Dystopian British Empire

To be worse the Brits would have to be better. If the early 1700s Church of England had been less openly corrupt, John Wesley's Methodists would still be C of E. A great moral revival in England from this enthused C or E would make for better British colonial governors who capably encourage colonials, not just to stay loyal, but to conquer French North America. Washington takes Fort Duqesne and makes mad Benjamins in real estate for the Virginia Burgess. Strengthened by loyal America, Britain winds up the wars with the French too easily to give nicey-nice stabilizing peace terms as in our timeline; Castlereagh's 100,000 pound bribe to the Spanish to abolish Spanish slavery triggers revolts across Spanish America, as in our timeline, but with no American revolution and an uninspiring, easily squashed French revolution, Bolivar just doesn't feel inspired to plow the sea sowing revolution among Indios or Mestizo. He likes the British. And in this timeline Castlereagh doesn't hate slavery and love stability, he loves conquest.

With Bolivar for Viceroy, the Brits conquer Spanish America and enlarge the slave plantations to be inclusive of most of the population. Without an America revolution, patriotic Brits don't hate 'the loudest Yelps for liberty coming from the floggers of Negroese' and loyal America isn't yelping for liberty anyway; Wilberforce, John Wesley, Samuel Johnson are busy keeping the C of E honest and enthusiastic and never get around to wanting slavery abolished. The empire builders link up the slave plantations across the whole New World with railroads and steam-pumped slave-dug mines. I'm thinking that's dystopian enough, but a British empire that powerful could enslave the rest of the world too. Yeesh.
 
I recognize that this board continues after 10 years to fetishize maps that are mostly pink, but could we for once admit that the British were utter monsters to anyone other than themselves without a bunch of desperate defenders resorting to Whataboutism to justify the Empire's atrocities and thus feel better about their map fetish?

Several hundred million Europeans owe their liberation to the British and their Empire, as do many millions of former slaves freed after Britain cajoled, bribed and bullied their governments to end slavery. That does not counteract the terrible acts done, most notably to generations of Afro-Caribbeans in sugar plantations. But the bad does not rub out the good, just as the good does not rub out the bad. One can recognize both the valor and the cruelty of an Empire and its vast differences over time and place, without sinking into cliches simplistic narratives.
 
In total amounts killed the British were among the worst and nobody even bats an eye at it, it's quite sad really.

That is simply not true. The numbers murdered by government were vastly larger in the 20th Century than they were before it, simply because technology and state organization happened on a far bigger scale. And of those numbers, Britain came far down the list of biggest state murders:


Here are the numbers for pre-20th Century. You could maybe give the Brits a million or so of the African slavery number, but even that seems like a stretch as they were only active in it for a portion of the period and had a much smaller portion of the plantations. But even with that aggressive estimate, you get a total of about 2m murders by the British state. A horrific number but nowhere near the top ten.

 
Last edited:

Starforce

Banned
That is simply not true. The numbers murdered by government were vastly larger in the 20th Century than they were before it, simply because technology and state organization happened on a far bigger scale. And of those numbers, Britain came far down the list of biggest state murders:


Here are the numbers for pre-20th Century. You could maybe give the Brits a million or so of the African slavery number, but even that seems like a stretch as they were only active in it for a portion of the period and had a much smaller portion of the plantations. But even with that aggressive estimate, you get a total of about 2m murders by the British state. A horrific number but nowhere near the top ten.



I think it's probably more than that, especially in India.

"Between 12 and 29 million Indians died of starvation while it was under the control of the British Empire, as millions of tons of wheat were exported to Britain as famine raged in India.

In 1943, up to four million Bengalis starved to death when Winston Churchill diverted food to British soldiers and countries such as Greece while a deadly famine swept through Bengal.

Talking about the Bengal famine in 1943, Churchill said: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.”



