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Colonial violence came home in the First World War

99 points by akbarnama 8y ago

erpaa 8y ago
"This is also why whiteness, first turned into a religion during the economic and social uncertainty that preceded the violence of 1914, is the world’s most dangerous cult today." -- OMG P-)
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments, especially on flameprone topics. In particular, it isn't good to cherry-pick the most provocative thing from an article and drop it in here as a drive-by. That usually guarantees a flamewar.
  - dbcooper 8y ago
    An article that makes such a bold, radical, and racially charged assertion hardly seems to be a good starting point for avoiding a flame-war, let alone starting a productive discussion.
  - bergoid 8y ago
    The author of the piece - Pankaj Mishra - has a track record of making racist anti-white statements under the guise of anti-racism. Here he's calling Jordan Peterson a fascist: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and-fascist-mysticism/ https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and... In the same article, writing about Peterson's friendship with Charles Joseph, a Kwakwaka'wakw sculptor, Pankaj Mishra shared the following insight with the world: "Peterson may seem the latest in a long line of eggheads pretentiously but harmlessly romancing the noble savage."
nutcracker46 8y ago
Mishra argues from a perspective aligned with the Marxist-socialists we have all heard before. WTF, it is too simplistic to assert that the West (yes, I capitalised it) opted to rely on a racial caste system and colonies to support liberal democracy for Whites. Also, I point to ethnic groups in the Far East who saw themselves as master races, civilised above all others in the world. These others did plenty of looting and colonizing too. Instead, think of the USA Civil War, WW1, WW2, the Cold War, and the coming WW3 as a contest: liberal democracy / represrntative government versus monarchies, autocracies, and oligarchies.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't turn HN discussions into predictable ideological flamewars. Those are tedious and therefore off topic. There is interesting historical material in this article, which most of us probably didn't know. (I didn't.)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- devoply 8y ago
  > Instead, think of the USA Civil War, WW1, WW2, the Cold War, and the coming WW3 as a contest: liberal democracy / representative government versus monarchies, autocracies, and oligarchies. To talk to this frame is to talk to support the rhetoric which has led to destruction of many countries in the name of liberating them while at the same time supporting other regimes practicing exactly what they are supposed to be condemning. It's a bullshit rhetorical tactic that no one believes anymore. The imperialism you speak of is alive and well and that's why it's the target of condemnation. When it's no longer practiced you can bring up the old canards of whataboutism to justify it as nothing out of the ordinary historically.
- negamax 8y ago
  It doesn’t take much brain cells to conclude Europe was supported at expense of rest of the planet. It’s failing in today’s economy for exactly the same reason. Globalization and current economic systems transfers wealth by merit instead of force. Many right wing conmen are reminiscing a past that will never be possible as there will never be colonies again
  - sgift 8y ago
    EU GDP: 18.8 trillion -- India GDP: 2.5 trillion India has almost three times the population of the EU. If that is "failing" I think we can fail a bit more.
    - negamax 8y ago
Synaesthesia 8y ago
The entire history of Europe is one of constant, vicious and brutal wars. Yes they exported it overseas but IMO WW1 is a continuation of a tradition of continental violence, not colonial violence that came home. One could argue rather the colonial violence is an export of the European history of war, as Chomsky does in "Year 501"
- danmaz74 8y ago
  Tbh, having a state of very frequent wars wasn't an exclusive to Europe.
  - ur-whale 8y ago
    wasn't => isn't
- pasabagi 8y ago
  The years before the first world war had seen no serious, bloody conflicts since the Napoleonic wars. Most of the techniques and technologies used so destructively in WW1 were tested first in the colonies. More fundamentally, the basic driver of tensions before the first world war was the german desire for colonies, or rather, export markets to allow their continued economic growth.
  - gdfasfklshg4 8y ago
    Do you count the American Civil War as a colonial war?
    - icebraining 8y ago
      I don't think that happened in Europe.
  - wcarey 8y ago
    Would the quarter million casualties of the Franco-Prussian war push it into the category of "serious, bloody" conflict?
mattmanser 8y ago
Claims that remembrance day doesn't honour them, hasn't he even watched the ceremony? 30 or 40 commonwealth wreathes are laid, all the countries are named on TV, and it's mid-ceremony, not at the end. I stopped there in the article, as he obviously had an agenda that is completely at odds with reality. Such a shame the Guardian didn't even do basic editorial checking on the article.
- KnightOfWords 8y ago
  In recent time there has been more acknowledgement of the role the commonwealth nations played in the conflict. However, that's not part of the popular narrative of WW1, and is given cursory treatment in most histories. The article is well worth reading in its entirety.
  - mattmanser 8y ago
    Why believe anything else he has written? A large part of the ceremony is given over to the laying of commonwealth wreathes, which is straight after the last post. It's a basic fact which he seems to claim doesn't happen, how much more of his writing is given over to this bias?
