To be wary of hatred directed towards the British Empire

[Bumpitybumper]

With the rise of movements such as BLM, there seems to be a growing hatred towards the British Empire and a keenness to point out all of the flaws and terrible things the empire and key individuals within it did. I too am horrified when I think about the role that the empire played in slavery and events such as the Irish Potato Famine. As these things become better publicised then there seems to be a growing school of thought that this is a white or at least British people problem that we must somehow atone for and feel guilty about. The British Empire has been cast as the ultimate villain and something we must be ashamed about.

My concern though is that lots of countries around the world have had empires and inevitably when these countries held lots of power, they acted in ways that we would now regard as morally reprehensible. The Mongol and Roman empires for example, were extremely cruel and many empires sort to brutally stamp out religious or cultural differences and gain control. Equally empires have brought about advancements in technology and improved the living standards of millions of people around the world.

Am I therefore being unreasonable to suggest that it is only fair to look at empires holistically and through the lens of the time they operated in? Of course the wrongdoings and horrendous acts mustn't be hidden, but equally they should be given context and positive acts shouldn't be erased either.

@RuggerHug sorry won't change anything and i can't see how someone apologises for another's actions , what would be more meaningful is not repeating actions , helping to put right etc etc
And it seems its ok to say the brits are at it again etc , but if we said it about another nation we would be accused of being bigots etc

Well if you think it wont make a difference, what harm could it do? It shows that the actions taken have been acknowledged as wrong and that they will not be repeated. Refusing to even do that is like saying "Well I'm sorry if you felt offended, but we still think we were right".

National Sorry Day

Such a woke idea and completely pointless.

[quote Notfeelinggreattoday]@feelingsareweird its also nonsense to blame the british empire for all that is bad in the world over and things take time to change , we live in such a different world today than we did before , its changing at a much faster pace due to technology evolving so quickly
But with history there are always 2 sides to every story and much of it none of us has a relative that lived through it , so we can only learn by whats on paper but we were not there
We can not judge 10 years ago by todays standards even , things that happened 10 years ago may not seem right today [/quote]
Being Irish I have literally lived through British colonisation and seen the horrific consequences of it, as have many of my family members who are very much still alive and able to remember the grisly details.

@user1471500037

I’m proud of the Empire - a small country built one of the largest empires the world has ever seen, operated to or better than the moral standards of the time, spread technological, medical knowledge throughout the world - used the Empire to fight and win against numerous opponents (Hitler, Napoleon, tin pot dictators) who would have killed many millions and taken history on an even darker path. Plus when the time came, we gave it up without too much angst and our common law, language, sports and culture act as a bedrock for those societies today. Bad things happen but so do good things and the Empire was (overall) a force for global good in its day

I assume this post is satirical?

I find it a huge patronisation to use a narrative of peaceful indigenous peoples uniformly living happily and harmoniously until the bad colonialists arrived to ruin everything and if we had only stayed away they would have been and stayed prosperous, peaceful, happy and carefree.

I agree, which is why I never said anything of the sort.

In fact, virtually every empire was able to expand precisely because it took advantage of local wars and rivalries. And there is no way to know how all these countries would have progressed if imperialism had never happened.

That does not take away the enormous impact of colonial rule. My point was that you cannot divorce current atrocities from the colonial past. I never said this was the only factor that explains them.

Obviously ISIS was not solely motivated or caused by Sykes-Picot. But the fact that this was part of their narrative, that they used colonial boundary-making to try to legitimise their own violence, is relevant and important.

[quote Notfeelinggreattoday]@feelingsareweird its also nonsense to blame the british empire for all that is bad in the world over and things take time to change , we live in such a different world today than we did before , its changing at a much faster pace due to technology evolving so quickly
But with history there are always 2 sides to every story and much of it none of us has a relative that lived through it , so we can only learn by whats on paper but we were not there
We can not judge 10 years ago by todays standards even , things that happened 10 years ago may not seem right today [/quote]
That’s exactly the point of the decolonising movement though - there are MANY sides to every historical story, and right now the only one championed in the curriculum, in the fabric of our cities, in the structure of our society and in the rhetoric of leaders like Boris and Nigel is the perspective of the white Anglo elites who benefited from colonialism. People who do, apparently, still subscribe to the worldview that thinks it’s the white man’s duty to spread ‘civilisation’ and that everyone should just be fawningly grateful that we deigned to leave our bloody railways behind.

Yes the world changes quickly, it always has done. Are you suggesting history is therefore irrelevant? That understanding how we got to where we are isn’t important?

People asking what Germany has done to atone -- I lived in Berlin recently and this is what I saw.

