Donald Trump

pinno

If you and others are looking at the past with rose tinted contemporary moral glasses and you are distorting the past because you cast judgement based again on contemporary moral standards, then you are not looking back objectively.

It also means that political correctness based on distorted opinions of historical events are not allowing for philosophical conclusion and is clouding history.

If you are saying that what the Mau Mau did was justifiable or that they did not commit atrocities, then you are saying that my father is a liar and you are not seeing things clearly. I bet you denigrate the IRA but I sense a sympathy with the Mau Mau.

Can I suggest some reading?

A History of the English Speaking Peoples, W Churchill

The late Lord Delamere was commissioned by the British to write a comprehensive report on the transition of white rule to indigenous people. He had 200 people at his disposal. In the end, he wrote 2 huge volumes which covered everything from watering hole rights to train timetables and maintenance schedules to export contacts and shipping information.
Far more thought and input than one would expect from the stereotypical colonialists that you present. It's an eye opener in that the British put inordinate effort to smooth the transition of this process. Far more input and thought that was ever afforded to the various tribes in Kenya by any administration to date since independence.
I would give you the copies of it if only they hadn't gone missing when my mother passed away. If you can get a copy, then read it.

I fell foul of a similar argument regarding the First World War whilst arguing with a historian. I was using contemporary morals on historical events. I had to win the argument about the ineptitude of the Generals by using a different argument and evidence and themes from the past.

Stevo_666

What happened during the British Empire is cannot be undone, the people involved are long dead and the world the was a very different place then. I cant see what it achieves to bang on about it unless you get some sort of satisfaction from pointless PC posturing.

If anyone disagrees then get onto the Italians about the human rights abuses committed during the Roman empire while you're at it :roll:

Wheelspinner

Rick Chasey wrote:

I've logged in especially just to say ...

OT - why did you stop...?

pinno

Wheelspinner wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

I've logged in especially just to say ...

OT - why did you stop...?

Because:

Pinno wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

...

Pinno wrote:

So do you Rick Chasey, (because you can sit there retrospectively saying "tut tut tut" this was bad and that wasn't good and we're so much better now,) think you occupy a higher moral ground? I think you do.

Yes.

rick_chasey

Stevo 666 wrote:

What happened during the British Empire is cannot be undone, the people involved are long dead and the world the was a very different place then. I cant see what it achieves to bang on about it unless you get some sort of satisfaction from pointless PC posturing.

If anyone disagrees then get onto the Italians about the human rights abuses committed during the Roman empire while you're at it :roll:

You'd make a great historian Stevo. :roll:

From a factual perspective, you're wrong, given Mau Mau occurred was between 1952 and 1960. Those involved are not all dead.

I don't understand why calling what the British did a war crime is PC posturing? It's factual. It was a war crime then, it still is now.

rick_chasey

If you and others are looking at the past with rose tinted contemporary moral glasses and you are distorting the past because you cast judgement based again on contemporary moral standards, then you are not looking back objectively.

It also means that political correctness based on distorted opinions of historical events are not allowing for philosophical conclusion and is clouding history.

I'm fairly sure, torture, massacres, rape, dismemberment were all considered war crimes at the time of Mau Mau. That's not political correctness. That's factual. That's not anything philosophical.

If you are saying that what the Mau Mau did was justifiable or that they did not commit atrocities, then you are saying that my father is a liar and you are not seeing things clearly. I bet you denigrate the IRA but I sense a sympathy with the Mau Mau.

For me that is irrelevant. Maybe Mau Mau did. They probably did. That is also terrible. However that doesn't make what the British did any better, and if we're discussing scale, the scale of British war crimes were considerably worse. Given the British ought not to have been there in the first place, as they took it by force and occupied it, they share a fairly large burden. My comments were focused on British war crimes, which occurred. Are you focusing on the Mau Mau atrocities to make the British behaviour seem less bad? That sounds a lot like political correctness to me. Call a spade a spade Pinno - the British were war criminals. Maybe the locals were too - my study was on the British since I can read their language (!) but that doesn't meant the British weren't.

As for Churchill, I have read a lot of Churchill on this. Want some quotes that illustrate Churchill's views on colonialism more generally?

When he led men in the battle of Omdurman in Sudan in 1898, he made sure

"all Dervishes who did not immediately surrender were shot or bayoneted.”

On the Bengal famine in 1943 in which 3 million died.

“Starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than that of sturdy Greeks

He blamed their plight on Indians

breeding like rabbits

On Ghandi

"He ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back."

and

"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."

As an MP, when demanding more imperial conquests, he said

"the Aryan stock is bound to triumph"

, and in private letters wrote of Africans & indians as people who

"willingly, naturally, gratefully include themselves within the golden circle of an ancient crown".

When the Kurds 'rebelled', Churchill said

"I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes...[It] would spread a lively terror.

" << this is not the kind of comment that suggests the source is particularly neutral when it comes to the plight of colonial subjects vs the British.

And as for this.

I fell foul of a similar argument regarding the First World War whilst arguing with a historian. I was using contemporary morals on historical events. I had to win the argument about the ineptitude of the Generals by using a different argument and evidence and themes from the past.

You might want to take a class in historiography. History only exists in the contemporary. The past doesn't exist in any physical sense, it is mere collective memory. We see physical objects in the present that were present in the past, but we can only examine them in the present, with all the discourse, and ways of understanding and knowing the world that comes with that. It sounds to me like you're looking for vindication of British actions as a function 'of their time' to exonerate it from contemporary criticism. If you want to use your interpretation of the past to do that, then by all means.

