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Learning history is fun, for example: The British East India Company was the largest drug cartel of the 19th century. They forced the Chinese to buy opium, and
by partycoder 8y ago
Learning history is fun, for example:
The British East India Company was the largest drug cartel of the 19th century. They forced the Chinese to buy opium, and decades later that opium made it to the Americas. Each time you turn on the TV and hear about of some random dude overdosing with illegal opioids, you can blame the British for that.
Lawrence of Arabia, the Sykes-Picot agreement, among other British interventions, helped create a state of permanent war in the Middle east. Each time you hear of war or violence in the Middle East, or some kid being blown up by a drone or burned alive with white phosphorus, you can blame the British for that.
However, they're not seen as the villains of history, we speak their language and some idiots wear t-shirts with their flag. Go figure.
- ljw1001 8y agoI think a better grasp of history would lead you to believe that there's nothing especially British about these activities. This is the exploitation of the powerless by the powerful, and is a close to a universal law throughout history as you're likely to find.
- partycoder 8y agoSo, in your revisionist mindset, the opium wars were just like any other war? The motivation of the opium wars was to fix the British Empire trade deficit by selling opium to China, turning them into drug addicts in the process. When the Chinese started seizing their opium they declared war. It's fucked up to just imagine what kind of morally bankrupt psycho could have thought of that as a solution to an economic problem, and what kind of society it takes to get everyone aligned to execute it.
- ljw1001 8y agoin my revisionist mindset it's a lot like King Leopald in the Congo, the near extermination of native Americans (to get their land), the slave trade, the proxy wars in Asia and Africa to fight (or expand) communism and other horrors.
- partycoder 8y agoFair enough, those are good examples. I take back the ad-hominem. The term to describe what happened in North America is settler colonialism (where settlers seek to replace population with their own rather than assimilating it).