You cannot walk more than 10 minutes in Berlin without stumbling across a memorial to victims of the Nazi regime. There are no statues of Nazis. The city is currently working on renaming streets named after prominent colonial figures.

Germany paid an enormous amount of reparations to individual victims and to the state of Israel. It has openly apologised for the atrocities it committed, not just with regards to the Holocaust but the many atrocities of occupation throughout Europe.

The German leadership consistently rejects neo-Nazis and any glorification of the Third Reich.

Germany is very reluctant to build up its military or deploy overseas. Germans contributing to overseas missions are generally only in training or support roles. Germany took in 1 million Syrian refugees, explicitly connecting this to its own history.

German schoolchildren learn a great deal about the Nazi regime and how evil it was, they are taken to camps to see things firsthand.

Even with all this, there is still room to do better, especially on the colonial past. But it is ridiculous to say that Germany has not tried to atone or apologise. There is a lot that other countries might learn from what they have done, especially on the education front.

The British Empire is causing ongoing problems (the situation in Northern Ireland for example). The Roman Empire is not causing ongoing problems. Other European countries also had (smaller) empires. This is a British based site. Things to do with Britain are more relevant. Of course it is more relevant to learn about the ongoing legacy of the British Empire, and try to process this history and learn from it; than whether the Romans also had slaves.

dreamingbohemien Brilliant post. I tried to say that but ended up waffling each time I started typing. You've summed up why the Germany comparison doesn't work for the British.

@KeepOnMovingForwards - it was a question? There are numerous articles on the link between the two. 'We' joined but why are we leaving?

Why is the word 'woke' used the way it is on here? It's sort of replaced the old 'political correctness gone mad' phrase I used to hear all the time and never do any more. Do people not know its origins? Is there no awareness of where it comes from and why using it as a dismissive insult as many do now is so gauche?

There is very clearly a very unpleasant under-side to the OPs purpose, presented as "innocent debate".

It’s really important to understand the past and learn from it. But in order to do this we need to look at it objectively and critically evaluate the lessons we can learn from it.

What happened happened. Nothing can change that. Trying to make value judgements based on today’s values and knowledge on yesterday’s actions Is fraught with difficulties. But what we can do is use this benefit of hindsight to look at and address the consequences of those actions and try and ensure they don’t happen again.

Thanks Rugger, I have lived in both countries and the difference is very stark.

Is there any memorial in the UK dedicated to the victims of colonialism? The slave trade, yes, but colonial rule? I don't think so.

People say you have to pay attention to both the good and the bad, but the supposedly 'good' aspects of Empire are memorialised everywhere, the bad not so much.

@dreamingbohemian
Isn't the Nazi Germany comparison a bit of a red herring because it was a relatively short lived period and they ultimately lost the war and thus power pretty quickly. Germans were forced to accept their wrongdoing pretty swiftly, they didn't really have much of a choice .The British Empire retained power for much longer and had a much slower decline. There wasn't as much international pressure to atone for its wrongdoings and despite what others are suggesting, a lot of the actions were done at a different time when prevailing global opinion was different. The British Empire for example was certainly not the only country to profit from slavery nor was it the last to abolish it.

[quote Notfeelinggreattoday]@unmarkedbythat maybe the poster means perceived by others not necessarily how germany themselves deal with it ? But as you know can you explain what do they teach themselves about it , are the current goverment apologising now to all the countries they invaded as this is what people seem to think the british should do[/quote]
the British are expected to flog themselves for things their far ancestors did, and yet the Germans are not for things their grandparents did

Maybe the poster themselves can clarify what they meant? Their post did seem to me to be ignorant of the lengths Germany has gone to- very well documented lengths that it astounds me someone who uses Germany as an example of not being expected to accept any responsibility "for things their grandparents did" not bothering to find about before commenting.

But as you know can you explain what do they teach themselves about it

Look downthread and you will see a good summary of what Germany teaches about its past. Or if you prefer, click here to a google search on "how Germany teaches its history".

are the current goverment apologising now to all the countries they invaded as this is what people seem to think the british should do
Who has asked that? Yes, Germany has apologised formally to victims, accepted moral responsibility, paid reparations and taken seriously its duty to ensure its people know the truth about their past. You can google "Vergangenheitsbewältigung" if you are genuinely interested.

Britain needs to be honest about its past, the bad and the good, to teach its people the truth about its past and what the ongoing repercussions are, to accept that it is entirely possible to be a patriot who is proud of some things about their country without needing to believe in a whitewashed version of history that only ever lauds us and never acknowledges mistakes. There are many things Britain and Britons have done and so that I think are wonderful and am proud to have a connection with; there are many things Britain and Britons have done which are dire. If I can claim pride in our successes why should I not have any shame about our failings?

