Would it be fair to say that the English was the least brutal empire?

Discussion in 'History' started by Skater, Jan 3, 2007.

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  1. Skater

    Skater Banned Banned

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    Would it be fair to say that the English was the least brutal empire?

    After all, all the horror stories surround more Rome, Spain & the like.
    Then again, no one (of course) ever documented what went on in Africa under their boot.

    The more publicized stories of brutaluty & hanging were on Jews that wanted to return to their homeland.
     
    Skater, Jan 3, 2007
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  3. Free_Matt_417

    Free_Matt_417 The CIA took my baby away Registered Senior Member

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    Nup

    I don't believe so. Think crusades. Think the Anglo-Irish War. Think the 100 years war. The english have to be the most ignored butcherers ever.

    In world war one the English generals would often send Australian men into fights they couldn't win. so many cases were men were lost because of the Higher up officers not accepting defeat and only seeing the victory at all costs view. 60000 in one day(1st day of the battle of the somme). thats a lot of men.

    People just don't see it as a crime when we do it to our own people. They ignore it.
     
    Free_Matt_417, Jan 6, 2007
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  5. Chatha

    Chatha big brown was screwed up Registered Senior Member

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    Where did you get that idea from. What about all the "off with the heads" commands that reveberated accross castles and palaces accross britain. What about the London Tower, the heracies against the church, Mary the queen of scotts. British people [rejected] their own people, much less any other people carring a different banner. The upper class treated the lower class like [crap]. Lets not even begin to describe their approach to colonialism, everybody knows the French were a lot more warm and fuzzy when it came to colonialism. French people were a lot more civilized, the french revolution was really a struggle for who could take paliament, but much of it gave birth to democracy, which would never had happened in Britain.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 6, 2007
    Chatha, Jan 6, 2007
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  7. Prince_James

    Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

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    Apparently both of you do not know what the term "British Empire" means.

    The British Empire were a relatively humane empire that brought civilization to much of the Earth. Without her, the world would be a far dimmer place.

    Hail Britannia, Britannia rules the waves.
     
    Prince_James, Jan 7, 2007
    #4
  8. S.A.M.

    S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Its called post colonial Amnesia:

    http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s19040.htm
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
     
    Last edited: Jan 7, 2007
    S.A.M., Jan 7, 2007
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  9. Free_Matt_417

    Free_Matt_417 The CIA took my baby away Registered Senior Member

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    Apparently patriotism is a disease.

    THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK
     
    Free_Matt_417, Jan 7, 2007
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  10. Anti-Flag

    Anti-Flag Pun intended Registered Senior Member

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    Are we talking under their reign or including conquests/wars?
    I think they were as brutal as everyone else, they never treated the Scots and Irish with any sense of respect, let alone the Americans.
    British rule in India isn't a historical subject im familiar with so I can't comment there.
    All in all it's about par for the course I'd say.
     
    Anti-Flag, Jan 7, 2007
    #7
  11. S.A.M.

    S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Par for the course:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_Massacre

     
    S.A.M., Jan 7, 2007
    #8
  12. Facial

    Facial Valued Senior Member

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    With regard to the title: no.
     
    Facial, Jan 7, 2007
    #9
  13. Sock puppet path

    Sock puppet path GRRRRRRRRRRRR Valued Senior Member

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    No they plenty brutal when they wanted to be, Dyer made the hall of shame here
     
    Sock puppet path, Jan 7, 2007
    #10
  14. MySpace

    MySpace Banned Banned

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    Thanks for that impoortant info.
    they were not as nice gentlemens after all.
     
    MySpace, Jan 7, 2007
    #11
  15. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    I take it you're a foreigner who is enchanted by the sweet movies made about the British colonial era.

    The British were arrogant racists. They believed by superimposing not just their model of rule but their rule over people they considered unenlightened, that they could lift them directly from the Stone Age into the Enlightenment. The fact that they attempted to do this to India, a civilization far older than the one the Normans imposed on the barbarian Anglo-Saxons barely a millennium ago, shows that their real goal was to make all the world British colonies that they could use for economic gain, rather than to enlighten anyone.