But don't cry foul when someone decides to take a more neutral view of 'were these actions war crimes according to the values of the time?' (yes) 'in our current understanding of war crimes, are these war crimes? (yes)', and 'with this in mind, can we say that, according to today's values, the British empire is something to be proud of? (only if you are proud of occupation by force, removing local governance and dictating law by force, and removing local agency through violence, which at times is at the level of war crimes).

lostboysaint

Could someone summarise how we've got from a bloke with a ginger cat on his head that isn't fit to find his own way to the toilet, let alone run a country, to war atrocities (or not) by the British? I can't be arsed to read the last few pages.

joe2008

My fault...

joe2008 wrote:

Pinno wrote:

Errr... Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Napalm, Union Carbide, the Iran Contras scandal... Not to mention 11,208 gun related homicides per annum (latest figures; 2013), Columbine, Waco ... etc etc.

Well, being British I'm not exactly proud of our past: The British Empire, The Boer Wars, The Partitioning of India, The Amritsar Massacre, Kenya: Mau Mau Uprising, Ireland through 8 centuries of colonial occupation and genocide, The Slave Trade, Australian Aborigines, Native Americans...

pinno

Rick Chasey wrote:

For me that is irrelevant. Maybe Mau Mau did. They probably did. That is also terrible. However that doesn't make what the British did any better, and if we're discussing scale, the scale of British war crimes were considerably worse. Given the British ought not to have been there in the first place, as they took it by force and occupied it, they share a fairly large burden. My comments were focused on British war crimes, which occurred. Are you focusing on the Mau Mau atrocities to make the British behaviour seem less bad? That sounds a lot like political correctness to me. Call a spade a spade Pinno - the British were war criminals. Maybe the locals were too - my study was on the British since I can read their language (!) but that doesn't meant the British weren't.

""Given the British ought not to have been there in the first place..."

That is a contemporary view. That statement is flawed. As I have stated before, we had been colonising for a long time when colonisation has been a recurrent theme throughout written history. If you are incapable of drawing a line, then you must hold Genghis Khan responsible for war crimes in the same moral light.
Colonisation wasn't viewed as acceptable or unacceptable, it was just a necessary action in terms of maintaining power, procuring resources, conquering territories, retaliation, being ahead of one's enemies, not being invaded* etc

Totally understandable considering Britain's geographical location and our relationship with other European countries.

You have failed (twice) to reconcile the current pervasive ivy of global Capitalism that has replaced the age of Empire (Eric Hobsbawm) with an age of materialism and obscene disparities in wealth, health, living conditions and poverty as well as the massive over use of natural resources.

Would you take the view that Britain 350 years ago should have taken a pacifist route and not colonised or occupied any territories, negotiated with the French and the Dutch and reached an entente cordiale ? If you do, you are suffering from a Moral Relativist lergy.

Rick Chasey wrote:

But don't cry foul when someone decides to take a more neutral view of 'were these actions war crimes according to the values of the time?' (yes) 'in our current understanding of war crimes, are these war crimes? (yes)', and 'with this in mind, can we say that, according to today's values, the British empire is something to be proud of? (only if you are proud of occupation by force, removing local governance and dictating law by force, and removing local agency through violence, which at times is at the level of war crimes).

You have gone off one one and made some categorical assumptions. All I served to do was challenge your belief that the Mau Mau had any right to fair treatment.

Again, you have failed to address my view that if we are capable of distorting one account, i'e the Mau Mau, then we are capable of ladling on the emotive in a culture of political correctness and an atmosphere of blame and guilt - again, your sentiment and accounts are flawed and riddled with moral relativism.
It's easy to take the "we're so much more morally sophisticated" view than it is to analyse the past and place it into a historical context. What we view as acceptable now has no place or relevance on the past.

The subjective can only be used in summary and if we are to use History as a yardstick for the advancement in humanity in both morality and technology.

Stevo_666

Rick Chasey wrote:

Stevo 666 wrote:

What happened during the British Empire is cannot be undone, the people involved are long dead and the world the was a very different place then. I cant see what it achieves to bang on about it unless you get some sort of satisfaction from pointless PC posturing.

If anyone disagrees then get onto the Italians about the human rights abuses committed during the Roman empire while you're at it :roll:

You'd make a great historian Stevo. :roll:

From a factual perspective, you're wrong, given Mau Mau occurred was between 1952 and 1960. Those involved are not all dead.

I don't understand why calling what the British did a war crime is PC posturing? It's factual. It was a war crime then, it still is now.

So what are you going to do about it Rick? If the answer is nothing then I refer you to my post above.

rick_chasey

Stevo 666 wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Stevo 666 wrote:

What happened during the British Empire is cannot be undone, the people involved are long dead and the world the was a very different place then. I cant see what it achieves to bang on about it unless you get some sort of satisfaction from pointless PC posturing.

If anyone disagrees then get onto the Italians about the human rights abuses committed during the Roman empire while you're at it :roll:

You'd make a great historian Stevo. :roll:

From a factual perspective, you're wrong, given Mau Mau occurred was between 1952 and 1960. Those involved are not all dead.

I don't understand why calling what the British did a war crime is PC posturing? It's factual. It was a war crime then, it still is now.

So what are you going to do about it Rick? If the answer is nothing then I refer you to my post above.

I guess I felt the need to bring it up for one of the same reasons I really think Trump is awful; his total rejection of any attempt to be factually correct.

He lies about things, he makes things up, he says whatever is expedient to him, regardless of what is factually correct and incorrect.

