
Uncovering the truth about the British empire and the Mau Mau uprising - lucasnemeth
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/18/uncovering-truth-british-empire-caroline-elkins-mau-mau?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet
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afandian
I'll never forget a discussion with a very intelligent professional American
(in the software business) who refused to believe that America could possibly
be engaged in torture. She just refused to believe that a country as 'great'
as the US could commit torture. (this was a few years ago under GWB when
Guantanamo was all over the UK papers but presumably still being suppressed in
the US media).

The more stories like this are told and remove any shadow of a doubt about the
foundations that western imperial states are built on the better.

Occasionally British politicians talk about "British Values" or "Making Great
Britain Great Again" without any hit of acknowledgement of what 'British
values' really entailed in reality.

~~~
dpark
There was no suppression of the Guantanamo abuses in the US media. It was
widely reported.

I also wonder if you misremember. It's plausible that the person you described
refused to believe that the abuses were _systemic_. It is implausible that a
"very intelligent professional" would legitimately deny the abuses entirely.
They were widely reported and well documented.

Edit: Actually, you could have just been dealing with someone who actively
chooses ignore this stuff. That is a sad possibility. It was still widely
reported, though.

~~~
afandian
I was shocked because she fell into the demographic that I would expect to
know.

Anyway, one thing that isn't in doubt is that it was only one data point. It's
good to have some balancing opinions!

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
The sad truth is that empires require massive amounts of violence to maintain.
There is no other way. Just look at Sumer, Assyria, Persia, Rome, China,
Ottoman, France, Britain, and Germany. Also, make no mistake, the United
States is also a defacto empire.

Unfortunately, the alternatives to empires is isolation and infighting between
smaller powers. For an example of this, take a look at the middle east. The
middle east is most peaceful when it is part of an empire - be it the Ottoman,
the British, Mongol, or Arab empires. Another example, is Europe. Europe was
pretty peaceful when it was partitioned between the Soviet empire and the US
Empire (also known as NATO).

Also, empires can provide major benefits through economies of scale. Take a
look at Europe before and after the fall of the Roman Empire. Looking back
historically, the Roman Empire was probably a net positive for human
development throughout the Mediterranean World. The various Chinese empires
were also probably net positives for their citizens.

Thus, it is not proper to judge the British empire over violence (given that
an empire requires violence). The judgement should be over whether the British
empire was a net positive or a net negative overall for the people involved.

~~~
throwaway-hn123
> The judgement should be over whether the British empire was a net positive
> or a net negative overall for the people involved.

That's easy, it was a net negative for the Indians.

~~~
gozur88
That's not an easy statement to make at all. The Indian kingdoms were
perpetually at war, and there's no reason to think things would have changed
without the British. Beyond that, the Brits left India with a common language
and pretty good set of governance institutions.

~~~
throwaway-hn123
Actually, it's a really easy statement to make. The British were directly
responsible for millions of deaths in India.

~~~
gozur88
"Millions"? How is that?

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tgarma1234
Yes one of the great quirks of European history is that the British Empire is
not held in the same esteem as the Nazi empire. The British Empire was
bizarrely racist and killed tens of millions of people worldwide. Maybe even
more than that if you include the promotion of slavery as a business on global
scale. England is so lovable now though.

~~~
JetSetWilly
Except it was the British Empire that persecuted slavery and brought to an end
the slave trade far in advance of other nations.

What people forget is that the norms of the past are not the same as the norms
of today. At one time, slavery was normal across vast swathes of the planet.
That it isn't today, is in part due to a moral revolution that took place in
Britain and resulted in a policy change by the British empire - despite its
own commercial interests - to abolish slavery and the trade in slaves, even
while nearly all other countries in the world at the time were totally fine
with it.

~~~
pjriot
Once the economic advantages were outweighed by the political disadvantages.

"while nearly all other countries in the world at the time were totally fine
with it". I guess this depends on how you define "country", but lets take it
to mean the majority of a population. I'll give you that countries benefiting
from the slave trade were clearly fine with it. I sincerely doubt the
populations being enslaved were though. (their opinions count right?)

~~~
JetSetWilly
That's the very thing I am talking about. Britain was the first country in
which it was a massive political liability to support slavery, and the first
country in which the opinions of ordinary people mobilising and campaigning
against slavery actually mattered and made a difference.

You can cast this in cynical terms as self interest, but you can do that with
any action by any state in history - Britain is hardly unique there.

