A good opinion piece describing the feelings when someone from the colonized land hears about the colonizer boasting about their cultures & development over centuries. Although, the piece is about an British-Indian-African speaking against the British rule in African countries, this can be easily expanded to include America, & other European countries (Germany, France, Belgium, Spain etc.)
British boast that at one point in history their empire was so big that sun never set in that empire, & they are proud of the legacy of their empire. But those British also forget to mention what British did in those colonized lands, in Australia, SouthEast Asia, South Asia, Middle East, several African countries, & of course, even in US. British policies colonized, humiliated, & subjugated the native people of these lands. They looted & transferred billions of treasures (if we value those treasures in current money) to UK. Even after exiting their colonies, they still interfere with the domestic policies of their colonies, because they still think that these regions are their colonies.
Let's talk about Americans. They proudly say that America is the most powerful country in the world, they have the best "democracy" in the world, & other regions, & their residents, should learn from America that how a country & its people should live, so these people can also develop. Americans don't stop to think how did their country become so "powerful"? By constantly interfering with the domestic & foreign policies of those countries, & if someone doesn't listen to the dictated terms of America, then they are forced to change their thinking or get punished severely. This is what political scientists have named, "imperialism."
If we look this international, diplomatic relationship on a micro level, it's very similar to a school yard bully forcing another student to do what the bully wants him / her to do. If that another student refuses to do such act, he / she is severely punished. When this happens on the school grounds, all of us, including Americans, call it bullying & condemn it, wholeheartedly. But these same Americans conveniently forget what America does on the international level is exactly same; "do what I say or you won't like the consequences for disobeying."
After all, an Iraqi, a Panamanian, a Colombian, a Yemeni, an Afghani, & the list goes on & on, won't feel such affection for America. They have felt, & are still feeling & living, the death & destruction of what America did to them. They don't feel happy or proud that America is such a powerful country, because that power is achieved by spreading terror, violence, misery, suffering, death & destruction. All that knowledge, scientific or otherwise, is useless if it is not backed by work, which doesn't harm anyone else. All that philanthropic work of Americans around the world is no good if those same Americans' tax dollars & moral support is for that same American army, which spreads misery, death & destruction in the poor villages of Afghanistan, Iraq, & Yemen.
After all, as the author of this piece pointed out, all empires, old & new, are "motivated by greed & cultural disrespect," & when one country wants to forcibly rule another country, it will always spread more misery & destruction than create anything valuable.
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Way back in 1973, when I was a postgraduate student at Oxford, I fell out with my new best friend, Samantha. She was the daughter of a South African businessman and I had been exiled from Uganda. Africa bonded us for a while, then things fell apart. She couldn’t understand why I went on and on about colonialism and its impact on the subjugated. And I couldn’t forgive her for not understanding. ...
A new survey found nearly 43% of Britons are proud of the British Empire. They hang on to these feelings because this nation has never gone through an honest assessment of that past. Though British rule did deliver some good, like all empires it was motivated by greed and cultural disrespect. The 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon observed, “The history of empires is the history of human misery.” They who have assiduously painted over dark episodes in British history should know that whitewash is unreliable and temporary. Truths will out.
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Ah, the many lessons we subjugated natives had to suffer through, amid the daily micro-humiliations of Western supremacy. The British banned home languages from playgrounds and spicy food in lunchboxes at our school; money spent on educating black children was a fraction of the funds made available for white kids in occupied lands. Just like in the UK, when the poor stole food, they were punished with extreme harshness. Resistance movements, like the Mau Mau in Kenya, had members tortured, imprisoned or killed.
Around 85 million Indian people died in famines between the years of 1760 and 1943, partly because of ruthless grain control policies. Churchill was unmoved when millions were perishing in Bengal. Indians, he thought, were “beastly people with a beastly religion.” They had no food because they bred like rabbits. There has not been a single deadly famine in India since independence. The Great Hedge of India (2001) by Roy Moxham described a vast hedge that was built by Victorian administrators so they could collect salt tax. Impoverished Indians were no longer able to afford this essential. Many suffered illnesses as a result or died.
What Rhodesians did to black people during this period remains hidden from British people. All they hear about is Mugabe, a monstrous product of colonialism, as was Idi Amin.
My last book, Exotic England, is both a critique of and a paean to my nation. I am here because they, imperialists, were there, in our lands. Though never equal, the relationship was not black and white. We learnt things, changed, fell in love sometimes. All of us have a responsibility to look honestly at this history, because so much of it lives on.
... Our education syllabus focuses on imperial vanities not realities. The media and arts do not yet reflect modern, global Britain.
So too, our foreign policies remain colonial. Blair was proud of the empire, so too Brown. The British still own the Chagos archipelago. In the Seventies, inhabitants were forcibly removed from the islands by our government and the largest atoll, Diego Garcia, turned into a US military base. A report quietly published last week suggests 98% of the dispossessed Chagossians want to go back. They do not matter. ...
That is not to mention the unconsciously colonialist British culture. A travel supplement on South Africa in a Sunday paper featured happy pictures almost all of European travellers and commentators, plus two local ladies selling fruit and a vineyard worker ... .
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