Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

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jimbob
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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by jimbob » Tue Jun 23, 2020 3:54 pm

Fishnut wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 12:52 pm
kerrya1 wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 10:22 am
jimbob wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 9:08 pm
A descendant of Robert E Lee on why Confederate statues should come down

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/54481783 ... 1995786740

Most of it is specifically American, but there are similarities.
I'm curious about all these confederate statues - is it common in other countries to put up lots of statues to the people that ultimately lost a war? Are these all located in the "South" or are they all over the US?

We have a few in Scotland (William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, etc) but not that many and mostly of people from much earlier in our history.
I found this video to be quite enlightening. The TL:DW is that the Daughters of the Confederacy was an organisation founded by women descendent from prominent anti-bellum ante-bellum families who wanted to preserve the 'good' legacy of the Confederacy. They raised money to put up statues of various 'heroes' and, more importantly, campaigned to get text books to record the 'truth' about the confederacy (basically putting a positive spin on everything). This meant that kids from the 1890s to the late 70s ( :o ) were raised on the idea that the Confederacy was good. They also had a kids version that taught a Confederate Catechism, indoctrinating generations.

ET change anti- to ante-
Yes, see also the bust of KKK founder and Confederate war criminal Nathan Bedford Forrest that was put up in the Tennessee State Capitol in the 1970s.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by monkey » Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:25 pm

kerrya1 wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 10:22 am
jimbob wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 9:08 pm
A descendant of Robert E Lee on why Confederate statues should come down

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/54481783 ... 1995786740

Most of it is specifically American, but there are similarities.
I'm curious about all these confederate statues - is it common in other countries to put up lots of statues to the people that ultimately lost a war? Are these all located in the "South" or are they all over the US?

We have a few in Scotland (William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, etc) but not that many and mostly of people from much earlier in our history.
They can be found in most States. This 2019 report from the SPLC has numbers, a timeline when they were put up and a map of of where. Think something else might be better for detail of the background though, but it'll answer some of your questions.

clicky

I think the report is only looking at public memorials/celebrations, there are more on private land too.

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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by kerrya1 » Tue Jun 23, 2020 7:22 pm

monkey wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:25 pm
kerrya1 wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 10:22 am
jimbob wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 9:08 pm
A descendant of Robert E Lee on why Confederate statues should come down

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/54481783 ... 1995786740

Most of it is specifically American, but there are similarities.
I'm curious about all these confederate statues - is it common in other countries to put up lots of statues to the people that ultimately lost a war? Are these all located in the "South" or are they all over the US?

We have a few in Scotland (William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, etc) but not that many and mostly of people from much earlier in our history.
They can be found in most States. This 2019 report from the SPLC has numbers, a timeline when they were put up and a map of of where. Think something else might be better for detail of the background though, but it'll answer some of your questions.

clicky

I think the report is only looking at public memorials/celebrations, there are more on private land too.
Thanks Fishnut & Monkey, I have some watching and reading to do. :D

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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by bmforre » Wed Jun 24, 2020 3:16 am

jimbob wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 3:54 pm
... KKK founder and Confederate war criminal Nathan Bedford Forrest ...
Wikipedia states:
Forrest joined the Ku Klux Klan in 1867 (two years after its founding) and was elected its first Grand Wizard...

In 1869, Forrest expressed disillusionment with the lack of discipline among the various white supremacist groups across the South, and issued a letter ordering the dissolution of the Ku Klux Klan and the destruction of its costumes; he then withdrew from the organization...
His declaration had little effect, however, and few Klansmen destroyed their robes and hoods.
He certainly did not found it. After the KKK had got going others picked him as suitable figurehead with star appeal.
When he quicly lost belief and ordered the terrorist roadshow disbanded they just went aggressively on.

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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Jul 07, 2020 4:13 pm

Thought-provoking long read on modern Britain's identity, its selective memory when it comes to history, and what its cultural exports say about how the country deals with its past.

https://longreads.com/2020/06/18/the-lo ... hness/amp/
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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by bjn » Tue Jul 07, 2020 8:21 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Jul 07, 2020 4:13 pm
Thought-provoking long read on modern Britain's identity, its selective memory when it comes to history, and what its cultural exports say about how the country deals with its past.

https://longreads.com/2020/06/18/the-lo ... hness/amp/
Excellent essay.

