Castle Aching

[Compound2632]

So should we stop using "The Judgement of History" as a bogeyman to impose a sense of moral responsibility on our rulers?

[Edwardian]

50 minutes ago, drmditch said:

English involvement in that trade started in 1562 by that good son of Devon John Hawkins, assisted in 1567 by his young cousin one Francis Drake.

 

 

That may be, but the major phase of the triangular transatlantic slave trade was later and the impetus was our cultivation of sugar in the West Indies, which came later. 

[CKPR]

I can't recall if I've posted this previously but I can recommend Brian Thompson's history / biography 'Imperial Vanities' for its insights into the unplanned and almost accidental nature of 19th century British colonialism with its contradictory mix of adventure, out and out greed, Christian evangelism, political expediency  and clear-headed pragmatism -  https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780006532217/imperial-vanities/ . It's also a cracking read, especially if pace CKPR, Victorian "little wars" and the campaigns in the Sudan are a particular interest. 

Edited June 27, 2020 by CKPR

[Regularity]

15 hours ago, drmditch said:

And the President's Mansion became the White House when it was whitewashed to hide the burn marks!

Sadly, not true. It was first whitewashed in 1798, to protect the locally quarried stone from surface damage caused by frost.

 

[Nearholmer]

Is there anything that the members of CAPC don't, between them, know?

[DonB]

As a technically trained individual, I eschewed History at School, found it boring as taught to 14 / 15-year old boys, and I find it difficult to remember a single fact from that part of my education. In consequence I have learned more about British History reading the last few pages of this topic, than I ever knew before. A bit late in life to start reading learned tomes i'm afraid! but thanks to all the contributors for broadening my horizon somewhat.

 

 

[Regularity]

I went to a trendy (flakey, actually) comprehensive where we didn’t do history and geography, rather “social studies” which at least include a trip to Ironbridge in 1980. It rained, and Blist’s Hill was basically not a lot.

This was fortunate: I avoided it being dry, and my interest in it was lit when I was 22. A friend who was studying the subject mentioned he was getting confused over brickwork patterns, so I explained about stretchers, headers, fillers, quoins, etc. He was amazed that I knew about them. I was amazed these could be part of studying history. I never told him that I knew about these (and bonds, and many other things) due to Iain Robinson’s articles in the Modeller...

[CKPR]

I didn't do history at school and the kernel of my interest in history came from watching 'Chronicle'  on BBC2 and reading "Military Modelling" magazine.

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Is there anything that the members of CAPC don't, between them, know?

 

I really don't know

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Is there anything that the members of CAPC don't, between them, know?

 

The CAPC are a disturbingly erudite bunch, but it depends on what you want them to opine upon.

 

I keep thinking of Dr Watsons initial assessment of Sherlock Holmes...

 

Thinks:   Should I have said that......

 

Edited June 26, 2020 by Hroth
Second thoughts,,,,

[Nearholmer]

11 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

the consequence was revolution against a despotic government; maybe we're seeing that now in the US?

It does feel from a distance as if the USA is heading for something, out of which will emerge a new version of their republic, after hopefully not too much blood-letting and not too much dragging the rest of the world into their misery. It all looks very unstable, unsustainable in its present form, is I suppose what I’m saying.
 

Hmm ..... Two (or several) factions contesting for control of, among other things, the mostly deadly arsenal created in the history of mankind. Do you think we should be worried?

 

Head under duvet time (very stuffy in this weather).

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Hmm ..... Two (or several) factions contesting for control of, among other things, the mostly deadly arsenal created in the history of mankind. Do you think we should be worried?

 

Cicero's wearing the T-shirt.

[Hroth]

34 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Hmm ..... Two (or several) factions contesting for control of, among other things, the mostly deadly arsenal created in the history of mankind. Do you think we should be worried?

 

Head under duvet time (very stuffy in this weather).

 

Doomed, we're all dooooooomed......

