
Colonial violence came home in the First World War - akbarnama
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/10/how-colonial-violence-came-home-the-ugly-truth-of-the-first-world-war
======
iamshs
I come from a village in Punjab that has a memorial gate (not big on cenotaphs
here 50-60 years back, so we build a memorial gate on the road that leads to
the village - a practise that Sikhs follow from long) in remembrance of ~120
Sikh soldiers that went to World War 1. The stories that elders told me were
about how British imperialists manipulated and threatened young Sikhs into
signing up to become cannon fodder because they had quotas to be filled for
village to village recruitment. Elders also told how British respected Sikh
traditions to the hilt, they understood and had good amount of research corpus
of the traditions too. This is why you will see in photographs, Sikhs in
Turbans and carrying the holy scripture, Guru Granth Sahib on their head
leading the procession. One negative effect was that Sikhs being minority, the
population decrease especially young ones, had a detrimental effect later on
while India was partitioned along religious lines. Sikhs could not save their
most fertile and irrigated plains in Sialkot to Sahiwal belt (present day
Pakistan) and were forcibly uprooted and forced to give up their own farms.
One positive effect was that after partition, the returnees were able to save
countless people from organised massacres along religious lines. They
organised village defences, provided logistic know-how and were able to arrest
quite a grim situation among the chaos.

Sadly, all this literature and memorial diaries are in Punjabi vernacular.
Hopefully as new generation grows up, more of these stories will surface in
English language. Also, there is marked difference between reporting of same
story in Punjabi newspaper and in English newspaper of the same newspaper
group: Punjabi newspaper of the same group reports situation more accurately
while English newspaper biases it against the Sikhs and even edits direct
quotes. So hopefully these stories will surface in either western sources or
independent media with correct editing procedure and relevant checks.

~~~
iguy
I hope those diaries do get translated. I know of some efforts to do this for
Partition stories, including oral histories (starting in the 80s).

Don't forget also that vast numbers of european men were also simply
conscripted, as unwilling cannon fodder.

------
Synaesthesia
The entire history of Europe is one of constant, vicious and brutal wars. Yes
they exported it overseas but IMO WW1 is a continuation of a tradition of
continental violence, not colonial violence that came home.

One could argue rather the colonial violence is an export of the European
history of war, as Chomsky does in "Year 501"

~~~
pasabagi
The years before the first world war had seen no serious, bloody conflicts
since the Napoleonic wars. Most of the techniques and technologies used so
destructively in WW1 were tested first in the colonies.

More fundamentally, the basic driver of tensions before the first world war
was the german desire for colonies, or rather, export markets to allow their
continued economic growth.

~~~
freddie_mercury
650,000 casualties in the Franco-Prussian War. The November Uprising 100,000
casualties. Russo-Turkish War 200,000 casualties. Crimean War 800,000
casualties.

I guess I don't know what counts as a serious, bloody conflict.

~~~
pasabagi
I think the thing is, the Franco-Prussian war was a limited war with limited
goals. The reason why the Napoleonic war stands out as the last war of
significance is it was an unlimited war, which reformed europe after it.

I don't think casualty counts are particularly good metrics here - rather, the
metric should be the degree to which the civilian population is brought into
the war, as victims, soldiers, or workers. In that sense, the colonies had
been experiencing 'total' wars in the sense that, europeans rarely
distinguished between civilian and enemy forces when putting down
insurrection, and rarely had qualms about mass conscription in various forms.
Consequently, the casualty numbers and social destruction of the first world
war, while extremely unusual for europe, would have been far less unusual in
east Africa, or India.

~~~
fork1
Germany started WW1 with the ambition to make it a limited war, with limited
goals. Quickly subduing France, and breaking Russia. Most people on either
side thought it was going to be a short war. It evolved differently though.

As for the second part, take the Franco-Prussian war then, and it's
consequences for France, it was massive. Besides the war that went quite
badly, a massive uprising happened in Paris (the Commune), under siege from
both Germans and Loyalists forces. Starvation was rampant, civilian impact
massive, and the final death toll quite important.

The 19th century in Europe was characterized by nationalisms, unifications of
countries in blood, and liberation of a few (Greece or Serbia for ex.), again
in blood.

I think you're disregarding history, in the name of your argument.

------
baud147258
> The first world war marked the moment when legacies of imperialism in Asia
> and Africa returned home, exploding into self-destructive carnage in Europe

I don't understand how the WW 1 is supposed to be the legacy of colonialism.
From what I've read, WW 1 was caused by the local opposition between power
blocks in Europe. Also the article spend way too much lines saying nothing of
import on its subject; it seems more a political piece regarding
#currentEvents than anything else.

> entire populations as culturally incompatible with white western peoples

Well, perhaps there are some culture that doesn't seem compatible with Western
culture, for example regarding personal freedom (of religion, of mariage, of
sexuality), on the place of women in society.

