing anger or resentment

@dreamingbohemian

I wonder how much of the world you have lived and worked in? Beyond the West? I wonder how many people you have encountered whose countries have been destroyed by US imperialism? Not in 1756. Not two centuries ago. Not even twenty years ago. I wonder how many guys you have met who had the terrible misfortune to live in Baghdad in 2004? He was a specialist engineer, working for a drilling company. As you berate Brits about why they should feel collective guilt for events from the 18th century, and lecture people about statues, do you have access to a useful accessory made of glass? It's called a mirror. Maybe you should spend more time looking at the events of the fucking 21st century. Instead of lecturing Brits about 17th century statues.

David Olusoga again:

"All I'm asking is that we believe people when they say these statues are oppressive"

Britain never had segregation unlike the US.

maybe not racial segregation. But worth learning what various classes were - and were not - allowed to do.

And of course women are perennial second class subjects, whatever the age.

Calm down Bovary

My day job is researching atrocities in 21st century conflicts

Why do you think I care so much about all this?

[quote Annamaria14]@MockersxxxxxxxSocialDistancing i think that you do not know your history. Isn't it amazing how these things are glossed over in school. The British did starve the Irish

1. By taking land from Irish people, and then renting the land back to them at extortionate prices, making many people fall into extreme poverty.
2. During the famine, while Irish people were starving, British people actually exported food out of Ireland, causing the famine to become much worse.[/quote] There were famines all over the British Isles at the time. Most notably in the highlands of Scotland but also in parts of England.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Potato_Famine

Yes a lot of fine point distinctions being made in this thread

The British did not steal the slaves, they paid other people to steal them

They did not starve the Irish, they let them starve

The colonies were not British, they just answered to the king

@dreamingbohemian

Don't tell me to calm down. You have no idea what I have seen. I am not going to listen to a sanctimonious lecture from someone whose entire focus is on the West and lecturing Brits on events from centuries ago. The Western parochial attitude on this thread is astonishing. You epitomize it.

There were famines all over the British Isles at the time. Most notably in the highlands of Scotland but also in parts of England.

Have we got back to the Harrying of the North yet ? Pretty much a dictionary definition of genocide ?

If you have time Bovary I can rant about dozens of regimes. Assad, father and son, what the Russians did in Chechnya, what the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs, the militias of the eastern DRC, this is what I do all day.

THIS thread is about Britain so unlike a lot of people on this thread, I am trying to stay on topic.

@DGRossetti

There were famines all over the British Isles at the time. Most notably in the highlands of Scotland but also in parts of England.

Have we got back to the Harrying of the North yet ? Pretty much a dictionary definition of genocide ?

That was 700 years previously.

But you're right. Why don't the Normans get the hate?

Yes - and famines in Europe. The 1789 French famine.

Zola's 'Germinal', if you have the patience and stomach to finish it is a particularly tough book on the French coal miners strike of 1860.

It is the history of the working class - Ireland, the North of England, rural Italy, Scottish Highlands - although regarding the famine in Ireland my understanding is that the British governments laissez fair approach was determined by a particular view of the Irish in comparison to other famines.

@dreamingbohemian

You have spent the entire thread lecturing Brits about why they should all feel collective guilt for events from the 17th century. The invasion of Iraq triggered the largest refugee crisis since WW2. Your parochial focus reflects the insularity of your perspective. But hey. Keep fixated on preventing 'atrocities' by smashing statues.

A lot of people have come to the UK including some of my own ancestors so the UK can't be that bad and people want to emigrate to the USA

1. I have said multiple times I do not believe in collective guilt. Read the thread.

1. The largest refugee crisis since the Second World War remains the partition of India. I suspect anyway you are thinking of the Syrian civil war.

1. Why is 'atrocities' in quotation marks? Do you not think the mass murders of civilians in war are atrocities? Because that is what I research.

1. Never said smashing statues would prevent atrocities. It is an acknowledgement of historical atrocity and the desire to stop glorifying those who committed them.

In the last week, I have also been on threads talking about all the horrible things that the US has done. Happy to contribute to a thread about France, Russia, China, you name it.

Every great power has a horrific past. This conversation is about Britain. Start a thread about anyone else, I will contribute as well.

If you mean that we need to get rid of offensive names, etc then I agree but that doesn't mean we are protected from people turning this round and using it to say these things didn't happen once those names have gone. One doesn't cancel out the other but we do need to ensure that the other sides history is firmly placed in the cultural memory of the nation

serena

No, I meant the opposite. I think the Year Zero impulse, which is a feature of some revolutionary movements, is focused on obliterating the past. It is a desire to 'clean the slate' by consigning objects which offend to the dumpster. It is problematic for all the reasons you stated.

@BovaryX

I get it - and when you say Year Zero impulse and Manchian - where are you getting those terms from out of interest?

Year Zero is from the French Revolution and also the Khymer Rouge. Manichean means to see things as good/evil and to hold those beliefs with a religious certainty.

@dreamingbohemian

I am speaking specifically about Iraq, a topic about which you appear to know nothing. 1 in 25 Iraqis displaced. I suggest you read about the consequences of US imperialism from 2003. You might be gone some time.

watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/refugees/iraqi

I have posted this on another post and Facebook but am ignored because I am the wrong type of black ‘voice’.

I’m sorry, I have to say this because it is a feeling that has been building up inside me for a while since this all started. I’m not even entirely sure how to word it but know it will not be popular.

I love the UK and think it is very unfair comparing it to America in terms of racism.

I am sick of people blaming their failures in life on being black in the UK. Friends I grew up with, in the same circumstances as me, blaming racism for why they have never achieved anything on Facebook now.

There is low level discrimination, same as for many groups, in the UK, like the disabled, European, travellers, women. But not even close to the scale in America. I was given a chance here and I grasped it. If everyone was as bad as is said then I would not be where I am today. Those same friends complaining were the same ones getting mixed up in drugs, gangs, crime. They were not forced to and has the same opportunities I did. And they had better parents, mine were abusive.

Some of my friends are turning on other friends because they don’t ‘understand’. My friend who got told this is a woman and disabled and in my opinion faces the same kind of low level discrimination I do in the UK. It is some weird kind of top trumps going on. She was viciously verbally abused for attempting to say something supportive.

And the usual violent thugs are using it for an excuse again too.

I do not believe this is how we end racism, I believe this is how we entrench those views.

Smashing statues and blaming the English for the creation of the slave trade (when our own ancestors were doing it to each other long before white people turned up) does nothing.

I don’t feel guilty for anything my great great great great grandparents did, why should white people? This bitterness is not the way to end predjudice.

I think Ireland does this well with their famine statues in Dublin. They are haunting, uncomfortable elongated statues - they are met by another set in Newfoundland, Canada, I think

serena

I think that sounds really interesting. It's evidence in a way, of a traumatic past. It's a tribute to it. I often think to construct something requires labour, but to destroy takes minutes.