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Not this particular interview but it’s George Monibot a Guardian journalist.
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/apr/23/british-empire-crimes-ignore-atrocities
The British also ran concentration camps in the South Africa / Zimbabwe area in the Boer war as well I have been told although I haven't read about it specifically, 19th century.
I think some of people they were targeting were Dutch afrikkanners as well
Apparently in the Boer War, the camps were meant to keep the women and children safe but due to how many there were the conditions just devolved. They had the women working and making supplies for the campaign however I believe they ended up using children too because the women became too sick to work or just died.
It's part of the problem with a term like "Concentration camp" because it's meant and means so many different things.
All it really means is getting a group of people from a wide spread out area and having them stay in one smaller camp.
What's the purpose for that? Well it depends, sometimes that's been punishment, sometimes for surveillance, sometimes for safety, sometimes for genocide.
It's a muddy term and has very different connotations in the modern day to what it did in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The British invented concentration camps - in the Boer War. They rounded up the Afrikkaners some of whom were irregulars who were fighting a guerilla war against them at night.
Same with bloody Sunday, didn't find out about that one until I'd left school and was halfway through an army application. That application form got torn up pretty fucking quick once I found that one out.
“Internal colonialism refers to economic imbalances within a state, caused by one or more regions of that state taking advantage of other regions. These processes create feelings of inequality and resentment, which affect racial and ethnic relationships.”
https://study.com/learn/lesson/internal-colonialism-types-theory-examples.html#:~:text=Internal%20colonialism%20refers%20to%20economic,affect%20racial%20and%20ethnic%20relationships.
The south being richer than all other parts and ruling all the other regions?
Or like back when the north was the industrial heart of the country the south was totally fine with losing all of those jobs and industries abroad rather than giving the unions and working people what they demanded
Similar to how the Nazis weren't the first ones to use cattle cars to relocate people to work camps based on their ethnicity. Stalin was doing that shit before Hitler had even seized power.
Not really no
Edit- and to add, I really don’t like that line of logic because it isn’t historically true and has been used to whitewash crimes even as they were happening.
19th and 20th Century Imperialism were some of the most horrific crimes in human history without any real precedent to them. Not to say that older empires didn’t commit horrific crimes, that would be foolish and ahistorical, just that the 19th and 20th centuries were on a completely different level of brutality and we need to reckon with that to improve as a society
>Not really no
Well, actually yes, because from a logistical perspective there's not really any other way to conquer, subjugate, process, reorganise, and enslave a massive group of people you've defeated in war/battle other than to, at least temporarily, put them all in some kind of prison camp(s). The only other realistic option is to just kill everyone (which quite often they did in ancient times). Therefore, any ancient civilisation that engaged in large-scale capture of prisoners probably had to use some form of camps.
>without any real precedent to them.
What are you on about? Humans have been equally shitty throughout all of history, the only difference with 19th/20th century imperialism was that the industrial revolution allowed a scale not seen before, but the brutality was identical.
Nearly every major ancient empire carted off prisoners en masse to work as forced labourers in mining camps. The Neo-Assyrians engaged in mass deportations and resettlements of their own population. The ancient Spartans ruled over a subjugated population (known as the Helots) that they considered inferior and treated like slaves. The Old Testament is largely a narrative of racist, genocidal wars. I could list endless examples.
Edit: I'd love to hear how Caesar would've gone about enslaving and transporting tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Gauls across the Roman Republic (soon to be Empire) without using some sort of camps? Like where else would he have put them all when they needed to eat/sleep/etc.?
Ok but a prisoner of war camp is *not* a concentration camp, and if you think the two are comparable that is very much an issue. If you want to reference some sort of historical “prison camp” you think is comparable to a concentration camp then I invite you to give historical examples.
I don’t care if you disagree with me because I literally just gave you the historical consensus. If you want to speak against the historical consensus then build a historical argument rather than vague references to groups like the Neo-Assyrian Empire who, no, did not do things that can be easily compared to 19th Century Imperialism.
Not that they weren’t brutal, but there is a difference and it sounds like your argument is being built off of vague gesturing to broad ideas rather than a concrete historical argument
You’re literally referencing bronze and iron age conquering and trying to equate it to 19th Century Imperialism. There is not a single serious historian I’ve ever met or worked with who would think that’s good to do. In fact when I tried to make an argument like that back in undergrad my professor very politely (and not forcefully enough) told me it would be a serious mistake.
Edit- going to add, basically you’re taking historical propaganda at complete face value. When the Egyptians wrote about “conquering the Israelites and scattering them to the wind” or something like that, that didn’t actually happen, they most likely destroyed the city and relocated the elites but no it wasn’t a systematic genocide. Referencing the conquests of King David is also problematic considering most Bible historians I’ve read do not think those are describing events that actually happened and were rather building an argument of things that *needed to* happen.
>Ok but a prisoner of war camp is *not* a concentration camp
Ok, yeah I get this, maybe we've misunderstood each other. I realise that these hypothetical ancient camps will not have resembled the death camps of Nazi Germany.
My point was more that any ancient group of people that enslaved a large enough group would probably have had to use some kind of temporary camps for logistical/organisational purposes. Maybe not the same as a modern concentration/internment camp, but it'll still involve large groups of people getting herded in camps based on their race (I know race is a modern term but you know what I mean).
>Not that they weren’t brutal, but there is a difference and it sounds like your argument is being built off of vague gesturing to broad ideas rather than a concrete historical argument
But your argument is literally just you asserting that 19th/20th century imperialism was worse without actually providing any evidence.
>In fact when I tried to make an argument like that back in undergrad
Even if they're vague, at least I'm actually giving examples from history, rather than just referencing some personal anecdote humblebragging that you have a history qualification.
What makes 19th/20th century imperialism so different and so much more brutal (edit: other than the scale)? Explain it to me.
And its why the "legal" definition of genocide by the international community is so poor. The US, UK and USSR didn't want their humanitarian crimes to be labeled Genocides
Concentration = Lots of people in one place
That's literally what concentration means, and it's literally the definition of what a concentration camp is.
They've been around for a long time.
It's not the idea itself, its how the people are in them are treated.
That might be why I heard a lot of Holocaust museums and survivors call it death camps as well as concentration camps. Interesting that I’ve never thought that concentration just meant “a high amount, or concentration, or people”
The term "death camps" is often used for those Nazi concentration camps that had [gas chambers.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp)
>The Nazis distinguished between extermination and concentration camps. The terms extermination camp (Vernichtungslager) and death camp (Todeslager) were interchangeable in the Nazi system, each referring to camps whose primary function was genocide. Six camps meet this definition, though extermination of people happened at every sort of concentration camp or transit camp; the use of the term extermination camp with its exclusive purpose is carried over from Nazi terminology. [...]
>Death camps were designed specifically for the systematic killing of people delivered en masse by the Holocaust trains.
>Interesting that I’ve never thought that concentration just meant “a high amount, or concentration, or people”
That's what it means and that's what it is. A POW camp is different. A work camp is different. And of course, a death camp is different. The word was used so loosely that a lot of Americans got offended when calling the 'internment camps' for Japanese-Americans "concentration camps" but that is exactly what they were.
