US man killed by endangered tribe in india

rick_chasey

TheBigBean wrote:

My point was that there was a difference between two groups of people and it was stirred up quite considerably by colonial powers. Pretending that the difference was entirely created by colonial powers is considered revisionism.
.

So, my understanding from the literature then and from historian's work on it, is that, though there was some definition between the groups, on a day-to-day level, they were more or less impossible to tell. Both groups were fairly well integrated - kids from all sides went to schools together etc.

A useful summary is here

This presentation, based on documentation by historians on the development of pre-colonial Rwanda, points in different directions. On the one hand, it indicates an "ethnic" diversity based partly on occupational status. partly on a patronlclient relationship, but also on HutuITutsi ancestry. On the other hand, it is said that until written descriptions by the first European travellers, people identified themselves according to clan rather than to ethnic affiliation, and that the description of so-called ethnic groups was laid down by those travellers

https://www.oecd.org/derec/unitedstates/50189653.pdf page 22 & 23 summarise the rest quite well.


So yes, you're right. I don't think it necessarily counters the idea that Belgian meddling was fairly critical in laying the foundation for the genocide, right? And that it was their instance on a racial identity, previously not really used as an identifier, and the associated inherited superiority/inferiority that contributed a lot.

rick_chasey

rjsterry wrote:

mfin wrote:

It seems a great majority of loads of these pages is born out of Rick morphing it into a thread for his own subject of interest. I don't know, perhaps psychologically it fills a need for him, dunno.

Can we get back to religious nutjobs please.

Yes, let's get back to your pet subject, mfin

TBF to RC he hasn't said that anyone should feel any personally responsibility for the various European empires. I think he's just arguing for awareness of how fundamentally they have shaped the world. As for academic jargon, inevitably academics want to be more detailed and precise in cataloguing and describing things, so will need to invent new names for to differentiate these things. If your area is the history of empires, imperialism isn't good enough; you need six different types of imperialism. And then of course there is the tendency of groups (tribes?) to develop jargon to differentiate themselves from outsiders .

Yeah it happened a long time ago - why would anyone be personally responsible?

I DO think that that awareness of what colonialism actually was for the colonised is missing in general rhetoric.

Though when Brexiters sing highly about how wonderful the empire is and in the next breath complain loudly that a bad deal will turn the UK into a colony like its some awful thing, they do rather lack a certain self awarness, but then that's hardly the most obvious example of that....

pinno

Rick Chasey wrote:

So here you wrote

To re write the whole of Empire with the same moral brush is highly erroneous.
Just like the slave trade - it was wholly barbaric and unethical but that perspective is the modern perspective, not the perspective during the slave trade

So, if we move beyond the fact plenty of contemporaries did think it unethical, here you say that from your perspective, the slave trade was barbaric, but probably not from the contempories’ perspective who were doing at the time. No. Way.!

Yet, as per your first quote, you think casting a current moral view on it is spurious. But you just have by calling it barbaric.

You missed my point. Should we feel guilty about having had an Empire?
Should we feel guilty about the sins of our predecessors?
Why are we not allowed to use the word tribe when in it's classical definition has no derogatory reference?
Why do you constantly bang on about how we forced x to do y when it wasn't always like that? That's a very inaccurate and quite frankly immature view point.
How did only 250,00 people manage to run a country of 390m (India)? It would be totally impossible to rule over 390m people with only 250,000 if that relationship was as coercive as you present.
How come Lord Delamere was given staff of over 200 people to compile a transition document to independence in Kenya (2 whole volumes, taking over 2 years to compile) which detailed everything from train time tables, shipping procedures for perishable goods to watering hole and diesel generator maintenance and every single facet of Kenyan life if the British administration was that oppressive?
Surely they would not have bothered given your opinion. In fact, the administrative cost of British 'Divide and rule' Empire started to cost more than we took from it in the end.
The attention afforded to the different people's in Kenya by the British far exceeded the attention given to those indigenous peoples by the Kenyan government since independence.

