The Entente was very aware of what was happening in Russia (and even intervened to stop it) they just were in no shape to do anything whatsoever about it.
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The Entente was very aware of what was happening in Russia (and even intervened to stop it) they just were in no shape to do anything whatsoever about it.
The Bengal famine was because local Indian governments refused to release food and the British government couldn't import food to the subcontinent because the merchant marine was needed to keep England from starving. Hardly comparable. Especially because it was stopped when the British military stepped in to insure that the food was released.
Well in fairness that was because the Nazis didn't have a clear plan of action from the start. The mass murder required war and it was unthinkable that France and England would let things get that far- or lose when push came to shove. But the Nuremburg laws and Night of the Broken Glass? Those were rather predictable given the Nazis stated goals, rhetoric and usage of paramilitary forces.
Probably you're right in that respect. Maybe it's that German people just are not suited to become revolutionaries. After all, even Lenin commented once that "If the Germans had to assault and seize a train, they would first make the queue at the ticket station to buy their tickets" :rofl:
It's really quite amazing like you comment the apathy and ineptitude of the leftist forces that ought to be the most interested in avoiding first Schleicher, Papen and their ilk seizing the government, and second, having them handing it over to the NSDAP out of pure incompetence, when they were by no means lacking either in supports and resources to do so :wacko:. Hell, the SPD and KPD with their militias, clubs and related organizations dominated Berlin by far, and they could have seized power without much trouble (apart from getting their hands on the whole of the Nazi leadership and most of the reactionary politicians).
As for the Spanish case, yes, it makes a very stark contrast. Germany fell into the NSDAP's clutches with (relatively) little violence, while in the Spanish case it took three years of civil war and more than a million and a half deaths between military engagements and repression (and a million more exiled, to top it all, out of a total population of 30 million). But again, as you rightly noted, there were too many cultural differences between the two countries. And also an important element: by 1936, it was very clear to the leftist forces in Spain the mortal danger that "fascist" (in the broadest sense) movements posed to them, and they were prepared to fight them, and also by that date Stalin had ordered the communist parties subjected to the Komintern all across Europe to form "Popular Fronts" with socialists and social democrats. Although that had little importance in Spain; while before 1933 the KPD was the third force in the Reichstag, in the February 1936 election the PCE only got 17 seats out of 473 (3.5% over the total) and was only the sixth force in the Cortes, even behind the Catalan nationalists. The real marxist bulwark was the PSOE, which got 99 seats (a spectacular 67.8% increase with respect to the 1933 election), and the PSOE, although marxist, was not affiliated to the Komintern and did not call itself "communist". This weakness of the Communists in Spain was the main reason why Stalin was so miserable with his help to the Republic, as it was clear for him that it would never become his puppet even if it won the war with Soviet support.
It was not comparable to the Nazis' actions in the Soviet Union (a comparison that by the way I had not made, but let's go ahead with it) in the fact that it lacked the direct genocidal intention that the Nazis' actions had. But to a majority of the British authorities both in Witehall and in India (with some honourable exceptions like Wavell), having "some black fellows" starve to death was perfectly acceptable as long as there was no bread rationing in Britain. India exported grain all along 1943 to Britain, and during the worst months of the famine, before local help could be organized by the Indian government, Churchill expressly refused to redirect convoys of Australian wheat directed to Europe that in those very moments were crossing the Indian ocean. And that wheat was not even destined for British home consumption: it was to be stored in order to feed European populations once the Allied liberation of occupied Europe began (which happened a full year later by the way). It should also be noted that such behaviour by the British authorities was a recurrent one, as they had acted exactly in the same way in all the devastating famines that had hit India during the late XVIII and XIX centuries (btw, during peaceful times, when the exceptional measures of wartime were not an issue). Also, the fact that British rule in Bengal began with a great famine in 1770 (in which the actions of the British East India Company were directly responsible) and ended with another great famine in 1943 does not say much about the quality of British rule in that area.