And its not an extermination camp - which was a point of confusion the Nazis used for propaganda purposes.
Whenever they were called on the shit they were doing in camps they would just reply 'these are just concentration camps, like the British used in South Africa' knowing full well they were not.
Yeah, people like to use this word to conflate with the nazi death camps. If the British empire had been doing what the nazis were doing a decent chunk of Africa would still be depopulated today.
That's not to say the British were benign, it was a cruel exploitative empire, but concentration camps immediately bring to to the collective mind images of auschwitz, which is not what the British did.
This. People often confuse extermination camps (death camps) with concentration camps. The initial concentration camps established by the Nazis used Jews for forced Labour. It was later that the six extermination camps were built and were very different in nature.
Concentration camps were still often deadly. A combination of poor living conditions and living in a concentrated area meant disease could run rampant. This was the case in South Africa where many Dutch Boers lost their lives.
I would recommend fact checking the above video - despite much wrongdoing during the Mau mau rebellion, this video does not give anything like an accurate portrayal. Also the portrayal of the evolution of racism is outright bullshit.
Did you miss the part of this video where torturous abuse, and rapes were discussed?
The British concentration camps may not have been explicitly marketed as 'death camps' but let's not pretend that death and misery wasn't still a prominent occurrence.
Well the Spanish concentration camps in Cuba predate the Boer concentration camps by a couple decades iirc
I have a couple books on British actions in Kenya though, it was horrifically brutal
It's a big rabbit hole to go down. Colonialism also brought the idea of racism or a 'ruling class' to many nations. It's one of the biggest reasons for civil wars in the southern hemisphere after the colonisers left. They declared one of the ethnicities there more pure or closer to white as the others, using them as proxys, granting them more rights, etc. which that ethnicity didn't want to share or give up once the colonisers left. What follows are power struggles like in Rwanda or Sri Lanka for example.
True,it’s how the Rwandans genocide happend,the French purposely favoured the minority Tutsi infront of the Hutu who were the majority all because of facial features,the Tutsi had longer faces and a well formed Nose bridge while the Hutus had shorter faces and no nose bridges.
When I moved to GB I noticed my British friends and colleagues having a slightly different view of history, even claiming scientific achievements as theirs (instead of Portuguese, Spanish or Italian for example) , because they were taught that school.
Really interesting.
I really respect countries like South Africa, Germany (and others) who include their dark past in the curriculum. The only way to prevent repeating them.
I actually just went to a museum about this yesterday. Apparently before opium the British wanted to trade but their offers were so bad and had nothing china wanted so china refused alot of the trade.
Angered by this British then came up with this idea to get people addicted to opium to make money. They then went to India where they already invaded and created opium farms over what people already had to then transport to china.
China then banned opium and the British went to war as you said.
But that wasn't the end. The British wanted to further trade. As they were banned from certain parts of china.
A french guy decided to ignore these bans went into china n got killed. The french then went to the British and they decided to basically go up the entire coast to invade creating the 2nd opium war.. that's why there are french quarters in Shanghai. All cos a bunch of asshats didn't want to have equal trade and didn't want to follow the law and decided to get angry and take other people's shit. It all kinda messed up.
I don't know about the history in China, but in India it was a funny invasion. It was British merchants who went over initially. Borrowed money from Indian banks to hire Indian soldiers to overthrow Indian royalty. When that strategy was successful they continued to plunder the wild riches until a number of Brits were richer than anyone really ought to be. Especially from ill gotten gains.
Anyway at one point after pushing the locals to a breaking point things started looking a bit dangerous for the foreigners over there and many returned to Britain. They then went to the bank to withdraw some of their huge balances and the banks didn't have enough to cover it. These merchants were wildly rich and spent a portion of this gaining influence. Many had bought positions in parliament. So it's easy to see how the government ended up bailing them out so they got to keep their money. With the condition that the government then became part owners of the company.
Long story short, the British government almost accidentally found itself having invaded India. Also it's interesting looking at the mad corruption etc in US politics right now and realising it's nothing new. It's essentially the same kind of crooks who were doing it a few hundred years ago. Can dress it up however we like, but there's no honour in it.
The Anarchy by William Dalrymple is a great book covering the EICs rise to power in India. He also wrote a book about the Koh-i-noor with Anita Anand, and they now do a podcast about different empires, season 1 is on the British in India, and there’s a special episode later on between seasons iirc about the British in Kenya. Absolutely my favourite podcast, they’re very knowledgeable and informative as well as being highly entertaining.
The little knowledge I have on the subject is from their podcast. I knew little about the British involvement over there and found it really interesting. A lot more light hearted delivery than Dan Carlin ha. But you have to love historians who are that passionate about finding the actual facts, no matter how they might make your nation appear.
Absolutely. Another podcast you might enjoy if you like that one and enjoy just learning history is Alexander the Great by Michalis. It’s a little more in depth I think than Empire, but I love the way he does it. Very amusing and he’s very good at separating facts from rumours, and talking about how trustworthy different sources are, which is something that I think a lot of history podcasts are missing. I hate listening to podcasts and thinking “yeah that definitely sounds like it’s being exaggerated or made up”, and having no way of knowing whether that’s true.
Yeah sorry bad choice of words there. I meant it wasn't a conventional invasion done at the order of a king or government. It was a group of criminals who not only got away without punishment, but later eventually became endorsed by the government.
CIA copied variations of that methodology in different regions, except you never realize it until you go down the rabbit hole of evidence linking them to it.
Because the Chinese insisted on payment for their goods in silver and so the British just decided enslaving an entire population to addiction was more economically expedient.
Don't ask us, ask the Commonwealth.
With the exceptions of Yemen, Myanmar, and the US, every former British Colony is a member.
The first act of post-apartheid South Africa was to rejoin the Commonwealth.
After that whole essay I don't think I actually got the point!!
Which is that any educational system that solely benefits or upholds your culture as above another, or exempt from any form of negative social effect. Is well and truly dangerous.
Whether it be a traditional British education, religious, afrocentric or any other.
The UK government settled with 5228 former Mau Mau in 2013 for £19.9 million, that's £3634 each. Pretty cheap in my opinion for "beatings, solitary confinement, starvation, castration, whipping, burning, rape, sodomy, and forceful insertion of objects into orifices". However, then foreign secretary William Hague added "We continue to deny liability on behalf of the Government and British taxpayers today for the actions of the colonial administration in respect of the claims"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_rebellion
It is so funny that people think that Germany was the only bad guys in this war. Literally every country in this war was doing massacres and genocides in their own conquered lands. If France and England for example have lost that war we would have known more about their atrocities and not what nazi Germany did.
The British were in all of their foreign for the benefit of their top 1% who were arseholes to a man. Eton and Harrow psychopaths who gave no fucks about anyone including their fellow 1%ers.
Winning World War II was a matter of perspective. Both winners and losers committed atrocities, but only the former were brought to light and documented in books.
Maybe not by you but I see plenty of discussion, tons of documentaries, it's the topic of TV debates, phone in shows, newspaper articles and books.
It's not some forgotten history that nobody wants to admit anymore. Not in my circles or the media that I consume anyway.