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Not again!

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Not again!

Nay, nay and thrice nay...

[Edwardian]

Oh titter ye not

[brack]

Regarding accidental empire, the evils of colonialism and do gooders, my favourite story is the mombasa protectorate of 1824-6.

Mombasa was ruled by the sultan of oman at the time. They would send a ship every so often to collect their share of tax/revenue and take it back to oman. Mombasa being one of the largest slave markets/ports in east africa.

Anyway, when the omanis turned up to collect the money, the locals refused to pay, so the omani fleet blockaded the harbour. Captain Owen, in the area surveying the coast for the RN with two boats, popped in to restock provisions (due to the recent treaties with britain the omanis happily let him through).

Owen was a devout man and a committed abolitionist. The locals told Owen they would cede the city to britain if they'd protect them from their omani oppressors. To that end they (somewhat prematurely) flew a home made british flag from the fort and told the omanis where to go - we're british now, so we certainly wont be paying up. The omanis left.

 

Owen was thrilled at the opportunity to strike a blow against the evils of slavery, so negotiated to form a protectorate, with the proviso that slave trading be banned, which the locals agreed to.

He went off to carry on his surveying and left a handful of his crew to 'govern' the locals, who slowly succumbed to tropical diseases and died off one by one, whilst trying to stop the locals from selling slaves (which they carried on doing as soon as Owen's ships were out of sight - they'd had no intention of stopping). By the end the colonial governor was a 16 yr old midshipman as everyone of higher rank had died of malaria. He apparently put local noses out of joint by somehow capturing a slave dhow, freeing the slaves and giving them each a plot of land to live on.

Owen wrote to the admiralty proudly informing them of the new protectorate and how it would greatly assist in the fight against the Indian Ocean slave trade. They responded in horror - relations with Oman were friendly but delicate, and they'd just signed a treaty to not interfere with the sultan's territories (in order to guarantee safe access to India) he was effectively told to go and give it back. So in 1826 the mombasa protectorate was abolished. Owen was then reassigned to northern Canada, presumably to teach him a lesson.

 

60 years later East Africa again became british, again pretty much unintentionally and against the wishes of the government of the time.

 

Rather contrasts with the popular image of rapacious english armed forces turning up, shooting the natives, planting a flag, painting the map pink and enslaving the world. The truth tends to be much more complex and balanced.

[Buhar]

Will the parishioners who have contributed over the last few days please each accept an "Informative" thingy.  If I track back and click the icon, I'll only start re-reading and it's past my bedtime.

 

Alan

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

I agree with what our host said in his post on the previous page, especially his comments on the rewriting/retrospective condemning of historical events. I find Brack's comment just above quite apposite in another way. This current publicly confected rage over the slave trade ignores a very important point which Brack's comment alluded to.

 

The British slave trade or the Arab for that matter did not thrive because the respective traders put ashore armed troops who then conquered, captured, enslaved and then exported the local people. The trade thrived because the local rulers were happy to do all the work of conquering, capturing and enslaving because that was a regular part of their pre-contact relations with their own neighbours. The local chiefs made a lot of wealth out of happily selling off their captured neighbours because that what's they normally did. The same practices were integral to most societies in the world, despite many historical and current attempts to recast these historical peoples as epitomies of the Rousseauian ideal. Native Americans regularly raided fellow tribes for slaves for their own use, as did aboriginal Australians who raided other tribes for women. In New Zealand the Maoris were masters of it - the list is endless. Everywhere one looks at the available ethnographic accounts the practice is endemic. 

 

Our mutual European Celtic ancestors did a roaring trade selling slaves to the Greeks and Romans and anyone else. As did the local British tribes amongst themselves - enslaved labour was a crucial component of the ancient economies and continued as we know in parts of the world into the 20th century i.e. the Arab states as well as into the 21st in the form of third world sweat shops producing cheap manufactured goods.