~~~
pjc50
> Well, perhaps there are some culture that doesn't seem compatible with
> Western culture, for example regarding personal freedom (of religion, of
> mariage, of sexuality), on the place of women in society.

At the time of colonization, women in the West didn't have the vote, and in
much of the British empire the prohibition on homosexuality came with the
colonizers and their missionaries, not as a result of local prejudice.

WW2 was very much colonialist - Germany having failed to colonise Africa was
going to colonise Asia by subjugating the Slavic peoples in the same way the
other colonial powers had subjugated their colonies.

------
mattmanser
Claims that remembrance day doesn't honour them, hasn't he even watched the
ceremony? 30 or 40 commonwealth wreathes are laid, all the countries are named
on TV, and it's mid-ceremony, not at the end.

I stopped there in the article, as he obviously had an agenda that is
completely at odds with reality.

Such a shame the Guardian didn't even do basic editorial checking on the
article.

~~~
KnightOfWords
In recent time there has been more acknowledgement of the role the
commonwealth nations played in the conflict. However, that's not part of the
popular narrative of WW1, and is given cursory treatment in most histories.

The article is well worth reading in its entirety.

~~~
mattmanser
Why believe anything else he has written?

A large part of the ceremony is given over to the laying of commonwealth
wreathes, which is straight after the last post.

It's a basic fact which he seems to claim doesn't happen, how much more of his
writing is given over to this bias?

~~~
jasonlotito
> It's a basic fact which he seems to claim doesn't happen

This is a lie.

~~~
mattmanser
How exactly? I mean this is what he says:

 _[Colonial subjects] also go largely uncommemorated by the hallowed rituals
of Remembrance Day._

Here is the BBC recording, the first hour or so is preamble before the
ceremony.

The last post finished at about 1:04:00 and the commonwealth countries start
laying their wreathes at 1:11:10, straight after the Royal family and the UK
political party heads:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0brgkgt/remembrance-s...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0brgkgt/remembrance-
sunday-the-cenotaph-2018-world-war-one-remembered#)

It's a recorded fact they were included significantly in the Remembrance Day
rituals. You can go and see all the previous years too.

David Dimbleby even says " _And now the high commissioners of Australia,
Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and India who played such a huge part in
both world wars. 3 million soldiers and laborers from across the empire and
the commonwealth served in the first world war, in the 2nd world war 5 million
men and women._ ". It then carries on with the wreath laying of all the other
commonwealth countries, all of which are named.

~~~
jasonlotito
This comment does a better job of explaining it.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18439954](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18439954)

"It's a basic fact which he seems to claim doesn't happen"

Even your quote doesn't back up what you say in the slightest:

"[Colonial subjects] also go largely uncommemorated by the hallowed rituals of
Remembrance Day."

The articles does not say it does not happen. The article says that it does
not happen enough. Saying otherwise is a lie.

------
pjc50
A good and timely article. I do feel that in Britain today as the generation
that was personally involved in the war die out the "remembrance" necessarily
transmutes to mythology, and some of the mythology is extremely harmful. Are
we remembering some at the cost of others?

Not to mention using it as a pretext to fuel the kind of nationalism that
drove both wars and colonialism in the first place.

I hadn't realised that the bombing in Iraq was done by the same controversial
"Bomber" Harris!

Or, if we take the broader view and step outside the European theatre, is the
war actually really past? There's still gunfire across the Sykes-Picot line.

------
jernfrost
Interesting read, but I want to raise some objections: 1) I don't like that
one keep talking about the whole west as one unit and tainting everybody. It
creates a simplified picture of oppressor and the oppressed.

It should not be forgotten that this is primarily about the major powers of
Europe. Not every European country was a major power. Europe is full of
smaller countries, which often had little say in this matter. Ireland e.g. has
a brutal history of oppression by the British. It is not like whites were nice
to each other and only cruel to others.

Big colonial powers have a different view of people. I remember reading about
polar expeditions, naturally since I am Norwegian. It is hard to not notice
the stark difference between how Norwegians treated Inuit people and how the
British treated them. The British were full of contempt for the natives of the
polar regions. They viewed them as backwards and as having nothing useful to
teach them. The British assumed British sense of civilization, property law
etc was universal. When an Inuit took an object belonging to a British
expedition member they brutally flogged him as punishment for "stealing".
Never mind that the concept of ownership was entirely different to the Inuit.

Norwegian polar explorers in contrast eagerly learned from the natives how
they used their dogs and how they dressed for the cold. It is a probably the
chief reason why Amundsen would beat Scott to the pole. Amundsen did not deal
with the different culture of the Inuit by assuming superiority and doling out
cruel punishment to anyone not following his moral code. Instead they used
trickery, making the Inuit believe that if they went into their storage room,
they could blow up.

I am not writing this primarily to make my fellow Norwegians look amazing. But
it is easier to contrast with cultures you actually know. Anyway we were kind
of dicks to our indigenous people, the Sami, but to point out that European
culture varied greatly. Saying the west did this and that, is a bit like our
own homogenization of Africa, as if it is just one country.

2) We must know our history to not repeat it. I DO think it is a problem that
we often try to sugarcoat our past. However we should also keep perspective.
Too often people get into this pattern of thinking as if the past brutality of
European colonial powers is inherent in being white. That is just as racist as
claiming jews are inherently money grubbing bankers and africans are lazy.
Europeans are as much product of their history and upbringing as everybody
else, and has the same potential for change. Nor is everybody the same. While
Europeans enslaved people, there was also Europeans fighting hard against
slavery. Emancipation developed further and quicker in Europe than in many
other parts of the world. E.g. slavery was ended by Europeans before it was in
the Arab world. I don't think that points to white superiority, but simply is
a way of pointing out that every civilization is a mix of different values and
ideas, both good and bad. The good can triumph over the bad.

We should however recognize that the struggles many countries face around the
world is partly of our making. However we cannot take full responsibility.
Africa or India would not be as modern rich or developed today as by magic if
Europeans had never set their feet on shore. All of these areas were hundreds
of years behind Europe in technological development. What Europe could have
done is treating them better. But that does not make Europeans uniquely bad.
The powerful have always through history had a tendency to exploit the weaker
ones.