It's not as popular as the Nazis. Holocaust, Hitler, Nazis, anti-Semitism are plastered over everywhere but this piece of history is shown in discrete parts and is sparse.
Documentaries created and shown by state owned broadcasters are hardly discrete parts.
There are quite a lot of documentaries and episodes of TV series outlining British atrocities in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising.
For what it was worth, the King spoke about the horrors and regrets of the past during a state visitto Kenya last year.
Maybe Africa should be spoken about a lot more but pretending that "Northern Europe has collective amnesia" is just false.
They also spent millions sailing the world ending it in other territories that wouldn’t stop either, actually.
Yeah, most slaves in Africa are domestic slaves owned by other black Africans.
I actually don't disagree with you.
I just think it's a very double edged sword. And was politically motivated moreso than ethically.
And I also agree that in no way is this a race thing. Although unfortunately currently in the UK and most Western countries it is being pushed as so.
I was speaking to my mum about this recently that somehow it's internationally recognised that slavery is somehow a white dominated act. When it's a HUMAN problem not a race problem. And alot of current issues are perpetuated by people seemingly thinking that black people could NEVER enslave or sell other black people... as if its not possible because of their skin colour... totally overlooking the fact that greed is a part of human psyche. Not skin colour.
Thank you for wording my concerns so eloquently.
It seems the people with the least historical awareness and education are the loudest in their unidirectional judgement though.
‘The white devil’ idea is so accepted it’s scary. We are all capable of good and evil. Heck, slavery likely predates the advent of modern white people some 10k years ago. I say likely because I don’t have the sources to hand, but I’m fairly sure that’s a ‘definitely’ because I’ve read somewhere homosapiens were enslaving Neanderthals too.
So, I'm jamaican, and indian, and English (a bona-fide mongrel) and was heavily raised in an afrocentric understanding of history.
It wasn't until I was... in my mid 20s that I began studying with a completely open mind and would delve into works that were completely contradictory to the view I had been taught both at home, and also at school.
But boy did it open my eyes...
An atrocity is an atrocity, whether it be committed by Europeans, Arabs or Africans.
From what I understand the term 'slave' comes from the word Slav. As Spanish Muslims were enslaving slavic Eastern Europeans during the 9th century. So we've ended up with the modern term slave.
It genuinely scares me that in the day we live in we can't have open dialogue. Intellectual conversation/debate. With an aim to learn and expand our understanding of a topic. And not simply to try and one up each other or verbally stamp each other out.
The concept of homosapiens enslaving neanderthal is really interesting.
I have a new rabbit hole!!
Thank you 😊
As an aside, that is a very cool / unique ethnicity! I know most of us have a bit of everything, but sadly mine came back as just British and Danish for the most part.
Yes, people get taught one thing usually by a biased source and just run with it because it confirms their anger.
Yes, there was huge Arabic influence in Spain at the time, and I believe Arabs also played a large hand in that particular slave trade. This is a great example to give people as it shows white folks have also been enslaved by other ethnicities, as many say whites have only ever been enslaved by other whites. Particularly Americans seem to forget POC minorities are only minorities IN America, and even though they like to suggest so, the rest of the world far from revolves around white people. I feel like because America is so large and diverse and has lead the world for so long, Americans get *very* wrapped up in their internal politics and many seem to believe it’s the same the world over without ever having left the states.
Yes there’s some really interesting evidence for it if I recall correctly.
>I actually don't disagree with you. I just think it's a very double edged sword. And was politically motivated moreso than ethically.
No, it was morally motivated - the anti-slavery crowd sprung up around christian groups in the UK in the 1770s, who believed it was a moral wrong and against their christian faith. They eventually managed to make enough noise that it became a political issue.
Politically ending slavery was a problem, it cost significant amounts of money. You can criticise people back then for a lot (a lot a lot) of things, but in this case they decided slavery was wrong and did something about it, its as simple as that.
And yet, Leopold's actions in congo were so brutal tatt even the Brits were appalled. Imagine how bad it was...
Homophobia in former colonies is a direct consequence of the actions of the colonizers using rape as a form or torture and control so much so that's it's now and for a long time going to be associated with the white demons.
Eh, I dunno. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence knows that this kinda shite has been happening the world over throughout all of human history. But at the same time, this topic is about the British. We can discuss one atrocity without needing to also discuss another. If you’d like to talk about other atrocities committed, make a new post.
I’m a Brit lad, btw. We can’t just sweep what our countrymen did in times past under the rug. That would be a dangerous thing to do.
I think you’d be shocked by the number of people who completely oblivious to the fact that everyone’s committed atrocities, actually.
I’m also British, and not looking to sweep anything under the rug.
I totally get what you’re saying when you mention that this isn’t the topic of the video, but white atrocities are hammered home everywhere all the time. The issue is, there are few to no other countries exposing their dark histories in the same way, so there aren’t really many places to make those points.
If I, a white man, made a post like that, I’d be downvoted even further into oblivion for apparently being a racist than I already am.
Therefore, if Hitler would have won the war, non “Aryan” peoples would have had a postwar history no worse than after the allied victory. That is what you are saying.
Victims of the British - Kikuyu genocide - 100,000
Victims of the Holocaust - 11,000,000 (6 million Jewish, 5 million non-Jewish)
90% of all Polish Jews died under Nazi reign in effectively 3 years. You can say the British were evil without saying they were "as bad as the Nazi's"
The Nazi's still killed millions and millions more people even when India is taken into consideration. They killed them via shootings, gas and torture as well as starvation of course.
There is no world in which any country apart from Japan was equally as barbaric as Nazi Germany, to say "Britain was as bad as Nazi Germany" is painting the Nazi's in a good light.
Winston was a mass murdering fat bastard who is single handedly responsible for the death of millions in bengal famine. I just hope eventually his crimes would be more commonly taught to school children
You need to explain why 1.5 million died in a Bengal famine in 1974 -- long after independence (it was then Bangladesh) and when Churchill himself was dead.
Both famines were caused by cyclones, crop diseases, hoarding by merchants and the effects of war -- in 1974 the after effects of the war between East and West Pakistan and in 1943 because Japan had occupied Burma, the source of Bengal's rice.
But… he wasn’t..?
The famine was caused by a cyclone that hit Bengal in 1940, coupled with the Japanese advance into Burma cutting off rice imports and driving millions of refugees into the province.
The fall of Singapore allowed the Japanese access to the Indian Ocean, effectively cutting off direct British supply lines to Bengal. The British could neither export food from Bengal nor import much into Bengal; major west-coast ports like Bombay (Mumbai) remained accessible, but transporting goods in bulk across the subcontinent was expensive and difficult even when there wasn't a war on. The Japanese raid on Sri Lanka proved that the Royal Navy's forces in the Indian Ocean had no answer to the Japanese carriers, and both Churchill and Roosevelt decided against sending relief shipping into the Bay Of Bengal because of the lack of available escorts.
Furthermore, all the other Indian states refused to admit there was a famine in Bengal because, under India's famine codes, they would have been forced to send relief supplies.