I think that generally there has been an erosion of the value of what a fact is. Whether that's selective picking of facts, whether that is misinterpreting facts, or whether that's things made up to look like facts to support an argument.

I think things would be better if people called him out on them more regularly. I would like the hosts during the presidential debates to call him out if he says something that factually wrong, like 'I was always against the war in Iraq'.

I figured that given I spent 2 years researching war crimes and genocidal behaviour in Africa, working in libraries and archives (and the work I produced was well received) I was in a position to call out this particular piece of BS when I saw it. I would like others to do that more often when they legitimately know what they're talking about, so I figured I'd practice what I preach.

I also figured it was worth the effort since, recently there has been a bit of an increase in nationalistic rhetoric. A key feature of nationalism is a keen feeling of a certain identity. Those identities and feelings of nationalism are in large part shaped and sculpted by the past ( or at least, the process of looking back into the past). Given parts of those nationalistic efforts are quite nasty, and rely on a partial view of parts of history (such as the overall experience of British colonialism), it's worthwhile making sure there's a fuller picture.

Some British people get upset when historians are critical of British behaviour during the empire because deep down, that idea of the noble British Empire is part of their identity, so a criticism of it is in part a criticism of them. I don't identify myself at all with the British Empire, so I don't take it at all personally when I criticise it. For me, it's factual. For me, not owning up to all sides of what the Empire did, is to self censure.

So what am I going to do about the past? I'm going to try and do my bit to make sure when it is remembered, it' is remembered in a more accurate way, and continue to call BS when I see it.

People like you misunderstand what the point of the past is. You think because it's done and finished people need to move on. But it's how it is remembered that is important, and it is the historian's place to shape and police that memory. Because those memories affect so many decisions that impact us all, across all stratas and strands of society, from bike forums to racial hate crime in the streets.

florerider

Trump remains guilty of barberic crimes

Pross

Trump came the closest he's come in this election campaign to telling the truth when he said he was slightly overweight. If only he'd dropped the word 'slightly' he'd have told a whole truth! Not sure about his claim to be otherwise healthy though, I've never seen a healthy man with orange skin (and white eyelids).

verylonglegs

Shame they didn't assess his mental health.

pinno

Rick Chasey wrote:

Stevo 666 wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Stevo 666 wrote:

What...it :roll:

You'd make a great historian Stevo. :roll:

From a factual perspective, you're wrong, given Mau Mau occurred was between 1952 and 1960. Those involved are not all dead.

I don't understand why calling what the British did a war crime is PC posturing? It's factual. It was a war crime then, it still is now.

So what are you going to do about it Rick? If the answer is nothing then I refer you to my post above.

I also figured it was worth the effort since, recently there has been a bit of an increase in nationalistic rhetoric. A key feature of nationalism is a keen feeling of a certain identity. Those identities and feelings of nationalism are in large part shaped and sculpted by the past ( or at least, the process of looking back into the past). Given parts of those nationalistic efforts are quite nasty, and rely on a partial view of parts of history (such as the overall experience of British colonialism), it's worthwhile making sure there's a fuller picture.

I don't quite agree with a lot of your post but i'm prepared to drop it. What you refer to is Nationalism in a pseudo BNP/echoes of Nazi Germany style. I totally condemn such behaviour. I want nothing to do with the Brexiteers who voted because they are simply xenophobes. What I want to do is re-balance the equation. On the one hand we have the Politically Correct who want to seemingly beat ourselves with sticks for having been the administrators of the biggest and last Empire who thrive on this culture of self flagellation based on distorted Western ideals and on the other, we have abject denial.

Having come from Kenya to the UK, we as a family were subject to prejudice. The same prejudice that you speak of.
Stupid stuff like: "I bet you had servants" and "...did they serve you tea in the afternoon on China teacups?" [chortle, snigger, chortle]. "You'll find living here in the UK a bit difficult now that you have to do everything yourself".
No frikkin idea. We didn't have a washing machine, fridge or TV in Kenya.

You refer naively to having studied 'Africa'. It's a massive continent with a huge diversity of cultures. It would take 10 lifetimes to 'study Africa'.

India: Administrated by 250,000 British (and some educated Indians) ruling over 350 million Indians. There is no way on earth that that number of administrators could possibly rule over so many if there wasn't a huge deal of collaboration and co-operation. Just for example.

DC Smith. Employed by the British Administration to convene a huge area called Arusha which straddles Tanzania and Kenya. His job was to maintain water wells, arbitrate over grazing rights, keep the Masai from killing each other (something they had done since time immemorial), maintain the Hospital generators (built in No mans land between Tanzania and Kenya. The Mau Mau made little advancement in this area as they were a different tribe (Kikuyu) and too far from the Highlands and Nairobi, DC Smith had warned the tribes in this area about Mau Mau and together they policed the area. The Mau Mau operated on the threat of death if anyone spoke, was seen to collaborate or was even employed by whites. Indeed, the death toll numbers are totally wild from a conservative 20,000 to an OTT 300,000. From direct evidence based on relatives and members of my own family, it is estimated that the Mau Mau killed IRO 17,000 fellow Kikuyus and a handful of whites. That paints a picture.

"The uprising was, in David Anderson's words, "a story of atrocity and excess on both sides, a dirty war from which no one emerged with much pride, and certainly no glory."

DC Smith did a great job. He earned the respect of the tribal elders. He was supposed to keep his job through the transition through independence until 1968. The Kenyan Parliament very quickly reneged on many of the transition stipulations; something Jomo Kenyatta himself had negotiated to ensure a smooth hand over. It was Lord Delamere's specific instruction and advice so that Kenya would not descend into chaos and corruption.

