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Comment by apsec112 | Hacker News Reader

AFAICT, the British Empire gets much more criticism for its various evils than other historical empires do. Very few people in the West, for example, even know about the ethnic cleansing of the Greeks under the Ottoman Empire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide), and that was less than a century ago. Probably the worst European colonialists were the Belgians, of all people, under King Leopold II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S...). And I've virtually never heard anyone talk about all the wars and conquests in India before the British came. The Mughal Empire was not conquered with sunshine and rainbows, etc.

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The Mughal's did bad things too, but some of their kings like Akbar at least tried to integrate society and not cause religious strife. The Mughal Empire did a lot of bad things in India, especially nutcases like Aurangzeb, and Indian people recognize those bad things.

The problem, as I understand, is that a lot of British people don't know all the bad things the Empire did, or don't learn about it the way German people learn about the Holocaust and the Nazi's. Same thing might apply to Belgium - I was appalled to visit Brussels and see a park called "Leopold Park" [1] in the center of the city.

Edit: Turns out this park is named after King Leopold I, the first king of Belgium, and before the Congo atrocities. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15314232 for the person who educated me :)

On a more personal level, as an Indian person who grew up in the US, I always thought Churchill was a badass dude and a good wartime leader. It wasn't until Middle School that I learned about the WW2 famines and all the stuff he said about Indian people. He hated Indians and was extremely racist. His decisions directly lead to the death of millions of people in India. He's no better than Hitler or any of those dictators in my view, and it's mind boggling that people idolize him as the Lion.

Tangent aside, a lot of people did bad things (globally), but saying the Ottomans are bad or the Belgians are bad doesn't absolve the British Empire of its crimes. I don't think we need reparations or blame anybody today, since we all understand bad things happened, but more people should be educated about what happened and how to make sure it never happens again.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Park

> Churchill's decisions directly lead to the death of millions of people in India. He's no better than Hitler

It gets even more ironic than that. During the 1940s Bengal famine, things were so bad that the Axis powers offered to step in and send humanitarian aid. Churchill not only refused, but he tried to prevent the newspapers from printing news of the offer, so that people wouldn't know how truly unnecessary their starvation was.

Lest I be mistaken, this is not to say that the Axis powers were somehow anything other than evil themselves. But it does highlight the level of hypocrisy of the British to claim the moral high ground when their own leader was intentionally starving millions to death out of spite. (And yes, it was spite - read what Churchill himself said on the topic).

Churchill was merely following proud English tradition: when the Great Famine decimated Ireland as a result of British policies (and during which Irish food exports to England continued unabated), Queen Victoria prevented the Ottoman Sultan from donating more aid and food than she had herself.

Being neither British nor Indian, I'd always thought of the British as not horrible colonialists of India, that is until I listened to Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast. [1]http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/15-the-prime-minister...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 offers an alternative view.

"Offering aid to your enemy, to highlight their weakness" is a standard propaganda technique, not to be taken at face value.

> hypocrisy of the British to claim the moral high ground when their own leader was intentionally starving millions to death

no disagreement here.

Why is this Winston asshole a hero again? Stabbed so many people in the back. One can understand if not condone the pre WW2 packs that compromised with Hitler. This is inexcusable.

The park was called after Leopold I, the first king of Belgium, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Belgium. This was in 1877, a decade before the Congo atrocities. (Source: https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldpark_(Brussel) in Dutch)

Thanks for educating me. I updated my post.

But I think your remark was valid though. Leopold II's atrocities get very little attention in Belgium compared to Nazism.

There are still quiet a lot of statues of him. Which indeed sounds weird in relation to Hitler statues. It might be an idea to give them the same treatment as the Nazi party grounds in Nuremberg. Proper context next to them.

>There are still quiet a lot of statues of him.

That I find kind of odd. His treatment of the locals in the Belgian Congo is sort of the gold standard for imperial oppression.