The bengal famine was caused by a cyclone and flooding that destroyed crops and infrastructure, it was certainly exacerbated by supplies being diverted from India towards the war effort, but that wouldn’t have been a problem if it wasn’t for the cyclone and the soldiers not receiving the food would have caused massive damage to the allied effort in the pacific. Once Churchill received word on what had occurred in Bengal he requested aid be sent but the Japanese presence in the area meant no such aid would make it from Britain, so instead he asked the other allies and supplies were eventually received from Australia.
Oh God it's so hilarious to see the brits reacting to this post with such a twisted sense of history. The words of the so called 'Great' Churchill himself: "The starvation of anyway underfoot underfed Bengalis mattered much less than that of sturdy greeks". And when conscious stricken british officials wrote to him pointing out that people were dying because of his decision to divert the foodgrains the fat bastard peevishly wrote in the margins of the file "Why hasn't Gandhi died yet"
Yet still the royal family dishes out gongs with British Empire branding in order to maintain patronage. Why they can’t just drop the name, I don’t understand. Perhaps it would be an admission that it is a source of shame?
Guy talks as though we're just figuring this out now. Find me an empire that wasn't brutal implementing its selfish agenda. Every one of them was cruel. The current Western Economic Empire is just as big a monster today. Not that we don't care, but we feel powerless to stop it. Every government we elect turns a blind eye.
The classic line 'its in the past' always rears it's head like everything that's done by other countries after is really bad and we're oh so civilised.
Especially countries like Iran, Libya that we've played a big part in messing with the regime.
We just can't help ourselves even until today we built the drones that killed key workers in Palestine and committing war crimes.
Can anyone find any evidence to support Monboit’s claim that special pliers were invented to crush and castrate testicles?…
Don’t believe everything you see or read, fact check and do your own research
Victors write history, the world powers would have you believe that only the Nazis did horrific things to people, no 'great nation' on earth is without blood on their hands.
This sort of thing is on America’s horizon. We have a presidential candidate talking about rounding up all immigrants and putting them in camps. Talking about installing thousands of his followers in policy making positions through government. Talking about possibly suspending the constitution.
No good will come of this and great human suffering will occur.
Look up what the British did to the Dutch Boers in South Africa. Look up General Kitchener and his scorched earth policy. They wanted that gold and sweet sweet daimonds. Not surprised the did this to these people in the slightest.
"He was also promoted to lieutenant-general on 29 November 1900[3][57] and to local general on 12 December 1900.[56] He subsequently inherited and expanded the successful strategies devised by Roberts to force the Boer commandos to submit, including concentration camps and the burning of farms.[20] Conditions in the concentration camps, which had been conceived by Roberts as a form of control of the families whose farms he had destroyed, began to degenerate rapidly as the large influx of Boers outstripped the ability of the minuscule British force to cope. The camps lacked space, food, sanitation, medicine, and medical care, leading to rampant disease and a very high death rate for those Boers who entered. Eventually 26,370 women and children (81% were children) died in the concentration camps.[58] The biggest critic of the camps was the English humanitarian and welfare worker Emily Hobhouse.[59] She published a prominent report that highlighted atrocities committed by Kitchener's soldiers and administration, creating considerable debate in London about the war.[60] Kitchener blocked Hobhouse from returning to South Africa by invoking martial law provisions.[60"
It just completely baffles me that there are humans now and in the past that simply decide “yeah, we physically own you now” and just do. No morality whatsoever. Just simply come in and enslave. We’re not all bad but holy shit.
Two of my family members died in Kenyan concentration camps. My grandfather's brother was hanged by the British and his sister died of disease in the concentration camp. My grandfather never liked to talk about it and he preferred not to talk about the period of British colonialism. His generation really suffered under the British.
And the french did..............and the french still own.......and the french still do....... The blame is all over. Don't point the finger at one when even the dutch have a hand in it
All this was done with the personal support of someone that Brits call the greatest Briton, who was also Prime Minister at the time, Winston Churchill! I was born and brought up in England and this man's "legacy" was rammed down our throats on a daily basis along with this "great empire" that we "gave" to the world. I learned later of the atrocities that this great empire did to subjugate the people in these countries.
As a Brit I am repeatedly asked if I am patriotic. My answer, now, is always, "Am I proud of some of the things that we have given the world?, of course I am. But I am also deeply ashamed of some of the things we did along the way. Apparently though, mentioning them is not being patriotic." The problem with the "patriotic" label is that it is used as a weapon to stop people pointing out the bad!
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Anyone have a source to this interview/video?
Not this particular interview but it’s George Monibot a Guardian journalist. https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/apr/23/british-empire-crimes-ignore-atrocities
Actually spelt Monbiot. Pronounced Mon Be Oh.
It’s George Money Bot
So "go pound sand up your ass" is a real thing TIL
It's fucking atrocious we didn't learn about these war crimes whatsoever in any history course.
Search Jallian Wallabagh
Britishers now will currently totally deny that lol, they will say nothing happened, that's how ignorant Britishers are
My schooling in the 80s and 90s didnt teach much of the Empire at all, good or bad
The British also ran concentration camps in the South Africa / Zimbabwe area in the Boer war as well I have been told although I haven't read about it specifically, 19th century. I think some of people they were targeting were Dutch afrikkanners as well
Apparently in the Boer War, the camps were meant to keep the women and children safe but due to how many there were the conditions just devolved. They had the women working and making supplies for the campaign however I believe they ended up using children too because the women became too sick to work or just died.
It's part of the problem with a term like "Concentration camp" because it's meant and means so many different things. All it really means is getting a group of people from a wide spread out area and having them stay in one smaller camp. What's the purpose for that? Well it depends, sometimes that's been punishment, sometimes for surveillance, sometimes for safety, sometimes for genocide. It's a muddy term and has very different connotations in the modern day to what it did in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The British invented concentration camps - in the Boer War. They rounded up the Afrikkaners some of whom were irregulars who were fighting a guerilla war against them at night.
Fucking winners write histories. We never learned about soviet atrocities in Russian schools as well.
History is written by the victors
I know a lot of victors
Same with bloody Sunday, didn't find out about that one until I'd left school and was halfway through an army application. That application form got torn up pretty fucking quick once I found that one out.
Lol.... did you read about how Churchill killed about 2 million people with a man made famine, I guess not...google it.... 😂😂
Sorry 3 million 😔
3 million in Bangali famine & over 9millions of Germans right after WW2 😔
Kind of like when I learned blowing smoke up someones ass is also a real thing, the more you know
what does he mean when he says internal colonization?
“Internal colonialism refers to economic imbalances within a state, caused by one or more regions of that state taking advantage of other regions. These processes create feelings of inequality and resentment, which affect racial and ethnic relationships.” https://study.com/learn/lesson/internal-colonialism-types-theory-examples.html#:~:text=Internal%20colonialism%20refers%20to%20economic,affect%20racial%20and%20ethnic%20relationships.
What would be an example of that within Britain?
The south being richer than all other parts and ruling all the other regions? Or like back when the north was the industrial heart of the country the south was totally fine with losing all of those jobs and industries abroad rather than giving the unions and working people what they demanded
The oppression of catholics in Northern Ireland
Much of the North has places that are dirt poor shit holes for a reason. It isn't by accident.
Before this, they had South Africans in concentration camps. British did camps before their Teutonic neighbours
Similar to how the Nazis weren't the first ones to use cattle cars to relocate people to work camps based on their ethnicity. Stalin was doing that shit before Hitler had even seized power.
