Australia less "colonial" than Britain?

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well the people in government there were still snatching aboriginal kids from families as recently as the 1960/70s were they not? - they certainly weren't 'British' then, they were Australian.

Reply 21

P.M.

naivesincerity

No. I said you shouldn't blame human nature on individual countries. I didn't say groups were 'absolved' of blame, I meant that you can't distinguish a country from another one morally based on past events.

Are you saying your comment was INTENDED to be irrelevant and inane?

Now I get the handle.

Reply 22

naivesincerity

P.M.

Are you saying your comment was INTENDED to be irrelevant and inane?

Now I get the handle.

No, I was explaining a perfectly valid point to you. Let me guess, you are a spotty little **** at sixth-form?

Reply 23

naivesincerity

P.M.

Are you saying your comment was INTENDED to be irrelevant and inane?

And you talk about me being evasive......you just completely evaded my point. :rolleyes:

Reply 24

P.M.

You began with:

I think it's silly generally to blame human nature on a specific nationality.

and ended with:

you shouldn't blame human nature on individual countries

So you're consistent.

But my unfortunate first instinct was to assume this irrelevant inanity hid some deeper meaning, and @ 02:39 I explained what I deduced it must be. You insist there is no deeper meaning. Fine. Thus, naive sincerity seems apt...

Reply 25

naivesincerity

P.M.

You began with:and ended with :s-smilie:

o you're consistent.

And then I explained to you what I meant, but you didn't want to move on from there because you are a smug little **** who's looking to promote himself as evidenced by your other posts.

Reply 26

P.M.

02:39 reprinted for the inebriated

Now, clearly you didn't mean that Australians were responsible for the creation of human nature, so I think my reading, that Australians shouldn't be "blamed" for conforming to universal human characteristics, was the only sensible one to make. Certainly, no rational mind would think you said anything about the sins of the father and all that. And if groups conforming to 'human nature' are absolved of blame, then so must individuals be.

Reply 27

SamTheMan

P.M.

That's an absurd evasion. Every individual would be blameless for anything and everything if you applied that logic consistently:

yea I killed her, yooman naychu innit...

I see his point though although I would express it in a different manner (although this wasn't the reason for the whole thread, on the contrary, I don't want to justify imperialism, I just want to point out that the blame that the UK holds is probably unfair and misinformed).

If the UK was at it (and usually if asked for a big colonial power of the 19th and 20th century, people will first thing of the UK and occasionally of France possibly), what were all the other countries doing?

The UK may have had an imperialistic foreign policy but some people have this weird idea that most other countries didn't have such foreign policies out of some informed choice, as if they knew about such things as democracy and human rights before the colonial powers: the opposite is actually true.

Although I would not want to underestimate the value of actions by such great people as Gandhi, where did the idea that it was wrong to colonise other countries come from? Most of the time from the actual colonial powers... opposition to these foreigns policies were mounting very quickly in the UK for example during the 20th century: whereas most European colonial powers chose to stay on as long as they could (Portugal in Angola, Mozambique, France in Indochina and Algeria, Holland in Indonesia) by fighting long and costly wars, Britain very early started leaving countries with the idea that leaving those countries with relatively good relationships would be better off in the long run and realising that their position was untenable anyway especially with the opposition back home.

That somehow contradicts the idea that Britain was this big nasty colonial power, the worst that ever existed, doesn't it? The fact is, most people don't know colonial history and have only really heard of what happened in India for example (which frankly, compared to the colonial wars in Indochina and Indonesia, or the Belgians in the Congo was pretty tame).

Anyway, regarding the human nature thing: I wouldn't use the term "human nature" but what were other countries doing while the UK was doing the same thing? Exactly the same, quite often worse and if they weren't, it was usually due to a lack of power and the lack of a central government. If they had that power, they would have used it of course.

It's worth noting that colonialism and the settlement in the dominions were very different and raised totally different issues.

Reply 28

P.M.

SamTheMan

Although I would not want to underestimate the value of actions by such great people as Gandhi, where did the idea that it was wrong to colonise other countries come from?

Not from Gandhi, during his years among the Indian colony in South Africa he was an open and passionate racial supremacist.

When he did eventually come around to the type of moral viewpoint most of us think we share, he then began to oppose colonialism in all its varieties and defend the right of indigenous peoples everywhere to own and run their historic homelands in their own interests.

During the period he was making this case for his own people in India, he also defended other peoples in a similar position, including the Palestinians then undergoing dispossession and displacement by Jewish colonisers.

Unfortunately for tptb today, whose principal race-replacement targets are now the English, Gandhi also included us in his moral community of peoples with rights as well as responsibilities:

In 1938, Mahatma Gandhi wrote the following… “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French…

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/israels-independence-from-whom/

Reply 29

SamTheMan

Thanks for the information about Gandhi and mentioning that he didn't always have opinions that would appeal to us today, but I was talking about participation in the process of decolonisation and the development of the concepts of self-determination, human rights, democracy...

A lot of people paint a picture of colonial powers who were occupying territories where people were claiming that their human rights were being infringed on, that their right to self-determination was not being respected. That's all a load of rubbish. If that had been true, colonialism would not have worked. It's because British imperialism was at its prime at a time when powerful countries believed in occupying less powerful ones and when those less powerful countries had the opportunity to do so, they'd invade their neighbours as well, that they managed to occupy countries.

Most ideas and claims that this foreign policy was "morally wrong" actually came from within Britain and the British parliament. Sure, in the colonies there were people who didn't like the occupation but this wasn't based on any type of principle. In the same position, they would have done the same.

Despite being among the first to actually denounce colonialism and slavery and the colonial power that left colonies the quickest, instead of having long wars, Britain ended up with the image of nasty colonial power, while countries like Australia, where most pro-colonial peope settled and where British colonialism was contested very little, now want to claim that their shady past is all down to the British...

Reply 30

P.M.

If you wanna know why a regime knocks a certain period or a certain population unfairly, you'll have to start with the regime and its agendas. It won't always be clear, after all they're competing for business against both national and international competitors - and you dumb **** are the customer. Of all parties, you're the last to know!

I agree with what you say about both slavery and anti-imperialism beginning at home as far as the historical record suggests. But question the historical record and what it recorded. Do you think tribal Africans were buying advertising on the pages on The London Times to oppose the investment in exploration and ships setting out their way circa 1810? Of course not, but there damn sure were tribal Africans objecting one way or another to being shackled and shipped.

I take the view as a European that certain forms of racism have been more common here than elsewhere, while other forms of racism have been less common, and that on balance we contemporary Europeans are racist only against ourselves and each other.