For example:

District Commissioner Smith resided over Arusha. He was responsible for arbitration between tribes, grazing lands, maintaining watering holes, maintaining the border hospital and supply of goods to that hospital etc etc.
DC Smith was supposed to be in that role after independence after being agreed prior and as part of the agreement (amongst a myriad of other posts), until 1968 to assist in the transition. Less than 2 years into independence - 1964, the Kenyan government went back on their promises and sacked all of the pre agreed positions.
DC Smith left for England and got married. His wife pressed him to take her to where he once worked and in 1972 he went back to Kenya, travelled to Arusha and set up camp.
In the morning (by magic or 'Bush Telegraph'), a gaggle of tribal elders were outside of his tent.
They were eager to talk to him as there were many disputes and problems to resolve.
Not a single Kenyan official in any capacity had visited them since 1964.
DC Smith had to explain independence. They didn't like this 'independence'. They wanted DC Smith to return.
I know many examples like this. If you roll out examples like the one given across the empire, then you potentially paint a somewhat different picture of what empire was really like.

The slave trade was abolished in 1833 in the UK. Long before our Empire was at it's peak.

Why do you only present Empire as the picture of them the abused and we the abusers, 'forcing them to do what we wanted them to do', 'beaten into submission'? Such emotive prose indicates an inner fear, a paranoia perhaps and unfortunately paints a very one dimensional, black and white perspective.
You have to admit, that's unrealistic and naive.

rjsterry

Rick Chasey wrote:

...though there was some definition between the groups, on a day-to-day level, they were more or less impossible to tell. Both groups were fairly well integrated - kids from all sides went to schools together etc...

There's a short history of the world. You could have been writing about Balkans, or the formation of Israel.

robert88

It's interesting to compare the way modern China operates in places like Kenya compared to the British.

Also the way in which the British automotive sector failed dismally until Japanese management came along.

I think the British Empire went bad at the time of the Indian Mutiny and we started feeling morally superior. General Gordon was an example of a bad Imperialist.

Perhaps the world changed and we didn't change fast enough to keep up.

Lewis Carroll summed it up:

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!

pinno

Robert88 wrote:

It's interesting to compare the way modern China operates in places like Kenya compared to the British.

Yes, very interesting.

The Chinese promised x. y and z to the Kenyans in return for the hard woods of the Chula Hills jungle. Well, what was remaining of it. The forest was totally decimated and none of the promises were delivered.
The main destination of Ivory is China. The main destination of Rhino horn is the far east. The backdrop of poverty and inequality is that officials can be bribed, poachers can be paid, etc.

We may bang on eternally about the implications of Empire - and what you said is true but what has replaced empire has repeatedly been far more oppressive and insidious.
What followed has often been corruption, greed, exploding populations and with the unsustainable populations; unbalanced distribution of wealth and poverty.

One could argue that the demise of the British Empire also heralded the rise in conflict globally and the beginning of the East/West split. Pax Britannica it was, even if it required domination of certain people's.

The British did not slaughter people wholesale like the Belgians or other colonisers. We were no angels but I will make no apology for Empire. In fact, those countries in the Commonwealth benefit from a common link, patronage by the Queen and in so doing, we didn't simply discard our links to former colonies as if they became surplus or as if they meant nothing but procurement of resources or extension of power through territory.

rjsterry

Pinno wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

So here you wrote

To re write the whole of Empire with the same moral brush is highly erroneous.
Just like the slave trade - it was wholly barbaric and unethical but that perspective is the modern perspective, not the perspective during the slave trade

So, if we move beyond the fact plenty of contemporaries did think it unethical, here you say that from your perspective, the slave trade was barbaric, but probably not from the contempories’ perspective who were doing at the time. No. Way.!

Yet, as per your first quote, you think casting a current moral view on it is spurious. But you just have by calling it barbaric.

You missed my point. Should we feel guilty about having had an Empire?
Should we feel guilty about the sins of our predecessors?

Nobody said anything about guilt. And nobody has argued that absolutely everything about the European empires (RC isn't just talking about Britain) was unremittingly grim for those affected. But western Europe wouldn't be what it is without them. The various empires were exercises in exploitation and international competition for access to resources with little consideration of the effects on local populations beyond whether they might interrupt supply. China continues to do the same today albeit with more subtle techniques and a bit less conquest.

To bring it back to the missionary, a lot of pseudo-scientific and religious rhetoric was used to justify the actions of these empires* and I think RC is just arguing that, though general attitudes to those empires have changed, those earlier justifications still affect our view of the world and it's useful to have an awareness of that.