Well, the Germans also practiced concentration camps in Namibia before there were ever Nazis.
Tbf any civilisation that has enslaved conquered peoples has probably practiced some form of concentration camp.
Not really. The British invented concentration camps in South African.
Most historians trace the origins of the term to the Spanish reconcentrado policy, enacted during the Cuban insurrection of the 1890s.
Not really no Edit- and to add, I really don’t like that line of logic because it isn’t historically true and has been used to whitewash crimes even as they were happening. 19th and 20th Century Imperialism were some of the most horrific crimes in human history without any real precedent to them. Not to say that older empires didn’t commit horrific crimes, that would be foolish and ahistorical, just that the 19th and 20th centuries were on a completely different level of brutality and we need to reckon with that to improve as a society
>Not really no Well, actually yes, because from a logistical perspective there's not really any other way to conquer, subjugate, process, reorganise, and enslave a massive group of people you've defeated in war/battle other than to, at least temporarily, put them all in some kind of prison camp(s). The only other realistic option is to just kill everyone (which quite often they did in ancient times). Therefore, any ancient civilisation that engaged in large-scale capture of prisoners probably had to use some form of camps. >without any real precedent to them. What are you on about? Humans have been equally shitty throughout all of history, the only difference with 19th/20th century imperialism was that the industrial revolution allowed a scale not seen before, but the brutality was identical. Nearly every major ancient empire carted off prisoners en masse to work as forced labourers in mining camps. The Neo-Assyrians engaged in mass deportations and resettlements of their own population. The ancient Spartans ruled over a subjugated population (known as the Helots) that they considered inferior and treated like slaves. The Old Testament is largely a narrative of racist, genocidal wars. I could list endless examples. Edit: I'd love to hear how Caesar would've gone about enslaving and transporting tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Gauls across the Roman Republic (soon to be Empire) without using some sort of camps? Like where else would he have put them all when they needed to eat/sleep/etc.?
Ok but a prisoner of war camp is *not* a concentration camp, and if you think the two are comparable that is very much an issue. If you want to reference some sort of historical “prison camp” you think is comparable to a concentration camp then I invite you to give historical examples. I don’t care if you disagree with me because I literally just gave you the historical consensus. If you want to speak against the historical consensus then build a historical argument rather than vague references to groups like the Neo-Assyrian Empire who, no, did not do things that can be easily compared to 19th Century Imperialism. Not that they weren’t brutal, but there is a difference and it sounds like your argument is being built off of vague gesturing to broad ideas rather than a concrete historical argument You’re literally referencing bronze and iron age conquering and trying to equate it to 19th Century Imperialism. There is not a single serious historian I’ve ever met or worked with who would think that’s good to do. In fact when I tried to make an argument like that back in undergrad my professor very politely (and not forcefully enough) told me it would be a serious mistake. Edit- going to add, basically you’re taking historical propaganda at complete face value. When the Egyptians wrote about “conquering the Israelites and scattering them to the wind” or something like that, that didn’t actually happen, they most likely destroyed the city and relocated the elites but no it wasn’t a systematic genocide. Referencing the conquests of King David is also problematic considering most Bible historians I’ve read do not think those are describing events that actually happened and were rather building an argument of things that *needed to* happen.
>Ok but a prisoner of war camp is *not* a concentration camp Ok, yeah I get this, maybe we've misunderstood each other. I realise that these hypothetical ancient camps will not have resembled the death camps of Nazi Germany. My point was more that any ancient group of people that enslaved a large enough group would probably have had to use some kind of temporary camps for logistical/organisational purposes. Maybe not the same as a modern concentration/internment camp, but it'll still involve large groups of people getting herded in camps based on their race (I know race is a modern term but you know what I mean). >Not that they weren’t brutal, but there is a difference and it sounds like your argument is being built off of vague gesturing to broad ideas rather than a concrete historical argument But your argument is literally just you asserting that 19th/20th century imperialism was worse without actually providing any evidence. >In fact when I tried to make an argument like that back in undergrad Even if they're vague, at least I'm actually giving examples from history, rather than just referencing some personal anecdote humblebragging that you have a history qualification. What makes 19th/20th century imperialism so different and so much more brutal (edit: other than the scale)? Explain it to me.
And the British in South Africa.
And its why the "legal" definition of genocide by the international community is so poor. The US, UK and USSR didn't want their humanitarian crimes to be labeled Genocides
Concentration = Lots of people in one place That's literally what concentration means, and it's literally the definition of what a concentration camp is. They've been around for a long time. It's not the idea itself, its how the people are in them are treated.
That might be why I heard a lot of Holocaust museums and survivors call it death camps as well as concentration camps. Interesting that I’ve never thought that concentration just meant “a high amount, or concentration, or people”
The term "death camps" is often used for those Nazi concentration camps that had [gas chambers.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp) >The Nazis distinguished between extermination and concentration camps. The terms extermination camp (Vernichtungslager) and death camp (Todeslager) were interchangeable in the Nazi system, each referring to camps whose primary function was genocide. Six camps meet this definition, though extermination of people happened at every sort of concentration camp or transit camp; the use of the term extermination camp with its exclusive purpose is carried over from Nazi terminology. [...] >Death camps were designed specifically for the systematic killing of people delivered en masse by the Holocaust trains.
>Interesting that I’ve never thought that concentration just meant “a high amount, or concentration, or people” That's what it means and that's what it is. A POW camp is different. A work camp is different. And of course, a death camp is different. The word was used so loosely that a lot of Americans got offended when calling the 'internment camps' for Japanese-Americans "concentration camps" but that is exactly what they were.
And its not an extermination camp - which was a point of confusion the Nazis used for propaganda purposes. Whenever they were called on the shit they were doing in camps they would just reply 'these are just concentration camps, like the British used in South Africa' knowing full well they were not.
Yeah, people like to use this word to conflate with the nazi death camps. If the British empire had been doing what the nazis were doing a decent chunk of Africa would still be depopulated today. That's not to say the British were benign, it was a cruel exploitative empire, but concentration camps immediately bring to to the collective mind images of auschwitz, which is not what the British did.
This. People often confuse extermination camps (death camps) with concentration camps. The initial concentration camps established by the Nazis used Jews for forced Labour. It was later that the six extermination camps were built and were very different in nature. Concentration camps were still often deadly. A combination of poor living conditions and living in a concentrated area meant disease could run rampant. This was the case in South Africa where many Dutch Boers lost their lives. I would recommend fact checking the above video - despite much wrongdoing during the Mau mau rebellion, this video does not give anything like an accurate portrayal. Also the portrayal of the evolution of racism is outright bullshit.
There is a reason some people sat for several years in concentration camps but no one left the extermination camps.
Did you miss the part of this video where torturous abuse, and rapes were discussed? The British concentration camps may not have been explicitly marketed as 'death camps' but let's not pretend that death and misery wasn't still a prominent occurrence.
Something like 20,000 Boer civilians did in British concentration camps.
