One of the driving forces behind the Rhodes statue campaign, an ugly tart calling herself Bidisha

[Mo Britain less Europe]

wrote a book about Venice filled with such petty canting and evident xenophobia and hatred of humanity that I wonder no-one has picked up on it yet.

[Berni]

[Classic Jorge]

[Mo Britain less Europe]

[Classic Jorge]

In fairness Shaka was a pretty amazing military leader, not a bad goalie either.

[Berni]

airbrushing.

Durban airport is named after and has a massive statue of Shaka Zulu. He was a massive imperialist and slaughtered thousands. And yet there's no talk of changing that, is there? Wonder what the difference might be?

[redgunamo]

[Mo Britain less Europe]

[Berni]

[Classic Jorge]

[Berni]

[redgunamo]

[Classic Jorge]

[Mo Britain less Europe]

Europeans?

[7evens]

I'm not sure it's relevant to slate what he did, based upon world order in the mid 1800's ?

[Berni]

[Berni]

[Classic Jorge]

[Classic Jorge]

But if rhodes hadnt been flying a british flag he'd be called a nazi

[Mo Britain less Europe]

[Berni]

and the suppression of the indigenous populations using superior technology' (which it seems to me is the only meaningful definition), you're basically saying all of human history is 'a bad thing', from the moment Homo Sapiens started kicking the **** out of Neanderthal Man.

Imperialism in one form or another is simply an unchanging fact of human history.

[Classic Jorge]

but I think that the whole business of believing whites to be superior to blacks and all that manifest destiny *******s is pretty heinous. It doesnt really belong in any post-enlightenment world, does it?

[Berni]

Plus, you can hardly blame people for making that assumption, can you? After all, the prima facie case suggesting exactly that was (and it could be argued still is) pretty strong. It's only very, very recently that such assumptions are even being challenged.

[Classic Jorge]

[Classic Jorge]

[Berni]

were racially superior. They went there on the off-chance, saw that these non-white peoples were living in filth, squalor, ignorance and superstition and - not unnaturally - drew the conclusion that they were like this because they were inferior in intellect, morals or whatever. It's hardly an unreasonable conclusion to have drawn in many instances, but it certainly wasn't the motivation behind much of British Imperialism.

[Classic Jorge]

They didnt consider other people to be people and thus had a clear conscience.

[Berni]

earlies knew, understood and appreciated India and the Indians far more than you or I can possibly conceive of. They were most certainly not plunderers and they certainly regarded the Indians as very much human.

Your grasp of Imperial history is horribly skewed by your political prejudices, j.

[Classic Jorge]

I have to admit that the whole business of india started off in quite a nice, sensible and mutually beneficial way. Then it got all imperial and it went to ****.

[redgunamo]

If so, you've accurately described my wife's thoughts on visiting my house for the first time around twenty years.

[Berni]

Actually, that describes our dressing room after a game, tbh. :rubchin:

[Berni]

stupidity, but I also see the things it has given the world and consider the alternatives and feel that, on balance, it is probably in credit. I resist the modern tendency to decry it as 'A Bad Thing' because I feel it is ahistorical and quite as simplistic as saying it is "A Good Thing"

Morality won't do as an arbiter of history, I'm afraid. Ultimately, it's just 'A Thing' and should be looked at as dispassionately as possible.

[Classic Jorge]

It would probably surprise you how even handed I am about the whole business. Not that I think we're in credit, of course.

[Berni]

yes? They were much nastier than us, but they did build the Taj Mahal, so that's OK.

[Berni]

But of course the world was much better when the Roman Empire finished, wasn't i...oh.

[Classic Jorge]

I'll use it as a kind of equivocal olive branch in an internet argument next time one comes up

[Classic Jorge]