 
Last edited:
It's probably because British Empire is still in recent memory (and also because a lot of its evils are better documented). The mongols are demonised quite a bit too, but maybe not on this forum because most people aren't educated in the history of the mongol empire. On the other hand, romans are not demonised at all because most of the people on this forum are too educated in the history of the roman empire (and also because they probably enjoy larping as romans/byzantines)

It's probably because of the greater propinquity. Nobody gets worked up about, say, Crassus crucifying thousands of rebels by the side of the Appian Way and then leaving their dead bodies up until they rotted away, whereas if a British general had done such a thing after the Indian Mutiny we'd never hear the end of it.

I think it's probably more than that, especially in India.

"Between 12 and 29 million Indians died of starvation while it was under the control of the British Empire, as millions of tons of wheat were exported to Britain as famine raged in India.

In 1943, up to four million Bengalis starved to death when Winston Churchill diverted food to British soldiers and countries such as Greece while a deadly famine swept through Bengal.

Talking about the Bengal famine in 1943, Churchill said: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.”

As others have already pointed out, the British Empire didn't take wheat away from Bengal during the famine. Food ran out because WW2 disrupted supplies, and because the governments of the other Indian states were hoarding food themselves (so if anything, the famine would have been relieved with a more oppressive British administration which was more willing to overrule local governments).
 
So Britain is guilty of both having a dystopian regime over India and also for not keeping that dystopian regime going long enough? Partition was inevitable after Nehru and Jinnah could not come to terms about the relative centralization of India. Jinnah wanted some autonomy for Muslim states and Nehru insisted on centralization to build a socialist country. Britain then did her best to ensure as few as people as possible ended up in the "wrong" state. The horrors of partition are on the local Pakistanis and Indians that carried them out.

Even IOTL, India has had big problems with separatist movements, so a world without partition might well have seen even more bloodshed (and doubtless people criticising Britain for imposing weird border on its post-colonial states, the same people do with Africa...).

Incidentally, there seems to be a very strange attitude that crops up when discussing partition, as if the people on the ground had no free will of their own. Like, of course they were going to start massacring people caught up on the "wrong" side of the border, so obviously the fault lies entirely on the people who drew up the border for not doing it better. The idea that the killers could have chosen to refrain from killing, or that they bear ultimate responsibility for their own actions, just seems to get ignored.
 
Incidentally, there seems to be a very strange attitude that crops up when discussing partition, as if the people on the ground had no free will of their own. Like, of course they were going to start massacring people caught up on the "wrong" side of the border, so obviously the fault lies entirely on the people who drew up the border for not doing it better. The idea that the killers could have chosen to refrain from killing, or that they bear ultimate responsibility for their own actions, just seems to get ignored.

Thr problem is that the locals are guilty of the actions they took, but if a country set borders between locals and structures which push these conflicts, that country aren’t innocent either.
 
One of the things that makes this touchy I think is that the British Empire means different things to different people; For some it is hard to get worse than OTL unless you want to push right into Genocide while for others Dystopia would imply things getting worse for the British themselves in the Empire which all things considered worked pretty well for them.
 
I think it's probably more than that, especially in India.

"Between 12 and 29 million Indians died of starvation while it was under the control of the British Empire, as millions of tons of wheat were exported to Britain as famine raged in India.

In 1943, up to four million Bengalis starved to death when Winston Churchill diverted food to British soldiers and countries such as Greece while a deadly famine swept through Bengal.

Talking about the Bengal famine in 1943, Churchill said: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.”

The Independent is a clickbait tabloid and is not a reasonable source for historical facts. It is simply not true that millions of tons of wheat were exported as famine was in India. There were plenty of deaths from starvation in India, because famine alleviation was poorly managed, but that is not the same as deliberate murder. Churchill certainly said racist things about the Indians, but that does not mean he deliberately starved them.

I have quoted a highly respected academic source from a professor who looked into democide (death by government) as the primary focus of his career. The man was not averse to including death from famine in his figures, as he includes the Cultural Revolution in the PRC's figures. He notably did not include most of those in Britain's numbers as in his review of the historical figure it was not deliberate. If you wish to contest the figures, I suggest you come up with a source of equal or higher worth.
 