DC Smith lost his job in 1966. He returned to Kenya in 1972 having spent the previous 6 years in the UK. He married in 1971 and took his wife to Kenya as she was both curious and he was interested to see how things had panned out since he departed. He set up camp in the middle of Arusha. By 6am there was a gathering outside his tent. Bush Telegraph had worked it's magic and the men who had got there were wondering where he had been all this time. There were multiple problems. Since his departure in 66, not a single Government rep had been to see any of them or attend to the water supplies or carry out anything from census to arbitration. The local hospital in no-man's land was derelict and used as accommodation.
He had to explain 'Independence'. None of the tribal elders liked this 'independence' and wanted DC Smith to stay. None of them knew independence had taken place.

Despite the controversial 'divide and rule', there were positives derided from that policy. The British in this context had paid far more attention to the local populace's needs in this area of Kenya than the Kenyans themselves had, then and since.

In Historical terms, we never learnt from the Mau Mau uprising - reminiscent of what happened later in Rwanda but on a much bigger scale.
The ex colonies from Sierra Leone to Gabon to Nigeria to Mozambique have been riddled with corruption since being given independence. These places may have evolved in pockets but there are examples of parts of what was the Congo, where certain indigenous people have resorted to type, for example:

Charles David Munroe. Requested by the Belgians during the early 60's to attend to a remote Missionary hospital in the old Democratic of Congo. He was an engineer and after a long trip, fixed the Lister Diesel generator for the Hospital and the rest of the complex. On his return, he was kidnapped by the Pygmies. They buried him up to his neck with his hands protruding and amputated them. They made soup out of his hands so that they could extract the 'magic' out. Now he survived the ordeal but at a huge mental and physical cost. He was the Uncle of a local Minister (religious) where I currently live, so this is not anecdotal evidence. It's an example of how backward parts of Africa were.

Modern Kenya is corrupt. The ruling tribe is Kikuyu. The other tribes are under represented in parliament so get pushed aside or simply ignored. I know Luo's. They tend to do well academically (if given the chance) but will almost always seek employment outside of Kenya. It's still tribal.

The 'wonderful' First President of Kenya Jomo Kenyatta, 'freedom fighter' and 'libertarian', was directly linked to the first big wave of wildlife decimation in the 70's. His wife had a stable of Leopard skins and Ivory despite her husband declaring a 'war on poaching' publicly and inviting the Legion Francaise to train anti-poaching squads and catch poachers. In the process of investigating the links, one trail led all the way to his wife. He quickly declared that the process had been a success and that he no longer required the assistance of the LF. Ha ha.

I have a friend who volunteered to help build a Hospital in the Zanzibar islands. The queue for treatment started months before it's completion. She and her fellow medics were treating people under make shift tents to clear the 'encampment'. She wondered why they all headed in the same direction following treatment. They were getting modern medicinal treatment and then promptly going to the Witch Doctor.

Your 'Africa' is quite different to my 'Africa'.

Seem the film 'Blood Diamond'? The theme is TIA - This Is Africa. Until you have experienced living and being there, you will never truly understand TIA, the Africans, their needs, their culture, their 'ways'. The bleeding heart and philosophically, 'sympathy' doesn't get anyone anywhere. The ' Lord's Jesus disciples' still run amok with machete's in Uganda to this day.

Historians like yourself, promote certain groups with having political and intellectual integrity and intention. The reality is that most of Africa during Empire (British, Dutch, Portuguese, German etc) the people's were illiterate and often barbaric; backward. To the PC, that's racist but it's not; it's fact: Female genital mutilation is still widespread as it was then and as it is now. Slavery still exists - most of the slaves (80%) that came out of Africa went to Saudi and the Middle East and were sold by their own kind, BTW.
That is not to say that because they were illiterate and under-educated that we or anyone had a right to abuse them.
In the late 1980's, a common myth in Nairobi was that if you were HIV positive, you needed to sleep with a virgin to rid yourself of the disease. Young girls in Nairobi were being raped for this purpose.

I would say that Africa under colonial rule may not have been democratic (yet another relative term - remember women didn't get a vote until the late 20's in the UK) and the treatment of the occupiers wasn't very good in parts but compared to the corruption, the rise of extremism, the genocide in Rwanda, the HIV and Ebola epidemics, the devastation of natural habitat and the animals that exist there, the so called 'freedom' but lack of actual democracy, the starvation, the population explosion on the back of the inequality and the poverty, the lack of concern for their own peoples (Re.: Ethiopia buying Exocet missiles whilst their people starved whilst the west fed them) etcetera ad nauseum but our rule was tame in comparison to the current plight of the people's in Africa.

Certain peoples suffered the oppression of the Colonials. Africa is now being oppressed and destroyed by greed, corruption, exploitation, genocide, extremism and indifference. What have you learnt as a historian who studied British Rule that may change that?

pblakeney

Ooooffftttt!!!!

joelsim

To be fair, the Kenyans have won the Tour 3 times for us.

joelsim

Stevo 666 wrote:

What happened during the British Empire is cannot be undone, the people involved are long dead and the world the was a very different place then. I cant see what it achieves to bang on about it unless you get some sort of satisfaction from pointless PC posturing.

If anyone disagrees then get onto the Italians about the human rights abuses committed during the Roman empire while you're at it :roll:

^This.

Today we should be more advanced, many of us are. Some not so. Think Republicans and Brexiteers.

finchy

There seems to be the assumption on here that studying history warts and all is some sort of act of mental masochism. We've got to understand what happened in the past, because the past shapes our present. It determines how we are seen in the world and how we should act. Accepting that this country has, in the past, been responsible for certain misdeeds doesn't mean blaming yourself, or hating yourself, it just means that you want to understand what happened, how and why. Anyway, what's the alternative? To avoid the truth? To not bother with history at all?

