Yes, in your defence, it is the kind of thing that sounds funny until you
realise what it actually entails. Much like defenestration
Popular misconceptions about 19th century History
- Thread starter Lampiao
- Start date
realise what it actually entails. Much like defenestration
That comes both from an erroneous view that the process of modernization being a Victoria 2 like event (press the button you're white now!) and a misconception of the actual economical situation of Tokugawa Japan (if a medieval country like Japan could do it, everyone can!).
Not to mention a misconception of how much Japan actually industrialised during the 19th century. Japan remained less industrialised on a per-capita basis than even Russia by the end of the 19th century, let alone other European economic powers. It was only in the 20th century that Japan would become one of the great industrial economies, though it's worth noting that Japan avoided the complete loss of manufacturing capability that many areas of the non-Western world underwent in the 19th century.
Also, while a Meiji was beyond the means of most non-European powers for much of the 19th century, a Siam was a possibility for many and all in all, would not be such a bad fate. It's worth underlining the fact that outside Malaysia, Thailand is still the most developed major country in Southeast Asia, being far wealthier than the formerly colonised Vietnam and Myanmar. More insidious than a lack of development and deindustrialisation (which was likely to happen to some extent even without European rule, see Iran, Turkey), was the destruction of native institutions which often (but not always) accompanied European rule. Countries which tended to keep native institutions in some way, shape or form such as Malaysia and Botswana tended to have a better twentieth century than those that didn't
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That's actually interesting. The Brits of the XIX century (of course, I'm talking about the "educated classes", the lower ones had been too busy trying to survive) seems to be very sure about their moral superiority but to the outsider Britain of Dickens seems to be a very cruel and not very compassionate place even comparing to the "Russian Bear" (why bear? The heraldic beast was a two-headed eagle and AFAIK the lions were not truly-English animals; the consistency of logic was definitely absent
). Just look at "Oliver Twist". A death penalty for buying the stolen goods and, IIRC, for a petty theft. In brutal uncivilized Russia the death penalty (excepting the open revolts) had not been used since the reign of Empress Elizabeth (mid-XVIII). Then goes the moral part. If I understood the "Pickwick Papers" correctly, a person placed into prison for debt had to pay for his food and lodgings and potentially could die from starvation (unless he begged for the alms successfully). In Russian Empire a debtor would stay in prison only for as long as creditor was paying for his up-keeping. And donating food to the prisoners (even the criminals) was considered something of a religious duty even in the late XIX.
To be fair, judging by Victor Hugo (well, he liked to exaggerate things) in France circa mid-XIX а person would get a multi-year prison sentence for stealing a loaf of bread (in Russia of that time for the crime like that he would be probably kicked couple times by a policeman and let free).
That's actually interesting. The Brits of the XIX century (of course, I'm talking about the "educated classes", the lower ones had been too busy trying to survive) seems to be very sure about their moral superiority but to the outsider Britain of Dickens seems to be a very cruel and not very compassionate place even comparing to the "Russian Bear" (why bear? The heraldic beast was a two-headed eagle and AFAIK the lions were not truly-English animals; the consistency of logic was definitely absent
Then goes the moral part. If I understood the "Pickwick Papers" correctly, a person placed into prison for debt had to pay for his food and lodgings and potentially could die from starvation (unless he begged for the alms successfully). In Russian Empire a debtor would stay in prison only for as long as creditor was paying for his up-keeping. And donating food to the prisoners (even the criminals) was considered something of a religious duty even in the late XIX.
To be fair, judging by Victor Hugo (well, he liked to exaggerate things) in France circa mid-XIX а person would get a multi-year prison sentence for stealing a loaf of bread (in Russia of that time for the crime like that he would be probably kicked couple times by a policeman and let free).
It's my understanding that the widespread use of the death penalty for so many offenses during this period is where we get phrases like "in for a penny, in for a pound" and "may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb." And they wonder why the 13 colonies rebelled.
Well, the greatest American philosopher, Al Bundy (from "Married with children"), explained it differently (can't guarantee the precise quotation): "Yes, we threw that tea into the water and why? Because Americans don't like tea. We like beer! ..... Read my lips: don't tax beer!"
While it can be argued that beer as a single item does not reflect a wide spectrum of the popular opinions, as far as I can recall, so far the only meaningful popular votes in MA in the last 2+ decades were (a) to allow selling booze on Sundays and (b) to abolish an extra tax on alcohol.
Well, the greatest American philosopher, Al Bundy (from "Married with children"), explained it differently (can't guarantee the precise quotation): "Yes, we threw that tea into the water and why? Because Americans don't like tea. We like beer! ..... Read my lips: don't tax beer!"
While it can be argued that beer as a single item does not reflect a wide spectrum of the popular opinions, as far as I can recall, so far the only meaningful popular votes in MA in the last 2+ decades were (a) to allow selling booze on Sundays and (b) to abolish an extra tax on alcohol.
Sure. One line I was going to include there but didn't was how if the taxes didn't do it, the literal hundreds of capital crimes would. But yeah, one or the other.
I'd agree that, while colonies were particularly brutal, metropolitan areas were also very brutal places, often with mirroring policies. For example, the brutal education policies of the IIIrd Republic to suppress regional cultures, and what happened after the Commune.That's actually interesting. The Brits of the XIX century (of course, I'm talking about the "educated classes", the lower ones had been too busy trying to survive) seems to be very sure about their moral superiority but to the outsider Britain of Dickens seems to be a very cruel and not very compassionate place even comparing to the "Russian Bear" (why bear? The heraldic beast was a two-headed eagle and AFAIK the lions were not truly-English animals; the consistency of logic was definitely absent
Then goes the moral part. If I understood the "Pickwick Papers" correctly, a person placed into prison for debt had to pay for his food and lodgings and potentially could die from starvation (unless he begged for the alms successfully). In Russian Empire a debtor would stay in prison only for as long as creditor was paying for his up-keeping. And donating food to the prisoners (even the criminals) was considered something of a religious duty even in the late XIX.