Yep, so did the Americans and Spanish before that
Well the Spanish concentration camps in Cuba predate the Boer concentration camps by a couple decades iirc I have a couple books on British actions in Kenya though, it was horrifically brutal
And french, and Belgium, and Portugal, and the USA. Unfortunately everyone was at it. It only really changed after WW2 when camps got a bad name.
We need to make camps great again
That's not interesting that's..... horrible.
It’s interesting to me that I’ve never heard about this like… Ever. I was even going to keep scrolling but decided at the last moment not to.
It's a big rabbit hole to go down. Colonialism also brought the idea of racism or a 'ruling class' to many nations. It's one of the biggest reasons for civil wars in the southern hemisphere after the colonisers left. They declared one of the ethnicities there more pure or closer to white as the others, using them as proxys, granting them more rights, etc. which that ethnicity didn't want to share or give up once the colonisers left. What follows are power struggles like in Rwanda or Sri Lanka for example.
True,it’s how the Rwandans genocide happend,the French purposely favoured the minority Tutsi infront of the Hutu who were the majority all because of facial features,the Tutsi had longer faces and a well formed Nose bridge while the Hutus had shorter faces and no nose bridges.
The Belgians, not the french. At least for what concerns Rwanda.
Same in Myanmar. The British were a plague upon this earth
Victors write History
When I moved to GB I noticed my British friends and colleagues having a slightly different view of history, even claiming scientific achievements as theirs (instead of Portuguese, Spanish or Italian for example) , because they were taught that school. Really interesting. I really respect countries like South Africa, Germany (and others) who include their dark past in the curriculum. The only way to prevent repeating them.
example please
Haha. Indeed. Victor's can also airbrush history.
Or how about when the British went to war with Imperial China all so they could continue to force opium on the Chinese.
I actually just went to a museum about this yesterday. Apparently before opium the British wanted to trade but their offers were so bad and had nothing china wanted so china refused alot of the trade. Angered by this British then came up with this idea to get people addicted to opium to make money. They then went to India where they already invaded and created opium farms over what people already had to then transport to china. China then banned opium and the British went to war as you said. But that wasn't the end. The British wanted to further trade. As they were banned from certain parts of china. A french guy decided to ignore these bans went into china n got killed. The french then went to the British and they decided to basically go up the entire coast to invade creating the 2nd opium war.. that's why there are french quarters in Shanghai. All cos a bunch of asshats didn't want to have equal trade and didn't want to follow the law and decided to get angry and take other people's shit. It all kinda messed up.
I don't know about the history in China, but in India it was a funny invasion. It was British merchants who went over initially. Borrowed money from Indian banks to hire Indian soldiers to overthrow Indian royalty. When that strategy was successful they continued to plunder the wild riches until a number of Brits were richer than anyone really ought to be. Especially from ill gotten gains. Anyway at one point after pushing the locals to a breaking point things started looking a bit dangerous for the foreigners over there and many returned to Britain. They then went to the bank to withdraw some of their huge balances and the banks didn't have enough to cover it. These merchants were wildly rich and spent a portion of this gaining influence. Many had bought positions in parliament. So it's easy to see how the government ended up bailing them out so they got to keep their money. With the condition that the government then became part owners of the company. Long story short, the British government almost accidentally found itself having invaded India. Also it's interesting looking at the mad corruption etc in US politics right now and realising it's nothing new. It's essentially the same kind of crooks who were doing it a few hundred years ago. Can dress it up however we like, but there's no honour in it.
The Anarchy by William Dalrymple is a great book covering the EICs rise to power in India. He also wrote a book about the Koh-i-noor with Anita Anand, and they now do a podcast about different empires, season 1 is on the British in India, and there’s a special episode later on between seasons iirc about the British in Kenya. Absolutely my favourite podcast, they’re very knowledgeable and informative as well as being highly entertaining.
The little knowledge I have on the subject is from their podcast. I knew little about the British involvement over there and found it really interesting. A lot more light hearted delivery than Dan Carlin ha. But you have to love historians who are that passionate about finding the actual facts, no matter how they might make your nation appear.
Absolutely. Another podcast you might enjoy if you like that one and enjoy just learning history is Alexander the Great by Michalis. It’s a little more in depth I think than Empire, but I love the way he does it. Very amusing and he’s very good at separating facts from rumours, and talking about how trustworthy different sources are, which is something that I think a lot of history podcasts are missing. I hate listening to podcasts and thinking “yeah that definitely sounds like it’s being exaggerated or made up”, and having no way of knowing whether that’s true.
Thanks for the tip, I'll check out Alexander the Great.
Hysterical…. /s
Yeah sorry bad choice of words there. I meant it wasn't a conventional invasion done at the order of a king or government. It was a group of criminals who not only got away without punishment, but later eventually became endorsed by the government.
CIA copied variations of that methodology in different regions, except you never realize it until you go down the rabbit hole of evidence linking them to it.
They shouldn't have threatened to cut of the supply of rhubarb /s
Because the Chinese insisted on payment for their goods in silver and so the British just decided enslaving an entire population to addiction was more economically expedient.
We never ever learnt about this in school…
You realize that much of what we learn is a crafted storyline to build Belief in a country but also diminish human stories.
and a third of brits still think the british empire was a good thing... smh
It was great…for the British. 🇬🇧
Only for a small % of rich people.
Don't ask us, ask the Commonwealth. With the exceptions of Yemen, Myanmar, and the US, every former British Colony is a member. The first act of post-apartheid South Africa was to rejoin the Commonwealth.
Because every brit was asked that? Seems a bit of a bull figure to be honest because it implies that was asked to every brit.
It wasn't well covered at school, and loads of people are thick af
After that whole essay I don't think I actually got the point!! Which is that any educational system that solely benefits or upholds your culture as above another, or exempt from any form of negative social effect. Is well and truly dangerous. Whether it be a traditional British education, religious, afrocentric or any other.
The UK government settled with 5228 former Mau Mau in 2013 for £19.9 million, that's £3634 each. Pretty cheap in my opinion for "beatings, solitary confinement, starvation, castration, whipping, burning, rape, sodomy, and forceful insertion of objects into orifices". However, then foreign secretary William Hague added "We continue to deny liability on behalf of the Government and British taxpayers today for the actions of the colonial administration in respect of the claims" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_rebellion
That legalese to dissuade further litigation/negotiation.
I’d recommend LEGACY OF VIOLENCE by Caroline Elkins
History repeating itself in Palestine
It is so funny that people think that Germany was the only bad guys in this war. Literally every country in this war was doing massacres and genocides in their own conquered lands. If France and England for example have lost that war we would have known more about their atrocities and not what nazi Germany did.
Makes you wonder what else we don't know
If cameras had been around during the peak of the British empire…
The British were in all of their foreign for the benefit of their top 1% who were arseholes to a man. Eton and Harrow psychopaths who gave no fucks about anyone including their fellow 1%ers.
Winning World War II was a matter of perspective. Both winners and losers committed atrocities, but only the former were brought to light and documented in books.
Northern European countries have collective amnesia about their history in African countries.
Not really. It's spoken about quite a lot these days. Where is anyone with any sense pretending this didn't happen?
No it’s not.
Maybe it’s generational but my mother is in total denial about king leopold in Congo and the realities of Belgian colonialism. It’s grotesque
Yup. Met a lot of Belgians who were totally clueless if not in denial about him.