    - vikasg 8y ago
      An actual person from the commonwealth is trying to tell you that the role of the colonies in WW1 is often ignored, and you can't even bother to read past the first paragraph. You just want to keep repeating that they lay wreaths.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - jasonlotito 8y ago
      > It's a basic fact which he seems to claim doesn't happen This is a lie.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
A few observations and thoughts after reading the article: 1. The European's ideas of racial superiority may have directly led the deaths of millions of soldiers from the machine guns. The colonial powers, had experience with and new just how devastating the machine gun when they used it against the indigenous peoples of their colonies. However, many commanders felt that it would not be that effective against well-trained European soldiers. That proved to be a huge mistake and millions of young infantry paid the price as their commanding officers sent them in mass assaults against machine guns. 2. More than any change of heart due to morals, it was the economic and manpower losses of WWI and WWII that made the European powers unable to hold onto their colonies. For example the British had faced unrest in India before, for example the Sepoy rebellion. However, they were able to brutally crush the rebellions and maintain their hold on power. However, in the aftermath of WWII, the British had neither the resolve, the manpower, or the money to continue to try to hold onto India in opposition to the independence movement. Without these World Wars, there is a good chance that India would still be a British colony. 3. The reason that "white" people oppressed so many others was not because they were necessarily intrinsically more immoral, but simply that they had much more power than the others.The examples of the Armenian genocide and the Rape of Nanking from WWI and WWII respectively by people that would not be considered "white" illustrates the sad state of human affairs in that the strong will tend to oppress the weak. This has been going on long before any notion of "whiteness" and will likely go on in the future whatever the status of "whiteness". 4. The post WWII peace in Western Europe was probably due more to the overwhelming superiority of the United States and the Soviet Union vis-a-vis the European powers than of any awakening. Whereas in WWI and WWII, the European powers could imagine beating their neighbors and taking their territory, after WWII, they knew that aggression against their neighbors would lead to a conflict with either the United States or the Soviet Union and they had no hope of winning.
- jernfrost 8y ago
  I agree, I don't think Europeans have been worse than others would have been, we simply had the means to do it. However I find it problematic that so much of the brutality gets swept under the rug. E.g. it is typical of political propaganda how Stalins starvation of millions of Ukrainians is used to disparage socialism. However it is far less known that Britain starved quite a lot more people in India, often in the name of capitalism. Food was shipped out at gunpoint to foreign markets while people starved to death on the grounds that markets should not be disrupted. There is also the belittling of other people, through ignorance of our own past. E.g. the Chinese with Mao is presented as somehow more barbaric and brutal. The US presents itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy despite slaughtering the native population and enslaving millions of blacks. I don't think westerners are inherently worse than anybody else. I just dislike the smugness in particular by great powers such as the Britain and the US, who present themselves as these big civilizing forces.
jernfrost 8y ago
Interesting read, but I want to raise some objections: 1) I don't like that one keep talking about the whole west as one unit and tainting everybody. It creates a simplified picture of oppressor and the oppressed. It should not be forgotten that this is primarily about the major powers of Europe. Not every European country was a major power. Europe is full of smaller countries, which often had little say in this matter. Ireland e.g. has a brutal history of oppression by the British. It is not like whites were nice to each other and only cruel to others. Big colonial powers have a different view of people. I remember reading about polar expeditions, naturally since I am Norwegian. It is hard to not notice the stark difference between how Norwegians treated Inuit people and how the British treated them. The British were full of contempt for the natives of the polar regions. They viewed them as backwards and as having nothing useful to teach them. The British assumed British sense of civilization, property law etc was universal. When an Inuit took an object belonging to a British expedition member they brutally flogged him as punishment for "stealing". Never mind that the concept of ownership was entirely different to the Inuit. Norwegian polar explorers in contrast eagerly learned from the natives how they used their dogs and how they dressed for the cold. It is a probably the chief reason why Amundsen would beat Scott to the pole. Amundsen did not deal with the different culture of the Inuit by assuming superiority and doling out cruel punishment to anyone not following his moral code. Instead they used trickery, making the Inuit believe that if they went into their storage room, they could blow up. I am not writing this primarily to make my fellow Norwegians look amazing. But it is easier to contrast with cultures you actually know. Anyway we were kind of dicks to our indigenous people, the Sami, but to point out that European culture varied greatly. Saying the west did this and that, is a bit like our own homogenization of Africa, as if it is just one country. 