> Leopold II's atrocities get very little attention in Belgium compared to Nazism.

That is true. I'm Belgian; I can't remember having heard about this e.g. in history classes; it's something I came across later on.

> It might be an idea to give them the same treatment as the Nazi party grounds in Nuremberg.

What treatment? Wikipedia says that it became a memorial, but doesn't say what it became a memorial to.

This is solely my personal opinion. But it isn't a traditional memorial.

It is in a rather unmaintained state (minimal reinforcement), with relevant information displayed next to and on it and is freely accessible to all.

"The Mughal's did bad things too, but some of their kings like Akbar at least tried to integrate society and not cause religious strife."

I wouldn't be so sure of that. A lot of Akbar's praises can be attributed to 'creative' history writing after the 1950s.

Interesting, do you have sources for that?

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

Scroll down to Akbar and you'll find some interesting things. Also of interest is Allauddin Khilji.

It only talks about Akbar's early reign (remember he was crowned at the age of 13) and was under the influence of Bairam Khan. Later years he removed the jaziya tax on Hindus, gave them high postions in his court and would not be recognized as Muslim (see Din i Ilahi). He is also supposed to have made a lot of effort to understand other religions. There is a reason why he and Asoka are considered Great Emperors of India.

I think on balance a better response to sordid histories is acknowledgement and solemn remembrance. It is important to recognize, as enlightened folks, just how terrible our ancestors misdeeds often were. That many groups often perpetrated such atrocities ought not be a reason to say "well we were just as bad as everyone else". Each person should draw a line from their own group's history to themselves and feel empathy towards the oppressed and yes, a bit of shame, that such things had been done by their ancestors. I'm not suggesting that means we walk around with our heads hung all the time, but rather that we challenge ourselves: how will we be different than them and what parts of our world are not yet just. Where do we have a part in making them more so?

I think that everyone should learn from crimes committed by all nations, not just those that they have some weak genetic link to, as if genocide was a potentially heritable trait like eye color. My own ancestors were Irish, for example. Obviously, the Irish people suffered greatly at British hands. Does that mean I should learn less about British crimes, or take them less seriously, than a classmate whose great-great-great-great-grandparents happened to be British instead? I would say no, and that everyone should learn about British successes and failures (and why they happened, what motivated them, etc.) equally.

All the rest of your points have been addressed, but re: the Mughal Empire

It is important to note that while the foundations of the Mughal Empire were forged with plunder and loot, the Empire itself became native to the Indian subcontinent not soon after and also subsequently for a couple of centuries brought about great cultural boom in the general area. The Mughals eventually came to see themselves as "Indians"(sic) and built their homes here.

This is a far cry from an Empire which was founded on loot and extortion & also evolved into siphoning off the wealth (both cultural and scientific) to a motherland completely disinterested in the welfare of its subjects.

> The Mughals eventually came to see themselves as "Indians"(sic) and built their homes here.

That is the key difference. The British were never interested in anything but looting India. The Mughals were more like the Normans in British history -- they started off as conquerors but eventually completely assimilated into the local population.

For those who read Hindi/Urdu, this ghazal, which eventually became his ephitaph, by the last mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar is quite touching (https://rekhta.org/ghazals/lagtaa-nahiin-hai-dil-miraa-ujde-...). The whole ghazal is well worth reading, but it ends with:

  कितना है बद-नसीब 'ज़फ़र' दफ़्न के लिए 
  kitna hai badnaseeb 'zafar' dafn ke liye
  दो गज़ ज़मीन भी न मिली कू-ए-यार में 
  do gaz zameen bhi na milee koo-e-yaar mein

Rough translation: How unlucky is Zafar; he couldn't even/be buried in the streets of his friends.

(The British exiled Bahadur Shah Zafar to Rangoon and he was eventually buried there.)

> The Mughals were more like the Normans in British history -- they started off as conquerors but eventually completely assimilated into the local population.