~~~
partycoder
You have a very eurocentric view of technological advancement.

The technologies that bootstraped the European civilization come from the
fertile crescent, aka middle east. Not only that, but what is eaten in Europe
are mostly plants and animals that are not endemic to Europe. Take that away
and you would have a continent full of people spending all their time trying
to feed themselves, without time to innovate and with a lower population.

The European Reinassance is 99% of the time misattributed. The real causes
were:

\- the introduction of paper to Europe (as an alternative to parchments, made
from animal skin)

\- the introduction of a new numeral system

\- the acceptance of secular thought

\- the Latin translations of the 12th century

\- the scientific method

None of those fundamental prerequisites are European merit. And yet it is
hardly ever mentioned because it does not justify a messed up perspective of
the world where one group of people "civilized" the rest of the world.

Before St Thomas Aquinas reformed the church through philosophy, scientific
research would be considered heresy and could get you killed. St Thomas
Aquinas studied from St Albert Magnus, from Latin translations made in Spain
after the fall of the Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain).

Copernicus developed his theories by studying the Alphonsine tables,
compilation of observations made by ancient astronomers. The Alphonsine tables
were also Latin translations made in Spain.

Take away the Alphonsine tables and modern numerals and you've got no
Copernicus, no Galileo, no Newton. Take away paper or secularism and you get
nothing at all.

Europe continued the work of fallen civilizations, did not figure it out
everything from scratch.

~~~
asianthrowaway
This line of reasoning is silly. I suppose all technology comes from Homo
Australopithecus since they were the first to bang two rocks together, and
they were the true origin of the Renaissance?

I'm all for acknowledging eurocentrism, but this euro-bashing is ridiculous.
If these "prerequisites" were all that were needed to kickstart the
Renaissance, why did it not occur in the middle east, for instance, where all
of these elements were also present?

~~~
partycoder
Because the Mongols destroyed them after they refused to pay tribute.

Knowledge is passed generation to generation, and if you interrupt that, it's
hard to recover from. Mongols destroyed everything, including libraries and
killed most scholars.

That void was filled with tribes that were not secular.

~~~
asianthrowaway
I think that's wholly simplistic. What about regions who beat off the Mongols,
such as the Mameluks? Or people who weren't that affected, like the Ottomans.

For that matter, I'd be interested in your theory as to why the Ottoman empire
failed to develop any intellectual tradition of note, while Europe was
soaring.

Russians greatly suffered under the mongols but eventually became a
superpower. China lost half its population but rebounded pretty quickly.

Edit: "Mongols destroyed libraries" afaik, they destroyed the library of
Baghdad but that's about it.

Also, the Mongols were not the only ones to destroy libraries. Iirc the
library of Cordoba, the biggest and most advanced of its time, was burned down
by the Caliph because it was deemed too un-islamic.

