When they raided the Imperial Summer Palace, they even took one of the Emperor’s concubines’ dogs to give to the queen.
This was during the Second Opium war - where the UK and France basically forced China to allow them to sell narcotics to Chinese people. It’d be like if the nation of Mexico teamed up with the cartels to force the US to allow open borders, raided the White House, and took like Champ back to the President of Mexico. (Why doesn’t Trump have a dog? C’mon, take notes from Nixon and Checkers!)
-
Trump doesn’t have the ability to have emotions for another living thing, so of course he has no dog.
-
They kidnapped someone’s fucking pet and dared to say that they “found” them? Is Compassion just not a British trait?
-
Dogs bite him
Everything reminds me of her.
… Lara Croft?
Why would there be African artefacts in a Britain museum though? Seems pretty off-theme.
Grand Nagus Zek is really out here enforcing the first rule of acquisition!
Inconceivable!
Explanation: Just a joke about the British Museum. While a fantastic resource in the modern day for study of historical artifacts, a great many of the ones from Africa were acquired with less-than-savory means.
The British (and general European colonizer) tendency to thoroughly loot the African ‘protectorates’ and colonies the made in the 19th century means that many of those objects have unfortunate origin stories for how they came to be in the Museum’s possession, and, again, many with ongoing disputes over whether the British Museum should own them, considering how recently they were stolen.
They should be given back, with the condition that the receiver country is … Functional and the artifacts will be on public display and safe/ won’t be lost or damaged.
That being said, we shouldn’t blame the British for all of this, they actually preserved a truly invaluable amount of human culture and history, and made it publicly available.
We shit on British colonialism a lot, but as someone with background from a former colony, they actually gave us a lot: medicine, sanitation, rule of law, basic technology, and they saved us from a centuries long genocide under the rule of the Muslims (even if they did oopsie-daisie some famines of their own).
Also, when we finally asked them to go, they mostly stood there for a few years saying 'listen!" in a firm voice, which is better than most of these things turned out.
Sorry you were downvoted, too many hear these and mistake it for “Mighty Whitey” apologia
That being said, we shouldn’t blame the British for all of this, they actually preserved a truly invaluable amount of human culture and history, and made it publicly available.
Not really sure that “We destroyed a whole lot of shit and stole the rest, but we preserved what we stole” is all that praiseworthy.
We shit on British colonialism a lot, but as someone with background from a former colony, they actually gave us a lot: medicine, sanitation, rule of law, basic technology
… I think you’re looking at British colonialism with some rose-tinted glasses.
Its not that I’m looking at colonialism with rose colored glasses.
I’m looking at pre’colonial civilizations with clear vision, and BTW, most of those were colonial or imperial too.
My subcontinent was colonized by the Muslims, here’s how that went:
All day Thursday and throughout the night, nearly fifteen thousand Turks were engaged in slaying, plundering, and destroying.
When Friday morning dawned, my entire army, no longer under control, went off to the city and thought of nothing but killing, plundering, and making prisoners. The sack was general during the whole day, and continued throughout the following day, Saturday, the seventeenth (Dec. 27), the spoil being so great that each man secured from fifty to a hundred prisoners, men, women, and children, while no soldier took less than twenty. There was likewise an immense booty in rubies, diamonds, garnets, pearls, and other gems; jewels of gold and silver; gold and silver money of the celebrated Alai coinage; vessels of gold and silver; and brocades and silks of great value. Gold and silver ornaments of the Hindu women were obtained in such quantities as to exceed all account. Excepting the quarter of the Sayyids, the scholars, and the other Mussulmans, the whole city was sacked. The pen of fate had written down this destiny for the people of this city, and although I was desirous of sparing them, I could not succeed, for it was the will of God that this calamity should befall the city.
https://ibiblio.org/britishraj/Jackson5/chapter09.html
100k dead, million enslaved, in days. Centuries of brutal rule where Hindus were livestock with no protection of law.
We have a lot of hate for colonialism because the ones who lost were the rich and powerful, my family were high caste, and I can tell you they were mostly entitled monsters and the world is better off with them losing power.