Last edited:
while for others Dystopia would imply things getting worse for the British themselves in the Empire which all things considered worked pretty well for them.

I think that's a bit of a straw man. Nobody's suggested that the experience of the British themselves is all that matters, at least not in this thread. Simply that "dystopia" implies a situation that is as bad, or almost as bad, as it is possible to get, that there are enough examples of empires treating their subjects worse than the British treated theirs to indicate that the British Empire was not as bad (or almost as bad) as possible, and therefore that the British Empire can't reasonably be described as dystopian.
 

Starforce

Banned
The Independent is a clickbait tabloid and is not a reasonable source for historical facts. It is simply not true that millions of tons of wheat were exported as famine was in India. There were plenty of deaths from starvation in India, because famine alleviation was poorly managed, but that is not the same as deliberate murder. Churchill certainly said racist things about the Indians, but that does not mean he deliberately starved them.

I have quoted a highly respected academic source from a professor who looked into democide (death by government) as the primary focus of his career. The man was not averse to including death from famine in his figures, as he includes the Cultural Revolution in the PRC's figures. He notably did not include most of those in Britain's numbers as in his review of the historical figure it was not deliberate. If you wish to contest the figures, I suggest you come up with a source of equal or higher worth.

Fair enough, I shouldn't have posted that anyways.
 
I think that's a bit of a straw man. Nobody's suggested that the experience of the British themselves is all that matters, at least not in this thread. Simply that "dystopia" implies a situation that is as bad, or almost as bad, as it is possible to get, that there are enough examples of empires treating their subjects worse than the British treated theirs to indicate that the British Empire was not as bad (or almost as bad) as possible, and therefore that the British Empire can't reasonably be described as dystopian.
Well, can all of the British subjects be lumped together into an average? I would argue that how the British exactly treated their subjects ranged wildly on who those subjects were and what Governments controlled the UK, so trying to "average" out which Empire did worse seems... reductive.
 
The brits destroyed several hundred stable, if preindustrial monarchies to replace with a few corrupt, administratively modern if dirt-poor nation-states with often having Issues with communist insurrections. That's OTL and pretty dystopian, if not the worst possible outcome.
 
The brits destroyed several hundred stable, if preindustrial monarchies to replace with a few corrupt, administratively modern if dirt-poor nation-states with often having Issues with communist insurrections. That's OTL and pretty dystopian, if not the worst possible outcome.

In many places, I don't really think that "stable" is the right description of the situation pre-British rule. I'm also sceptical that the pre-British states were less corrupt than their modern descendants (as opposed to what we call "corruption" then being called "how countries are run"), and I'm especially sceptical that they were wealthier. As for insurrections, the fall of any empire -- or any government, really -- generally leads to instability as people and groups jockey for position in the new order. If that's enough to qualify the British Empire as a dystopia, I'd say that most governments in history also count.
 
Well, can all of the British subjects be lumped together into an average? I would argue that how the British exactly treated their subjects ranged wildly on who those subjects were and what Governments controlled the UK, so trying to "average" out which Empire did worse seems... reductive.

Well, we need to be able to do some sort of meaningful averaging out, otherwise the statement "The British Empire was dystopian" becomes meaningless.
 
In many places, I don't really think that "stable" is the right description of the situation pre-British rule. I'm also sceptical that the pre-British states were less corrupt than their modern descendants (as opposed to what we call "corruption" then being called "how countries are run"), and I'm especially sceptical that they were wealthier. As for insurrections, the fall of any empire -- or any government, really -- generally leads to instability as people and groups jockey for position in the new order. If that's enough to qualify the British Empire as a dystopia, I'd say that most governments in history also count.
For people who aren't in the ruling class governments besides some of the western countries from the late 40s to early 1970s and Japan from that same era till the bubble do count as net negatives.
 
Top