Relevant : Dr Shashi Tharoor's talk on this matter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4
This talk is so good.
The East India Company, the original corporate raiders
11–20 of 130 posts
Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders
#12Relevant : Dr Shashi Tharoor's talk on this matter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4
I saw a related clip by him recently and it was deeply enlightening.
Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders
#13It is actually amazing how little British folks today know about their own historical misdeeds, they may accept the issues towards USA and other countries but tend to downplay atrocities magnitudes higher in India and other countries India is important because it was the crown jewel of the British empire and was completely destroyed of its soul by the colonialists with very clever mixture of politics, military and ot…
Crimes of Britain is pretty informative Twitter account on this topic. Here's a sample of a lot more recent British history: https://twitter.com/crimesofbrits/status/905035282046742528
Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders
#14It is actually amazing how little British folks today know about their own historical misdeeds, they may accept the issues towards USA and other countries but tend to downplay atrocities magnitudes higher in India and other countries India is important because it was the crown jewel of the British empire and was completely destroyed of its soul by the colonialists with very clever mixture of politics, military and ot…
> It is actually amazing how little British folks today know about their own historical misdeeds, they may accept the issues towards USA and other countries but tend to downplay atrocities magnitudes higher in India and other countries To add to this, it's not just the British. The Portuguese, French, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish (among others) colonized parts of India long before the British did, and the Portuguese an…
Imagine invading a country to essentially control it's natural resources. Thanks goodness we have moved on from that sort of behaviour and now we need some kind of moral reason (e.g war on terror) to do this to other countries (e.g. Iraq).
Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders
#15It is actually amazing how little British folks today know about their own historical misdeeds, they may accept the issues towards USA and other countries but tend to downplay atrocities magnitudes higher in India and other countries India is important because it was the crown jewel of the British empire and was completely destroyed of its soul by the colonialists with very clever mixture of politics, military and ot…
AFAICT, the British Empire gets much more criticism for its various evils than other historical empires do. Very few people in the West, for example, even know about the ethnic cleansing of the Greeks under the Ottoman Empire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide), and that was less than a century ago. Probably the worst European colonialists were the Belgians, of all people, under King Leopold II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S...). And I've virtually never heard anyone talk about all the wars and conquests in India before the British came. The Mughal Empire was not conquered with sunshine and rainbows, etc.
Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders
#16It is actually amazing how little British folks today know about their own historical misdeeds, they may accept the issues towards USA and other countries but tend to downplay atrocities magnitudes higher in India and other countries India is important because it was the crown jewel of the British empire and was completely destroyed of its soul by the colonialists with very clever mixture of politics, military and ot…
> It is actually amazing how little British folks today know about their own historical misdeeds, they may accept the issues towards USA and other countries but tend to downplay atrocities magnitudes higher in India and other countries To add to this, it's not just the British. The Portuguese, French, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish (among others) colonized parts of India long before the British did, and the Portuguese an…
When things like the bengal famine happen because of just diverting India's supply chain to the WWII how the F* do you put up with something like that.
If you haven't seen it already read the wikipedia entry[1] and pause and think for a moment, they denied food shipments for almost 2 full years in a famine.
Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders
#17It is actually amazing how little British folks today know about their own historical misdeeds, they may accept the issues towards USA and other countries but tend to downplay atrocities magnitudes higher in India and other countries India is important because it was the crown jewel of the British empire and was completely destroyed of its soul by the colonialists with very clever mixture of politics, military and ot…
I've heard some Brits complain about American misdeeds throughout the Middle East without a hint hypocrisy crossing their face.
Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders
#18It is actually amazing how little British folks today know about their own historical misdeeds, they may accept the issues towards USA and other countries but tend to downplay atrocities magnitudes higher in India and other countries India is important because it was the crown jewel of the British empire and was completely destroyed of its soul by the colonialists with very clever mixture of politics, military and ot…
> It is actually amazing how little British folks today know about their own historical misdeeds, they may accept the issues towards USA and other countries but tend to downplay atrocities magnitudes higher in India and other countries To add to this, it's not just the British. The Portuguese, French, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish (among others) colonized parts of India long before the British did, and the Portuguese an…
> If you're thinking of responding to this with a comment about how the British "improved" India by industrializing it, or all the "benefits" India got from being plundered for 450 years
I once overheard my white coworker say, that the British did India a huge favor, by bringing them English. It was in his belief that back then, the Indians were just killing each other for fun. So the British did them a huge favor by colonizing them.
And because of that, today, India is a major software player for outsourcing, all thanks to the British for colonizing them, and bringing them English.
I sat there thinking to myself, this is unbelievable. I didn't want to talk politics in a business setting, so I ignored it.
The British destroyed a civilization. Enslaved a generation. And enriched themselves in the process. But all that is swept under the rug, because they brought English to their colonies.
Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders
#19It is actually amazing how little British folks today know about their own historical misdeeds, they may accept the issues towards USA and other countries but tend to downplay atrocities magnitudes higher in India and other countries India is important because it was the crown jewel of the British empire and was completely destroyed of its soul by the colonialists with very clever mixture of politics, military and ot…
AFAICT, the British Empire gets much more criticism for its various evils than other historical empires do. Very few people in the West, for example, even know about the ethnic cleansing of the Greeks under the Ottoman Empire ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide ), and that was less than a century ago. Probably the worst European colonialists were the Belgians, of all people, under King Leopold II ( https:/…
The Dutch VOC is right up there.
Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is actually amazing how little British folks today know about their own historical misdeeds, they may accept the issues towards USA and other countries but tend to downplay atrocities magnitudes higher in India and other countries To add to this, it's not just the British. The Portuguese, French, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish (among others) colonized parts of India long before the British did, and the Portuguese an…
> If you're thinking of responding to this with a comment about how the British "improved" India by industrializing it, or all the "benefits" India got from being plundered for 450 years I once overheard my white coworker say, that the British did India a huge favor, by bringing them English. It was in his belief that back then, the Indians were just killing each other for fun. So the British did them a huge favor by…
In NL plenty of people feel roughly the same about Surinam.