~~~
pjriot
I don't think its being particularly cynical to say if the industries
supported by slavery had not been supplanted somewhat (reducing their
political power) then slavery would have continued apace. Politicians have
proven adept at taking advantage of popular movements when suitable.

Its basic economics. Had the ruling elite deemed it necessary I'm sure Punch
could have been commissioned to print all manner of xenophobic cartoons about
subhuman slaves and their barbarism in order to justify the practice further.

This isn't to diminish the efforts of the anti-slavery movement or the
individuals involved.

*Edit: Also, yes, this is not unique to any country at all. I'm sure there are a myriad of examples of slavery within any of the countries that Britain colonised throughout history.

~~~
keyboardwarrior
very dark yet very accurate

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anexprogrammer
Whilst Kenya was an undoubted low point of the British overseas territories,
it's chilling to think they were markedly better behaved than the French and
especially Belgian colonies in Africa.

Quite how any of these were able to rationalise such behaviour, and so
comparatively recently, whilst claiming to be civilised beats me.

~~~
douche
Blood and repression is the norm for empires, from Sumeria down through. The
new thing is being ashamed of it.

~~~
anexprogrammer
Well the first phase of the British Empire was much more about the trade than
repression and saw abolition of suttee and slavery. Early treaties attempted
to preserve native rights. Intermarriage was relatively common, as was some
immigration into the UK.

The later "benevolent empire" phase, broadly around the time of the Opium
wars, saw the repression, misrule and attempt to civilise these places. That
saw more separation. This was the phase that saw concerted efforts to add
infrastructure, schools, hospitals and such.

~~~
benbreen
The first phase of the British empire was roughly from the time of Queen
Elizabeth to the start of the Seven Years War in 1754 (or up to 1688 if you
want to use the Glorious Revolution as a division point). This is precisely
the period when the British were among the world's most active and
enthusiastic slavetraders. The abolition of the slave trade in the British
Empire was obviously a bright point in its history, but it's worth pointing
out that this happened _two hundred years_ into the British Empire's lifespan,
not at the beginning.

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lil1729
Appreciate the great work!

British did a lot of nasty killings in India as well, for instance the
Jalianwala Bagh:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre)

~~~
dominotw
Here you can see imperial life in action

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhKYg641K3c&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhKYg641K3c&feature=youtu.be&t=565)

Surreal imagery.

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Spooky23
I think a better example of the evilness of the British Empire is the Irish
experience in the 19th century. You lose the "excuse" of racism and are left
with religious sectarianism and sheer greed for the policy.

The British put inhumane and genocidal policies in place, starving millions in
a land of plenty.

~~~
JetSetWilly
The initial British response was to buy £100,000 of corn meal from the US to
import to Ireland to combat the famine.

This doesn't seem like an action of a government intent on genocide.

It seems more to me that British policy in Ireland during the famine is marked
by an extreme ideological commitment to laissez faire economics (ie, letting
land owners export food from Ireland in large quantities to make money,
letting ports export food etc) and no little incompetence and prejudice
against imagined "workshy" irish layabouts.

But I wouldn't say there was a deliberate policy of genocide as such.

As far as I know, the potato blight was not started by British settlers
gifting infected towels to the natives.

~~~
pjriot
No, it seems like the action of a government attempting to appear concerned
when quite clearly humanitarian issues were a tertiary concern.

If a genocide occurs as a result of a commitment to a political or economic
ideology, does intention really matter?

