UK Muslims targeted for speaking out about terror

[Walsingham]

I honestly cannot think of a single instance in which a colonised populace genuinely looked up to their coloniser. In most cases I'd suggest dull indifference would fit better. In most of the other some degree of antipathy. Here for example while whitey probably has some degree of affection for dear old blighty still there's a lot more antipathy from Maori- except the elites- plus a lot of indifference.

 

I accept you can't think of many instances. I would suggest that - due to the two way traffic in mores and culture - India is an example of a good relationship. I'm not saying it justified anything. I'm just saying you can see it evident in many levels, even to this day.

[NOK222]

That's probably because of the events that led to the end of their colonization. 

[Zoraptor]

 

I accept you can't think of many instances. I would suggest that - due to the two way traffic in mores and culture - India is an example of a good relationship. I'm not saying it justified anything. I'm just saying you can see it evident in many levels, even to this day.

 

 

The question with India is whether the actual population cares or likes Britain, and that I rather doubt- I'd suspect indifference would be far more prevalent. Certainly there's an anglicised/ americanised ruling class who are also broadly anglo/ americophiles, but they tend to be the only people we actually hear from because they speak english, are on the internet, travel internationally, are frequently educated in foreign universities etc, things that probably 95% of Indians don't do and which skew perceptions, ie we generally see the educated classes and those predisposed to liking/ being in the west and that skews perception. There's also a lot of anger still in certain areas about the events surrounding independence and partition which did, after all, kill and displace millions. Plus other regional things like the Bengal famines that killed more than any of Stalin's shenanigans, the rather brutal repression of certain rebellions etc. Whether those sorts of things can be fairly attributed to Britain is in some cases a moot question, but they are blamed for them and as with many 'young' countries there is a tendency to play on them to prop up perceptions of the current government in education and the like.

[Walsingham]

You make a good point about us being chiefly exposed to the classes who like us, for obvious reasons.

 

However, I also note that you mention partition killing people. I find it patronising in the extreme to treat the genocidal behaviour of Indians as the puppetry of Whitehall. Not to mention seemingly excusing the perpetrators on grounds of somehow diminished responsibility.

 

I feel quite strongly that by our excess guilty feelings we have allowed decades of violence and bad government all over the place. Writing it all off as inevitable, and our fault. People have suffered and died needlessly to satisfy post-colonial narcissism.

[Zoraptor]

You make a good point about us being chiefly exposed to the classes who like us, for obvious reasons.

 

However, I also note that you mention partition killing people. I find it patronising in the extreme to treat the genocidal behaviour of Indians as the puppetry of Whitehall. Not to mention seemingly excusing the perpetrators on grounds of somehow diminished responsibility.

I never said Britain was to blame, either entirely or even in the majority. But if you run a place for up to three centuries and you end up with millions of dead and displaced when you relinquish control then there clearly is some blame to be assigned, and it's very easy for the victims to blame the colonial authority for the shambolic change over.

 

I feel quite strongly that by our excess guilty feelings we have allowed decades of violence and bad government all over the place.

Heh, that was largely the justification for colonialism in the first place.

[Rostere]

Of course it depends of the state of the nation you colonize, but in my opinion bad relations between colonized and colonizer come chiefly from a violent struggle for independence. If there is no such struggle, or if no such struggle has occurred yet, I think a measure of respect for the colonizer among the colonized definitely can exist - take my example of Ho Chi Minh from earlier in this(?) thread for example.

[Walsingham]

 

You make a good point about us being chiefly exposed to the classes who like us, for obvious reasons.

 

However, I also note that you mention partition killing people. I find it patronising in the extreme to treat the genocidal behaviour of Indians as the puppetry of Whitehall. Not to mention seemingly excusing the perpetrators on grounds of somehow diminished responsibility.

I never said Britain was to blame, either entirely or even in the majority. But if you run a place for up to three centuries and you end up with millions of dead and displaced when you relinquish control then there clearly is some blame to be assigned, and it's very easy for the victims to blame the colonial authority for the shambolic change over.

 

I feel quite strongly that by our excess guilty feelings we have allowed decades of violence and bad government all over the place.

Heh, that was largely the justification for colonialism in the first place.

 

 

I suppose the question I might ask is: If the monied and political class left Great Britain, taking the police, army, judiciary, and welfare services with them, how much violence would happen?

[Zoraptor]

Going by the riots you had fairly recently, quite a lot, quite quickly.

 

The real question there though is how much blame you assign to the people actually committing the violence vs the people who have withdrawn all the services.

[Walsingham]

Going by the riots you had fairly recently, quite a lot, quite quickly.

 

The real question there though is how much blame you assign to the people actually committing the violence vs the people who have withdrawn all the services.

 

The former are the perpetrators. The latter are accessories to the fact.

