Baba forwarded me a piece via a super-intellectual friend of his. Felt like responding to that in some detail so went on and on in an email. Realized he might forward it to him so then structured it a bit nicely. Also realised that this is 200 words+ for the day so might as well record it here 🙂
I’m also keen to read this 10 years later (where I’m hopefully not wasting my day on conference calls which I couldn’t give a rats ass about) and see if my thoughts on this have evolved. I’m sure I would have structured this very differently 10 years ago…
The piece in question:
In defense of the British Empire
If the Empire was a system of exploitation, it was a very inept one
~ Robert Tombs
https://spectator.us/defense-british-empire/
My response:
Isn’t Empire Apologia a bit out of date now? This debate has been going on for many years – especially post Brexit. Shashi Tharoor shot to popularity among GenY and milennials by a viral speech against this point and made much money by milking a book out of it. Again this now for an American audience I daresay?
There is concern and debate in the UK that the British education system does not speak of or teach their children about the dark side of the Empire at all. I think that is where there is a lot of clamour for correction, which seems reasonable enough in this age of jingoistic hypernationalism.
Clearly there is enough of a spread of facts to pick what to focus on and what to ignore . Of course there were some benefits, but they were hardly driven by a spirit of generosity or egalitarianism. The railways for instance were to transport British goods to the ports. That they benefited the locals later was purely incidental. Likewise for literacy, agriculture reforms etc.
It is undeniable that the Empire and its history is predicated on an axiom of White Man better than Coloured Man – the histories of white colonies versus other ones attest to this. In most cases better weapons and strategic alliances, trickery and opportunism allowed a handful of Englishmen to take charge, not that they were invited with open arms as this piece indicates.
That this was a function of that age (as was the slave trade, conquering a people and looting their lands etc.), it was not an orchestrated strategy driven centrally but opportunistic scope creep etc. is acceptable. So one need not be apologetic re: that, just like descendants of the Mughals/Marathas/Rajputs in India should not be apologetic about atrocities from that age. And perhaps whether it was a more humane empire than others of its age like the French, Portuguese, Spanish etc. is an interesting intellectual debate for Europeans to indulge in.
I am not well-read enough to debate the merit in the auditing of ills from generations ago or reparations. But to position it as an act of benevolence (or Kipling’s White Man’s Burden) which this gentleman seems to do is also a bit rich and smells of BS.
Yada Yada Yada 