The interesting thing is that the Norman mark probably never wore off: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8424...

So much for "assimilation" of the conquerors! I feel like it really works the same everywhere, every time. They won't really let you in even after centuries. Don't get deceived.

It’s worth also mentioning the the Armenian genocide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide ) which happened around the same time by the Ottoman Empire, and is just as unknown. That resulted in the death of over 1.5 million people, and tensions between Armenia and Turkey are still rather tense today. Many Western countries still refuse to accept it took place, most likely due to their favourable political position with Turkey.

Maybe it's just me, but the Armenian genocide is much more well known than the greek one. There are pulitzer winning authors who discuss the Armenian genocide, and at least for me it was taught on when I learned about world war 1 (abet this isn't as touched on as much as ww2). And in more recent years, you have seen countries of serious prominence such as Germany recognize the arminian genocide as a genocide rather than just a war. I learned about the greek aspect from this post.

I'm curious if this is because the arminian genocide killed 90% of the ethnic groups population, being one of the most horrific and close to complete acts of ethnic cleansing ever to happen.

2 things -

1. The British Raj is still in living memory. All 3 of my surviving grandparents were born before independence and were adults and married by 1947 (when India gained independence). They remember British rule. Comparing the criticism that an evil empire from living memory receives with empires that came before it is pretty disingenuous.

2. As an Indian, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth when tyrants like Winston Churchill are celebrated in modern Britain. His thoughts on the Bengal famine of 1943 and his inaction during that time which caused the death of an estimated 2 million people due to starvation is a matter of public record.

I'm not sure why you are bringing this point. OP is not saying British are worse than Ottoman or other empires.(Two Wrongs Make A Right Fallacy)

The claim seemed to be that historical British crimes were disproportionately ignored, compared to historical crimes committed by other countries. I am arguing against this by pointing to other crimes that (I'm guessing) most Westerners don't even know about.

The Mughal empire mistreating Indians has a slightly different relevance to Westerners than some Western empire doing the same.

Not knowing about Mughal is ignorance, while not learning about the bad sides of our own history is (often: culturally imposed) revisionism.

The legacy of the UK is certainly not generally looked at in the same light as similarly evil 20th century regimes. (Nor is the US)

The reason has more to do with the fact that victors write history, and the Empire co-opted and exploited local institutions. So while Britain’s Empire was lost, its language and cultural impact reigns supreme in many ways to this day.

The Dutch VOC is right up there.

Uhmmmm, does the Ottoman Empire or Mughal Empire still exist? The British Government is still run in the name for the Monarch who was the monarch of the Britsh empire while it still existed. The government is still run by the descendants of the British political elite (eg. House of lords) who carried out those atrocities. No common people should be blamed for sins of a regime but the elite who perpetuated and benefitted from those atrocities and passed on the benefits to their offsprings are fair game.

I think a willingness to look critically at your own past is a virtue, and it makes sense that people in a given country would be more concerned about their own misdeeds.

Also, the scale of the British empire was much vaster than the ottomans or the Belgians, and we’re still dealing with the repercussions of it the empire and it’s collapse all over the world.

> Very few people in the West, for example, even know about the ethnic cleansing of the Greeks under the Ottoman Empire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide)

Fewer still know about the "Turkish Genocide" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_genocide) but that's more to do with cherry-picking "historians" such as yourself.

Of course that Wikipedia page redirects to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Ottoman_Muslims which kinda proves the point that for some reason we can't use the term "Turkish Genocide" and must use quotes and softer language like "Persecution".

"cherry-picking "historians" such as yourself."

I've never claimed to be a historian, and it's impossible to not leave lots of things out in a Hacker News comment, especially if the scope is as broad as "all historical atrocities". I didn't write these Wikipedia pages, I'm just linking to them out of convenience since I can't link to copyrighted history books.

> I've never claimed to be a historian

That's why they put it in quotes.

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