[Zoraptor]

And accessories do share blame- it's itself a crime to be an accessory to a criminal act if you knew or had a reasonable suspicion of it. Given human nature it is inevitable that some people will see withdrawal of police as an invitation to riot or settle scores, while others will be driven by withdrawal of services of the breakdown of law into doing things they usually wouldn't and previously hadn't. So you can blame the individuals, and you can blame the system/ it's withdrawal, the only question being where exactly the balance of blame lies.

 

But one entity I don't think you can fairly blame is the people as a whole. No country whether India or the UK consists entirely of Gandhis, if it did you wouldn't need police etc in the first place.

[Kroney]

Since the conversation has drifted over towards post-colonialist attitudes, I'll briefly weigh in to say that Britain withdrew from certain countries too quickly and thoughtlessly. The utter cluster**** that is Africa is largely our fault, something that could easily have been avoided had we created sovereign nations along tribal borders instead of something similar to our old administrative areas. India, by and large, has a relatively positive attitude toward Britain. Partly because India always had relatively hands-off treatment, with significant areas being autonomous and ruled by local royalty.

 

My general point, I suppose, is that a lot of countries suffered a power vacuum soon or immediately after independence due to political expediency on our part. The Empire was costing and we wanted rid. A slower withdrawal may well have resulted in a far more stable world. So yeah, we share some of the moral burden from being accessories, though it doesn't excuse the actions of men putting rifles in the hands of children and pointing them towards a rival tribe.

[Walsingham]

I should add that my opinion radically shifted a few years back when I got access to the Colonial Office files on Nigeria. If you have more than dilatory interest in these issues then I can't recommend them highly enough.

 

A lot of work was put into planning good governance for Nigeria. It's not like we just snuck out in the middle of the night.

 

There main mistake was assuming that power brokers and intellectuals and so on would behave consistently with our experience, and in their own best interests. You know, by making a go of commerce and politics.

 

You can criticise the speed with which we left. But I think it was a combination of selfishness, and the fact that once you accept we had better let the locals get on with their lives, how long do you WANT to wait?

[Zoraptor]

The big problem there was that the principles that governed good colonial administration and good independent administration were not in concert. For a good colonial administration you want a minimum of trouble for the administrators, and maximal returns on the 'investment' of having the colony- and at least in theory for an independent administration you want a balance of good economic principles and good social development/ cohesion. Unfortunately colonial administration often meant things like deliberately weakening tribes that were 'too strong' by putting half their land in one area and half in another/ promoting weaker tribes as administrators in preference and similar, things which are potentially disastrous when independence comes along because you have resentment and, for want of a better term, national identities that are split between nominal countries.

 

At its heart the problem is that colonialism was always- fundamentally- about benefiting the coloniser rather than the colonised, no matter what justifications were said about it at the time. If you want a good, smooth and seamless transition to home rule it needs to have a good framework of things like education and infrastructure, well run, and native run, industries which are not just obsessed with target profits but also with how those profits are made (eg no corruption tolerated just because they make enough money for the crown), and good 'state' fundamentals like a judiciary and police force set up over decades not months or years plus- as far as possible- sensible boundaries and policies to include and harmonise the people in the new country. Sadly, while those things did happen in some areas (dominions, mainly for the Brits, though they were also usually where colonists outnumbered natives) they didn't happen everywhere.

[Walsingham]

Not sure how your point meshes with mine, Zor. Could you elaborate?

[Zoraptor]

Hmm. I guess the points I was trying to make were twofold, firstly that most of the post colonial countries are fundamentally compromised by their design, and that in order to have them be (immediately) successful post colonial countries is a process requiring decades of preparation rather than months or years. So whatever preparations made, no matter how well intentioned, were effectively the ambulance at bottom of cliff rather than railing at top.

 

With respect to Nigeria (and India etc) I will happily accept that Britain did not deliberately sabotage the independence process and in latter cases probably did the best they could, but on a fundamental level the problems they had were results of colonial policies from their inception and that the only way to avoid them was to decide- early- that the colonies would be independent at some stage and to have at least some focus on getting good (native) governance and infrastructure in place from early on. That way you have people ready for a power transition who adhere to the tenets of good governance, unfortunately that was not the focus.

[Walsingham]

Okay, so what differentiates annexing, say, Swaziland different from annexing, say, Cardiff?

[Zoraptor]

The main things that differentiate it are time- 12th century vs 19th century- and proximity. For the vast majority of that time Wales has been treated as an integral part of England/ Britain and has had essentially indistinguishable social and economic institutions. The same certainly cannot be said for Swaziland- it did not get much development, wasn't treated as integral, did not have the same institutions- and pretty much the only colonies where it can be said are those which had colonisers in either the majority or a very sizeable minority- Canada/ A/ NZ/ RSA- and even in those cases the colonised were generally less well off still.

[Walsingham]

You haven't been to Wales have you? Development?

 

Seriously, though. Britain generally attempted to leave comparable institutions, given the timeframe available. And not just in 'white' countries. Look at Singapore. Hong Kong.

 

Again, I ask, how is it legitimate for ANY nation state to exist by right of conquest? For Madrid to govern Santiago? For London to govern Newcastle?

