British empire killed 165M Indians in 40 years: How colonialism inspired fascism | Hacker News Reader

British empire killed 165M Indians in 40 years: How colonialism inspired fascism

mronline.org

53 pointspmoriarty33 comments

I am beginning to understand the origins on the current trend in India of being independent from Western policies and wanting to determine its own destiny. Initially, I was quite surprised to see that, given the enormous pressure to conform, but I guess things like this may explain Indian government's reluctance to go along. Also, perhaps the long-standing support for its not so friendly neighbor.

It’s not a recent trend: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_and_the_Non-Aligned_Mo...

The current trend is mixing it with a big dose of nationalism.

This conclusion seems to use highly questionable methodology.

Why should England's in the 16th and 17th centuries mortality rates be a good assumption for the baseline pre colonial mortality rate of India? Why 16th as opposed to 14th or 15th? I can't help but become more suspicious of the author's intentions when they lay blame on capitalism when Empire and Colonialism were not sole domains of market economies but also the Communist Soviet Union which had inflicted exactly that onto Ukraine and much of Eastern Europe.

>The rise of capitalism from the long 16th century onward is associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality.

This claim in particular from the source author's seems particularly hard to believe.

Make no mistake, the Bengal famine of 1943 was in no small part caused by the British Empire. But arbitrarily comparing death rates and declaring full culpability goes beyond belief.

British colonialism killed 100M Indians in 40 years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33978278 - Dec 2022 (45 comments)

British colonialism killed 100M Indians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33875569 - Dec 2022 (3 comments)

Somewhat ironically the current British Prime Minister who is of Indian descent recently proposed bringing in laws so that anyone expressing “anti-nationalist” views could be referred to Prevent, the government’s anti-radicalisation scheme.

It might have to do something with acrimonious ‘partitions’ brewing in ireland and scotland.. the brits cant suffer what they inflicted on others..

>This staggering figure does not include the tens of millions more Indians who died in human-made famines that were caused by the British empire.

Does it not? The figures are based on excess deaths. Unless there were human made famines before the British empire, so there wouldn't be excess deaths?

I'm struggling to work out how excess deaths is a meaningful figure over such a long time frame. Am I misunderstanding, or is this essentially reflecting a rising population. If someone dies a year 'early' is that booked as an excess death for the period? Is it reasonable to say the British empire killed them?

So the 100M figure comes from an excess deaths analysis. Let’s assume it’s accurate. It’s an indirect indicator. What was the direct mechanism that caused all those deaths?

I wonder how many "killed" would an excess deaths analysis produce for Britain itself during that time

Famine was a factor

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in...

Funny comments. You are talking about indicators. Even the number is smaller we still talk about 100 million of death people.

I once read a very cynical take that the Nazis had not done anything particularly novel; their big mistake lay in doing that sort of thing to melanin-deprived people.

(that said, I don't think the brits went in for obviously direct genocides; they seem to have been more the sort who would choose indirectly genocidal policies, eg encouraging opiate addiction or buying up all the potatoes?)

I don't think Britain bought up all the potatoes in Ireland, Britain bought all the beef leaving the Irish only potatoes and cabbage to eat. Then with a monocrop of potatoes as the staple diet, the potato blight caused a famine and mass deaths.

My bad. However, my understanding of the situation is that there was a british debate at the time as to what to do, if anything. The bleeding hearts suggested food relief for the starving irish, but were overridden by the libertarians of the day, who were horrified that anyone should attempt to trump economic considerations with moral ones, and insisted that one should not tamper with markets: the price of foodstuffs was the price. (if the irish could not afford to keep that beef or to import other food, they had obviously made a poor decision when selecting their parents!) Therefore nothing was done.

Edit: in the case of government response, my recollection does seem to have been a reasonable oversimplification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Governm...

Probably closer to 1 trillion, if you also consider their potential kids and grandkinds /s

Britain is still deeply racist to this day.

Compared to where?

I have no dog in this fight. I'm not British. I don't live in Britain.

I am certain that racism exists in Britain. But I don't think I've been anywhere that racism doesn't exist. More to the point, I don't think I've been anywhere with less racism than Britain. I've been to every continent but South America and Antartica. Perhaps Brazil is the utopian ideal you're using as a baseline? I saw racism in India, in China, in Canada and the US, and in my native Ireland.

There isn't much racism in Ireland, but then again, there aren't that many visible minorities, and until recently we've been blaming all our ills on Britain... Oh, bother. Well, apart from the Troubles, Cromwell, the Famine, what has Britain ever done to us?

Pythonic (half-)witticisms aside, I don't think your statement is useful. There are racists in Britain, but my own anecdata is that it's mostly a place with relatively good integration, certainly better than what I saw in the US.

Finally, take a look at the current cabinet. They may be a shower of haters, second-raters, I'll-pay-for-it-laters and the like (Braverman is my current least favorite, but only because Priti Patel on a break getting her venom glands upgraded, but they certainly cover a fair gamut of skin colors. (Though no one of East Asian decent so far as I know)

> they certainly cover a fair gamut of skin colors

If races to you are a "gamut of skin colors" I have not much to say here.