2) We must know our history to not repeat it. I DO think it is a problem that we often try to sugarcoat our past. However we should also keep perspective. Too often people get into this pattern of thinking as if the past brutality of European colonial powers is inherent in being white. That is just as racist as claiming jews are inherently money grubbing bankers and africans are lazy. Europeans are as much product of their history and upbringing as everybody else, and has the same potential for change. Nor is everybody the same. While Europeans enslaved people, there was also Europeans fighting hard against slavery. Emancipation developed further and quicker in Europe than in many other parts of the world. E.g. slavery was ended by Europeans before it was in the Arab world. I don't think that points to white superiority, but simply is a way of pointing out that every civilization is a mix of different values and ideas, both good and bad. The good can triumph over the bad. We should however recognize that the struggles many countries face around the world is partly of our making. However we cannot take full responsibility. Africa or India would not be as modern rich or developed today as by magic if Europeans had never set their feet on shore. All of these areas were hundreds of years behind Europe in technological development. What Europe could have done is treating them better. But that does not make Europeans uniquely bad. The powerful have always through history had a tendency to exploit the weaker ones.
_Codemonkeyism 8y ago
It also looks to me Belgium is forgotten, isn't it? It's mostly Britain, France and Germany remembered in Europe (The US is more associated with WW2 I think).
- pjc50 8y ago
  Belgium didn't have a chance to do much actual fighting, in both wars it was conquered almost immediately. Belgium would also rather not talk about its period of colonial genocide.
  - _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
    a.) Proportionally the Belgian civilians and the country suffered most. b.) Yes.
- Steve44 8y ago
  > It also looks to me Belgium is forgotten, isn't it? I think a lot of people in the UK are well aware of the Menin Gate at Ypres and their Last Post ceremony. There are so many places and incidents in history that they can't all be remembered with equal vigour. Some will be less prominent than others, it doesn't necessary mean they are forgotten.
- RugnirViking 8y ago
  As a school child in the UK when learning about the world wars we took a trip directly to belgium, not france. We visited flanders fields in ypres, and menin gate. We were taught a great deal about belgian involvement, and most of the impression I got very much included belgium as central to the fighting. Of course, that might be a UK perspective, given we got into the war as a result of german invasion of belgium, but also the incredibly famous poem 'flanders fields' and the symbol of the poppy from belgian fields suggests to me that this understanding continues into adulthood for most people here. For reference, we barely covered world war 2 at all. The latest thing I recall learning about in history at school was the weimar republic and the leadup to world war 2, but they didn't attempt to teach what actually happened dring the course of the fighting. (presumably because it was far too complicated and all over the world to paint a consistent picture to schoolchildren) - It was mainly about the political situation in germany such as the beer hall putsch and communist bavarian uprising. It also has to be said I am relatively young and a lot of this occured around 12 years ago so older people may have a different picture from their schooling, but I have seen nothing that leads me to believe that - older people tend to have great respect for these things as well.
pjc50 8y ago
A good and timely article. I do feel that in Britain today as the generation that was personally involved in the war die out the "remembrance" necessarily transmutes to mythology, and some of the mythology is extremely harmful. Are we remembering some at the cost of others? Not to mention using it as a pretext to fuel the kind of nationalism that drove both wars and colonialism in the first place. I hadn't realised that the bombing in Iraq was done by the same controversial "Bomber" Harris! Or, if we take the broader view and step outside the European theatre, is the war actually really past? There's still gunfire across the Sykes-Picot line.
iamshs 8y ago
I come from a village in Punjab that has a memorial gate (not big on cenotaphs here 50-60 years back, so we build a memorial gate on the road that leads to the village - a practise that Sikhs follow from long) in remembrance of ~120 Sikh soldiers that went to World War 1. The stories that elders told me were about how British imperialists manipulated and threatened young Sikhs into signing up to become cannon fodder because they had quotas to be filled for village to village recruitment. Elders also told how British respected Sikh traditions to the hilt, they understood and had good amount of research corpus of the traditions too. This is why you will see in photographs, Sikhs in Turbans and carrying the holy scripture, Guru Granth Sahib on their head leading the procession. One negative effect was that Sikhs being minority, the population decrease especially young ones, had a detrimental effect later on while India was partitioned along religious lines. Sikhs could not save their most fertile and irrigated plains in Sialkot to Sahiwal belt (present day Pakistan) and were forcibly uprooted and forced to give up their own farms. One positive effect was that after partition, the returnees were able to save countless people from organised massacres along religious lines. They organised village defences, provided logistic know-how and were able to arrest quite a grim situation among the chaos. Sadly, all this literature and memorial diaries are in Punjabi vernacular. Hopefully as new generation grows up, more of these stories will surface in English language. Also, there is marked difference between reporting of same story in Punjabi newspaper and in English newspaper of the same newspaper group: Punjabi newspaper of the same group reports situation more accurately while English newspaper biases it against the Sikhs and even edits direct quotes. So hopefully these stories will surface in either western sources or independent media with correct editing procedure and relevant checks.