How do you feel about the British Empire?

The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget — lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget — lest we forget!

If drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law —
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget — lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In recking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word —
Thy Mercy on thy People, Lord!

Nelson Muntz: HA-haa!

Imperialism in the traditional sense of the word is something of a dodo nowadays. Economic imperialism however is very much alive and kicking.

Economic squabbling compared to who and who?

substitute european for pacific/oceanic and we have Oz...

australian insomnaics let us unite, for we are part of the UK....

So maybe I'm not proud that we had an Empire, but that the one we did have was at least run well and with a semblance (and not much more) of a conscience. That said my knowledge of the actual doings and dealings of empire are more than scant so this view will not be easy to justify.

Empress Of India, what about all the other colonies?

The Empress-ing (actually it may have been 1877) was basically a stunt by Disraeli to provide a big excuse for street parties and parades, to cover up the fact that he didn't have much legislation on the books. This is all from memory, history fans, feel free to correct. It was controversial in places anyway and wd have been more so if he'd tried to chuck Australia, etc. in too.

I don't get it. Does that mean America is Ringo Starr?

I don't approve or disapprove of the Empire: it's just something of our past that doesn't personally fascinate me that much, but I accept it as a fact and as a part of its time. Although Britain has redefined itself much more successfully than many outside it think, I would say that imperial values were influential on the BBC and on certain newspapers for longer than they should have been (and sadness over loss of empire still partially fuels some papers: it'll be interesting what happens at the Daily Mail, say, when a younger man succeeds Paul Dacre).

"WITH YOUR ARMIES".

further to what I said in the first para there, I come from a German family (though raised in Portugal) and there's a pretty direct line for me of "this was terrible -> but regular people, like my grandparents, were involved in it -> how could that be? which encourages a search for deeper (and not just moral) answers. Probably wouldn't have been as much of a priority for me if my notion was "oh, some history thing, had some good and some bad stuff, others would've done the bad if we hadn't".

not that I think the Empire should be treated with the same degree of moral horror as the third reich, to be clear

there's this contrary pull between alterity & identity, & it seems to me the twin move of getting people to identify with the empire at the same time as condemning it is probably unrealistic. history can & should work within all sorts of frames besides nation states & any serious national history will obv pick at nationhood.

the british empire is perhaps less of an aberration than the third reich & the soviet bloc, prefiguring the current world system rather than operating outside of it & this makes the sense of moral judgment difficult. if ppl don't feel the need to condemn the foreign depradations of british petroleum & BAE then it seems hard to see how they'll summon a sense of moral outrage about empire. the sense of empire is subtler, and foggier for a lot of british ppl without connections to colonies beyond perhaps grandparents being posted round the world in the war. that might go some way to explaining the lack of motivating energy for imperial history, there's never been the same sense of crisis within the UK

history can & should work within all sorts of frames besides nation states & any serious national history will obv pick at nationhood.

Sure, which is why I qualified with "mainstream"; I don't think non-expert discussion and (crucially) the way history is taught in schools has gone beyond the nation state model...anywhere yet, really, and the possibility of that happening soon is probably as fanciful as anything else being discussed here

I think total defeat - of the kind the Reich and the Soviet Union experienced - certainly helps, as does the fact that they're fresher in mind than the Empire, which spread out over centuries. But in the end the question was about what change would be desirable, not what would be probable

Also perhaps relevant that third reich and soviet bloc can be assessed after they ended. British empire winding down since idk the seventies probably hasn't yet provided the necessary end point

XP

definitely, there's a greater awareness of empire in former colonies where that sort of reckoning has occurred but for (most?) ppl in the uk there's been more continuity than disruption & it's harder to disentangle what is & isn't imperial (another thing that makes a straightforward moralistic approach a tricky proposition)

the way history is taught & understood has changed a lot so there is room for optimism there imo. my little brother is doing a-level history atm & is doing a bit on early colonialism & the church, it seems pretty good!

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/dont-mistake-nostalgia-about-british-empire-scholarship#survey-answer

"On 8 May, The Times will host an event on “the legacy of the British Empire”, at which participants will debate whether Britain’s empire was “a force for good or a force for evil”"

"Reappraising the British Empire in this vein has become a way in which race-thinking, if not outright racism and masculinism (The Times panel, we’re told, will examine the “men and motivations” of empire), if not misogyny, can be rehabilitated in a celebratory story that excuses occasional “excess” by evoking overall “benefit”."

This Empire nostalgia shitfest was brought to you by The Times, surprise surprise.

Good to see it can only be considered as a binary either/or, no room for subtleties in modern Britain. Salute the flag, carry on up the khyber, brexit mean etc etc etc

calling academics who take a nuanced and humanist stance on the excesses of colonialism a "left-wing fifth column" and then moaning about them stifling the debate is rather fucking thick and hypocritical, but I think they know that tbh and are playing to the "anti-pc gallery" - or something like that.

even weirder that the dutch had an empire

well the countries that had a colonial empire are exactly the ones you would expect from their geographical position in europe, i.e. atlantic coastline. even sweden did a bit of colonizing as the dominant scandinavian power. meanwhile, the italians started it all but went the other way, to the black sea.