The Germans killed millions in the holocaust which was recent but somehow that isn't raised as much as it wasn't colonialism.

this type of comment can get to actual fuck.
The day before yesterday i was at Buchenwald concentration camp memorial. It is a truly soul destroying place in so many ways. But do you know what else i saw? about 10 separate classes of German school kids - youngest about 12 oldest about 17 - with staff from the memorial talking about the holocaust. They confront this from an early age at school and almost literally never stop hearing about it.

There is NOTHING like this in English schools. Nothing. It is shameful.

@Brefugee
Do the Germans acknowledge the African genocide they were involved in at the turn of the century though or their own involvement in slavery?

So anyone who says they only care about current atrocities and not Empire just sounds completely ignorant

I would think most people don’t give it a single thought.
An article on the news about some atrocity in a far off land where there are many atrocities. What are people supposed to do.

Take to the streets to wail about the injustice and how it is all the Empires fault and go around in a permanent state of shame.

I would say most people are too busy trying to keep in work, put food on the table of their own families and pay their bills to even give another uprising half way around the world a moments thought.

Brefugee

So what exactly would you have British schools do.

Where are these day trips supposed to go to show British children how horrible the previous generations were

How would it work out if for a lot of these children if they themselves are immigrants or one or both of their parents or gps were.

Does the “shame” still apply to them.

Bumpity yes of course, you cannot make an exact comparison between Nazi Germany and the British Empire -- as you say, the Nazis were utterly defeated and this made it much easier to disown and apologise for that era.

But essentially we are talking about atrocities committed in living memory, and the different ways in which countries choose to deal with this.

Germany could have abandoned its contrite stance years ago if it wanted to. But it hasn't -- if anything, it is going further down that road, starting to atone more for its colonial past.

The point is not that the UK could do or should do exactly what Germany has done, but rather to explain some of the things that a country might do.

I am not English but it has always seemed odd to me that the British are expected to flog themselves for things their far ancestors did, and yet the Germans are not for things their grandparents did.

i have read some pig-shit ignorant twaddle over the years on this site but this just about takes the biscuit. Have you seen drunk English football "fans" singing "two world wars and one world cup" in German cities, doing the "biggles" thing with their hands on their eyes?

When Horst Seehofer and his friends start a campaign to get the festspiele in Bayreuth to sing the Horst-Wessel Lied you can come back on that one.

@Bumpitybumper - about as much as the English educate themselves about the exact causes and effects of the Irish Potato Famine. I have read some excellent articles and seen some very good museum exhibits over the last five years or so, which and i think is an indication that they are indeed confronting their further past.

It is difficult. When they talk about their colonial history, outsiders tend to carp on about how they should be saying sorry for the holocaust as though they never do that. While inside Germany, given the last 60 or so years of being beaten over the head with the stick of what happened before and during WW2 they do get a bit defensive about their at colonial past. Pretty much like the reaction a lot of white people had over the toppling of Colston's statue.

But they are working on it. Which is good.

If you have time look up pictures of the Buchenwald memorial. It is MASSIVE. You can see it from the autobahn for miles.

Brefugee
So what exactly would you have British schools do.

Well, Oliversmumsarmy, I'd start with some of our most recent past. The Troubles as it is euphamistically caused. How did we end up at that stage? and then people wouldn't spout ignorant rubbish about potatoes and how the Irish were idiots for not having other crops too (which i have seen elsewhere). And a bit more about just why countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are still having territory/border disputes. Etc etc. Maybe a bit about how concentration camps started? Or the hugely damaging effects bunging a few rabbits into the outback brought?

A huge amount of reparations continues to be made by the New Zealand Government as the British Crown's representative in New Zealand, as owed due to breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi - for illegal theft and colonisation of Maori lands, massacres such as Parihaka, acts of suppression of Maori culture, such as being forbidden to speak their language in schools.

This is after having to fight to get Te Tiriti acknowledged as a living and speaking document, that had to be abided by, rather than conveniently ignored and declared irrelevant when the ink was barely dry (sound familiar?)

Now it is respected as one of our founding constitutional document, and consultation and consideration of its principles must be made when drafting and implementing legislation.

One of the most powerful elements of reparation however, is a Crown representative going on the marae, to acknowledge the wrongs that were done, and to apologise. This restores the iwi's mana (tribe's honour).

There's a long way to go and much work yet to be done, but it's shitloads better than saying, oh well, that's all in the past, can't go back and change things, we'll just promise not to do it again in the future.

It is an attempt to redress the wrongs done, and to lessen the ongoing damage that has been caused to Maori that is shown in poorer health, educational, and societal outcomes that are still very much in evidence to this day, and very much attributable to the negative effects of colonisation.