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  > Sadly, all this literature and memorial diaries are in Punjabi vernacular. Hopefully as new generation grows up, more of these stories will surface in English language. Also, there is marked difference between reporting of same story in Punjabi newspaper and in English newspaper of the same newspaper group: Punjabi newspaper of the same group reports situation more accurately while English newspaper biases it against the Sikhs and even edits direct quotes. So hopefully these stories will surface in either western sources or independent media with correct editing procedure and relevant checks. What is preventing you from doing at least the rough draft? That sounds like a very interesting story, and I'd be willing to pay something to help bring it faithfully to the English language. (contact me by email if interested, I probably won't be able to reply since HN ratelimits me to what seems like two replies every eight hours or so, and this is #2)
baud147258 8y ago
" the “long peace” of the 19th century " The article lost me a little there. I think there as enough wars in the 19th century in Europe (Franco-Prussian, Crimea... [0]) so that using 'long peace' is a bit of a stretch [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe#19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe#19...
- asianthrowaway 8y ago
  The 19th century (post 1815) didn't see huge conflicts like the Napoleonic wars, the 7 year war or the 30 year war which completely wrecked Europe.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    But there was enough high-intensity conflicts (France-Prussia, Spain, Italy, Crimea, Balkans...) that saying "long peace" is a stretch.
baud147258 8y ago
> The first world war marked the moment when legacies of imperialism in Asia and Africa returned home, exploding into self-destructive carnage in Europe I don't understand how the WW 1 is supposed to be the legacy of colonialism. From what I've read, WW 1 was caused by the local opposition between power blocks in Europe. Also the article spend way too much lines saying nothing of import on its subject; it seems more a political piece regarding #currentEvents than anything else. > entire populations as culturally incompatible with white western peoples Well, perhaps there are some culture that doesn't seem compatible with Western culture, for example regarding personal freedom (of religion, of mariage, of sexuality), on the place of women in society.
- pjc50 8y ago
  > Well, perhaps there are some culture that doesn't seem compatible with Western culture, for example regarding personal freedom (of religion, of mariage, of sexuality), on the place of women in society. At the time of colonization, women in the West didn't have the vote, and in much of the British empire the prohibition on homosexuality came with the colonizers and their missionaries, not as a result of local prejudice. WW2 was very much colonialist - Germany having failed to colonise Africa was going to colonise Asia by subjugating the Slavic peoples in the same way the other colonial powers had subjugated their colonies.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- tomgp 8y ago
  Short version, think of it like this: The European powers had a ton of capital and resources garnered through colonial exploitation of Africa and Asia which was basically fuel burned through in massive bonfire of destruction that was the First World War -- anything left over went into the Second World War leaving the US as the dominant power for the latter half of the 20th century. [edited to fix a spelling mistake]
  - baud147258 8y ago
plehoux 8y ago
In 1918, the Canadian/British army opened fire on people from my own neighbourhood in Quebec city, many deaths. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89meute_de_Qu%C3%A9bec_de_1918 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89meute_de_Qu%C3%A9bec_de_... This is never talked about by politicians. People from my city don't even know about this anymore. Those traumatic events and the force conscription from the two world wars were precursor to Quebec separatist movement. I guess it was the same elsewhere in the colonies.
- goodcanadian 8y ago
  A summary, in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_Crisis_of_1917#Quebec_Easter_riots_and_the_end_of_the_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_Crisis_of_1917#Qu... I take exception to your characterisation of the army as British, however, as it was unquestionably federal Canadian troops. The British were not involved. I also take exception to the idea that it is not talked about. The difference in feeling between English Canadians and French Canadians towards the war was well covered by my (English) Canadian education, particularly in the context of conscription. [EDIT: Not that conscription was terribly popular in English Canada either, merely more justified to "help the mother country." French Canadians generally did not feel any connection to Britain and wanted to stay out of it.]
MichaelMoser123 8y ago
Buffalo soldiers - same story. The big war thing used to be a thing of the past, now it's coming back. That frightens me. Anybody in with that?
kenny87 8y ago
I see humans but no humanity.