Only the swiss keps their paws off eh?

they devoted their energies to magnificent clocks, and the world was a better place for it.

when you have such nice mountains, why go anywhere?

don't mention what Swiss did in the mid 20th Century tho!

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/Military_Affairs/13/4/The_Dutch_Invasion_of_England_in_1667*.html

and this Dutch invasion and military defeat of UK forces on UK soil isn't often mentioned.

True but they stayed put

If the Dutch were to attack UK today it would be a toss up

This came up in SNA and I half-wondered if it was one of

promising thread titles that turn out to be on ILM

Like "How do you feel about British Sea Power?"

If the Dutch were to attack UK today it would be a toss up

Tbf our brave women and men for some years now have to practice shooting while voicing the sound of a bullet/shotgun because there's no money for actual bullets. A situation I wholly approve.

Still a toss up though probably.

even sweden did a bit of colonizing as the dominant scandinavian power.

― Roberto Spiralli, 20. april 2018 17:34 (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fuck the world. no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_colonial_empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme

Danish vikings trashed the place near where I was born, which granted me the opportunity to run an April fools story in my newspaper about a Danish viking helmet being found in our soil (our soil being polder land, reclaimed long after the vikings actually set sail here). The supposed exhibit of said helmet attracted a big enough crowd for it to be a successful April fools gag, and some people I know here still hold the Danish accountable for whatever insufferable fate seemingly bestowed upon them. It is a lie, and yet it is the truth. I am at peace with both coexisting.

Tom, I don't think Fred is doubting that Scandinavia has colonialist skeletons in its closet so much as taking offense at casting Sweden as its dominant power.

I know.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DUzzw1IW4AE9hdO.jpg
30 year War era Europe is an absolute fucking clusterfuck. I really admire historians who can talk authoritatively about all the different players on the board. In this pic here is the size of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1619 ... absolutely huge!

scottish people still cheap to this day after being burned financially with the hapless darien scheme

We've never been good away from home.

the lads got over there and were out on the beach getting stramashed, turning lobster-pink, and getting heatstroke.

they'd have fallen out of balconies to their deaths if they could only have built some multistory dwellings.

I presume the Rangers fans were all rejoicing + singing a good ol' rendition of No Surrender to the IRA when the darien scheme went tits up!

England has been a cancer on civilization and I'll sleep better when it ceases to exist

Like Nazi Germany but for 300 years and I'm pushed but truth

I typed pished not pushed

It bad.

Doggerland Empire was probably more chill, but other island nation with ropey evil empire past Japan, bad as well.

Powerful island nations vs continental powers late to the colonial game = fuck knows they are all shit, but arguably the UK were shit for much longer.

Soul brothers me and thee

There's always mitigating arguments from colonialist cunts

They're cunts' arguments

of course every human tribe of the past probably had times of raiding and stealing nearby territories for the past 4 millions years

piers brendon's "decline and fall of the British Empire"

this book is great btw

Fast forward to today "decline and fall of the American Empire"

well we only managed 80 years or so, not bad eh chaps cheerio

https://www.penguin.co.uk/content/dam/catalogue/pim/editions/407/9781846147753/cover.jpg

this sounds interesting, from what I can gather from reviews he eschews much conventional wisdom and hammers the fuck out of Blair and Thatcher.

How British

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/05/industrial-revolution-iron-method-taken-from-jamaica-briton

Dichotomy of literally wouldn't be here without it and disgusting offensively exploitative system.

Probably wouldn't be here either.

Grew up in its wake probably just at a point of transition. With a racist grandfather and then education payed for by the UN.

& now reading Walter Rodney who I should have read much sooner.

Another American pipe dream (mine, from group email yesterday):

Happy 4th, although I've recently become a British loyalist, because for all its sins and shortcomings, the Empire managed to end slavery w/o equiv of US Civil War. If things could have been worked out soon enough, maybe no American Revolutionary War either---and if we were part of the Empire, then the Commonwealth, who knows what other crazy evil shit that the world might have been spared. Of course, with American resources, who knows what else the Empire might have gotten into, for a while. But still, I think history might have turned out for the better, in a very non-utopian way (wild understatement, yes)...

"British loyalist" in alternate universe 18th-20th Century Empire-to-Commonwealth terms only!

Well we all know who was responsible for slavery in the US in the first place. Few things are more revolting than the British patting themselves on the back for "ending slavery".

America has set the bar very low in that respect, and all related.

Being British is like being German if the Third Reich had literally lasted for a thousand years.

I'm anglophone, but I sure ain't no anglophile.

theyre not awful lads individually i blame the schools

Another American pipe dream (mine, from group email yesterday):
_Happy 4th, although I've recently become a British loyalist, because for all its sins and shortcomings, the Empire managed to end slavery w/o equiv of US Civil War. If things could have been worked out soon enough, maybe no American Revolutionary War either---and if we were part of the Empire, then the Commonwealth, who knows what other crazy evil shit that the world might have been spared. Of course, with American resources, who knows what else the Empire might have gotten into, for a while. But still, I think history might have turned out for the better, in a very non-utopian way (wild understatement, yes)..._