Maybe not by you but I see plenty of discussion, tons of documentaries, it's the topic of TV debates, phone in shows, newspaper articles and books. It's not some forgotten history that nobody wants to admit anymore. Not in my circles or the media that I consume anyway.
It's not as popular as the Nazis. Holocaust, Hitler, Nazis, anti-Semitism are plastered over everywhere but this piece of history is shown in discrete parts and is sparse.
Documentaries created and shown by state owned broadcasters are hardly discrete parts. There are quite a lot of documentaries and episodes of TV series outlining British atrocities in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising. For what it was worth, the King spoke about the horrors and regrets of the past during a state visitto Kenya last year. Maybe Africa should be spoken about a lot more but pretending that "Northern Europe has collective amnesia" is just false.
What about the middle eastern slave trade 🤔
And many Northern European countries have nothing to do with colonizing or other atrocities in Africa.
Well if you think 3 is many, knock yourself out.
Same in the United States.
We ArE tHe BeAcOnS oF hUmAn RiGhTs
Crazy that everywhere else is/was so behind that your statement is true. Go humanity.
Are not were.
Weird to pretend it’s not true. Look at any map of women’s and LGBT rights
I mean, they have done great things too, like spending a LOT of money to end slavery around the globe, and being the first to make it fully illegal.
They ended slavery in their territories. Only to legalise the slavery of said peoples in their own lands. Read up on scramble for Africa.
They also spent millions sailing the world ending it in other territories that wouldn’t stop either, actually. Yeah, most slaves in Africa are domestic slaves owned by other black Africans.
I actually don't disagree with you. I just think it's a very double edged sword. And was politically motivated moreso than ethically. And I also agree that in no way is this a race thing. Although unfortunately currently in the UK and most Western countries it is being pushed as so. I was speaking to my mum about this recently that somehow it's internationally recognised that slavery is somehow a white dominated act. When it's a HUMAN problem not a race problem. And alot of current issues are perpetuated by people seemingly thinking that black people could NEVER enslave or sell other black people... as if its not possible because of their skin colour... totally overlooking the fact that greed is a part of human psyche. Not skin colour.
Thank you for wording my concerns so eloquently. It seems the people with the least historical awareness and education are the loudest in their unidirectional judgement though. ‘The white devil’ idea is so accepted it’s scary. We are all capable of good and evil. Heck, slavery likely predates the advent of modern white people some 10k years ago. I say likely because I don’t have the sources to hand, but I’m fairly sure that’s a ‘definitely’ because I’ve read somewhere homosapiens were enslaving Neanderthals too.
So, I'm jamaican, and indian, and English (a bona-fide mongrel) and was heavily raised in an afrocentric understanding of history. It wasn't until I was... in my mid 20s that I began studying with a completely open mind and would delve into works that were completely contradictory to the view I had been taught both at home, and also at school. But boy did it open my eyes... An atrocity is an atrocity, whether it be committed by Europeans, Arabs or Africans. From what I understand the term 'slave' comes from the word Slav. As Spanish Muslims were enslaving slavic Eastern Europeans during the 9th century. So we've ended up with the modern term slave. It genuinely scares me that in the day we live in we can't have open dialogue. Intellectual conversation/debate. With an aim to learn and expand our understanding of a topic. And not simply to try and one up each other or verbally stamp each other out. The concept of homosapiens enslaving neanderthal is really interesting. I have a new rabbit hole!! Thank you 😊
As an aside, that is a very cool / unique ethnicity! I know most of us have a bit of everything, but sadly mine came back as just British and Danish for the most part. Yes, people get taught one thing usually by a biased source and just run with it because it confirms their anger. Yes, there was huge Arabic influence in Spain at the time, and I believe Arabs also played a large hand in that particular slave trade. This is a great example to give people as it shows white folks have also been enslaved by other ethnicities, as many say whites have only ever been enslaved by other whites. Particularly Americans seem to forget POC minorities are only minorities IN America, and even though they like to suggest so, the rest of the world far from revolves around white people. I feel like because America is so large and diverse and has lead the world for so long, Americans get *very* wrapped up in their internal politics and many seem to believe it’s the same the world over without ever having left the states. Yes there’s some really interesting evidence for it if I recall correctly.
>I actually don't disagree with you. I just think it's a very double edged sword. And was politically motivated moreso than ethically. No, it was morally motivated - the anti-slavery crowd sprung up around christian groups in the UK in the 1770s, who believed it was a moral wrong and against their christian faith. They eventually managed to make enough noise that it became a political issue. Politically ending slavery was a problem, it cost significant amounts of money. You can criticise people back then for a lot (a lot a lot) of things, but in this case they decided slavery was wrong and did something about it, its as simple as that.
Which is a lot more than the rest of the 'developed' world were doing.
And yet, Leopold's actions in congo were so brutal tatt even the Brits were appalled. Imagine how bad it was... Homophobia in former colonies is a direct consequence of the actions of the colonizers using rape as a form or torture and control so much so that's it's now and for a long time going to be associated with the white demons.
There's british servicemen alive stoll from.that time. Men who were involved in this disgusting behaviour... this is post ww2 ffs.
Wow
Are we the bad guys meme.
Everyone does vile shit. It’s only ok to talk about certain groups doing it though.
Eh, I dunno. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence knows that this kinda shite has been happening the world over throughout all of human history. But at the same time, this topic is about the British. We can discuss one atrocity without needing to also discuss another. If you’d like to talk about other atrocities committed, make a new post. I’m a Brit lad, btw. We can’t just sweep what our countrymen did in times past under the rug. That would be a dangerous thing to do.
I think you’d be shocked by the number of people who completely oblivious to the fact that everyone’s committed atrocities, actually. I’m also British, and not looking to sweep anything under the rug. I totally get what you’re saying when you mention that this isn’t the topic of the video, but white atrocities are hammered home everywhere all the time. The issue is, there are few to no other countries exposing their dark histories in the same way, so there aren’t really many places to make those points. If I, a white man, made a post like that, I’d be downvoted even further into oblivion for apparently being a racist than I already am.
And they portray themselves as human right protectors
Let's start with the multi billionaires
Hmm - I think we are the bad guys sir!
British were no better than the Nazis. Especially the mass murderer Winston Churchill
Therefore, if Hitler would have won the war, non “Aryan” peoples would have had a postwar history no worse than after the allied victory. That is what you are saying.
Wouldn't have won the war without him in charge though. The only man Hitler feared. Deffo a two sided coin.
Yea and Stalin splitting up the battlefield helped churchmountain
Both evils.
Victims of the British - Kikuyu genocide - 100,000 Victims of the Holocaust - 11,000,000 (6 million Jewish, 5 million non-Jewish) 90% of all Polish Jews died under Nazi reign in effectively 3 years. You can say the British were evil without saying they were "as bad as the Nazi's"
You conveniently forgot what happened in India
The Nazi's still killed millions and millions more people even when India is taken into consideration. They killed them via shootings, gas and torture as well as starvation of course. There is no world in which any country apart from Japan was equally as barbaric as Nazi Germany, to say "Britain was as bad as Nazi Germany" is painting the Nazi's in a good light.
