Afua Hirsch thinks that Britain’s colonial past needs a lasting memorial.
Our nation must confront the inconvenient facts of its history rather than glorious versions of an imperial past. That’s why we need a museum of empire
I am well aware of the inconvenient facts of our past, for unlike the implication in the Salman Rushdie quote, I’ve studied history.
The trouble with the English, remarked Salman Rushdie in typically apt fashion, is that they don’t know their history, because so much of it happened overseas. And so the island status that motivated Britain’s imperial story in the first place has helped us distance ourselves from all aspects of that story.
Salman Rushdie is a pompous prick. He’s also a piss-poor writer, but that’s another matter. This is the usual English bashing rhetoric – because in the tiny minds of these revisionists it is always the English who are responsible for the world’s ills. Nowhere are the Scots, Irish or Welsh involved. Yet had these people done a little history, they will see Celtic fingerprints all over our colonial past. But, of course, only the English are racist.
There is the way, for instance, that the empire was built and sustained. From the Norman conquest of Ireland in the 12th century, the English began imagining themselves as the new Romans, persuading themselves they were as duty-bound to civilise “backward” tribes as they were destined to exploit their resources, land and labour.
Along with every other developing civilisation. It’s human nature. It wasn’t just the English. Look at all those other European nations that flexed their international muscles and settled overseas – not least, the Norman invasion of England, you fuckwit. The main language south of the Rio Grande is Spanish or Portuguese after all. The conquistadors weren’t English, were they?
So, yeah, the Empire had its black heart, no one who has done any history will dispute that. It also brought to the colonies a system of government and common law that dragged some of them out of savagery. We also put an end to some of the vile practices such as suttee. That some of these nations chose to descend back into savagery and economic collapse post empire is entirely up to them; it certainly isn’t our fault.
Also, two hundred years ago, it was the Royal Navy that policed the high seas and put a stop to the transatlantic slave trade. No, no, please, don’t thank us… Oh, you weren’t. Oh, well…
the remarkable looting by supposed heroes such as Francis Drake, one of the most notorious pirates in history,
This line is where I stopped reading this dire drivel. Yes, Drake was a rogue – a state sponsored privateer. But we were a nation alone under threat from Spain – and bear in mind that this was a man of his time. They did things differently then. To judge Drake by modern sensibilities is revisionism of the worst kind. We needed men like Drake and he was – and still is – a national hero with good cause. I’ll take Drake over scum like Hirsch every day. If Hirsch thinks that we are such an evil people, she is free to leave for a more conducive environment any time she likes. I won’t shed any tears.
Fuck off already.
Could this be a new ‘cricket test’? Afua Hirsch, Salman Rushdie, (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown) don’t sound like names with a long English heritage yet they call themselves ‘we’.
Being truly English means accepting England as it was, (‘we’ can’t change it anyway). Would England have been a different place if Alfred hadn’t burn the cakes? Who cares?
‘We’ is a strange word, the speaker usually means ‘You!’.
Aplogise for your own sins, don’t make false apologies for the past or worse still try to claim moral superiority over the past.
Really is a shame when people who don’t know history accuse others of same in an attempt to discredit them. Did I say shame? I think I meant something stronger.
As you say, Spain and Portugal were major conquerors. Just look at the legacy of the conquistadors.Then there’s the Ottomans. Oh, but these aren’t this history of the British Empire, so maybe she doesn’t care?
And if she’s going to start with the Normans, can we at least blame the French?
You would have to blame the Vikings…
Oh look. She’s got a book being published in 2018.
Yeah, I noticed that. One to avoid.
What I find amusing is that The Guardian is losing £50m a year and it’s website is splattered with begging notices for donations to keep it going, and yet nobody there seems to consider that it is the printing of irrelevant, patronising and above all sneering articles like the ones that professional offendatron Hirsch produces every week which are putting the paper into the ground.
Hirsch trolls nothing but imaginary guilt articles condemning people for ‘crimes’ she imagines happened 200 years ago. Does she really think most working class Labour voters identify with this shit?
And therein lies the point. No one gives the empire much thought – except the professionally perpetually aggrieved at Guardian Towers.
As an amusing aside, the paper continues to vociferously support John McDonnell’s spending theories, whilst at the same time verging on bankrupcy themselves. They should just do what big John McDonnell would do – borrow loads of money and spend it! It’s simple!
Look how the Bantu colonised Southern Africa and committed genocide against the Hottentots and the Bushmen, only being constrained in their racial brutality when whitey arrived and kicked their arses, causing them to confine themselves to being brutal amongst their own kind.
DocBud How could you? Bringing facts into the Grauniad’s hearing! You’ll be telling us next that the African slaves were brought to market by their own people or, worse, by professional Muslim slavers.
They’ve already tried the Museum idea, right here in Bristol, with the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum at Templemeads. It went broke so it is now closed and moving to London.
I find it interesting that the colonies where the invaders almost completely displaced the native population became modern industrialised democracies. Those colonies where this did not happen, and the invaders left and put the original inhabitants back in charge, reverted back to being the third world shitholes that they were before. Recently some one quoted Ian Smith on the subject of Robert Mugabi, he predicted that he would stay around for thirty years, murder or imprison anyone who opposed him and impoverish the country. He lived a bit longer than Smith predicted but otherwise Smith was spot on. There seems to be a lot of celebrations going on in Zimbabwe just now, do they really think that the new guy will be any different?
Regarding the OP, why single out the English? A couple of hundred years ago it was just the way of the world. Besides, as has already been mentioned, the Spanish and Portuguese behaved far worse than the British.
Becuse this is the Guardian and the Guardianista hate the English.
Our only crime was that we were better at empire building than anyone else.
Reminds me of a BBC doc a few years ago. A lecturer from the ex-Polytechnic of Oil Drum Lane was semi-tearfully droning on about how some of the customs of a particular African tribe had been lost as a result of the evil British colonialists. One was led to imagine that it was some garden of Eden/hippy idyll that had been cruelly stamped out but it was eventually quietly slipped in that one of their most charming lost customs was the capture and eating of their neighbours in the next village.
Yes, how dare our ancestors lean on the locals to cut out the cannibalism.
Don’t worry -you will all be talking Chinese soon.
The virtue of victorious virility