99 points by akbarnama 8y ago

"This is also why whiteness, first turned into a religion during the economic and social uncertainty that preceded the violence of 1914, is the world’s most dangerous cult today." -- OMG P-)

dang 8y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments, especially on flameprone topics. In particular, it isn't good to cherry-pick the most provocative thing from an article and drop it in here as a drive-by. That usually guarantees a flamewar.
- dbcooper 8y ago
  An article that makes such a bold, radical, and racially charged assertion hardly seems to be a good starting point for avoiding a flame-war, let alone starting a productive discussion.
- bergoid 8y ago
  The author of the piece - Pankaj Mishra - has a track record of making racist anti-white statements under the guise of anti-racism. Here he's calling Jordan Peterson a fascist: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and-fascist-mysticism/ https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and... In the same article, writing about Peterson's friendship with Charles Joseph, a Kwakwaka'wakw sculptor, Pankaj Mishra shared the following insight with the world: "Peterson may seem the latest in a long line of eggheads pretentiously but harmlessly romancing the noble savage."

nutcracker46 8y ago

Mishra argues from a perspective aligned with the Marxist-socialists we have all heard before. WTF, it is too simplistic to assert that the West (yes, I capitalised it) opted to rely on a racial caste system and colonies to support liberal democracy for Whites. Also, I point to ethnic groups in the Far East who saw themselves as master races, civilised above all others in the world. These others did plenty of looting and colonizing too. Instead, think of the USA Civil War, WW1, WW2, the Cold War, and the coming WW3 as a contest: liberal democracy / represrntative government versus monarchies, autocracies, and oligarchies.

dang 8y ago
Please don't turn HN discussions into predictable ideological flamewars. Those are tedious and therefore off topic. There is interesting historical material in this article, which most of us probably didn't know. (I didn't.)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
devoply 8y ago
> Instead, think of the USA Civil War, WW1, WW2, the Cold War, and the coming WW3 as a contest: liberal democracy / representative government versus monarchies, autocracies, and oligarchies. To talk to this frame is to talk to support the rhetoric which has led to destruction of many countries in the name of liberating them while at the same time supporting other regimes practicing exactly what they are supposed to be condemning. It's a bullshit rhetorical tactic that no one believes anymore. The imperialism you speak of is alive and well and that's why it's the target of condemnation. When it's no longer practiced you can bring up the old canards of whataboutism to justify it as nothing out of the ordinary historically.
negamax 8y ago
It doesn’t take much brain cells to conclude Europe was supported at expense of rest of the planet. It’s failing in today’s economy for exactly the same reason. Globalization and current economic systems transfers wealth by merit instead of force. Many right wing conmen are reminiscing a past that will never be possible as there will never be colonies again
- sgift 8y ago
  EU GDP: 18.8 trillion -- India GDP: 2.5 trillion India has almost three times the population of the EU. If that is "failing" I think we can fail a bit more.
  - negamax 8y ago

Synaesthesia 8y ago

The entire history of Europe is one of constant, vicious and brutal wars. Yes they exported it overseas but IMO WW1 is a continuation of a tradition of continental violence, not colonial violence that came home. One could argue rather the colonial violence is an export of the European history of war, as Chomsky does in "Year 501"

danmaz74 8y ago
Tbh, having a state of very frequent wars wasn't an exclusive to Europe.
- ur-whale 8y ago
  wasn't => isn't
pasabagi 8y ago
The years before the first world war had seen no serious, bloody conflicts since the Napoleonic wars. Most of the techniques and technologies used so destructively in WW1 were tested first in the colonies. More fundamentally, the basic driver of tensions before the first world war was the german desire for colonies, or rather, export markets to allow their continued economic growth.
- gdfasfklshg4 8y ago
  Do you count the American Civil War as a colonial war?
  - icebraining 8y ago
    I don't think that happened in Europe.
- wcarey 8y ago
  Would the quarter million casualties of the Franco-Prussian war push it into the category of "serious, bloody" conflict?

mattmanser 8y ago

Claims that remembrance day doesn't honour them, hasn't he even watched the ceremony? 30 or 40 commonwealth wreathes are laid, all the countries are named on TV, and it's mid-ceremony, not at the end. I stopped there in the article, as he obviously had an agenda that is completely at odds with reality. Such a shame the Guardian didn't even do basic editorial checking on the article.