*the religious and commercial motivations often pulled in different directions, even as far back as the Crusades. Money always trumped God.

pinno

Yeah but Rick think's that the next holocaust is just around the corner and this becomes underlined when people don't learn from History. Any deviation from absolute clarity, terms of reference, subconscious racism all serves to reinforce the impending fact.
It becomes a matter of extreme importance that we understand fully and we take on board the fact that if we maintain the current path, history will be repeated and he has even concluded that the Empire and the apparent intrinsic attitudes of Superiority lead to the second world war and Genocide.
Hence his attitude towards Empire.

This is quite an extra-ordinary conclusion. I will not pander to the paranoia. If he is presenting History in that vein, using evidence to underline the supposition, then the motive for pulling people up for the use of tribe for example, is now clear (but erroneous). Use of prose like 'beaten into submission' is highly emotive but telling because it re-affirms my belief that he is paranoid and hell bent on making sure that the brethren of this forum (or anyone that appears the slightest bit prejudicial) may be complicit in the next holocaust for their inaction and refusal to accept and fully understand the past which then germinates the seeds of the next...

You know where i'm going.

slowmart

Pinno, does that mean you think a certain forum brother exhibits the same behaviours and superiority complex over the pre state cake community or simply that the individual is human, like the rest of us and wants to push his own agenda, rather than accept our nature is our path?

robert88

Pinno wrote:

Robert88 wrote:

It's interesting to compare the way modern China operates in places like Kenya compared to the British.

Yes, very interesting.

The Chinese promised x. y and z to the Kenyans in return for the hard woods of the Chula Hills jungle. Well, what was remaining of it. The forest was totally decimated and none of the promises were delivered.
The main destination of Ivory is China. The main destination of Rhino horn is the far east. The backdrop of poverty and inequality is that officials can be bribed, poachers can be paid, etc.

We may bang on eternally about the implications of Empire - and what you said is true but what has replaced empire has repeatedly been far more oppressive and insidious.
What followed has often been corruption, greed, exploding populations and with the unsustainable populations; unbalanced distribution of wealth and poverty.

One could argue that the demise of the British Empire also heralded the rise in conflict globally and the beginning of the East/West split. Pax Britannica it was, even if it required domination of certain people's.

The British did not slaughter people wholesale like the Belgians or other colonisers. We were no angels but I will make no apology for Empire. In fact, those countries in the Commonwealth benefit from a common link, patronage by the Queen and in so doing, we didn't simply discard our links to former colonies as if they became surplus or as if they meant nothing but procurement of resources or extension of power through territory.

I am no defender of Chinese practices, nor do I universally condemn them. My visit to Kenya revealed that the Chinese were heavy handed and whilst they bring good they also destroy. But that's not unusual.

What the British Empire does show is that it is a very dangerous game to exercise dominance over other countries whether or not your intentions are benign. Once you set yourself up in that way you are open to criticism, fair or otherwise. The EU, among other things, is meant as an antidote to the practice of empire-building and hegemony.

rick_chasey

Pinno wrote:

Yeah but Rick think's that the next holocaust is just around the corner and this becomes underlined when people don't learn from History. Any deviation from absolute clarity, terms of reference, subconscious racism all serves to reinforce the impending fact.
It becomes a matter of extreme importance that we understand fully and we take on board the fact that if we maintain the current path, history will be repeated and he has even concluded that the Empire and the apparent intrinsic attitudes of Superiority lead to the second world war and Genocide.
Hence his attitude towards Empire.

This is quite an extra-ordinary conclusion. I will not pander to the paranoia. If he is presenting History in that vein, using evidence to underline the supposition, then the motive for pulling people up for the use of tribe for example, is now clear (but erroneous). Use of prose like 'beaten into submission' is highly emotive but telling because it re-affirms my belief that he is paranoid and hell bent on making sure that the brethren of this forum (or anyone that appears the slightest bit prejudicial) may be complicit in the next holocaust for their inaction and refusal to accept and fully understand the past which then germinates the seeds of the next...

You know where i'm going.

Mate I think you’re letting your imagination run wild.

Honestly, I don’t give you that much thought and I’d recommend doing the same for me.

I get the whole Africa thing feels personal since you’ve got roots down there, but I’m not having a go.

