I wish I could edit my first comment to make it clear on the first read that Churchill was a murderous racist thug of a different kind and lower scale, okay just did it...
With most of the British Ex-Patriates I know well or personally, colonialism is historical fact of common ground without being too weird. We'll joke about curry houses in Britain being a massive improvement in options for them and my grandfather the romantic literature nut. Its when I am traveling that I encounter the occasional briton who thinks its appropriate small talk to trash India and expect me to buy in, always with the implication of what the hell would they be had we not colonized them... and now look at what they've done since.
The person I find most offensive in the characterization of British imperialism is Hannah Arendt, with phrases like "ungrateful natives blind to the unquestionable benefits of British rule" - writing in the Post-World War II era. Her take in imperialism has a very distorted data set, and she doesn't shape everything by way of current attitudes toward colonialism. But that attitude hasn't entirely gone away, the condescension has morphed into other forms. Again, the closer to my age or younger, the less I encounter it. And I think your observation of similarity between the Bengal and Irish famines is sound, the Raj's grip was tight, cheap labor and cheap raw goods were a stable a cash (sacred, okay my bad - but I couldn't pass it up) cow for the British 100 years later.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2011-06-21 03:42 pm (UTC)With most of the British Ex-Patriates I know well or personally, colonialism is historical fact of common ground without being too weird. We'll joke about curry houses in Britain being a massive improvement in options for them and my grandfather the romantic literature nut. Its when I am traveling that I encounter the occasional briton who thinks its appropriate small talk to trash India and expect me to buy in, always with the implication of what the hell would they be had we not colonized them... and now look at what they've done since.
The person I find most offensive in the characterization of British imperialism is Hannah Arendt, with phrases like "ungrateful natives blind to the unquestionable benefits of British rule" - writing in the Post-World War II era. Her take in imperialism has a very distorted data set, and she doesn't shape everything by way of current attitudes toward colonialism. But that attitude hasn't entirely gone away, the condescension has morphed into other forms. Again, the closer to my age or younger, the less I encounter it. And I think your observation of similarity between the Bengal and Irish famines is sound, the Raj's grip was tight, cheap labor and cheap raw goods were a stable a cash (sacred, okay my bad - but I couldn't pass it up) cow for the British 100 years later.