Rick's right, if we just view the British Empire as some sort of shining beacon of democracy and rule of law, we risk become insular, narrow-minded and ignorant. That doesn't mean that we should see ourselves as worse than any other country - we can also learn about the acts carried out by the Mau Mau, or Genghis Khan or the Romans - and it doesn't mean applying 21st century values to the past, it just means that we avoid living with some sort of fairy tale whitewashed version of our national history. Unfortunately that's what a lot of people, not just in our country but others too, are quite content to live with.

ballysmate

finchy wrote:

There seems to be the assumption on here that studying history warts and all is some sort of act of mental masochism. We've got to understand what happened in the past, because the past shapes our present. It determines how we are seen in the world and how we should act. Accepting that this country has, in the past, been responsible for certain misdeeds doesn't mean blaming yourself, or hating yourself, it just means that you want to understand what happened, how and why. Anyway, what's the alternative? To avoid the truth? To not bother with history at all?

Rick's right, if we just view the British Empire as some sort of shining beacon of democracy and rule of law, we risk become insular, narrow-minded and ignorant. That doesn't mean that we should see ourselves as worse than any other country - we can also learn about the acts carried out by the Mau Mau, or Genghis Khan or the Romans - and it doesn't mean applying 21st century values to the past, it just means that we avoid living with some sort of fairy tale whitewashed version of our national history. Unfortunately that's what a lot of people, not just in our country but others too, are quite content to live with.

It would be absurd to argue that Britain or any other nation always acted in a benevolent manner and wearing a hairshirt to atone for misdeeds years before your birth is equally absurd. As such, I agree with your first paragraph.

Rick wrote

I think that generally there has been an erosion of the value of what a fact is. Whether that's selective picking of facts, whether that is misinterpreting facts, or whether that's things made up to look like facts to support an argument.

But that is what the study of history is, isn't it? Historians read witnesses perceptions of events and further interpret them, sometimes with an agenda in mind. That is why history is constantly being revised.

finchy

Ballysmate wrote:

I think that generally there has been an erosion of the value of what a fact is. Whether that's selective picking of facts, whether that is misinterpreting facts, or whether that's things made up to look like facts to support an argument.

But that is what the study of history is, isn't it? Historians read witnesses perceptions of events and further interpret them, sometimes with an agenda in mind. That is why history is constantly being revised.

Nothing wrong with revising history in light of new evidence and interpretations. I'm not sure I get your point though.

tangled_metal

Mau Mau bad, British colonialism bad (some good too). Personally I feel both sides in the so called Mau Mau uprising were atrocious without any side coming off clean. To condemn one over the other is ridiculous since nothing exists in a vacuum.

British colonialism wasn't happening in a vacuum, it was related and intertwined with other colonisation and indeed local populations too. It's a time almost all living today cannot truly understand. Historians can only look at the past and make pronouncements based on their moral values which are of the day they're in. Those values will be condemned a generation on just like some of Churchill 's and his generation.

Rick and pinno need to realise they're kind of arguing the same thing and the only thing you can truly say those days had dodgy morality and bad things went on. Perpetrated by both sides but it is the morality or acceptance of the era that was wrong. In the future our current level of morality will be condemned.

The way I see it humans are on a journey towards moral enlightenment. Atrocities accepted as necessary once aren't now. In the future our atrocities will no.longer be viewed as.necessary. Humans move on, evolve our species morality with each generation.

BTW mentioning Romans you need to consider propaganda they put out. Vandals are bad, for example. I believe they were just a tribe Romans had difficulty taking over. There's cultures from then that were actually enlightened even by modern standards that had a Roman hatchet job done on their character. Before you get onto Celts and druids (whatever they really were I think isn't known because Romans destroyed them).

So Rick and Pinno get off your high horses and wake up to the fact that those times were different, both sides behaved beyond the pale of this generations standards and this generation is carrying out plenty of its own disgraceful, inhumane acts. Human nature? I hope not. I hope it'll evolve out of us if it is.

pinno

Tangled Metal wrote:

Rick and pinno need to realise they're kind of arguing the same thing and the only thing you can truly say those days had dodgy morality and bad things went on. Perpetrated by both sides but it is the morality or acceptance of the era that was wrong. In the future our current level of morality will be condemned.

I'm disagreeing because I feel that political correctness and moral relativism is distorting History. That is completely different to agreeing that what we did was bad; historically people have acted atrociously to each other but in the light of Syria and the bombing of Yemen by the Saudi's to the total impoverishment of people's by say, Mugabe. There is nothing new under the sun and there is little evidence of advancement in the evolution in human morality except in spoken and philosophical terms.
Technological, agricultural and medicinal advances aside, is there any real and fundamental advancement in human morality/equality?

Tangled Metal wrote:

The way I see it humans are on a journey towards moral enlightenment. Atrocities accepted as necessary once aren't now. In the future our atrocities will no.longer be viewed as.necessary. Humans move on, evolve our species morality with each generation.

Are we? Sorry mate but that's bollox, refer to my previous statement. Humanity requires a different enlightenment to moral advancement. We are destroying the very orb that we rely on for our existence. It's now a fight against greed, exploitation and the destruction of our planet.
Is the wholesale destruction of natural habitat by all and sundry an advancement? No, I think not - it's a devolution. We think we are so clever now but we aren't really.
The rise of ISIS is testament to a devolution in morality and equality. I suspect that providing that we continue to skew history for one reason of another, we will never learn and we never do.