I just think people who are ‘proud’ of the empire, and I don’t really have any views if you are or not, are really not thinking about what it really entailed.

pinno

Slowmart wrote:

Pinno, does that mean you think a certain forum brother exhibits the same behaviours and superiority complex over the pre state cake community or simply that the individual is human, like the rest of us and wants to push his own agenda, rather than accept our nature is our path?

[Insert like icon]

TheBigBean

Rick Chasey wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

My point was that there was a difference between two groups of people and it was stirred up quite considerably by colonial powers. Pretending that the difference was entirely created by colonial powers is considered revisionism.
.

So, my understanding from the literature then and from historian's work on it, is that, though there was some definition between the groups, on a day-to-day level, they were more or less impossible to tell. Both groups were fairly well integrated - kids from all sides went to schools together etc.

A useful summary is here

This presentation, based on documentation by historians on the development of pre-colonial Rwanda, points in different directions. On the one hand, it indicates an "ethnic" diversity based partly on occupational status. partly on a patronlclient relationship, but also on HutuITutsi ancestry. On the other hand, it is said that until written descriptions by the first European travellers, people identified themselves according to clan rather than to ethnic affiliation, and that the description of so-called ethnic groups was laid down by those travellers

https://www.oecd.org/derec/unitedstates/50189653.pdf page 22 & 23 summarise the rest quite well.


So yes, you're right. I don't think it necessarily counters the idea that Belgian meddling was fairly critical in laying the foundation for the genocide, right? And that it was their instance on a racial identity, previously not really used as an identifier, and the associated inherited superiority/inferiority that contributed a lot.

Belgium meddling clearly had an impact, but that shouldn't absolve those yielding machetes of blame. I don't think you are saying it does, but I think it is important to make that point.

To persuade me that the creation of racism by colonialism was common (beyond colonials vs locals) I would probably need more examples. I think in most instances "divide and conquer" relied upon existing differences rather than arbitrary fabrication of new ones.

In India, the British fully adopted the Indian caste system, because it fitted nicely with the UK's class system, but riots between hindus and muslims were bad for business, so not tolerated as much.

TheBigBean

Rick Chasey wrote:

I just think people who are ‘proud’ of the empire, and I don’t really have any views if you are or not, are really not thinking about what it really entailed.

I also find this view point weird, because it had nothing to do with them as it largely happened years ago.

I think there is a modern nationalist trend though which goes the other way and assumes there were no positive impacts of the empire, and that anything bad today can be blamed on years of occupation. Indian nationalists are a prime example of this.

robert88

A Patriot is someone who loves his country; a Nationalist is someone who hates every one else.

rick_chasey

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

I just think people who are ‘proud’ of the empire, and I don’t really have any views if you are or not, are really not thinking about what it really entailed.

I also find this view point weird, because it had nothing to do with them as it largely happened years ago.

I think there is a modern nationalist trend though which goes the other way and assumes there were no positive impacts of the empire, and that anything bad today can be blamed on years of occupation. Indian nationalists are a prime example of this.

Indian nationalists you say....*ahem*

TheBigBean

Rick Chasey wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

I just think people who are ‘proud’ of the empire, and I don’t really have any views if you are or not, are really not thinking about what it really entailed.

I also find this view point weird, because it had nothing to do with them as it largely happened years ago.

I think there is a modern nationalist trend though which goes the other way and assumes there were no positive impacts of the empire, and that anything bad today can be blamed on years of occupation. Indian nationalists are a prime example of this.

Indian nationalists you say....*ahem*

You'll need to expand on that

rick_chasey

BB - basically the experience of colonialism helps frame it in that way. As colonialism takes hold you see more and more racial undertones and eventually overtones, culminating in the “white man’s burden” in the late 19th century/early 20th.

This coincides with some of the most extreme attrocities caused by colonial powers - Congo, Nambibia, & plenty of others.

The experience of colonialism is part of the process.

rick_chasey

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

I just think people who are ‘proud’ of the empire, and I don’t really have any views if you are or not, are really not thinking about what it really entailed.

I also find this view point weird, because it had nothing to do with them as it largely happened years ago.

I think there is a modern nationalist trend though which goes the other way and assumes there were no positive impacts of the empire, and that anything bad today can be blamed on years of occupation. Indian nationalists are a prime example of this.

Indian nationalists you say....*ahem*

You'll need to expand on that

Well who originally defined the Indian “nation”?