 

In fact if we look far enough back there is not one human society that has ever eschewed the idea that one's neighbours weren't fodder for one's own economic or other purposes. That we now find slavery to be reprehensible is a welcome but quite recent advance in our human relations. Yet we still condone third world sweat shop labour. As a species our fellow humans are first a commodity then a human - that's the way of the world. 

 

As for tearing down statues etc. it serves no purpose other than to ignore the fact that all it will do is hide the past not atone for it. And hiding the past is not a desirable thing if we are to have some human progress.      

 

     

Edited June 27, 2020 by Malcolm 0-6-0

[monkeysarefun]

On 23/06/2020 at 01:48, Compound2632 said:

Perfidious Albion - was ever thus.

 

The vote for the right to hold the 2023 Womens World Cup was held yesterday. It came down to a New Zealand-Australia bid versus Columbia.   Nice to see the Mother Country stepping  up in support of its Commonwealth offspring, who answered its call in two world wars.

 

No wait, They voted for Columbia.

[Hroth]

3 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

The vote for the right to hold the 2023 Womens World Cup was held yesterday. It came down to a New Zealand-Australia bid versus Columbia.   Nice to see the Mother Country stepping  up in support of its Commonwealth offspring, who answered its call in two world wars.

 

No wait, They voted for Columbia.

 

Its probably cheaper for a fan to get a return flight to Columbia than to Australia or New Zealand*.  Pure economics.....

 

* I've not looked it up.

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

10 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

Its probably cheaper for a fan to get a return flight to Columbia than to Australia or New Zealand*.  Pure economics.....

 

* I've not looked it up.

 

 

Naahh!!! Columbia home of coke ............... a high time for all 

 

Only joking - herein follows  the usual disclaimer re etc. etc. etc.  

[Hroth]

5 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

Naahh!!! Columbia home of coke ............... a high time for all 

 

 

"I'd like to teach the world to sing...." 

 

Oops, wrong coke.

 

To be honest, I'd have thought twice about sending a sports tournament there, imagine afterwards.  "Did you pack your bag yourself?"

 

[Edwardian]

7 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

The British slave trade or the Arab for that matter did not thrive because the respective traders put ashore armed troops who then conquered, captured, enslaved and then exported the local people. The trade thrived because the local rulers were happy to do all the work of conquering, capturing and enslaving because that was a regular part of their pre-contact relations with their own neighbours.

 

 

I think this is a classic case of two wrongs not making a right.  I think we just have to accept that post-colonial societies and their diaspora are only really going to talk about the colonial power's 'wrong'. 

 

There is some justification for the apparent imbalance you highlight, however. There is a logical argument that demand would have driven supply, so much more black-on-black enslavement and sale would have resulted as a result of the insatiable demand of the planters in the West Indies and the Carolinas etc. Now, to my mind that still leaves the Africans involved making bad moral choices by our standards, and, I suspect, given that conquest and enslavement was something they seem to have done anyway, one might suppose that there was little reluctance or any moral qualm on their part.  Seeing this pressure to supply as part of the exploitation of native population economically more powerful Europeans is no doubt how it is argued these days.

 

However, if we judge these enslaving African chiefs by the standards of their time and place, they are not doing anything wrong. Are the Europeans of the same day to be held to a higher standard?  That would be problematic, as it equates to "we knew best", an acceptance of which justifies much colonial governance of native peoples.  

 

As I pointed out reference Colston, it takes many decades before the more progressive Brits start to argue the immorality of the slave trade. Once the Brits become Woke on the issue, do we get to point fingers at native populations or East African Arab slavers who have yet to catch up?  You could draw an analogy with the varied international responses to climate change.

 

All this is very problematic, but the problems, to my mind, all seem to flow from the modern insistence upon judging the past by present day standards.  Again, I don't see this as a useful tool to understand the past.  If we do not understand the past, we cannot draw meaningful lessons from it. 