Tangled Metal wrote:

So Rick and Pinno get off your high horses and wake up to the fact that those times were different, both sides behaved beyond the pale of this generations standards and this generation is carrying out plenty of its own disgraceful, inhumane acts. Human nature? I hope not. I hope it'll evolve out of us if it is.

Again, I disagree. I have a right to defend myself against the assumptions created by moral relativism in a culture of PC. I have a right to defend myself as an ex-pat and as the son of a man who witnessed and had to deal with the aftermath of a group of people who have been elevated to the status of 'war veterans' and libertarians. I don't occupy the moral high ground.
As I have said previously, if we can distort the actions of the Mau Mau, we can distort the actions of another 'tribe' or people's. Where does it stop? No one dares question contemporary opinions of the Empire because it would be seen as politically incorrect; a sort of heretical or immoral view, (how dare I challenge contemporary opinion?) and unfortunately there is momentum in that culture which sends people off in the wrong direction

It sickens me to the core and I have been on the receiving end of the prejudice associated with the fact that I was born in a former colony, despite being born well after independence and my parents never benefited financially as a direct result of living in a former colony any more than if we had lived in the UK.

I ask you TM to trawl back over my posts on this subject and tell me where I have sat on a perceived higher moral ground - that 'high horse' you speak of.

rick_chasey

Having come from Kenya to the UK, we as a family were subject to prejudice. The same prejudice that you speak of.
Stupid stuff like: "I bet you had servants" and "...did they serve you tea in the afternoon on China teacups?" [chortle, snigger, chortle]. "You'll find living here in the UK a bit difficult now that you have to do everything yourself".
No frikkin idea. We didn't have a washing machine, fridge or TV in Kenya.

I'm not sure how that's relevant to the UK's colonial rule over Africa, but anyway.

You refer naively to having studied 'Africa'. It's a massive continent with a huge diversity of cultures. It would take 10 lifetimes to 'study Africa'.

You want me to be specific? I studied War crimes & genocide in Africa under European rule from the mid 19th Century up till the outbreak of World War one. Specifically, I took a deep look at how the UK viewed the Belgian rule of the Congo, in light of the general consensus that the Europeans were in Africa to 'civilise' it. The context being the Belgians killed between 10-13 million locals between 1885–1908 (yes, so roughly double those killed in the holocaust), and the severing of hands and feet of the locals by the Belgians was a literal day-to-day occurrence. Have a think about the scale of that murder and brutality for a moment.

Re india - i don't know enough about it to comment. I'm familiar with the fairly brutal rebellion in 1857 where both sides went about murdering civilians, including children, and both sides took a 'no prisoner alive' approach. You can take different views, but a combination of bribery of local leaders and really very brutal violent repression when locals stepped out of line kept most of them in check.

C Smith. Employed by the British Administration to convene a huge area called Arusha which straddles Tanzania and Kenya. His job was to maintain water wells, arbitrate over grazing rights, keep the Masai from killing each other (something they had done since time immemorial), maintain the Hospital generators (built in No mans land between Tanzania and Kenya. The Mau Mau made little advancement in this area as they were a different tribe (Kikuyu) and too far from the Highlands and Nairobi, DC Smith had warned the tribes in this area about Mau Mau and together they policed the area. The Mau Mau operated on the threat of death if anyone spoke, was seen to collaborate or was even employed by whites. Indeed, the death toll numbers are totally wild from a conservative 20,000 to an OTT 300,000. From direct evidence based on relatives and members of my own family, it is estimated that the Mau Mau killed IRO 17,000 fellow Kikuyus and a handful of whites. That paints a picture.

On this.

Firstly, who decided the 'no mans land between Tananzia and Kenya'? Certainly wasn't the locals, since they did not structure their society along the lines of nation states.

The warring between local groups such as the Mau and the Kikuyu (why you keep referring to them as tribes we'll get on to. Why not call them groups - or societies? I'll explain why you don't), was in part a result of forced resettlement of the locals by European forces there. In carving up their land, the Brits created displacement that caused local resentment. That's why there was such fierce resentment towards other rival groups (as there always had been - it's not like Europe was a beacon of peace during that time either, was it?), as well as towards the Europeans there.

If you want a contemporary example of when this still doesn't work is in Iraq, where Churchill hemmed in 3 different religious groups with the slight of his hand over a map, who find themselves in a constant battle for power over the instruments of power and state left there by the British. The debate over bombing Syria as well as Iraq was a debate born purely out of colonial interference - the Europeans drew up those borders for the locals - no surprise the local politics doesn't reflect those borders.

Now, for the record, I don't doubt that the locals were doing awful things to each other. But why is that Europe's business? Is it because Europeans felt superior to the Africans? Yes. I'll get to that later.

DC Smith lost his job in 1966. He returned to Kenya in 1972 having spent the previous 6 years in the UK. He married in 1971 and took his wife to Kenya as she was both curious and he was interested to see how things had panned out since he departed. He set up camp in the middle of Arusha. By 6am there was a gathering outside his tent. Bush Telegraph had worked it's magic and the men who had got there were wondering where he had been all this time. There were multiple problems. Since his departure in 66, not a single Government rep had been to see any of them or attend to the water supplies or carry out anything from census to arbitration. The local hospital in no-man's land was derelict and used as accommodation.
He had to explain 'Independence'. None of the tribal elders liked this 'independence' and wanted DC Smith to stay. None of them knew independence had taken place.