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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by Woodchopper » Tue Jul 07, 2020 9:36 pm

bjn wrote:
Tue Jul 07, 2020 8:21 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Jul 07, 2020 4:13 pm
Thought-provoking long read on modern Britain's identity, its selective memory when it comes to history, and what its cultural exports say about how the country deals with its past.

https://longreads.com/2020/06/18/the-lo ... hness/amp/
Excellent essay.
Yes, very good

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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:08 am

A book on the economics of slavery and the foundational role that wealth generated posted in the Industrial Revolution is finally being published, 80 years after it was written, having been suppressed by white snowflakes who prefer to tell the tale of abolition as if it were simply the gradual refinement of white folks' moral sensibilities.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... shed-in-uk
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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by Fishnut » Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:35 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:08 am
A book on the economics of slavery and the foundational role that wealth generated posted in the Industrial Revolution is finally being published, 80 years after it was written, having been suppressed by white snowflakes who prefer to tell the tale of abolition as if it were simply the gradual refinement of white folks' moral sensibilities.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... shed-in-uk
I've heard the thesis of the book mentioned elsewhere (I'm sure it came up in Empireland, among others) but it will be really interesting to read it in its original form. There's a quote I've heard along the lines of 'Britain only invented slavery so that it could abolish it' and it's an attitude that seems very prevalent - we had no idea that slavery was bad, but as soon as we worked it out we abolished it. It's bollocks, but so pervasive.
it's okay to say "I don't know"

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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by Millennie Al » Mon Jan 24, 2022 2:53 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:08 am
A book on the economics of slavery and the foundational role that wealth generated posted in the Industrial Revolution is finally being published, 80 years after it was written, having been suppressed by white snowflakes who prefer to tell the tale of abolition as if it were simply the gradual refinement of white folks' moral sensibilities.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... shed-in-uk
Did you read that article all the way to the end? It says:
However, the text – which is still in print in America and has been translated into nine different languages and published all over the world – has been inaccessible and out of print in this country for years.
It was published in 1944 in America and seem to have been widely read and discussed. As to being unavailable in the UK, that was clearly in the dark ages before Amazon when obtaining a book from abroad was so difficult. In reality, this Giardian article is merely a disguised advertisement for a new edition. This is not some highly dramatic revelation following 80 years of suppression - not least because it was published in the UK in 1966 and reviewd in the TLS - but merely a commercial decision.

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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by IvanV » Mon Jan 24, 2022 10:16 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Jan 24, 2022 2:53 am
It was published in 1944 in America and seem to have been widely read and discussed. As to being unavailable in the UK, that was clearly in the dark ages before Amazon when obtaining a book from abroad was so difficult. In reality, this Giardian article is merely a disguised advertisement for a new edition. This is not some highly dramatic revelation following 80 years of suppression - not least because it was published in the UK in 1966 and reviewd in the TLS - but merely a commercial decision.
I think there is an important difference between "available if you know about it and know how to get it", and "visibly and freely available". Especially in the years before the internet. And I think authoritarian regimes know that. They don't necessarily have to completely ban stuff, just make it difficult to get. When only a few people have access to stuff, that can be kept under the lid. That's why, for example you go to certain countries and there just aren't many books. I particularly remember going to Chile and Argentina shortly after they emerged from authoritarian rule, and bookshops were rare, small and expensive. Even in university towns: there would be piles of the common standard textbooks that students absolutely required but not a great deal else. Most people did not have books of any kind in their houses, or maybe only a couple of coffee-table books about their own country. Even as recently as 10 years ago, an Argentinean visiting me in Britain for the first time was astonished at the range and cheapness - by his standards - of books available. And he deduced that from going into a small branch of Waterstones in a small town.