~~~
partycoder
I am talking about the Siege of Baghdad (1258). You are talking about a period
of time after the death of Kublai Khan (1294) where the Mongols were already
divided into smaller regions.

Anyways, if you want to be a eurocentric revisionist, continue doing so. I
don't care.

If you study the Latin translations of the 12th century you will see how
significant part of the Reinassance could be attributed to previous
civilizations.

~~~
asianthrowaway
Yeah, I understood you were talking about the Siege of Baghdad. If you think
that the destruction of a single city is the reason for the middle east
lagging behind the west over several centuries, then I reiterate what I said
before, you have an extremely simplistic view of history. I don't consider
myself particularly eurocentric, but you seem to be a middle eastern
chauvinist. Projection, maybe?

Where did I deny that Europeans built on previous advances by other people?
It's obvious they didn't exist in a vacuum. But europeans were the first to
systematize the production and diffusion of knowledge. In a sense they
invented what you could call the mass intellectual tradition.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
A few observations and thoughts after reading the article:

1\. The European's ideas of racial superiority may have directly led the
deaths of millions of soldiers from the machine guns. The colonial powers, had
experience with and new just how devastating the machine gun when they used it
against the indigenous peoples of their colonies. However, many commanders
felt that it would not be that effective against well-trained European
soldiers. That proved to be a huge mistake and millions of young infantry paid
the price as their commanding officers sent them in mass assaults against
machine guns.

2\. More than any change of heart due to morals, it was the economic and
manpower losses of WWI and WWII that made the European powers unable to hold
onto their colonies. For example the British had faced unrest in India before,
for example the Sepoy rebellion. However, they were able to brutally crush the
rebellions and maintain their hold on power. However, in the aftermath of
WWII, the British had neither the resolve, the manpower, or the money to
continue to try to hold onto India in opposition to the independence movement.
Without these World Wars, there is a good chance that India would still be a
British colony.

3\. The reason that "white" people oppressed so many others was not because
they were necessarily intrinsically more immoral, but simply that they had
much more power than the others.The examples of the Armenian genocide and the
Rape of Nanking from WWI and WWII respectively by people that would not be
considered "white" illustrates the sad state of human affairs in that the
strong will tend to oppress the weak. This has been going on long before any
notion of "whiteness" and will likely go on in the future whatever the status
of "whiteness".

4\. The post WWII peace in Western Europe was probably due more to the
overwhelming superiority of the United States and the Soviet Union vis-a-vis
the European powers than of any awakening. Whereas in WWI and WWII, the
European powers could imagine beating their neighbors and taking their
territory, after WWII, they knew that aggression against their neighbors would
lead to a conflict with either the United States or the Soviet Union and they
had no hope of winning.

~~~
jernfrost
I agree, I don't think Europeans have been worse than others would have been,
we simply had the means to do it. However I find it problematic that so much
of the brutality gets swept under the rug.

E.g. it is typical of political propaganda how Stalins starvation of millions
of Ukrainians is used to disparage socialism. However it is far less known
that Britain starved quite a lot more people in India, often in the name of
capitalism. Food was shipped out at gunpoint to foreign markets while people
starved to death on the grounds that markets should not be disrupted.

There is also the belittling of other people, through ignorance of our own
past. E.g. the Chinese with Mao is presented as somehow more barbaric and
brutal. The US presents itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy despite
slaughtering the native population and enslaving millions of blacks.

I don't think westerners are inherently worse than anybody else. I just
dislike the smugness in particular by great powers such as the Britain and the
US, who present themselves as these big civilizing forces.

------
plehoux
In 1918, the Canadian/British army opened fire on people from my own
neighbourhood in Quebec city, many deaths.

[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89meute_de_Qu%C3%A9bec_de_...](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89meute_de_Qu%C3%A9bec_de_1918)

This is never talked about by politicians. People from my city don't even know
about this anymore. Those traumatic events and the force conscription from the
two world wars were precursor to Quebec separatist movement. I guess it was
the same elsewhere in the colonies.

~~~
goodcanadian
A summary, in English:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_Crisis_of_1917#Qu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_Crisis_of_1917#Quebec_Easter_riots_and_the_end_of_the_war)

I take exception to your characterisation of the army as British, however, as
it was unquestionably federal Canadian troops. The British were not involved.
I also take exception to the idea that it is not talked about. The difference
in feeling between English Canadians and French Canadians towards the war was
well covered by my (English) Canadian education, particularly in the context
of conscription.

[EDIT: Not that conscription was terribly popular in English Canada either,
merely more justified to "help the mother country." French Canadians generally
did not feel any connection to Britain and wanted to stay out of it.]

------
_Codemonkeyism
It also looks to me Belgium is forgotten, isn't it? It's mostly Britain,
France and Germany remembered in Europe (The US is more associated with WW2 I
think).

