frog222 wrote:tinybgoat wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... olonialism
"The sun may never set on British misconceptions about our empire"
The argument sits at the heart of a new documentary,
Bengal Shadows . For every million Britons who know about the latest Churchill feature film, Darkest Hour , I suspect no more than half a dozen will know about the documentary (and the proportion in India may not be much larger). But what Churchill might mean to a resident of Midnapore, West Bengal, and another in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, could not be more different. Before we try to refine ethical approaches to the empire, we should perhaps try to discover more of what it was.
https://thewire.in/209830/bengal-famine ... sh-empire/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"Digging Up British Empire’s Bloody Legacy in India"
Sinha, from SOAS, believes that there is a lot that Britain must be do for it to have an honest conversation about its past. “Currently, I am not sure if the average Brexit Leave voter is even a part of these conversations about its colonial past. The government must start with ensuring better, more honest schooling about Britain’s history.”
Trailer ---
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Apologies about very distant history are so Tony Blair !
I thought 'honest schooling' on history was already an objective ?
Thanks for this
It is a striking reminder that there are people still living who remember when the British was not quite the benign Empire that people like Farage are happy to portray
This is also the case in places like Palestine
There are still people living who remember the lies and the betrayals - and the politically expedient decisions taken by the British 8and the US, France etc) for their own benefit
These stories are told and understood locally which perhaps explains why the British are not as well regarded as we might think
Take, the discussion of yesterday on Iran. The British were part of a plot to overthrow the elected Government and replace them with a vicious dictatorship. This was in the memory of living people who are still living with the consequence of that decision. Now we have the British and US pontificating about how bad things are in Iran and how bad the Government is
Do you think the role of the UK and US in the 50's has been forgotten?
Do you think the Iranians have forgotten the support for Saddam in the 80s - how many people in the UK have heard of the Scott Report?
The British, as far as I can tell from my own experience, are pretty ignorant of our own role in fomenting things that we are still seeing problems with now
I am not saying all decisions were wrong, and all that we did was bad, but without this context it will be difficult to understand why the Indians, Chinese, Palestinians, Iranians etc are not very open to criticism coming from us - and actually it is counter-prodctive as it can be used by repressive regimes to gain popular support
Understanding history, or at least being aware of the importance of looking back to the last 100 years ago, can really help people to understand the current day.
How can anyone understand the border issues in Ireland and the importance if they are not aware of the British history in Ireland since Norman times, the role of Cromwell, the plantations, Wolfe Tone, the Famine, the Easter Rising, the Somme, the Ulster Volunteers, the Civil War, Partition, the Border Campaign, Civil Rights, the Troubles, Internment etc, etc
It doesn't take long to get a feeling for this but not many people bother before drawing their conclusions - I can tell you though the Irish know it off by heart and it drives a lot of their approach to Britain
I had a row (yes, Iknow very unlike me) with someone last week over the use of Ulster to describe NI - they were adamant that the two were the same and then I asked them what about Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal - they had never heard of them!