To be fair, judging by Victor Hugo (well, he liked to exaggerate things) in France circa mid-XIX а person would get a multi-year prison sentence for stealing a loaf of bread (in Russia of that time for the crime like that he would be probably kicked couple times by a policeman and let free).
We see colonies as extremely brutal because there was more resistance (and less representation) but it might be that similar troubles in the homeland would have yielded similar results
To understand criminal policy of 19th century Britain and Europe in general, we need to understand the socio-political context of these societies:
i. Industrialization, urbanization and increase of inequality: it's the age of revolutions in Europe, petty crime need to treated as harshly as possible to maintain the status quo.
ii. Capitalism breeds individualism, hence individual rights are praised as the human right par excellence: Sati or any other act of self sacrifice is seem as harmful.
iii. Scientificism and bureaucratization of the state: Law needs to applied consistently, one shouldn't simply kick a thief's ass for stealing a slice of bread, there must be due process, etc.
These three chracteristics clearly revolve around the industrial and capitalistic character of Britain and Western Europe in general. In a nutshell, Criminal policy needs to focus on social stability, 19th century Europe punished harshly petty theft but it didn't care for apostasy, an offense punishable by death in traditional Islamic countries.
That said, Colonial bureaucracy is, by definition, displaced from its place of origin, obviously British world view would never reflect India's reality. Consequences are inevitable.
i. Industrialization, urbanization and increase of inequality: it's the age of revolutions in Europe, petty crime need to treated as harshly as possible to maintain the status quo.
ii. Capitalism breeds individualism, hence individual rights are praised as the human right par excellence: Sati or any other act of self sacrifice is seem as harmful.
iii. Scientificism and bureaucratization of the state: Law needs to applied consistently, one shouldn't simply kick a thief's ass for stealing a slice of bread, there must be due process, etc.
These three chracteristics clearly revolve around the industrial and capitalistic character of Britain and Western Europe in general. In a nutshell, Criminal policy needs to focus on social stability, 19th century Europe punished harshly petty theft but it didn't care for apostasy, an offense punishable by death in traditional Islamic countries.
That said, Colonial bureaucracy is, by definition, displaced from its place of origin, obviously British world view would never reflect India's reality. Consequences are inevitable.
For some reason, I get the feeling that this is some sort of racist colonial fantasy. You never see threads pondering if Europe can get a majority population of brown immigrants (perhaps because it's too contemporary/controversial/topical).
you get them all the time,its mostly called Eurabia or similar things. They just happen to be less pondering,more stating,and less neutral,and more "OMG!!11!!". also,nutty.
Ehh, that’s kind of complicated, and also very specific to the nations that you’re talking about.
If the Hapsburgs had formed a Danubian Confederation they might have survived—but such a devolution of powers was unthinkable to the monarchy. The Commonwealth is pre-19th century (unless you’re talking about the Brits) and had a lot of systemic issues beyond their multinational nature. Yugoslavia probably could have survived, but the horrors of the Yugoslav Wars and nationalism there today color people’s perceptions of the region.
On the other side of things, the continued survival of Belgium and Spain is called into question fairly often, and the same could have been said of Canada twenty years ago.
That's not really what an holocaust is (if the word can ever be used as a generic term anyway); the use of the word is clearly to try to conjure or plant the idea that what he ultimately argues is criminal negligence or disastrous mismanagment amounts to deliberate massacres and genocide.
It's a useless and out of place comparison, especially for a book of this type.
What's this single and uniform "capitalist" ideology? Lack of direct accountable governments and the coercive power of colonial regimes make the situation very different from a ideal free market and even then there is nothing inherent to capitalism that makes it impossible to mix with interventionist policies and Davis writing in at the eve of the 21st century ought to account for that. Either way, his stance on this specific topic(capitalism's role in famines) makes no sense in light of the pattern we see in the 20th century.
Even Amartya Sen, which seems to me closer to Davis in this debate, argues more from the idea of autocratic and unaccountable states and that's why he claims "famines don't happen in democracies"(paraphrasing)
I don't get this attempt to construe(even if just rhetorically) criminal or immoral lack of action or bad policy by the part of the British(which was not fully true) as if it was an active commitment of atrocities, that makes no sense as you even quote a redditor that presents different problems caused by the Europeans as side effects and not goals of their policies.
Anyway the point is that things clearly did not get massively worse even if they didn't get much better, the population of India was still generally growing during this time, famines killed a smaller portion of the population, both in absolute and relative than they did in the 18th century(both in semi-British territories such as Bengal in 1770 or outside British territories such as Central and Northern India during the Chalisa and Doji Bara famines)
You can see that I'm not really denying that British policies were inadequate or that the problem was not ultimately down to a complete lack of food, but we still have records of British relief projects, reactive change of policies; also from the few mentions on famines in the book "A new economic history of India" railways helped against famines(page 10, 111, 112, 140 156) contrary to what Davis argues, although the book is kind enough to provide other point of views but ultimately favours the idea that railways helped against famines and also claims that the British took into account the famines of the 70s in their railway expansions and constructions.
And after you listed all these surviving multi-ethnic giants, don't forget the small ones like Russia and India.
Russia is not that multi ethnic today, it's 80% ethnic Russian.And after you listed all these surviving multi-ethnic giants, don't forget the small ones like Russia and India.