~~~
pjc50
Belgium didn't have a chance to do much actual fighting, in both wars it was
conquered almost immediately.

Belgium would also rather not talk about its period of colonial genocide.

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
a.) Proportionally the Belgian civilians and the country suffered most.

b.) Yes.

------
baud147258
" the “long peace” of the 19th century "

The article lost me a little there. I think there as enough wars in the 19th
century in Europe (Franco-Prussian, Crimea... [0]) so that using 'long peace'
is a bit of a stretch

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe#19...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe#19th_century)

~~~
asianthrowaway
The 19th century (post 1815) didn't see huge conflicts like the Napoleonic
wars, the 7 year war or the 30 year war which completely wrecked Europe.

~~~
baud147258
But there was enough high-intensity conflicts (France-Prussia, Spain, Italy,
Crimea, Balkans...) that saying "long peace" is a stretch.

------
MichaelMoser123
Buffalo soldiers - same story.

The big war thing used to be a thing of the past, now it's coming back. That
frightens me. Anybody in with that?

------
kenny87
I see humans but no humanity.

------
nutcracker46
Mishra argues from a perspective aligned with the Marxist-socialists we have
all heard before.

WTF, it is too simplistic to assert that the West (yes, I capitalised it)
opted to rely on a racial caste system and colonies to support liberal
democracy for Whites. Also, I point to ethnic groups in the Far East who saw
themselves as master races, civilised above all others in the world. These
others did plenty of looting and colonizing too.

Instead, think of the USA Civil War, WW1, WW2, the Cold War, and the coming
WW3 as a contest: liberal democracy / represrntative government versus
monarchies, autocracies, and oligarchies.

~~~
negamax
It doesn’t take much brain cells to conclude Europe was supported at expense
of rest of the planet. It’s failing in today’s economy for exactly the same
reason. Globalization and current economic systems transfers wealth by merit
instead of force. Many right wing conmen are reminiscing a past that will
never be possible as there will never be colonies again

~~~
sgift
EU GDP: 18.8 trillion -- India GDP: 2.5 trillion

India has almost three times the population of the EU. If that is "failing" I
think we can fail a bit more.

~~~
negamax
Anyone can prop their GDP by borrowing and making their children under debt.
Also, anyone can get rich by looting their neighbors. That's exactly what
happened in colonial times. And former is underway. So not sure what you are
on about?

~~~
asianthrowaway
How do you explain the fact that many European countries who had marginal or
no colonial empires are among the richest countries in the world today?
(Germany, Sweden, etc.)

~~~
negamax
That's easy. Concentration of looted wealth in a region and regional internal
trade with barriers for external entities. Why do you think there are so many
voices against WTO? It challenges the status quo built by force.

~~~
jernfrost
Most wealth in most European nations depends on local production and
expertise.

Why is e.g. the Norwegian fisherman richer than the Bangladeshi fisherman? It
is not because he gets more money for each fish he sells.

It is because the usage of modern fishing vessels and technology allows him to
fish a lot more fish. In Norway we tried to give Bangladeshi fishermen modern
Norwegian fishing vessels in the 70s. If failed because they do not have the
skill and infrastructure to maintain and support a modern fishing fleet.

Value lies in better both superior equipment and the knowledge of how to use
it effectively. That advantage exists in Europe regardless of whether Europe
gets to exploit other nations or not.

Even in colonial times, most economic activity happened locally. Tobacco,
sugar and spice does not grow the core of the economy. What mattered most was
intensified farming locally. The usage inanimate power, labor specialization
and cheaper transport to increase production of food, clothes, tools,
furniture, housing etc.

Even without actually exploiting the colonies Europeans would have benefited
hugely from the maritime explorations. New crops such as potatoes benefited
European agriculture greatly.

~~~
negamax
Sure..

------
erpaa
"This is also why whiteness, first turned into a religion during the economic
and social uncertainty that preceded the violence of 1914, is the world’s most
dangerous cult today."

\-- OMG P-)

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments, especially on flameprone topics.

In particular, it isn't good to cherry-pick some provocative thing from an
article and drop it in here as a drive-by. That usually guarantees a flamewar.

~~~
dbcooper
An article that makes such a bold, radical, and racially charged assertion
hardly seems to be a good starting point for avoiding a flame-war, let alone
starting a productive discussion.