I recall going to Portugal in the early 1980s, looking in the windows of the bookshops and seeing lots of books about The Troubles in Northern Ireland. You did not see this in Britain in those times. Doubtless if we dug hard, we could find the same information as readily available on the continent. But that was hard work. I came home, and verified the near complete absence of such books from the public libraries and bookshops I generally visited in Oxford. Maybe they were there if only I knew which small corner of Blackwells to look in. In principle I could have gone into the Bodleian to see what could find. But as a maths/science student, I knew only the Maths/science libraries, and it didn't seem to be to a good use of my time in those days to investigate the other libraries just for my own idle curiosity, especially since I couldn't actually take such books and journals away to read them at my leisure.

When I did a study for the European Commission on compliance with a regulation on radio spectrum management, about 25 years ago, the French spectrum manager told me that they were compliant with the requirement to publish their spectrum plan, but they only supplied it to people who needed it. I said, please give me a copy. They said no. And so our report said they were not compliant with the requirement to publish it. My client agreed with us, published what we said, and took enforcement action. They recognised the importance of genuine and unrestricted publication.

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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Jan 24, 2022 4:12 pm

IvanV wrote:
Mon Jan 24, 2022 10:16 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Jan 24, 2022 2:53 am
It was published in 1944 in America and seem to have been widely read and discussed. As to being unavailable in the UK, that was clearly in the dark ages before Amazon when obtaining a book from abroad was so difficult. In reality, this Giardian article is merely a disguised advertisement for a new edition. This is not some highly dramatic revelation following 80 years of suppression - not least because it was published in the UK in 1966 and reviewd in the TLS - but merely a commercial decision.
I think there is an important difference between "available if you know about it and know how to get it", and "visibly and freely available".
Yes, I agree.

Economic historians have spent decades debating the role played by financing from the slave trade and Caribbean sugar industry in the UK industrial revolution. (As far as I remember some of the arguments against it being significant aren't that British proto-capitalists didn't use the money for moral reasons, but that at the time enormously more money was being made from other activities, especially from looting and exploiting India). Historians have also spent decades discussing the extent to which banning slavery and then the slave trade was in Brittan's national interest (for example that anti-slavery patrols conducted by the Royal Navy also allowed Britain to exert imperial control over the oceans).

But the fact that sources and arguments like those in the book by Eric Williams are well known and debated among historians doesn't mean that they have seeped into the public understanding of the origins of the industrial revolution or abolitionism. So I hope that the book is widely read.

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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by dyqik » Mon Jan 24, 2022 5:42 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Jan 24, 2022 4:12 pm
IvanV wrote:
Mon Jan 24, 2022 10:16 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Jan 24, 2022 2:53 am
It was published in 1944 in America and seem to have been widely read and discussed. As to being unavailable in the UK, that was clearly in the dark ages before Amazon when obtaining a book from abroad was so difficult. In reality, this Giardian article is merely a disguised advertisement for a new edition. This is not some highly dramatic revelation following 80 years of suppression - not least because it was published in the UK in 1966 and reviewd in the TLS - but merely a commercial decision.
I think there is an important difference between "available if you know about it and know how to get it", and "visibly and freely available".
Yes, I agree.
Hence the HHGTTG bit about the filing cabinet in a disused toilet with a sign saying "Beware of the leopard".

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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by IvanV » Thu May 19, 2022 11:02 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Mon Jan 24, 2022 2:53 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:08 am
A book on the economics of slavery and the foundational role that wealth generated posted in the Industrial Revolution is finally being published, 80 years after it was written, having been suppressed by white snowflakes who prefer to tell the tale of abolition as if it were simply the gradual refinement of white folks' moral sensibilities.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... shed-in-uk
Did you read that article all the way to the end? It says:
However, the text – which is still in print in America and has been translated into nine different languages and published all over the world – has been inaccessible and out of print in this country for years.
It was published in 1944 in America and seem to have been widely read and discussed. As to being unavailable in the UK, that was clearly in the dark ages before Amazon when obtaining a book from abroad was so difficult. In reality, this Giardian article is merely a disguised advertisement for a new edition. This is not some highly dramatic revelation following 80 years of suppression - not least because it was published in the UK in 1966 and reviewd in the TLS - but merely a commercial decision.
The Graun went back and corrected the article to make clear that in fact the book was in fact published in Britain in the 1960s by a major publishing house, and had several reprints. But it did go out of print for a long time. So I bought it and read it. It's very readable, at least to economic history nerds like me.