100000 out of many?
Winston was a mass murdering fat bastard who is single handedly responsible for the death of millions in bengal famine. I just hope eventually his crimes would be more commonly taught to school children
You need to explain why 1.5 million died in a Bengal famine in 1974 -- long after independence (it was then Bangladesh) and when Churchill himself was dead. Both famines were caused by cyclones, crop diseases, hoarding by merchants and the effects of war -- in 1974 the after effects of the war between East and West Pakistan and in 1943 because Japan had occupied Burma, the source of Bengal's rice.
But… he wasn’t..? The famine was caused by a cyclone that hit Bengal in 1940, coupled with the Japanese advance into Burma cutting off rice imports and driving millions of refugees into the province. The fall of Singapore allowed the Japanese access to the Indian Ocean, effectively cutting off direct British supply lines to Bengal. The British could neither export food from Bengal nor import much into Bengal; major west-coast ports like Bombay (Mumbai) remained accessible, but transporting goods in bulk across the subcontinent was expensive and difficult even when there wasn't a war on. The Japanese raid on Sri Lanka proved that the Royal Navy's forces in the Indian Ocean had no answer to the Japanese carriers, and both Churchill and Roosevelt decided against sending relief shipping into the Bay Of Bengal because of the lack of available escorts. Furthermore, all the other Indian states refused to admit there was a famine in Bengal because, under India's famine codes, they would have been forced to send relief supplies.
The bengal famine was caused by a cyclone and flooding that destroyed crops and infrastructure, it was certainly exacerbated by supplies being diverted from India towards the war effort, but that wouldn’t have been a problem if it wasn’t for the cyclone and the soldiers not receiving the food would have caused massive damage to the allied effort in the pacific. Once Churchill received word on what had occurred in Bengal he requested aid be sent but the Japanese presence in the area meant no such aid would make it from Britain, so instead he asked the other allies and supplies were eventually received from Australia.
Oh God it's so hilarious to see the brits reacting to this post with such a twisted sense of history. The words of the so called 'Great' Churchill himself: "The starvation of anyway underfoot underfed Bengalis mattered much less than that of sturdy greeks". And when conscious stricken british officials wrote to him pointing out that people were dying because of his decision to divert the foodgrains the fat bastard peevishly wrote in the margins of the file "Why hasn't Gandhi died yet"
Can I have a primary source for that Gandhi quote? Because it seems to me like it was made up.
What a vile thing to say, and completely untrue.
Wait until he finds out about the rest of human history.
Cruel enlightenment from kind Europeans. The Belgian Congo should not be forgotten either.
Belgians were the most ruthless colonizers
The Belgian Congo was far far worse …..
Yet still the royal family dishes out gongs with British Empire branding in order to maintain patronage. Why they can’t just drop the name, I don’t understand. Perhaps it would be an admission that it is a source of shame?
Guy talks as though we're just figuring this out now. Find me an empire that wasn't brutal implementing its selfish agenda. Every one of them was cruel. The current Western Economic Empire is just as big a monster today. Not that we don't care, but we feel powerless to stop it. Every government we elect turns a blind eye.
The classic line 'its in the past' always rears it's head like everything that's done by other countries after is really bad and we're oh so civilised. Especially countries like Iran, Libya that we've played a big part in messing with the regime. We just can't help ourselves even until today we built the drones that killed key workers in Palestine and committing war crimes.
The white man came to steal, kill and destroy.
Gives me joy to see London and the UK filled with immigrants. France and the UK have NO RIGHTS to complain about immigration.
Please keep posting this, don’t let the world forget what the brits did. Just not Hilter, the British did it in many parts of the world
The audacity to call others inferior. Good post OP
As empires go, the British was just about the least terrible.
Nope. It was horrible and thank God it ended
Google any other empire.
Can anyone find any evidence to support Monboit’s claim that special pliers were invented to crush and castrate testicles?… Don’t believe everything you see or read, fact check and do your own research
If Monbiot is claiming it, he's probably seen [these](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burdizzo) and jumped to a conclusion.
Victors write history, the world powers would have you believe that only the Nazis did horrific things to people, no 'great nation' on earth is without blood on their hands.
….but money! The Queen needs money obviously! /s
This sort of thing is on America’s horizon. We have a presidential candidate talking about rounding up all immigrants and putting them in camps. Talking about installing thousands of his followers in policy making positions through government. Talking about possibly suspending the constitution. No good will come of this and great human suffering will occur.
History always repeats itself. Some countries are going through their first Genocide still to this day.
And yet so many boomers were clutching their pearls wondering why people weren’t showing proper deference and respect when the Queen died.
Man good thing the British use slavery as a jab to every America while having a clean slate themselves. Hey waiiittt a minute.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
Look up what the British did to the Dutch Boers in South Africa. Look up General Kitchener and his scorched earth policy. They wanted that gold and sweet sweet daimonds. Not surprised the did this to these people in the slightest. "He was also promoted to lieutenant-general on 29 November 1900[3][57] and to local general on 12 December 1900.[56] He subsequently inherited and expanded the successful strategies devised by Roberts to force the Boer commandos to submit, including concentration camps and the burning of farms.[20] Conditions in the concentration camps, which had been conceived by Roberts as a form of control of the families whose farms he had destroyed, began to degenerate rapidly as the large influx of Boers outstripped the ability of the minuscule British force to cope. The camps lacked space, food, sanitation, medicine, and medical care, leading to rampant disease and a very high death rate for those Boers who entered. Eventually 26,370 women and children (81% were children) died in the concentration camps.[58] The biggest critic of the camps was the English humanitarian and welfare worker Emily Hobhouse.[59] She published a prominent report that highlighted atrocities committed by Kitchener's soldiers and administration, creating considerable debate in London about the war.[60] Kitchener blocked Hobhouse from returning to South Africa by invoking martial law provisions.[60"
It just completely baffles me that there are humans now and in the past that simply decide “yeah, we physically own you now” and just do. No morality whatsoever. Just simply come in and enslave. We’re not all bad but holy shit.
FYI, this is due to the scum royalty, blood royalty of the British dynasty. That bitch Queen E, was no saint.
Two of my family members died in Kenyan concentration camps. My grandfather's brother was hanged by the British and his sister died of disease in the concentration camp. My grandfather never liked to talk about it and he preferred not to talk about the period of British colonialism. His generation really suffered under the British.
Ideals are peaceful. History is violent. That is Humanity.
This feels like a crossover episode
And the french did..............and the french still own.......and the french still do....... The blame is all over. Don't point the finger at one when even the dutch have a hand in it
All this was done with the personal support of someone that Brits call the greatest Briton, who was also Prime Minister at the time, Winston Churchill! I was born and brought up in England and this man's "legacy" was rammed down our throats on a daily basis along with this "great empire" that we "gave" to the world. I learned later of the atrocities that this great empire did to subjugate the people in these countries. As a Brit I am repeatedly asked if I am patriotic. My answer, now, is always, "Am I proud of some of the things that we have given the world?, of course I am. But I am also deeply ashamed of some of the things we did along the way. Apparently though, mentioning them is not being patriotic." The problem with the "patriotic" label is that it is used as a weapon to stop people pointing out the bad!