Arguably an Indian nationalist is the other side of the same coin, intentionally or not.

TheBigBean

Rick Chasey wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

I just think people who are ‘proud’ of the empire, and I don’t really have any views if you are or not, are really not thinking about what it really entailed.

I also find this view point weird, because it had nothing to do with them as it largely happened years ago.

I think there is a modern nationalist trend though which goes the other way and assumes there were no positive impacts of the empire, and that anything bad today can be blamed on years of occupation. Indian nationalists are a prime example of this.

Indian nationalists you say....*ahem*

You'll need to expand on that

Well who originally defined the Indian “nation”?

Arguably an Indian nationalist is the other side of the same coin, intentionally or not.

Yes, India was a colonial creation, so the modern day nationalism is the sort of thing you were referring to before. Note that I said there are many examples in Asia (India being the most obvious) and South America, but I haven't come across any in Africa.

I don't really follow Indian politics any more, but the impression I get is that the nationalists are mainly north Indian Hindus, so exclude Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Christians, South Indians, Himalayan Indians (including Tibetan refugees) and Nort-Eastern Indians. Not very inclusive in other words.

rick_chasey

No and I don't know much about India either tbh.

rjsterry

No need to go so far afield. We have our own nationalists in Wales, Scotland and NI.

Was going to say, do you mean Hindu nationalists.

TheBigBean

rjsterry wrote:

No need to go so far afield. We have our own nationalists in Wales, Scotland and NI.

A guy in India once asked me to explain the NI conflict. He simply couldn't understand how educated people could be fighting like they were. He didn't think it could be compared to Kashmir where the literacy rate was 30% or so.

bompington

Brendan O'Neill, of course, has a different take on it:

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/11/it-is-time-we-civilised-the-sentinelese-people/

robert88

One of the consequences of Empire was the infamous Sykes Picot agreement whereby we(and the French) secretly created the modern Middle East back in 1916.

Over a hundred years later it is still causing war and bloodshed, including the creation and rise of ISIS.

rick_chasey

bompington wrote:

Brendan O'Neill, of course, has a different take on it:

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/11/it-is-time-we-civilised-the-sentinelese-people/

He is rather awful. Rather struggle to take anything he says seriously other than as an apologist for the fairly extreme right wing.

TheBigBean

bompington wrote:

Brendan O'Neill, of course, has a different take on it:

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/11/it-is-time-we-civilised-the-sentinelese-people/

We could find ways to try to encourage the Sentinelese people, and the world’s other lost tribes, to exchange their unforgiving way of life for the more comfortable, knowledgable existences the rest of us enjoy. This may take a very long time, more than a generation perhaps, because it would need to be done patiently, carefully, and with an eye for informing the Sentinelese people of the world beyond their shores, rather than pressuring them or humiliating them in any way. But it is worth trying, surely?

The Indian government tried this for a number of years by leaving gifts on the beach.

TheBigBean

Rick Chasey wrote:

No and I don't know much about India either tbh.

I would have thought that India was quite an important part of any discussion on colonialism. The scramble for Africa was only a small part of it.

rick_chasey

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

No and I don't know much about India either tbh.

I would have thought that India was quite an important part of any discussion on colonialism. The scramble for Africa was only a small part of it.

Sure, but you pick your battles, and my focus was on Africa. It's an enormous topic.

tangled_metal

Civilization them? Jeez that guy is an idiot.

What does the civilised world have that is so great? Water, food, shelter, social cohesion? Well I'm sorry but that last one really is lacking in the civilised world but it seems to me there's a society on that island looking out for itself. They're pretty much working together to keep the civilised world out.

There's people in the civilised world trying to get back to a simple life of subsistence in the wilderness. Away from the civilised world.

There's a certain prejudice about assuming subsistence lifestyle is a backwards or inferior life. Making everything you need it of what is around you and feeding yourself from your land and coastline isn't inferior if that's your choice. Afterall what do you really need? IMHO food, water, shelter and company of those in your circle (friends, family, etc) pretty much fulfills the essential requirements.

As for knowledge? Well they know how to survive and probably survive well in their environment. Possibly better than I would if I lived in a big city with all that civilization.

I only skim read that opinion piece but it made my blood boil. What a grade A to$$er! Who gave him a job writing that rubbish?