KnightOfWords 8y ago
In recent time there has been more acknowledgement of the role the commonwealth nations played in the conflict. However, that's not part of the popular narrative of WW1, and is given cursory treatment in most histories. The article is well worth reading in its entirety.
- mattmanser 8y ago
  Why believe anything else he has written? A large part of the ceremony is given over to the laying of commonwealth wreathes, which is straight after the last post. It's a basic fact which he seems to claim doesn't happen, how much more of his writing is given over to this bias?
  - vikasg 8y ago
    An actual person from the commonwealth is trying to tell you that the role of the colonies in WW1 is often ignored, and you can't even bother to read past the first paragraph. You just want to keep repeating that they lay wreaths.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - jasonlotito 8y ago
    > It's a basic fact which he seems to claim doesn't happen This is a lie.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

A few observations and thoughts after reading the article: 1. The European's ideas of racial superiority may have directly led the deaths of millions of soldiers from the machine guns. The colonial powers, had experience with and new just how devastating the machine gun when they used it against the indigenous peoples of their colonies. However, many commanders felt that it would not be that effective against well-trained European soldiers. That proved to be a huge mistake and millions of young infantry paid the price as their commanding officers sent them in mass assaults against machine guns. 2. More than any change of heart due to morals, it was the economic and manpower losses of WWI and WWII that made the European powers unable to hold onto their colonies. For example the British had faced unrest in India before, for example the Sepoy rebellion. However, they were able to brutally crush the rebellions and maintain their hold on power. However, in the aftermath of WWII, the British had neither the resolve, the manpower, or the money to continue to try to hold onto India in opposition to the independence movement. Without these World Wars, there is a good chance that India would still be a British colony. 3. The reason that "white" people oppressed so many others was not because they were necessarily intrinsically more immoral, but simply that they had much more power than the others.The examples of the Armenian genocide and the Rape of Nanking from WWI and WWII respectively by people that would not be considered "white" illustrates the sad state of human affairs in that the strong will tend to oppress the weak. This has been going on long before any notion of "whiteness" and will likely go on in the future whatever the status of "whiteness". 4. The post WWII peace in Western Europe was probably due more to the overwhelming superiority of the United States and the Soviet Union vis-a-vis the European powers than of any awakening. Whereas in WWI and WWII, the European powers could imagine beating their neighbors and taking their territory, after WWII, they knew that aggression against their neighbors would lead to a conflict with either the United States or the Soviet Union and they had no hope of winning.

jernfrost 8y ago
I agree, I don't think Europeans have been worse than others would have been, we simply had the means to do it. However I find it problematic that so much of the brutality gets swept under the rug. E.g. it is typical of political propaganda how Stalins starvation of millions of Ukrainians is used to disparage socialism. However it is far less known that Britain starved quite a lot more people in India, often in the name of capitalism. Food was shipped out at gunpoint to foreign markets while people starved to death on the grounds that markets should not be disrupted. There is also the belittling of other people, through ignorance of our own past. E.g. the Chinese with Mao is presented as somehow more barbaric and brutal. The US presents itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy despite slaughtering the native population and enslaving millions of blacks. I don't think westerners are inherently worse than anybody else. I just dislike the smugness in particular by great powers such as the Britain and the US, who present themselves as these big civilizing forces.

jernfrost 8y ago

Interesting read, but I want to raise some objections: 1) I don't like that one keep talking about the whole west as one unit and tainting everybody. It creates a simplified picture of oppressor and the oppressed. It should not be forgotten that this is primarily about the major powers of Europe. Not every European country was a major power. Europe is full of smaller countries, which often had little say in this matter. Ireland e.g. has a brutal history of oppression by the British. It is not like whites were nice to each other and only cruel to others. Big colonial powers have a different view of people. I remember reading about polar expeditions, naturally since I am Norwegian. It is hard to not notice the stark difference between how Norwegians treated Inuit people and how the British treated them. The British were full of contempt for the natives of the polar regions. They viewed them as backwards and as having nothing useful to teach them. The British assumed British sense of civilization, property law etc was universal. When an Inuit took an object belonging to a British expedition member they brutally flogged him as punishment for "stealing". Never mind that the concept of ownership was entirely different to the Inuit. Norwegian polar explorers in contrast eagerly learned from the natives how they used their dogs and how they dressed for the cold. It is a probably the chief reason why Amundsen would beat Scott to the pole. Amundsen did not deal with the different culture of the Inuit by assuming superiority and doling out cruel punishment to anyone not following his moral code. Instead they used trickery, making the Inuit believe that if they went into their storage room, they could blow up. I am not writing this primarily to make my fellow Norwegians look amazing. But it is easier to contrast with cultures you actually know. Anyway we were kind of dicks to our indigenous people, the Sami, but to point out that European culture varied greatly. Saying the west did this and that, is a bit like our own homogenization of Africa, as if it is just one country. 2) We must know our history to not repeat it. I DO think it is a problem that we often try to sugarcoat our past. However we should also keep perspective. Too often people get into this pattern of thinking as if the past brutality of European colonial powers is inherent in being white. That is just as racist as claiming jews are inherently money grubbing bankers and africans are lazy. Europeans are as much product of their history and upbringing as everybody else, and has the same potential for change. Nor is everybody the same. While Europeans enslaved people, there was also Europeans fighting hard against slavery. Emancipation developed further and quicker in Europe than in many other parts of the world. E.g. slavery was ended by Europeans before it was in the Arab world. I don't think that points to white superiority, but simply is a way of pointing out that every civilization is a mix of different values and ideas, both good and bad. The good can triumph over the bad. We should however recognize that the struggles many countries face around the world is partly of our making. However we cannot take full responsibility. Africa or India would not be as modern rich or developed today as by magic if Europeans had never set their feet on shore. All of these areas were hundreds of years behind Europe in technological development. What Europe could have done is treating them better. But that does not make Europeans uniquely bad. The powerful have always through history had a tendency to exploit the weaker ones.