The rule of law is not an Asian concept, I am grateful for its existanfe, and weep at its waning influence.
Tamerlane is… not really what I would point to for an average history of India. Don’t forget that the Mughal Empire was more powerful and prosperous than Europe, and included both Hindus and Muslims in the echelons of power. The only real improvement in the process of conquest is that the Brits were no longer interested in slavery by the time they took a keen interest in India in the 19th century.
The Brits brought certain technologies and institutions which are beneficial, that much is true. But medicine, sanitation, rule of law, and ‘basic technology’? Not particularly. Modern Western organizational techniques, honestly, was probably the most beneficial to India.
British medicine was only marginally better than the rest of the world until the late 19th century - and at that point, as uncolonized countries like Japan showed quite well - “Sent a few doctors for degrees at Western medical universities” was a much cheaper and more profitable avenue than getting one’s own damn country taken over. Sanitation, likewise, was not meaningfully improved even in Britain itself until the 1890s, and British efforts to improve sanitation in India were even more lackluster. Rule of law is arguable. Basic technology is very vague, but I struggle to think of anything ‘basic’ that the Brits actually introduced to India en masse.
Don’t confuse the worldwide advance of civilization with a single beneficiary. If India had not been colonized, it is extremely likely that they would have received ‘medicine, sanitation, rule of law, and basic technology’ by the same means that other non-colonized countries did. There’s no stopping modernity.
We have a lot of hate for colonialism because the ones who lost were the rich and powerful, my family were high caste, and I can tell you they were mostly entitled monsters and the world is better off with them losing power.
I agree with this, don’t get me wrong - people often taking “anti-imperialism” to mean “pro-local elites”. But the reason that many successful historical empires are successful is because “Shitty local elites” vs. “Shitty distant elites” don’t generally inspire strong feelings of resistance in the mass of the common people. And Britain was probably, on the whole, not particularly worse than most local elites.
But that doesn’t mean that colonization brought modernity to India. Rather the opposite - colonization was a step ahead of modernity spreading out from the scientific and material explosion of the industrial revolution, and so claimed credit for its arrival (and monopolized its local implementations). Like a sailor with the wind at his back claiming that he is the one who brought the coming storm, and not the other way around.
The only real improvement in the process of conquest is that the Brits were no longer interested in slavery by the time they took a keen interest in India in the 19th century.
That’s a gentle way to put it.
The British ended the global slave trade, and enforced it via the Royal Navy.f
but I struggle to think of anything ‘basic’ that the Brits actually introduced to India en masse.
Steam locomotives?
Fine, feel free to take back some of the argument, however, the brute force of British colonialism had, imho, an excellent destabilizing influence on millennia of the caste system’s stranglehold on Indian culture.
I think India was so infinitely hidebound to its traditions, much like China and Russia were, and the enforced change had much of the same revolutionary effects that the communist revolutions had on the latter.
Sometimes change is needed, and imperialism brought beneficial changes I doubt we would have seen otherwise, as the cultural inertia was, and remains to this day, quite powerful.
Hey man, if you want to argue that British imperialism wiped out the power of local elites, and that was a good thing (or at least better than local elites continuing), I’m not here to get in your way. I’m just in opposition to the technological side of the argument.
I think then by inference you have to give me the rule of law.
They have the westminster system, something they could never have had under their local elites.
Everything else I concede as circumstantial at best.
Yeah let’s just infantalize these places and put conditions on how they are to treat their property that we stole if we’re nice enough to return it
Ask the taliban about whether they should get more of their stuff back.
Also how are those statues doing.
Sometimes there is an objective right and wrong that doesn’t align with your mindless idealism because many people on this planet aren’t innocent and are actually assholes.
Oh look, white savior garbage on Lemmy. Some people aren’t crypto colonialists. It’s none of England’s business what happens to these stolen items when they’re returned. I don’t get to steal your car and refuse to return it because I don’t believe you’ll change the oil every 3000 miles.
Whistles That’s a false equivalence fallacy.
These objects are not mere possessions but history itself. The right thing to do with stolen goods is to return them…
But given that this is an artifact of great importance to humankind itself, there’s no sense in handing it over if it’s going straight in the trash.