Again, see above. The instruments of power and governance the Europeans forced onto the locals (and let's be clear, it was forced, since rebellion was met with brutal violence, as discussed earlier) was not appropriate. You can't destroy the existing power structures, replace them with ones inappropriate to govern the locals, and then hand it over to the locals and go 'go on then - get on with it!'. If you want a more recent example, look at Iraq post UK/US invasion - remove the existing power structure, create some one that won't work, and hand it over.

In Historical terms, we never learnt from the Mau Mau uprising - reminiscent of what happened later in Rwanda but on a much bigger scale

You mentioned Rwanda. Rwanda is an interesting case. Did you know that the difference between the Huti and the Tutsis was an entirely arbitrary creation of the Belgians during their colonial rule? The Belgians felt is expedient to have a ruling class, so created an arbitrary distinction, and concentrated hands in one of the local groups, the Tutsis, and made all others Hutu's - who they took land from and handed over to the Tutsis. They even introduced Identity cards to help with the distinction.

The Belgians literally created the two groups and put all the power in the hands of one (a small minority) at the expense of the other.

Couple that with the decade and a half of genocide (remember, 10-13 million dead), and the routine severing of hands by the Europeans at the turn of the century, means that an entire generation was brought up under extreme violence. Since that era, the place has been unstable.

Charles David Munroe. Requested by the Belgians during the early 60's to attend to a remote Missionary hospital in the old Democratic of Congo. He was an engineer and after a long trip, fixed the Lister Diesel generator for the Hospital and the rest of the complex. On his return, he was kidnapped by the Pygmies. They buried him up to his neck with his hands protruding and amputated them.

So in the context of the above, this does not come as a surprise. Severing of the hands of locals by Europeans was extremely common in the Congo. Nasty for Charles? Absolutely. Terrible. But so it was for the 100,000s who had it done to them. And, if we're comparing scales here... The difference is, the one white guy gets a fair bit more coverage than the thousands of local Africans.

Historians like yourself, promote certain groups with having political and intellectual integrity and intention. The reality is that most of Africa during Empire (British, Dutch, Portuguese, German etc) the people's were illiterate and often barbaric; backward. To the PC, that's racist but it's not; it's fact:

Now we get to the meat and wine of my study. This comment frames everything else you've said. For anyone else who has the patience to have gotten this far, you need to understand that this comment is racist. And by racist, i mean, thinks Europeans are superior to Africans - not that whoever says this is going to go out of his way to hurt people of other ethnicity. but I mean it in a literal sense.

Wikipedia has a nice entry on this. One of my study mates at the time helped write bits of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Africa

This little line is useful to explain away Pinno's BS.

Racism in Africa is multi-faceted and dates back several centuries. It is a phenomenon that may have been strengthened by European colonialism, under which boundaries were drawn that did not take into consideration the different peoples dwelling within the newly formed provinces. The boundaries were little changed when former European colonies gained independence. As a consequence, some African nations have been plagued with inner conflicts, racist attitudes and tribal warfare.

.

But where it gets interesting is this bit:

Racism and colonization were interrelated.[2] Racism was used to justify colonialism, and it resulted in the conquest of African nations.[3] The colonists believed that Africans had to move from their "primitive" existence to a modern European one. Africans were seen as backward mainly due to the racist ideas of Social Darwinism.[2] The relationship between the colonized and colonizer was mediated by race and a system of racism that disadvantaged Blacks, Asians and Arabs.

Racism and European Colonial rule are inextricably and syncretically linked. A bit of epistemology. To even be able to conceive the concept of one's own race (White Europeans), ruling over another (non-White Africans), you have to think your race is in someway superior. That is, by definition, racist. What occurs in the imperial African example, is Europeans turn up with their wealth & industrialised weapons, guns etc, and start to dominate the locals. That process of domination only further reinforces that concept of one being better than the other.

Jean Paul Satre is good on this: https://www.marxists.org/reference/arch ... lgeria.htm

By there mere act of calling those local to Africa 'barbaric' (and so by definition, assuming the Europeans therefore are not) when we've spent the last 3 days highlighting the atrocities of the British & Europeans during various episodes of the Empire, from cutting ears off, to mass execution and systematic severing of hands, is a curious one, isn't it Pinno?

Just because the Europeans at the time thought they were doing the right thing, doesn't meant they were doing the right thing. I'm sure the SS thought the same, I'm sure Stalin thought the same.

The mess the Middle East is in now is as a direct consequence of European colonialism. Time and again, the issues that flare up have their roots deep in the colonial past.

Now - if you still disagree, and no doubt you will, then I urge to to actually go and do some reading. The reason this is the recognised historical view amongst professional historians, is that it has extremely strong intellectual underpinings. What I found when I studied it was that is quite difficult to get your head around, but when you do, it's extremely convincing.

I would say that unless you actually understand the theory behind the view that by its very nature, European colonial rule of Africa and the middle east had to be racist in order for it to occur, you're not in a position to comment if it's right or not. If you're interested, I'll PM you a reading list. That's how I did it - 4 months of reading. I started out saying things like you. I recited all the facts I'd learned, blah bah. But once I'd read those books, I realised how dumb I really sounded. Wiki has a summary of the school of thought, but it's patchy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism


Anyway, I've given this more effort and thought than I intended to, but it's always fun to revisit what you've studied. Can't believe it's 7 years ago since I finished.

But yeah, I won't be responding anymore, so you can have the last word if you want.

pinno

tribe
trʌɪb/Submit
noun
1.
a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognized leader.
"indigenous Indian tribes"

Nothing racist about using the term 'tribe'. Is it that the West do not recognise the significance of the social and cultural differences between people's, however you name them, the reason why we make continual f*ck ups i'e: Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan?