 

Quote

The local chiefs made a lot of wealth out of happily selling off their captured neighbours because that what's they normally did.

 

Or eat them, in certain places.

 

Quote

The same practices were integral to most societies in the world, despite many historical and current attempts to recast these historical peoples as epitomies of the Rousseauian ideal. Native Americans regularly raided fellow tribes for slaves for their own use, as did aboriginal Australians who raided other tribes for women. In New Zealand the Maoris were masters of it - the list is endless. Everywhere one looks at the available ethnographic accounts the practice is endemic. 

 

Our mutual European Celtic ancestors did a roaring trade selling slaves to the Greeks and Romans and anyone else. As did the local British tribes amongst themselves - enslaved labour was a crucial component of the ancient economies and continued as we know in parts of the world into the 20th century i.e. the Arab states as well as into the 21st in the form of third world sweat shops producing cheap manufactured goods.

 

This goes, I think, to my point that people will act in broadly similar ways whenever there is a power imbalance in their favour.   

 

Quote

In fact if we look far enough back there is not one human society that has ever eschewed the idea that one's neighbours weren't fodder for one's own economic or other purposes. That we now find slavery to be reprehensible is a welcome but quite recent advance in our human relations. Yet we still condone third world sweat shop labour. As a species our fellow humans are first a commodity then a human - that's the way of the world. 

 

We are complicit in it, much the way that the Eighteenth Century English tea drinker was with the slave trade, every time they added sugar. 

 

Quote

As for tearing down statues etc. it serves no purpose other than to ignore the fact that all it will do is hide the past not atone for it. And hiding the past is not a desirable thing if we are to have some human progress.      

 

     

 

We need an answer to the problem of being seen to celebrate figures from the past whose deeds still cause offence to people of the present.  The question of Cromwell outside Parliament and Irish sensibilities has been raised. You might point out that, if judged by the standards of today, few people could ever remain memorialised by statues. You might take the view that people should simply not be so offended by things that happened decades or centuries ago. The world only works if we forgive and forget and move on.  However, the current trend is that offence is in the eye of the offended, so that would not provide an answer or quell any anger.

 

 

6 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

The vote for the right to hold the 2023 Womens World Cup was held yesterday. It came down to a New Zealand-Australia bid versus Columbia.   Nice to see the Mother Country stepping  up in support of its Commonwealth offspring, who answered its call in two world wars.

 

No wait, They voted for Columbia.

 

Pay back for Mel Gibson.

 

 

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

"I'd like to teach the world to sing...." 

 

Oops, wrong coke.

 

To be honest, I'd have thought twice about sending a sports tournament there, imagine afterwards.  "Did you pack your bag yourself?"

 

 

I vaguely and briefly knew This Parliamentarian.  She was a university contemporary of mine, and while she was up at Oxford, her brother, Charlie, was an acquaintance at Cambridge.  He spoke with a soft Scots accent.  She, on the other hand was defiantly, excessively and affectedly posh to the extent that her Oxford contemporaries dubbed her "the Duchess of Christchurch".

 

She was very enthusiastic about slaughtering all manner of wildlife, and her home provided abundant scope for such pursuits.

 

Given her tastes, when she undertook her student travels in South and Central America, she acquired as a souvenir, a splendid set of horns from some dumb beast.  The story goes that, on packing for her flight from Bogotá, she discovered that her suitcase would not close with said horns inside.  Nothing daunted, there and then she sawed through the horns, thus allowing them to fit, but also producing a quantity of fine white dust that permeated every nook and cranny of her suitcase.

 

We were in hoots of laughter imagining the conversation at customs; "you've just flown from Colombia. There is a fine white powder all over your suitcase.  Did you pack the case yourself, Miss?"  

 

 

Edited June 27, 2020 by Edwardian
Geographical Confusion!

[wagonman]

There's a lot of cocaine swilling about in the District of Columbia ... or did you mean Colombia?