    We have the British Empire to thank precisely for much of what's wrong with the world today. British lords drew arbitrary lines on the maps of places they had no familiarity with and decreed that everyone living inside those lines were now members of a "nation" and they would just naturally live together in harmony and cooperation because the bloody King or Queen said so.

    As a result we have so-called "nations" in Africa holding fragments of tribes that were split three or four ways, each fragment having only one thing in common with the next: mutual hatred.

    It is the British Empire that created Iraq. Some racist Englishman figured that since the Sunni Arabs, the Shiite Arabs, and the Indo-European Kurds all look alike to a pudgy albino wearing long underwear in the Mesopotamian winter, they might as well combine them into a "nation."

    It is the British Empire that is responsible for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The British "owned" the homeland of the Palestinians in the same way that America "owns" the homeland of the Navajos: by having more guns and less honor. Actually to be precise they simply grabbed it from the Turks at the end of WWI as the "spoils of war" because after all the people who lived there were unenlightened savages. When the British decided to do something nice for the Jews after 1500 years of nearly universal antisemitism in Europe, the last thing they wanted to do was to actually give them a homeland in Europe (which would have made the majority of the surviving Jews deliriously happy) so they gave them Palestine!

    So don't go getting misty-eyed about the glories of the British Empire. It's one of the worst things that's ever happened to this planet and even though the sun finally, blessedly set upon it, we are STILL cleaning up the mess it made.
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2007
    Fraggle Rocker, Jan 8, 2007
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  16. Prince_James

    Prince_James Plutarch (Mickey's Dog) Registered Senior Member

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    Fraggle Rocker:

    I think your entire post is moot, for the simple fact that it is Britannia which -is- the right spelling.

    Look it up in the dictionary, or do a search engine search.

    Here, I'll do the former for you:

    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Britannia

    But no, I am not British. I simply admire the British tremendously and am partially of British ancestry.
     
    Prince_James, Jan 9, 2007
    #13
  17. Odin'Izm

    Odin'Izm Procrastinator Registered Senior Member

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    Have you heard of the extermination of the Zulus? or the tower of london? or been to the torture museum in london. Witch hunts...invading scotland, slaughtering the population...where the hell did you get this idea from, the english have atleast one genocide on their hands.
     
    Odin'Izm, Jan 9, 2007
    #14
  18. Chatha

    Chatha big brown was screwed up Registered Senior Member

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    fraggle rocker
    I don't think the british ever knew what they were doing. They had no idea about the geodemographic dynamics of the world.
     
    Chatha, Jan 9, 2007
    #15
  19. Sock puppet path

    Sock puppet path GRRRRRRRRRRRR Valued Senior Member

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    One of my favorite acts of the british colonial era was when queen Victoria, angered at the treatment of the british envoy to Bolivia (caught in a compromising situation with a Bolivians' wife) ordered that gunboats be dispatched immediately to teach them a lesson. When informed that Bolivia had no coast to accost she found it on her globe crossed it out and declared that it no longer existed.
     
    Sock puppet path, Jan 9, 2007
    #16
  20. tablariddim

    tablariddim forexU2 Valued Senior Member

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    The British Empire, [unnecessary vulgarity removed] up every country it colonised and left a huge social and economic mess after stealing their resources and leaving.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 11, 2007
    tablariddim, Jan 9, 2007
    #17
  21. Lord Hillyer

    Lord Hillyer Banned Banned

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    Least brutal? Probably. They tended not to be brutal except in reaction to insurrections, or whilst actually conquering a place. Other empires made more of a habit of gratuitous brutality.
     
    Lord Hillyer, Jan 10, 2007
    #18
  22. atitagain

    atitagain Banned Banned

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    What about the British led massacres of aborinials in Australia, NZ?
     
    atitagain, Jan 10, 2007
    #19
  23. Sauna

    Sauna Banned Banned

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    They might have kicked the English out, but they've yet to get rid of the English. Still they speak it, and listen to the BBC.

    Come to think of it the same might almost be said for the USA, that other erstwhile colony, and what a mess yet to clear up!

    I hear tell that in some these backward parts they still use the inch, while in Britain they've all but got rid of it.
     
    Sauna, Jan 10, 2007
    #20
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