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As someone who both has a lot of Irish blood (read: many relatives who hate the British), and someone who considers himself an amateur historian I'd like to mak
by bjones22 11y ago
As someone who both has a lot of Irish blood (read: many relatives who hate the British), and someone who considers himself an amateur historian I'd like to make a single point:
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943:
"starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than that of sturdy Greeks"
~ Churchill 1943
I think this quote captures the ethos of British colonial rule quite nicely.
While the British ruled many of their colonies by a identifiable play-book (i.e. a superiority complex that lead to brutal governance), cultural preference, as it always seems to, lead to favorable treatment of those demographics closest to anglo-saxon / protestant / etc, characteristics.
So I assert while famines were induced by the British in both Ireland and India, the Indians would have been seen as lowlier then the Irish, by a debatable amount.
The Indian population would thus have suffered harsher under colonial rulers.
This is coming from someone who has traced his ancestry back to a British lord, which in all likelihood means a family member (likely 3-4 generations) was raped as a direct result of British colonialism.
History is brutal and everybody likes to call foul. However treatment of different, far off, peoples by colonial powers will never seek to amaze in its vicious and sickening nature.
Like this incident committed by American troops in 1901: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balangiga_massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balangiga_massacre
- enupten 11y agoApparently many more Bengalis died during WWII than the Jews. And this when we were supposedly "allies". The British were just as inhuman as the Nazis. Indeed, many people are thankful to Hitler precisely because his war-mongering weakened Britain. You'll then find Hinduphobes turn this around by accusing Indians (read, Hindus) of anti-semitism! Wendy Doniger in her tome on "alternate" history makes this very claim. Ironically, India is the only country in the World where the Jews (and the Zoarastrians, Syrian Christians...) were harboured unpersecuted for centuries before they migrated to Israel. http://swarajyamag.com/commentary/for-sir-winston-churchill-was-an-honourable-man/ http://swarajyamag.com/commentary/for-sir-winston-churchill-... http://swarajyamag.com/magazine/how-india-bailed-out-the-west-in-world-war-ii/ http://swarajyamag.com/magazine/how-india-bailed-out-the-wes...
- vacri 11y agoWell, the 'potato famine' in Ireland wasn't just due to potato blight. The English were ripping heaps of food out of the island. Given that the population of Ireland halved as a result, it seems much of a muchness to me when playing 'oppression olympics' about who had it worse. Remember also that the English didn't conquer India just with their own armies. They used allies and puppets; England didn't have the sheer manpower it'd take to conquer India alone. Basically their tactic was find a small power and give them advanced weapons. The small power then enjoys becoming a big power... but is then dependent on England for the arms supply, and so becomes a puppet. The English were very good at politics, playing people off each other.