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davywavyWe've left in the hands of three unfriendly powers
Examine the Irishman, Welshman or Scot
You'll find he's a stinker as likely as not
The English the English the English are best
I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest
The Scotsman is mean as we're all well aware
He's boney and blotchy and covered with hair
He eats salty porridge, he works all the day
And hasn't got bishops to show him the way
The English the English the English are best
I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest
The Irishman now our contempt is beneath
He sleeps in his boots and he lies through his teeth
He blows up policemen or so I have heard
And blames it on Cromwell and William the Third
The English are moral the English are good
And clever and modest and misunderstood
The Welshman's dishonest, he cheats when he can
He's little and dark more like monkey than man
He works underground with a lamp on his hat
And sings far too loud, far too often and flat
The English the English the English are best
I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest
And crossing the channel one cannot say much
For the French or the Spanish, the Danish or Dutch
The Germans are German, the Russians are red
And the Greeks and Italians eat garlic in bed
The English are noble, the English are nice
And worth any other at double the price
And all the world over each nation's the same
They've simply no notion of playing the game
They argue with umpires, they cheer when they've won
And they practice before hand which spoils all the fun
The English the English the English are best
I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest
It's not that they're wicked or naturally bad
It's just that they're foreign that makes them so mad
The English are all that a nation should be
And the pride of the English are
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ukmonty and meThe English the English the English are best
I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest
Following the debate over on
ksirafai, I decided to whip up a quick poll on the greatest of all Human Inventions, the British Empire. Basically, I'm curious to know which year you think the Empire was at it's peak.[Poll #556800]
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-22 02:44 pm (UTC)anything after the great exhibition in 1850 is in a period of British imperial decline as she starts to get out produced by the other up and coming industrial economies like Germany and the USA. by 1857 not only is she in decline economically but British land power has been found wanting in the crimean war (sure we won but serious deficiencies uncovered which we don't start putting right for nearly 20 years and Cardwell's army reforms) also the indian mutiny is in full swing (1857-58)testing our colonial resolve against something not quite european model army but far from the forces of the Mahdi which we can mow down with a maxim gun - granted thats later but the principle..)
Oh and victoria isn't empress until 1876, albert gets made prince consort in 1857 mind.
1905.. our economic strength is still weakening our navy is living off of high technology it doesn't understand how to use and the myth of british supremacy as they haven't fought a sea battle of substance since trafalgar 100 years before.
1940 - anytime after the first world war British empire is in terminal decline, its greatest myths have been shattered by that war and empire is becoming essentially a burden on britain mainly due to its own economic policies having worked against empire for years. and whilst we had to make a stand against the Nazi's if the principles of being British and having the empire meant anything it was also effectively a suicide gesture from the empire itself to help save the rest of the world, if we'd have sold out sure the empire could have continued but it would have just run on downhill and ended in a damp squib moment like a wet fart.
I can see an arguement for these being the final act of glory for the empire standing by its actual british principles of what is right and proper even if it destroys us in the process (of course it can be argued that an american war aim was to destroy the western european world empires and that their isolationist policy at first and the whole war loans and marshall plan of loans was part of a way to cripple the empires of britain and france economically post war to achieve the dissolution of the empires for greater free market profiteering by american industrial empires)
I plumped for 1815 as its really what empire encapsulates for me 1940 would be a close second I guess.
Oh and some of your other comments are very much cop outs as they don't answer the question when it ended is not a definate answer and isn't exactly a great year for the empire (for the people who gain independence perhaps) if you could pin down a definate year it did end in..
and anytime after it ended isn't a valid answer to the question by any form of logic it'd be like saying 1065 before william the conqueror showed up.. you know not even britain yet...
no subject
Date: 2005-08-22 02:49 pm (UTC)I know very well that if I'd included "1833 - Slavery abolished throughout the Empire", that would have agot a lot of votes because, well, it's something that everyone has heard of.