Using the word 'tribe' is now non PC?! FFS.

Re.: Belgians, I get your point. However, Charles Munroe in the early 60's went to do an important job which ultimately was for the benefit of the people attending the hospital - way after the genocide (1885 to 1908). I was simply describing how certain people's resorted to type.

In the absence of colonials, Africa is a complete mess. One may blame colonisation for the mess they are in but only to a certain extent; there must be a point where they take responsibility for their actions. The divisions between people's either by enforcement or by economics is as stark as it was then - probably more so, due to the massive population explosion.
22,000 murders a year in South Africa. Apartheid by colour has been replaced by a different sort of division - by economics, by weighted political representation and bias. South Africa never had that level of violence during Apartheid and if there was, the world would be standing up shouting from the roof tops. Africa is littered with dictators and despots.
I'm underlining the following in the hope that you choose not to ignore it, just like the last time I am not saying that Apartheid was good in any shape or form but personally, one apartheid has been replaced with another type of apartheid but seemingly inexplicably acceptable to the eyes of the West.
When native people's abuse each other and commit atrocities, is that okay because we haven't got a white oppressor and a black victim? No it isn't, there is no difference; its still oppression, it's just not being metered out by outsiders.
Has anyone attempted to intervene in Zimbabwe? No. Did anyone intervene in Rwanda? No. When Idi Amin was running rampant? No. Did anyone intervene when Ethiopia was having an all out civil war? No. In Sudan? No.
Is it being studied to the nth degree like our past? No. For all the knowledge of the past, we allow atrocities to continue to occur - in the future, will we look at this ear as the 'Era of indifference'?

Philosophically, where is mankind now in relation to how we treat each other in the light of the world having being colonised and slaughtered in the ages of Empire from the Roman Empire to the Jesuits to the Belgians? Are we really that more advanced morally?

In any event and in any circumstances, I will never get you, Rick Chasey, to see past the Political Correctness pervading your interpretation of history providing you see yourself as Morally superior.

You withdrew and made no mention of my request to have a discussion on moral relativity.

Here's a book for you:

J Rachel's, The Elements of Moral Philosophy

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elements-Moral ... 0078038243

Perhaps then you'll take a less moralistic view and remove some of the subjectivity and emotive terms from the stuff you have written but I doubt it. The atrocities of the past seem to step on your moral sensitivities despite the fact that you or I had nothing to do with them. They are terrible but shouting about them doesn't make you morally superior.
We live in a little but slightly over populated Island off the coast of Europe - most of us benign and accommodating, that puts our previous Empire into context.
Are you going to be protesting at the next Commonwealth Games?
Did I ever hold up the Empire as a 'beacon of democracy'? No.

joe2008

It's been a good read, thanks Rick and Pinno.

pinno

joe2008 wrote:

It's been a good read, thanks Rick and Pinno.

You're welcome but I am going to take this particular hat off and revert back to spouting bollox. Maybe an addition to the 'Fundamentals of nasal excavation whilst partaking in Velocipedal activities (Article 2)'.

joe2008

Pinno wrote:

joe2008 wrote:

It's been a good read, thanks Rick and Pinno.

You're welcome but I am going to take this particular hat off and revert back to spouting bollox. Maybe an addition to the 'Fundamentals of nasal excavation whilst partaking in Velocipedal activities (Article 2)'.

haha, I might have to read up on some African history now, to fill the gap

mamba80

Please dont stop Pinno or Rick, this is great reading, esp as i ve been involved in some of these countries, i just couldnt compete with either of your passions on this subject, though at the moment, more Rick than Pinno... sorry.

Makes a change from pointless shitte on labour party blah blah

pinno

joe2008 wrote:

Pinno wrote:

joe2008 wrote:

It's been a good read, thanks Rick and Pinno.

You're welcome but I am going to take this particular hat off and revert back to spouting bollox. Maybe an addition to the 'Fundamentals of nasal excavation whilst partaking in Velocipedal activities (Article 2)'.

haha, I might have to read up on some African history now, to fill the gap

I recommend the following but Rick might not approve:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Battle-Bundu-F ... +the+bundu

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Permanent-Way- ... manent+way

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Age-Empire-187 ... +of+empire

Great film:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gods-Must-Craz ... t+be+crazy

Laurens Van Der Post wrote a lot about Africa. From the plight of the Bushmen - persecuted and killed like dogs by all races, all tribes. He wrote about the harmonious relationship between the Dutch settlers and indigenous tribes before it was blown to shreds first by the British and then finally by the Angola war. The Americans funded opposing sides to South Africa in Angola and Namibia fuelling bloody civil war and using them as expendable in a big political game, not because they were against Apartheid (although it was a rather convenient political lever by a very hypocritical country considering segregation laws in America didn't end until 1969(?)) but because they saw South Africa as an economic threat.
No one says 'The Americans shouldn't be in America because it doesn't belong to them' yet some of the first Dutch settlers in Africa go as far back as the late 1600's (my father's forefathers) and people still say '...because it's their's'. It's a strange double standard and a non-acceptance of the fact that colonisation on one form or another has been going on since time immemorial.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Off-Voortrekke ... ortrekkers

The Portuguese had settlements all the way back in the 1420's.
The slave trade dates back to the Romans and there were and still are forms of slavery internally.
Africa and the peoples within it have been used and abused for centuries, we happened to be amongst the last colonisers but at the end of a very long and bloody string. Every one is culpable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_i ... ary_Africa