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Britain’s destruction and concealment of colonial records (2017)
- neartheplain 5y agoAny newer studies with examples of some of the concealed records? This one is frustratingly vague on the details.
- klyrs 5y agoThe irony is palpable
- ganeshkrishnan 5y agoHow would you know what was burnt if it was already burnt? The secrets were burnt and no one has them anymore.
- kylegordon 5y agoIt's the second line of the article... "A great number of these records were destroyed and a sizeable portion sent to Britain to be kept secret. " Not all have been destroyed.
- neartheplain 5y agoSome papers were sent back to Britain for safekeeping, per the article. Speculatively, perhaps someone who was there could also tell us what was burnt in more detail.
- neolog 5y agoMaybe they wrote down what they burned.
- toss1 5y agoIf document-A makes a reference to document-B, and document-B is missing, and there were other references to burning, that's a start. Also, document-B might show up in the set that wasn't burned, but taken away and classified
- hhs 5y agoCaroline Elkins has written on this topic more broadly. Early next year she’ll have a book out that touches on this area. Here’s a brief summary: “And she makes clear that when Britain could no longer maintain control over the violence it provoked and enacted, it retreated from empire, destroying and hiding incriminating evidence of its policies and practices.” [0] [0]: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/45877/legacy-of-violence-by-caroline-elkins/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/45877/legacy-of-vio...
- 29athrowaway 5y agoCowardly covering up coward acts.
- nicky0 5y agoSays the throwaway account...
- hermitcrab 5y agoThe British Empire did good things and bad things. From the point of the people colonized, I'm confident it was a lot more bad than good. If you don't believe me, read up on the horrors of the Amritsar massacre, the botched partition of India or the treatment of Kenyan people during the Mau Mau rebellion. So I'm sure there is a lot to cover up. The faintest praise I can offer is - we weren't as bad as the Belgians.
- Synaesthesia 5y agoWait til you hear what they did to Bengal, one of the richest places in the world when they arrived. Today it’s Bangladesh.
- hermitcrab 5y agoI guess that is what happens when you let a private corporation (The East India Company) run a sub-continent for profit with its own army. At least Google and Facebook don't have their own armies (yet)!
- rbg246 5y agoA private corporation committing atrocities is still the country or empire that sets the rules. It's still British people carrying out / orchestrating the violence.
- hermitcrab 5y agoI'm not excusing Britain in any way for allowing the East India Company to behave as it did. I believe many of the British ruling class were shareholders and benefitted directly from its depredations.
- rbg246 5y agoNo absolutely, sorry if I sounded that way. I certainly was not saying you were excusing, just adding an addendum to your comment.
- Synaesthesia 5y agoOne day the British will have to face up to their genocidal colonial legacy.
- hermitcrab 5y agoA lot of people certainly died through indifference, neglect and their resources being misappropriated (e.g. Bengal famine, Irish potato famine, Highland clearances etc). But I'm not aware that the British Empire ever did anything deliberately genocidal, in the way that, say, the Nazis or the Romans attempted to destroy whole peoples.
- eigenket 5y agoThe Boer war might count, I'm sure there are other examples > The British response to guerrilla warfare was to set up complex nets of blockhouses, strongpoints, and barbed wire fences, partitioning off the entire conquered territory. In addition, civilian farms and livestock were destroyed as part of a scorched earth policy. Survivors were forced into concentration camps. Very large proportions of these civilians died of hunger and disease, especially the children
- azalemeth 5y agoMy grandmother's parents were in one of these concentration camps. She told stories about how the British used to arrive periodically to kill all the chickens and lifestock and try to maximise famine, and how her dad was a gun-runner for the Boers. She later emigrated to London (!).
- hermitcrab 5y agoAccounts of the Boer concentration camps are horrific. And the scorched earth policy was brutal. I don't think it was a deliberate attempt to exterminate the Boers though. Just to subjugate them enough so the British empire could take what it wanted.
- ArkanExplorer 5y agoThe lesson of genocide appears to be: carry it out in the most boring way possible (starvation, exposure, disease, suppression of fertility) and people will forget about it or never realize it occurred. As soon as you introduce novel technologies or extensive record-keeping, your actions remain cemented in history and popular consciousness.
- akudha 5y agoMakes me wonder what kind of horrific stuff we would find in the secret archives of the past (and even the present), like unit 731 for example. Part of me wants to know, but part of me also wants them buried and gone so we as a species can just move on. One thing is certain though - humans are as capable of horrific shit as we are capable of great love and empathy.
- klelatti 5y agoJust yesterday hundreds of people were presented with 'honours' bearing the name of the British Empire - e.g. a 'CBE' is a 'Commander of the British Empire'. Just as a start (and only a start) maybe Britain should stop celebrating the (non-existent) Empire which caused so many problems around the world.
- kmlx 5y ago> which caused so many problems around the world you’re viewing this through the prism of the present.
- vixen99 5y agoCompletely agree. The benighted nations exploited by the British could have done without them introducing the British legal system giving people far more rights than they had ever had before. Could have done without the road and rail systems left behind by the British (including in India where it was the biggest in the world). Could have done without the literacy and educational reform in places they colonized. And unlike any other nation, they passed the Slave Trade Act in 1807 that made slavery illegal in the British Empire. It continued elsewhere of course (as it does today) and the British Navy seized 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans between 1808 and 1860. Also interesting that five of the ten richest countries in Africa today are former British Colonies. Perhaps the Ottoman Empire or someother (which might we suggest?) should have triumphed instead.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoLife of Brian had something similar to say: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDcturOGF_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDcturOGF_4
- thewarrior 5y agoSo no nation not colonized by the British has a legal system that gives them rights ? A cursory look at colonial India is enough to show this to be complete nonsense. The Rowlatt act wasn’t exactly the beacon of human rights.
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- Tagbert 5y agoWhen Brasil was planning to end slavery, the minister in charge burned all of the records. The Portuguese were very thorough bureaucrats who recorded everything about which slaves were brought from where. After the burning, the former slaves could never know where they were from.