Did I get my dates wrong for Empress of India? Curses, must re-read my Flashman...
no subject
Date: 2005-08-22 03:02 pm (UTC)Disraeli only rockets up during the 1860's
1833 is also just after the great reform act (1832) which is a fairly decent year.. of course its also just before the 1834 poor law amendment act where we start locking people up in workhouses which could be seen as a low..
similar to robin whilst I don't think the empire is something that could or should exist in the modern age (well perhaps with a major modification for an imperial parliament and/or dominion status for india, ireland etc etc.) it was something that was the done thing, we excelled at in the later imperial period (after the spanish and portuguese early period) and one that in the main we ran a lot better than everyone else.. People say that the British invented concentration camps in the boer war.. Take a look at the Germans and the Hottentot massacres and the literal death camps they set up there they are models for the later nazi period ones down to racial theories and experimentations, or look at the brutallity in the Belgian congo or the Italian's chemical weapons runs in east africa...
Hmm...
Date: 2005-08-22 03:20 pm (UTC)Lest we sing solely the praises of Empire, consider its uncomfortable truths as well, its efforts at settling taxable Sudanese herders, say.
Re: Hmm...
Date: 2005-08-22 03:23 pm (UTC)The question to be asked is really: "If the Empire hadn't been there, would the world have been better or worse? Would more people have lived or died? Would the net sum of human happiness been increased or decreased?"
To which I think the answer is that things would have been a great deal worse..
Exercises in Counterfactualism
Date: 2005-08-22 03:30 pm (UTC)If you remove the very concept of the British Empire from world history, do you do likewise with the other European powers? If so, to what point, up to and including Spain's conquest of the New World (and all that silver & gold which flushed through the European markets)?
The most damning thing of Empire, regardless of whose Empire it is, is that it relies on an idea, and forcefits the world to it...whether it wants it or no. At least European-style agriculture and settlement of Africa was a near-complete failure thanks to local conditions that no amount of policy was going to radically change.
If one wants to measure Britain's Empire against others, clearly Britain's was mostly better than Russia's, or Belgium's ... but France's? The USA's?
As for "worse" as a conclusion, that, I believe, depends on one's timescale. Arguably, much of the world's strife today results from this very Imperial process that was begun by Britain and others. Worse, all the wrong lessons have been learned by some who persist in its wake, from that very 'forcefit' process.
Moreover...
Date: 2005-08-22 03:35 pm (UTC)This leads to everything from:
American political revolution...
...to utter ignorance of local ecology as sheep are introduced to Australia, or cattle to the American West or wheat to central African riverbanks.
Re: Moreover...
Date: 2005-08-22 03:45 pm (UTC)Gosh, it's so simple when you think about it.
Hilary
Re: Moreover...
Date: 2005-08-22 04:18 pm (UTC)Re: Moreover...
Date: 2005-08-22 03:49 pm (UTC)I trust that your ideas of 'reality' and 'ideas' will hold up to scrutiny in the heightened intellectual world of 2155. Or not.
Re: Moreover...
Date: 2005-08-22 04:10 pm (UTC)The reality was a desert, the idea was a new paradise of known foods & animals; or if you prefer the reality that the new settlers cared about was the market for wool and mutton, nevermind what the local indigenous people had been successfully doing for centuries that no Briton was interested in shelling shillings for (e.g. "ewww...they eat that?" TM).
No cheap shot at all - just people acting rationally from information sources that did not reflect the world they were trying to live in. Those who didn't sufficiently adapt often died...or the consequences of their success wouldn't be felt for generations (e.g. New World, Australia, South Africa).
Or, if you prefer something more down-to-earth, consider what the proud settlers were thinking as their cattle herds died out on the Zambeze (sp?), whilst local herds remained healthy? Politics, Religion, Empire - nice concepts, but what about getting some steak on the table? That's something surely all people through time can understand.
----
Moreover, the primacy of the idea of Empire was definitely relevant to the people of that time. No different than Manifest Destiny for the US, really. People felt they had a RIGHT and DUTY to go overseas and SPREAD CIVILISATION (TM)...and getting rich in the process was also GOOD (TM). Granted, Britain and France practiced dumping their unwanted overseas, but that was the flip side of the same coin.
Re: Moreover...
Date: 2005-08-22 04:18 pm (UTC)H
Re: Moreover...
Date: 2005-08-23 09:21 am (UTC)if you want to point out a few failures, look at the successes - the potato is a pretty good one. Hurrah for teh British for bringing the Potato tot he world! But in my terms, it wasn't the British per se - it was the agriculture meme. The Empire simply happened to be the agent of that meme in that time and place.