~~~
JetSetWilly
I think it matters, because the very definition of genocide involves
deliberate intent and policy to achieve the goal of wiping out a people.

~~~
pjriot
Fair point. We need a better word to describe mass murder by coincidence.

I would note however, that the goal of wiping out a people (in this case it
could be argued that "a people" could just as easily refer to "poor people" as
"Irish people") was at least a bonus as far as Westminster was concerned.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.sh...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.shtml)

"The Irish viceroy actually proposed in this fashion to sweep the western
province of Connacht clean of as many as 400,000 pauper smallholders too poor
to emigrate on their own. But the majority of Whig cabinet ministers saw
little need to spend public money accelerating a process that was already
going on 'privately' at a great rate."

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anupshinde
Shouldn't we as humans bury the longer past and move on and look at the
present-day scenario? I know many will say - "What about justice to our
ancestors?". Justice is done to them when their children(descendants) do not
suffer similar injustice and/or live a better life. How many parents want
their kids to live in a war-waging world?

I understand what she did was very hard work. But what's the point? People who
raise these issues now probably and unintentionally end up generating hatred
amongst individuals who might otherwise be perfectly fine with each other.
Then there are people who get emotionally touched, take an absolute stand and
create an uprising. The people (experts) who raised the issue first get
sidelined. The govt tries to control the situation and gets labelled as
oppressive. Politicians and media take control now. It goes on and then starts
a racial and a religious divide and all the wars in the world. The true
purpose is lost and what exists past those wars is just pieces of hazy truth
mixed with spiced up vigilantism.

The British did very bad and evil things in the past. But why not talk about
evil things performed now by another powerful and smart country that uses
methods incomprehendible to most people.

~~~
benbreen
I have no issue with the anti-war aspects of what you wrote. But as an
historian, I feel like I ought to write a defense of remembering past
injustices. I think there are several grounds for doing so:

\- I can't speak for Caroline Elkins, but I think that many historians,
including myself, believe that every human life that was ever lived has some
value and deserves to be remembered, as far as that's possible. As living
human being we naturally have a tendency to privilege our present moment and
the lives of the humans who happen to be alive alongside us, and there's
nothing wrong with that. But it's humbling to realize that there are tens of
billions of lives that have faded from memory, but which were every bit as
vivid and profound to the people who experienced them as your own life is to
you. So I think one core benefit of history is simply in preserving the
memories and the experiences of all sentient beings. (This is going to get
very interesting in the decades to come when we get better at digitally
preserving people's personalities and memories, but that's for another
discussion).

\- There are a surprising number of people in the mainstream of political and
cultural discussion who truly seem to believe that the British Empire should
be uncritically celebrated. Niall Ferguson being probably the most famous
example. This kind of work forces us to confront the fact that the good
intentions of some British imperialists were counterbalanced by atrocities and
acts of unthinking violence. Caroline Elkins' work is important in the same
way that George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" is - it documents cruelties,
not to settle scores, but to help us avoid repeating them.

\- Arguably, more violence and hatred could be incited by _failing_ to
remember horrible past events. In other words, if a people have a sense that
they've been wronged within living memory, and that as those memories fade,
the injustice done to them will be forgotten, this could generate even more
distrust and hatred then an acknowledgement and apology. This is a debatable
point, but one that makes sense to me from the standpoint of my own life - we
tend to get angriest at unacknowledged wrongs.

~~~
nradov
As a counterpoint I think remembrance of past injustices is one of the key
obstacles holding back the former Yugoslavia. People there tend to be _aware_
of history (or at least their own version of it) going back to 1389 in a way
that most Americans can't grasp. And although they might be right in some
moral sense, so what? This just encourages a victim mentality and won't get
them anywhere in the long run.

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clarkenheim
There is a great Radiolab episode on this very subject, also touches on the
vault of top secret historical documents from the British Empire.
[http://www.radiolab.org/story/mau-mau/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/mau-
mau/)

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formula1
I appreciate that she took a stand for what she believes in. I hope that
someone of her calibur will also express how the carribean has so few natives
or tribes being pocketed in little corners of many american countries. But I
appreciate any effort to understand and reach for justice

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MustardTiger
It is interesting how everyone wants to portray themselves as a victim. "I was
persecuted for pursuing this very popular agenda, please ignore all the
overwhelming support I got and pretend I am a victim". The idea that the
British empire was an empire of evil and hatred has been the only acceptable
view for decades, and is the standard story taught starting at least 3 decades
back. You were not persecuted for supporting the majority view.