[Zoraptor]

Cardiff had Britain's entire copper smelting industry situated there, for example. There was nothing similar in the colonies, if anything they were used to supply Britain with cut price raw materials rather than using those raw materials to build up their own economies.

 

Singapore and Hong Kong are special cases in that they're both cities rather than classic countries. They have the big advantage of having been developed as ports and as points of entry to British controlled areas- indeed, the whole conquest/ lease of Hong Kong was as an access point for opium to China. That necessitates a lot of infrastructure and administration that simply was not necessary and hence not done elsewhere.

 

As for right of conquest, historically it was fine and accepted as such- at least if you could make it stick and get other great powers to accept it. Nowadays it isn't. It's largely an irrelevant distinction though, I don't object to colonisation because it was 'illegal', because it wasn't though post UN it at least in theory is (Israel and China being examples of where it's still being done) now. My objection is that the colonised did not benefit enough from being colonised, ie that the White Man's Burden got rather tiring and left sitting- or dropped suddenly- at the side of the road when it became inconvenient. My objection is partly a matter of principle, but mostly a matter of practicality. I'd happily swallow the principle if the end results were good, but far too frequently the end results weren't.

[Wrath of Dagon]

And my point about justice in a case of nations? ...

I was talking about justice for individuals, I agree with you justice for countries is a bit nonsensical, everyone's done plenty of wrong in the past, the further back you look the worse it gets.

 

You who appear to care especially about Christians in various places all over the world: you should read that article and learn how Palestinian Christians are treated in a country which has long since gone off the rails in efforts to "Judaize" itself.

Burning churches and slaughtering people, attacking schools and throwing acid into girls' faces, yes, totally the same situation.

 

Still the situation in Palestine has been one of the most important problems fundamentally changing how "the West" is perceived in the ME. It's possible 9/11 would never have occurred if it were not for the situation in Palestine, for example.

Yes, Soviet Union would have never invaded Afghanistan, Bin Laden would have never gone to fight there and become a Jihadist, Iraq would have never invaded Kuwait causing US to send troops to Saudi Arabia, causing Bin Laden in turn to declare war on the US. But then I keep forgetting, everything is the fault of the Jews. Edited December 21, 2013 by Wrath of Dagon

[Walsingham]

As for right of conquest, historically it was fine and accepted as such- at least if you could make it stick and get other great powers to accept it. Nowadays it isn't. It's largely an irrelevant distinction though, I don't object to colonisation because it was 'illegal', because it wasn't though post UN it at least in theory is (Israel and China being examples of where it's still being done) now. My objection is that the colonised did not benefit enough from being colonised, ie that the White Man's Burden got rather tiring and left sitting- or dropped suddenly- at the side of the road when it became inconvenient. My objection is partly a matter of principle, but mostly a matter of practicality. I'd happily swallow the principle if the end results were good, but far too frequently the end results weren't.

 

As you deduced, that's what I was driving at.

 

So, if I may run with the ball, what we're talking about comes down to good governance versus bad governance?

[Zoraptor]

It's a bit more complicated than that, because good governance is very much in the eye of the beholder- Belgium may well have considered the Congo to be well governed as it made a good profit for them; the inhabitants not so much.

 

Fundamentally though, good governance ought to be governing for the benefit of the governed and not some outside group, and that generally did not happen. If it had colonialism would have been more palatable.

[Mor]

It's a bit more complicated than that, because good governance is very much in the eye of the beholder- Belgium may well have considered the Congo to be well governed as it made a good profit for them; the inhabitants not so much.

 

Fundamentally though, good governance ought to be governing for the benefit of the governed and not some outside group, and that generally did not happen. If it had colonialism would have been more palatable.

Yes, but benefit is also very much in the eye of the beholder. Its no secret that colonial power made a lot of profit of their investments, after all no countries are in the philanthropic business. As for colonials, I am intersected to know how you measure the benefit to them?(In terms of infrastructure investmentindustries, education, social progress etc.. many of them still use variants of British "modern" laws ) are you saying that they would have done better if they were left alone?

 

 

Also I am not certain how the discussion got sidetracked, but I hope it wasn't a long the lines of "sins of the father" apologizing. You can find "daddy" issues everywhere, but when I hear those, more often that not its about excuses or people who like/exploit the victimization angle, because it means that others own them and they don't need to do ****.

[Walsingham]

I haven't read any in detail. But I seem to recall someone on here mentioning studies that showed Britain made virtually no benefit from its colonies. MOst of its actual money came from trading freely with Europe and the USA - AFTER the latter had become independent.

[Zoraptor]

We have no way of knowing how well or not countries would have done without colonialism. It would depend on what (if anything) replaced it.

 

But as I said, if colonialism were better balanced in terms of returns I'd swallow my moral objections, so I'm not absolutely opposed to the process, just its implementation and results. I would say with certainty that if there had been more emphasis on developing the colonies for the benefit of the people who lived in them as well as the coloniser they'd be in a better situation, else there's really not enough information to speculate.