If peopel didn't transport successful foodstuffs from one place to another, then Ur on the Chaldees would be damned crowded by now, and it's a meme which has been used by everyone. People had been searching for the Terra Australis for years, so if the French or Dutch had found it first, would they have had the foresight not to transplant agriculture there? of course not - because it's what people do. Agriculture is an 'idea' which is also 'reality', and your differentiating between the two is a false differentiation, at least in the immediate sense.
Why did I get irritated by that? Because criticising people for the sin of being nothing more than products of their time always winds me up. It's very easy to be wise after the event, but nothing I've seen of anyone who has ever doen the above has ever convinced me they'd do any better in identical circumstances. One thing I try to avoid doing is criticising people for doing what I would do myself under the same circumstances.
Splitting Hairs
Date: 2005-08-23 04:23 pm (UTC)So much of that agricultural expansion and distribution was to serve a specific Imperial purpose. I would argue the commodification of agriculture for enterprise is a distinctly Imperial concept, especially with its protected markets, state prices and monopoly interests that set it apart from conventional capitalism even. Consider: sugar, rum (and the gin response); corn (cheap calories for slaves); sheep & wool (Wool Board, for example).
Likewise, the pricing of territory in Australia was based off of an English model of productivity that frankly, Australia mostly cannot support - it is a pricing model that sets up shepherds for financial ruin.
These are certainly more artefacts of Empire and its policies than it is locally-informed capitalism or a mere agriculture meme. Indeed, going back to the cattle in Zambeze example, the speed of exploitation and expectation of rapid return is something wholely different from a mere agricultural settler who might have the time to observe local practices and mimic them.
Consider all the early colonial failures in Virginia, because the Crown and its representative companies had the colonists busy trying to pay their interest, digging for gold, rather than planting food crops or cultivating a new market for tobacco.
---
Incidentally, the potato is a decidedly problematic crop: both historically (Ireland?), and currently (very heavy pesticide need) - arguably the result of trying to make an alien species successful in an inappropriate land with high expectations of success.
---
As for criticising people as products of their time: fair enough - however, consider the rapacious need to exploit that was so much of Empire. Had they had longer timescales to properly settle, experiment; or more flexible attitudes towards local solutions that they might have learned from - both a different, and possibly more successful Empire might have resulted. Instead the 'forcefit' of Empire is wasteful of knowledge and has provoked great misery. Moreover, these were conversations of their day (e.g. the Papal intervention on Spanish & Portugese abuses of American natives; the Haitian revolution; the American revolution; Disraeli/Gladstone), not just a modern eye looking to the past.
I think criticism is fair to employ, so long as it is also employed against oneself in one's own time, which I happily do as well. :-)
Re: Splitting Hairs
Date: 2005-08-24 08:59 am (UTC)Hilary
Re: Splitting Hairs
Date: 2005-08-24 04:06 pm (UTC)Also
Date: 2005-08-23 04:31 pm (UTC)What I find interesting is what seems to me the strongest lesson from Empire - don't let existing reality get in the way of a shared idea stamped onto that reality.
I would argue this is a very Imperial meme, and one that has provoked both positive and negative applications. Also, I do not dispute the benefits of Empire, but I think it's myopic to ignore its problems as well.
2155
Date: 2005-08-22 04:15 pm (UTC)Moreover, where the concept of 'idea vs. reality' is as relevant today as any other time in the past - consider America's grapple with Iraq & terrorism; or Europe's attempts at Union, even with the rash of nationalist responses it has provoked; or the world's grapple with poverty, famine, and climate change.
There are a lot of ideas out there, some of them getting resources to do something with them, others no. Some hard realities are already making themselves felt, and it is unclear if the existing institutions have recognised and responded to them yet.
Re: 2155
Date: 2005-08-23 08:24 am (UTC)The examples you quote of failed agriculture are really high-profile examples of failure of a much older, agricultural meme - the deliberate exportation and propagation of those species that benefit us. This meme has not been overthrown by the failures you cite, it is still broadly and globally in use. Your citing a few failures seems to me to be a bit like pointing to the dodo as an example of how being a flightless bird is a disastrously bad thing. Yes, okay, disastrous to the subjects themselves; but only in limited contexts, and not to the gene per se.
*in more ways than one, some might say
Hilary