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(Photo: Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the BPL/flickr)
British news is quite influential in the United States, especially with respect to international affairs. British news about international affairs also quite naturally sometimes deals with India, which is a very important country internationally.
Something quite peculiar sometimes happens when the British press deals with India, however. One occasionally comes across a news article hinting about British benevolence during the colonial era. Often this may take the form of a local Indian purportedly speaking to the reporter about how he or she missed life under the British Raj.
Strangely, this doesn’t seem to happen much with that other great former British colony (the United States). British media is far more familiar with American culture than with Indian culture. Yet nobody in the British media ever mentions Americans missing life as a colony. British rule in India being much harsher than British rule in the thirteen colonies, one would think that Americans everywhere would be talking about how good life was before independence. But, strangely enough, this never happens. Indeed, in my time in the United States, I’ve never met an American who thought things were better under British colonialism.
Nor have I ever met a real-life Indian who thought things were better under the British. Of course, one rarely talks about these topics with Americans and Indians. But it does show the ridiculousness of the concept of benevolent colonialism.
–inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/
5 Comments
I’ve always noticed how the focus of WW II history is on the valiant little island going it alone against Hitler. Unlike Americans who include the war in the Pacific, this is a quiet chapter of WW II history for the Empire, because it indeed points to their true identity as an Empire, and I’m sure the Oligarchs also don’t like to think of the ass-kicking they took at the hands of people they perceived to be their inferiors [pretty much everyone, by the way].
http://american_almanac.tripod.com/FDRlw95.htm
The Cold War speech given in Fulton, Missouri would determine American foreign policy for generations. Truman would follow the direction of the great Churchill, where an FDR would not have.
Dr. Carroll Quigley was one of Bill Clinton’s favorite professors at Georgetown.
http://www.amazon.com/Anglo-American-Establishment-Quigley-Carroll/dp/0945001010
It’s a long, and very special relationship.
Benevolence, eh. What people have ever asked to be colonized?
Thank you inoljt for putting up this interesting MyFDL diary.
Thank you nwbn for interesting and multi observation comment.
I had considered commenting here earlier but passed — will chime in this time around.
The 20th century British Empire/American Empire relationship has seldom been broken down in ways that better illustrate the monetary connections and agreed upon,shared desires of both these so called democratic based empires to control global trade,militarism dominance and harvest the profits both would bring/do bring to the British and American aristocrats and ruling classes. Closely held control and profits from that control both the Germans and Japanese found out they were not going to be let in on during WW1 and WW2.
American aristocrats? Why that can’t be — there is no American noble class one can hear being voiced here. Well — contrary to what we Americans have been told or taught there is an American Nobles Class. We just are not encouraged to view it or term it so.
The British Empire ran into a human meat grinder in the trenches of WW1 and a fiscal burn rate that post WW1 left the British Empire mortally wounded. Post WW1 the BE tried to be what it had been prior to 1914 but that epoch was over with. See Washington Naval Treaty. The interwar naval arms race was taken over by the Americans and Japanese while the best air war thinking of this period was not coming from the BE either.
The Americans by the mid 1930′s had aced the large air transport concept with the DC-3 and within ten years of 1935 fielded the Boeing B-29 with the much larger Vultee B-36 with six 28 cylinder P&W Wasp Major radial powerplants each with 56 spark plugs turning 19 foot diameter pusher props coming along as well.
The BE only survived WW2 because the British aristocrats had worked some very critical diplomatic gear changes with WashingtonDC post WW1. Japan got the boot while USA was courted to become the BE’s Very Good Friend. The Germams and Japanese found out how this linkage would be played and used from 1942-1945. What took place during WW2 between WashingtonDC and London would have not been possible just fifty years earlier. Certainly not one hundred year earlier. Many Americans of the 1840′s viewed the BE as the Enemy.
After WW2 the American Empire kept climbing towards its 20th century zenith. The BE saw its holdings break away or be given back by BE to avoid coming major and not winnable conflicts.
So here we are in this early 21st century with the American Empire leaking monetary,military and political power in larger and larger amounts while the BE now contents itself with being WashingtonDCs useful puppet or worse.
The propaganda was thick during much of the 20th century to prop up the “special relationship” between BE and AE. Hollywood embraced this being so wholeheartedly. To this day the BE still is able to play its AE friend on the cultural front anytime it wishes. Lucky for the BE James Bond came along,the Beatles showed up and Princess Di was very pretty and likeable.
The British aristocrats chose well a little over one hundred years ago. Quite likely the Americans Federal Reserve which J.P.Morgan had a large part in forming up was also the tool the BE wanted in place to help keep imperial monetary policy making easier to do and maintain. Our American Dollar Hegemony still seen here in 2012 was no happenstance comeabout.
I would be happy to see American Empire be dismantled being it is draining far too much American fiscal wealth away from where it should be going. American Militarism is a wicked and deathdealing creation that needs to be pulled way back and put on a short chain.
Unlike the BE the AE has much more “homeland” scale size to run thru until we Americans get to face what the BE did during 1920′s and 1930′s.
The British Empire could be and was as racist,bigoted and ruthless as anything the Germans ever came up with. Just had better PR and a class of aristocrats who were lucky to avoid what befell their French,Russian,Austrian and German equals. As for the American aristocrats who are now being called the One Percent? They may not be saved by a FDR this time around. If the American aristocrats do not wake up and get much more merciful and politically intelligent they may find out what happens when enough humans say “enough!”.
“The propaganda was thick during much of the 20th century to prop up the “special relationship” between BE and AE. Hollywood embraced this being so wholeheartedly.”
One of the most telling episodes of how effective propaganda can be was the treatment of the Soviets by Hollywood in the 1940s. During WWII, the Soviets were portrayed as fellow Americans and were imbued with all the characteristics that US society holds dear: hard-working, freedom-loving, ingenious, rugged individuals. As soon as the war ended, they were depicted as soulless, mindless, godless incarnations of unstoppable evil. And apparently, US citizens believed both versions even though the switch in how the Soviets were presented was almost immediate.
It’s tempting to put certain undesirable American behaviors in the context of our own start as a British colony.
Even though Great Britain made slavery illegal before we did, slavery was one of the many things that colonists had imported from the mother land. And, we certainly had our own “Indian” issues. And our own colonization issues.
Then again, I doubt it is an issue of simply of being British or descendants of the British.
Ethnocentricism, xenophobia, and territorialism seem fairly universal–and not limited to humans, either. Power is more of a determinant than nationality.
However, as far as we are able to know, humans seem unique in their ability–and apparent need-to rationalize some of the most heinous things they do.