A key point for me, which made the course of Williams' argument compelling to me, and which doesn't come out in the Graun review, is the following.

Slave-powered sugar plantations were set up in the British West Indies (BWI), the first large scale slave-powered agriculture for export in the world. These plantations initially made a huge amount of money. The sugar was largely sent to Britain, where it was refined and then exported to the world. BWI was the wealthiest corner of the world for a time. But these were small mountainous islands, which merely had a first-mover advantage in the sugar plantation market, in part reinforced by British restrictive trade practices, and soon exhausted their soil. It took quite a while, but eventually sugar was being produced at half the cost by slave-powered plantations in Cuba, Brazil, Hispaniola (especially the French end, now Haiti), etc, who had enough space for larger plantations and for crop rotation. It was also half the cost from India, which was not strictly slave labour, but there were other unpleasant forms of servitude routine in India. The British aristocracy got themselves heavily into West Indian sugar, and fabulously wealthy off it. And the planters sponsored many MPs at Westminster. So parliament granted the British West Indies a monopoly of the British market, which kept the West Indies going for some time longer, despite the large cost disadvantage.

But there were counter-interests wanting access to cheap sugar - British sugar refiners exporting to Europe, and representatives of the British consumer, and it eventually became unsupportable. Once the BWI lost their monopoly of the British sugar market, their sugar plantations collapsed. By this time the US was already independent. So Britain now had very little direct interest remaining in any profitable slave-powered plantations. It is noticeable that it was around this time that anti-slavery morality started to gain some traction in Britain.

Clearly Britain retained substantial economic interests in slavery even after the economic collapse of the BWI:
- British slave ships were the suppliers of about 90% of slaves to all the colonies of the New World - Portuguese, Spanish, French, the USA.
- Britain refined slave-produced sugar from Brazil, Cuba, etc, and exported it to Europe.
- The British textile industry, the massive engine of the British economy in the 19th century, depended substantially on slave-produced cotton from the USA.
- And in general, a lot of slave-produced tropical products consumed in Britain too.

Williams documents how all of these economic factors and vested interests were introduced into the Westminster parliamentary debates over slavery, and how that influenced the staged limitations on slavery. For example, in 1807 the slave trade was abolished. But it didn't abolish slavery in the British Empire: that came with the 1833 Act. Even that fell short of abolishing near-slavery forms of servitude in places like India. Also, as long as there was extensive demand for slaves in the other colonies of the New World, British slavers continued illegally to supply them. The Navy was sent to try and restrict this, but at great cost and rather little success, they eventually gave up.

The practice of economic history has moved on to advantage since Williams' time. There is not a single diagram or table in the book. Rather he sets out his numerical data in text in paragraphs. Better modern practice would put it in tables and graphs and maps. He also fails to set out his arguments as clearly as a modern text might. Nevertheless it is a compelling book to read, and brings a huge amount of research and sources together. It certainly dispels the view that Britain ended slavery solely on grounds of morality, but rather economic factors were very present in the debate and outcomes.

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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Thu May 19, 2022 11:52 am

Thanks for the summary Ivan, very insightful.
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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by Woodchopper » Fri Jul 14, 2023 10:07 pm

I visited Paxton House yesterday with the family. https://paxtonhouse.co.uk/

It’s a Georgian mansion with lots of fine furniture which was owned by the Home family (of the British prime minister).

The house had a room devoted to an exhibition on slavery and the guide explained how the family made a fortune from their sugar plantations on Grenada. One of them suppressed an uprising while he was governor. The guide also explained how local businesses in the Borders were involved in supplying goods to the plantations and in refining sugar for sale to consumers in Britain.

I thought it was presented well and was both informative and added some drama to the tour which revealed a dark family secret.

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Re: Coming to Terms With Britain's Past

Post by Herainestold » Sat Jul 15, 2023 10:24 pm

It certainly dispels the view that Britain ended slavery solely on grounds of morality, but rather economic factors were very present in the debate and outcomes.
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