>I have not much to say here.

No, and yet you wrote this, which just begs the question what you think the issue is.

Your issue seems to be one of equating race with skin colour? Except you seem to be the one doing that. And in context I'm not sure what the issue is. I don't personally know the heritage of the current cabinet, but I can see their skin colour on TV. Therefore I can't comment on the racial diversity. I could comment on the colour diversity, unless you feel everyone should equate the 2, but then why raise the issue to start with?

There's been a lot of studies done on racism in the UK.

Basically a victim is less likely to be punched in the face as compared to the past, but racism shows up in school grading, job finding success, hospital treatment, justice system etc...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/01/more-than-1200...

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/dec/15/job-discrimina...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/28/facing-the-u...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/12/racism-north...

>One black Caribbean lecturer in the south-west of England told researchers: “I drive a nice car and one member of staff asked me if I was a drug dealer, because how else could I afford [it]?”

Well this is the first example I got to and it doesn't seem racist to me. Or am I racist for taking the Mick out of my friends white BMW???

I have a friend who is brown, he told me this happened at his work...

Another colleague had made a joke where the punchline was something about my brown friend being detained by cops. So my friend was saying how it was driving him insane how often jokes would centre on scenarios of him being chased by cops or being a thief or whatever. The colleague pulls the "jokes are jokes, there's no hidden meanings or racism at play" Two or three other developers could overhear the conversation. 30mins later the IT guy came in and asked my friend if he'd stolen any GPUs from the office for bitcoin mining.

I feel the key here is... if a person says they're being victimised by something, whether it be racism or something else. We should strive to reduce this kind of hassling.

Imagine if our significant-other was constantly humiliated by work colleagues for being short or fat or some such... I'm sure most people would be upset.

I don't deny it's possibly racist. But to me it seems more motivated by the car.

And in the absence of further background I don't think it reasonable to assume racism.

Yes you're right, I don't think it's reasonable to make people feel uncomfortable, but I've had people make me feel uncomfortable and that isn't racism.

People take the piss out of me for being skinny, the example you give seems to be in the same ballpark. Labeling this kind of thing as racism just devalues the term.

I believe you. There are racists in Britain. There are all manner of bigots there. Between people who thought I was fair game for being Irish (I've heard all the potato jokes I promise) to those who don't like me for being Jewish, I fully believe there are bigots.

But again, racist compared to what? Do you have an example of a much less racist society? I.e. I'm not claiming it's ok. But the phrasing 'deeply racist' irritates me. It's a fine way to dismiss everything good about the place.

That said, some of the recent stuff in the Graun about black school children being strip searched is enough to make your blood boil.

I get what you mean about the "compared to what". And yeah I do reckon it's better in Britain than say the 50s when an Irishman or a Blackman couldn't even rent a place to live easily.

When I reread your comment, I can clearly see I got the wrong end of the stick last night. Sorry about that.

Can fascism produce colonialism tomorrow? I mean just look at the defense of Ukraine. The west has had a whole year and not even been able to raise one Brigade worth of troops.

Hypothetically if Ukraine collapses anything is possible.

While I certainly wish we in the west would do more for Ukraine, "not one brigade" is a silly thing to say. We'd have to be all in if we went in with ground troops. Personally I'd like to see us go all in with aircraft and destroy every last bit of Russian hardware in Ukraine territory, but I've no idea if that's realistic or possible.

Why they are not our allies? What is so great about Ukraine?

The US, UK and Russia did have a security guarantee with Ukraine in return for them giving up the nuclear weapons they had under the Soviet union.

Ukraine has strongly indicated they want to join the EU and NATO and have moved towards a more democratic government (with corruption problems, but some western allies also have corruption). Self serving as that might be they are, for all intents and purposes, our allies. And they are rather strategically positioned.

And then we also don't like one country systematically attacking the civilians and civilian infrastructure of another country. There are various agreements about rules of engagement, not annexing within agreed upon borders etc.

In answer to your question then: nothing, there's nothing special about Ukraine. That's the point.

> The west has had a whole year and not even been able to raise one Brigade worth of troops.

Yes, most certainly this was the entire point of the elaborate weapon delivery schemes. To not escalate this to a world war by sending in NATO forces.

Just get it close as possible to a world war.

Doesn't look like it's working. They have lost half their energy infra. And NATO did announce they were going to raise troops mid year. Hasn't happened afaik, cuz the members don't agree on contributing troops.

   > Doesn't look like it's working.

If it weren't working Russia would have steamrolled Ukraine in a week. Agree or disagree with the policy, but the US is threading the needle between giving Ukraine enough support to keep Russia from winning quickly and decisively, while not putting troops on the ground in a direct fight with Russia which would cause World War 3.

If that is indeed the goal, it has worked thus far. I disagree that this is a wise path, but it's their stated strategy.

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