81–90 of 96 posts
For every officer living the privileged life described in this article there were dozens of rank and file British troops, who certainly had no servants, or any of the other described comforts and luxuries. No mention of them?
The question was specifically about British officers .
For every officer living the privileged life described in this article there were dozens of rank and file British troops, who certainly had no servants, or any of the other described comforts and luxuries. No mention of them?
A dead comment mentions even rank and file troops had servants. In previous centuries it was much more common for middle status people to have hired help.
Uh... but how had the Indians been doing it for thousands of years?
Plenty of melanin, and habits that didn't involve being out in the direct sun at its hottest probably helped. As for the British officers of the time, I assume a key factor was having people (slaves and/or other subordinates) to order to do work while they stayed out of the direct sun as much as possible, in their relatively luxuriant accommodations.
But yeah, the article says as much:
> Finally, the British had servants. Even common British soldiers had servants. Most of the work the British did in India was mental - writing and reading reports, making decisions, giving orders. They spent a lot of time sitting down in the shade. Nearly all of the physical work that supported British lives in India was done by Indians. Intense physical exertion, in fact, could be deadly; if a British regiment had to perform a forced march, for instance, there was a real likelihood that at least a few of the men would die.
It's a weird question. "How does one survive in the heat?" "Well, one just has servants to do all the work." Uh what?
Melanin really doesn't have anything to do with it. If it leads to a suggestion that it was somehow appropriate for the British rulers of India to have Indians do all the manual labor, because somehow Indians were "better" at it (while the British were "better" at ruling, naturally), well, of course not. The division of labor in British colonial India had nothing to do with biology, literally nothing.
What a euro centric oblivious type of pseudo academic indulgence. I guess what we need to take from that is that colonialists we’re really busy people, entrepreneurs doing really important things, so this is the kind of perspective into their legacy that we’re missing. You do tend to deal with the heat rather well when someone else is doing the hard work and producing the staff you’re stealing from them. I wonder if…
I wonder why you sound so snarky regarding this article. It's not that the author defended them or said anything positive about them (except maybe "I've been there and can relate"). Nothing I read here surprised me, really. And it's not that he didn't mention that the burden was basically shouldered by the people there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Famines were mainly a result of British mismanagement of resources. This mismanagement peaked when World War 2 was the top priority (read: Bengal famine). The British were indeed sloppy when it came to the welfare of Indians and did enact some evil policies. They were imperialists after all. But there's no evidence that the British wanted to "wipe out" the native population.
> there's no evidence that the British wanted to "wipe out" the native population. No one accused all "the British". If you read my sentence, I used the word, some Brits such as Churchill. There's ample evidence of Churchill's desire to genocide, and even actions taken to genocide non-white people and subsequent whitewashing of the matters. I am sorry if some readers are upset to discover this about their hero, as I…
Uh... but how had the Indians been doing it for thousands of years?
I think an implied part of the question is how did the british do it despite having customs and building habits designed for a colder climate. E.g. british troops had stuff uniforms, and british building styles weren’t designed for india. Hence was much of the answer focusses on “going native” with “mughal dress”, local building styles, etc. So, how did they adapt the face of apparent resistance to abandoning all of…
That is how they spent their summers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
What’s the deal recently with new accounts on HN peddling anti-western conspiracy theories? There’s a kernel of truth here but the conclusions and narrative are simplistic and false. There’s no shortage of good historical resources on the Bengal famine which demanded at its peak 3x as much food as was sailing past to war-torn Europe, and with which Churchill asked FDR for assistance, but instead we just get inflammat…
If you think some other post is way off base, it's best to assume good faith as the guidelines ask and reply patiently with correct information, not name-calling like "anti-western conspiracy theories". If you do the latter, there's a good chance you'll make the situation worse by increasing the distance between us instead of bridging it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s the deal recently with new accounts on HN peddling anti-western conspiracy theories? There’s a kernel of truth here but the conclusions and narrative are simplistic and false. There’s no shortage of good historical resources on the Bengal famine which demanded at its peak 3x as much food as was sailing past to war-torn Europe, and with which Churchill asked FDR for assistance, but instead we just get inflammat…
> accounts on HN peddling anti-western conspiracy theories? There’s a kernel of truth here It is a sad day when providing facts is described as "anti-western". > we just get inflammatory rhetoric We? Inflammatory? The facts speak for themselves. If the truth hurts, then perhaps the problem is the reader's attachment to invalid notions.
If you're going to post about a divisive topic that's prone to flamewar like this one, you need to do so in the spirit of the site no matter how many facts or how much truth you possess. Otherwise you just damage the container here, and increase the amount of alienation between people, which harms HN and doesn't help the world much either. The cause of the truth is only served to the extent that people can hear you. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of this site more to heart when posting here?
I've written about this kind of thing before, if more explanation or context would be helpful:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> accounts on HN peddling anti-western conspiracy theories? There’s a kernel of truth here It is a sad day when providing facts is described as "anti-western". > we just get inflammatory rhetoric We? Inflammatory? The facts speak for themselves. If the truth hurts, then perhaps the problem is the reader's attachment to invalid notions.
Some of the information you're expressing is important, but it breaks the HN guidelines to push truth in the flamewar style, as you're doing here. Facts don't speak for themselves; there are infinitely many facts, it's up to a human to select them, and the human voice shows up nowhere more loudly than in the facts one selects. If you're going to post about a divisive topic that's prone to flamewar like this one, you…
I'm surprised but I'm open to being corrected. Please help me identify which statement I made which is considered "flamewar style".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of the information you're expressing is important, but it breaks the HN guidelines to push truth in the flamewar style, as you're doing here. Facts don't speak for themselves; there are infinitely many facts, it's up to a human to select them, and the human voice shows up nowhere more loudly than in the facts one selects. If you're going to post about a divisive topic that's prone to flamewar like this one, you…
> in the flamewar style, as you're doing here I'm surprised but I'm open to being corrected. Please help me identify which statement I made which is considered "flamewar style".
Also, your quotes are talking about China, not India, and don't seem to mention genocide?