How were a couple of thousand British administrators able to subjugate millions of Indians so completely?
British colonialism killed 100M Indians in 40 years
21–30 of 52 posts
Re: British colonialism killed 100M Indians in 40 years
#22India’s population in 1880 was about 250m and by 1920 about 319m. Sorry the 100m killed is infeasible on its face. But, then consider the source.
Really poor argument, "oh biased source". Invading a country and colonizing their people. Can really destroy a local population. Ask Native Americans. Ask Kenyans. Ask the Phillipines. Britiain truly commited some upseakable horrors to the countries they invaded, and really push their idea of caucasian supremacy. Deny the truth all you want, the unmarked graves of native american children remain. The evil of the brit…
Do we exempt the Portuguese, the Egyptians, the Mongols, the Japanese, and so forth? The belief that colonialism is a manifestation of white supremacy is historically uninformed. Did Native Americans suffer at the hands of the European expansion. Certainly, but recognize that the Spanish and the Portuguese both preceded the British. Were the Native Americans peaceful, pastoral peoples prior to the Europeans? Not a chance. History is replete with all nationalities and races subjugating and enslaving others. It is not a British thing or a white thing. That’s simply a modern argument to promote a political agenda.
Re: British colonialism killed 100M Indians in 40 years
#23How were a couple of thousand British administrators able to subjugate millions of Indians so completely?
In their own words;
Empire in Asia, How we came by it : A Book of Confessions by W. M. Torrens - https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.01877/page/n5/mode/...
Re: British colonialism killed 100M Indians in 40 years
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a lot more to it than that. If we can stop caucasian-washing history for a second, britain did not simply arrive in india, and leave peacefully either. They lied about their motive as a trade company (the east india company). They used religion (Christianity) To scout the local population and worked with priests/nuns to see if the land as able to be invaded. And when they left they split the country into two…
I literally copy and pasted what I could find from the brief article. Your beef is with the authors.
No, context matters.
You trivialized the subject by your one-liner and rightfully got schooled on it.
Re: British colonialism killed 100M Indians in 40 years
#25"This is a straightforward case for reparations" - and there you have it.
This whole idea of reparations for things done by previous generations is absurd. Where do you draw the line - 1900? 1800? 1700? Ridiculous. It's the same with conversations about slavery - apparently the only relevant slavery is post 1700 African slavery which also ignores that Africans were participating slave traders - enough arbitrary constraints? How about domestic bloodbaths - English vs Scots, chattel slavery in middle ages Britain, ... what an absurd can of worms.
Re: British colonialism killed 100M Indians in 40 years
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? If 169m were born during that period and 100m lost their lives because of British policy, then it still means that 100m lives were lost unnecessarily.
So you’re positing that roughly 60% of the incremental population growth was lost to British rule? Didn’t happen. Just as shark migration patterns were not changed by slavery. Nor any of the other absurdities promulgated by the media and politicians today.
No, this is just one scenario. There could be other scenarios, for example, 300m being born but 100m losing their lives because of British policy, and the rest dying because of high infant mortality, epidemics, and so on. The point is, 100m over 100 years because of an inhumane and callous colonial master is just not as unthinkable as the parent commenter makes it out to be.
Edit: 11 million minorities, including 6 million Jews, were killed in 4 years during the holocaust. In many countries, the Jewish population did not recover at all.
In 2020, Covid-19 slashed the average American life expectancy by 1.8 years. This is for a population of 320 - 350 million. The article contends that Indian life expectancy dropped by a whopping 5 years at the height of British colonial power. For a large and populous country to lose 5 years of life expectancy is a pretty big deal no matter what way you slice it.
Re: British colonialism killed 100M Indians in 40 years
#27"This is a straightforward case for reparations" - and there you have it. This whole idea of reparations for things done by previous generations is absurd. Where do you draw the line - 1900? 1800? 1700? Ridiculous. It's the same with conversations about slavery - apparently the only relevant slavery is post 1700 African slavery which also ignores that Africans were participating slave traders - enough arbitrary const…
> This whole idea of reparations for things done by previous generations is absurd.
What about confiscated land, taken in the last 100-200 years?
New Zealand is grappling with it and it’s not without friction. However leaving it unaddressed seems completely unrealistic, you just allow the theft and profit at the expense of one race and profit for another?
Here is a recent story on a small part of the grim saga.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ldr/477765/ngati-maru-apology-hig...
Re: British colonialism killed 100M Indians in 40 years
#28Re: British colonialism killed 100M Indians in 40 years
#29"This is a straightforward case for reparations" - and there you have it. This whole idea of reparations for things done by previous generations is absurd. Where do you draw the line - 1900? 1800? 1700? Ridiculous. It's the same with conversations about slavery - apparently the only relevant slavery is post 1700 African slavery which also ignores that Africans were participating slave traders - enough arbitrary const…
This juvenile argument is always brought up when it comes to the subject of Reparations owed by The British, but unfortunately for its proponents, holds no water. This is simply an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for gutting the Colonized Countries in all dimensions viz. Economically, Socially and Culturally.
Here is Jason Hickel (one of the authors of the posted article) on The Case for Reparations - https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/10/13/the-case-for-rep...
In particular; read his rebuttal to the five commonly used arguments (including yours) in the latter half of the above article.
Some more articles for your edification;
1) https://qz.com/1911783/what-the-uk-owes-in-reparations
2) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/what-to-know-about-calls-...
3) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/world/americas/colonial-r...
Some excerpts from all of the above links:
1) W. Arthur Lewis, a Nobel Prize-winning economist from St. Lucia, had argued since the 1930s that colonialism had gutted the economies of colonized societies for generations to come, making the debt one of not just repayment but also of reconstitution.
2) India wasn’t “developed” under British rule – it was de-developed. And not just in terms of social welfare. British policy was designed to destroy India’s domestic industries by imposing asymmetrical tariffs, by dismantling the institutions that trained up producers, and in some cases even by maiming skilled artisans – all to create captive markets for British goods. During the course of British rule, India’s share of the global economy shrank from 27% to 3%.
3) Frantz Fanon had it right when he wrote, in Wretched of the Earth, that “Colonialism and imperialism have not settled their debt to us once they have withdrawn from our territories. The wealth of the imperialist nations is also our wealth. Europe is literally the creation of the Third World.”
4) “The sequel to that history of repression and disavowal has been poverty and uneven progress. So calls for reparations consider this wide story and its micro-level consequences in their activism,” Smith said.
5) “There’s no real ownership of responsibility. So there is recognition that what happened in the past was bad, but we’re not responsible now,” said Moffet. “It’s a way of sort of separating the monarchy or British government from the past.”
6) And then it strikes you…. Then it strikes you that there is not enough money in all of Britain to compensate for these injustices. And you realize, that if Britain paid reparations – real, honest, courageous reparations – there would be nothing left. Britain would not exist.
And that is exactly what people find so terrifying about the question of reparations. It’s not that they fear the actual prospect of paying. It is that even just thinking about what is owed reveals the hard truth: that what is owed, is everything.