_Codemonkeyism 8y ago

It also looks to me Belgium is forgotten, isn't it? It's mostly Britain, France and Germany remembered in Europe (The US is more associated with WW2 I think).

pjc50 8y ago
Belgium didn't have a chance to do much actual fighting, in both wars it was conquered almost immediately. Belgium would also rather not talk about its period of colonial genocide.
- _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
  a.) Proportionally the Belgian civilians and the country suffered most. b.) Yes.
Steve44 8y ago
> It also looks to me Belgium is forgotten, isn't it? I think a lot of people in the UK are well aware of the Menin Gate at Ypres and their Last Post ceremony. There are so many places and incidents in history that they can't all be remembered with equal vigour. Some will be less prominent than others, it doesn't necessary mean they are forgotten.
RugnirViking 8y ago
As a school child in the UK when learning about the world wars we took a trip directly to belgium, not france. We visited flanders fields in ypres, and menin gate. We were taught a great deal about belgian involvement, and most of the impression I got very much included belgium as central to the fighting. Of course, that might be a UK perspective, given we got into the war as a result of german invasion of belgium, but also the incredibly famous poem 'flanders fields' and the symbol of the poppy from belgian fields suggests to me that this understanding continues into adulthood for most people here. For reference, we barely covered world war 2 at all. The latest thing I recall learning about in history at school was the weimar republic and the leadup to world war 2, but they didn't attempt to teach what actually happened dring the course of the fighting. (presumably because it was far too complicated and all over the world to paint a consistent picture to schoolchildren) - It was mainly about the political situation in germany such as the beer hall putsch and communist bavarian uprising. It also has to be said I am relatively young and a lot of this occured around 12 years ago so older people may have a different picture from their schooling, but I have seen nothing that leads me to believe that - older people tend to have great respect for these things as well.

pjc50 8y ago

A good and timely article. I do feel that in Britain today as the generation that was personally involved in the war die out the "remembrance" necessarily transmutes to mythology, and some of the mythology is extremely harmful. Are we remembering some at the cost of others? Not to mention using it as a pretext to fuel the kind of nationalism that drove both wars and colonialism in the first place. I hadn't realised that the bombing in Iraq was done by the same controversial "Bomber" Harris! Or, if we take the broader view and step outside the European theatre, is the war actually really past? There's still gunfire across the Sykes-Picot line.

iamshs 8y ago

I come from a village in Punjab that has a memorial gate (not big on cenotaphs here 50-60 years back, so we build a memorial gate on the road that leads to the village - a practise that Sikhs follow from long) in remembrance of ~120 Sikh soldiers that went to World War 1. The stories that elders told me were about how British imperialists manipulated and threatened young Sikhs into signing up to become cannon fodder because they had quotas to be filled for village to village recruitment. Elders also told how British respected Sikh traditions to the hilt, they understood and had good amount of research corpus of the traditions too. This is why you will see in photographs, Sikhs in Turbans and carrying the holy scripture, Guru Granth Sahib on their head leading the procession. One negative effect was that Sikhs being minority, the population decrease especially young ones, had a detrimental effect later on while India was partitioned along religious lines. Sikhs could not save their most fertile and irrigated plains in Sialkot to Sahiwal belt (present day Pakistan) and were forcibly uprooted and forced to give up their own farms. One positive effect was that after partition, the returnees were able to save countless people from organised massacres along religious lines. They organised village defences, provided logistic know-how and were able to arrest quite a grim situation among the chaos. Sadly, all this literature and memorial diaries are in Punjabi vernacular. Hopefully as new generation grows up, more of these stories will surface in English language. Also, there is marked difference between reporting of same story in Punjabi newspaper and in English newspaper of the same newspaper group: Punjabi newspaper of the same group reports situation more accurately while English newspaper biases it against the Sikhs and even edits direct quotes. So hopefully these stories will surface in either western sources or independent media with correct editing procedure and relevant checks.

microcolonel 8y ago
> Sadly, all this literature and memorial diaries are in Punjabi vernacular. Hopefully as new generation grows up, more of these stories will surface in English language. Also, there is marked difference between reporting of same story in Punjabi newspaper and in English newspaper of the same newspaper group: Punjabi newspaper of the same group reports situation more accurately while English newspaper biases it against the Sikhs and even edits direct quotes. So hopefully these stories will surface in either western sources or independent media with correct editing procedure and relevant checks. What is preventing you from doing at least the rough draft? That sounds like a very interesting story, and I'd be willing to pay something to help bring it faithfully to the English language. (contact me by email if interested, I probably won't be able to reply since HN ratelimits me to what seems like two replies every eight hours or so, and this is #2)

baud147258 8y ago

" the “long peace” of the 19th century " The article lost me a little there. I think there as enough wars in the 19th century in Europe (Franco-Prussian, Crimea... [0]) so that using 'long peace' is a bit of a stretch [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe#19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe#19...

asianthrowaway 8y ago
The 19th century (post 1815) didn't see huge conflicts like the Napoleonic wars, the 7 year war or the 30 year war which completely wrecked Europe.
- baud147258 8y ago
  But there was enough high-intensity conflicts (France-Prussia, Spain, Italy, Crimea, Balkans...) that saying "long peace" is a stretch.

baud147258 8y ago

> The first world war marked the moment when legacies of imperialism in Asia and Africa returned home, exploding into self-destructive carnage in Europe I don't understand how the WW 1 is supposed to be the legacy of colonialism. From what I've read, WW 1 was caused by the local opposition between power blocks in Europe. Also the article spend way too much lines saying nothing of import on its subject; it seems more a political piece regarding #currentEvents than anything else. > entire populations as culturally incompatible with white western peoples Well, perhaps there are some culture that doesn't seem compatible with Western culture, for example regarding personal freedom (of religion, of mariage, of sexuality), on the place of women in society.

pjc50 8y ago
> Well, perhaps there are some culture that doesn't seem compatible with Western culture, for example regarding personal freedom (of religion, of mariage, of sexuality), on the place of women in society. At the time of colonization, women in the West didn't have the vote, and in much of the British empire the prohibition on homosexuality came with the colonizers and their missionaries, not as a result of local prejudice. WW2 was very much colonialist - Germany having failed to colonise Africa was going to colonise Asia by subjugating the Slavic peoples in the same way the other colonial powers had subjugated their colonies.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
tomgp 8y ago
Short version, think of it like this: The European powers had a ton of capital and resources garnered through colonial exploitation of Africa and Asia which was basically fuel burned through in massive bonfire of destruction that was the First World War -- anything left over went into the Second World War leaving the US as the dominant power for the latter half of the 20th century. [edited to fix a spelling mistake]
- baud147258 8y ago

plehoux 8y ago

In 1918, the Canadian/British army opened fire on people from my own neighbourhood in Quebec city, many deaths. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89meute_de_Qu%C3%A9bec_de_1918 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89meute_de_Qu%C3%A9bec_de_... This is never talked about by politicians. People from my city don't even know about this anymore. Those traumatic events and the force conscription from the two world wars were precursor to Quebec separatist movement. I guess it was the same elsewhere in the colonies.

goodcanadian 8y ago
A summary, in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_Crisis_of_1917#Quebec_Easter_riots_and_the_end_of_the_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_Crisis_of_1917#Qu... I take exception to your characterisation of the army as British, however, as it was unquestionably federal Canadian troops. The British were not involved. I also take exception to the idea that it is not talked about. The difference in feeling between English Canadians and French Canadians towards the war was well covered by my (English) Canadian education, particularly in the context of conscription. [EDIT: Not that conscription was terribly popular in English Canada either, merely more justified to "help the mother country." French Canadians generally did not feel any connection to Britain and wanted to stay out of it.]

MichaelMoser123 8y ago

Buffalo soldiers - same story. The big war thing used to be a thing of the past, now it's coming back. That frightens me. Anybody in with that?

kenny87 8y ago

I see humans but no humanity.