Given the poor quality of National Socialist theoretical "thinking" (to call it something), it's no wonder that mostly they improvised as things evolved. But usually people, back then and now, judge such actitudes comparing them with other experiences that are familiar to them or that they know (without doubt) to have already happened historically. Before the Nazis, there had been rabid anti-semitic states like Tsarist Russia and probably that was the level of repression that they thought of when listening to the Nazis. Or even less, as the famous mayor of Vienna between 1897 and 1910 Karl Lueger (greatly admired by Hitler) put up a noisily anti-semitic rhetoric that was mostly just a façade to help him win votes. That this time it was deadly serious, and that the Nazis were fanatical enough to carry their plans on to the very last extremes, was something that almost nobody could conceive back in 1933.
I agree with you that the Nuremberg Laws and the Night of the Broken Glass could be anticipated when looking back to the legal discrimination and pogroms of Tsarist Russia, but the Final Solution could not.
If anyone is interested, this month's edition of BBC history magazine has an article about the great misconceptions of the first world war.
That is simply not true.
-the British actions during famines in India varied greatly. They completely solved the 1873 famine for instance. Then they thought they had a major bullet, were complacent for the next famine, revised their plans after they screwed up that one and managed to deal with famines effectively for the next two decades before screwing up again.
-the British didn't care about Bengal in 43 in part because they believed there was enough food on the subcontinent. It turned out they were entirely right and the famine was solved when they got the local indian governments to release food. I guess Indians were genocidal towards other Indians?
-India was subject to recurrent famines because the monsoons made output variable and poor transportation networks made it difficult to move food around the country. The British managed to overcome that which is the reason there was no continent wide famine after 1900 except for 1943
Tldr; Once the British took over from the East India Company (whose record isn't good) they did deal with famines. Famines had occured prior to British rule. Famines occured more frequently during British rule in part because of large scale population growth, forced crop diversification (which helped eliminate the threat of famines in the long run) and varying British policy (although given the inability of previous Indian states to import food during continent wide famines, I don't see how this would make the British stand out).
Tsarist Russia? While the state itself "only" indulged in programs, we got to see how they deal with Jews when they thought they were a direct threat by their actions during the Russian Civil War. A good portion of white forces were more than willing to systematically cleanse areas of Jews. Given the Nazis rhetoric about the Jews being in league with their enemies it shouldn't be a surprise that they took after the latter group.
The Final Solution couldn't, not because their attitude was a mystery, but because the exact political circumstances (a nonaggression pact with the USSR, conquering France, allying with Italy and Japan) were unimaginable. However with those circumstances it isn't as much a surprise- the Nazis believed that the blockade was one of the factors that brought Germany down and their goal of eliminating undesirables combined with possible food shortfalls leads to a rather obvious policy.
While the idea of slaughtering large numbers of people might have seemed far fetched, you have to remember during the last war the Germans were willing to write off atrocities in Belgium, violating the rules of war and attacking nonmilitary targets (such as their raids on the British cost against undefended and non-military towns) and willingness to do what it took to win (like unrestricted submarine warfare) should have given them an idea that more safeguards become lax in wartime. If the Germans were unwilling to consider what they did dispassionately, they could have looked at the actions of other states and seen how normal safeguards degraded- the US being a good example given it went from isolationism to lynching objectors and secret police in just a couple years. As the defenders of the Old Regime discovered so painfully a century before war is revolution.
The 1873 famine in Bihar (part of the Bengal governorate) is a good example of British attitudes and concerns in India. Sir Richard Temple was governor of Bengal at the time, and he did take energetic and timely measures to help the population and avoid the worst of famine-induced deaths.
By 1876, sir Richard had become Famine Commissioner for the Government of India, and he'd come under intense critism because of his "excessive" spending in famine relief. So in 1876 sir Richard sought to avoid any such criticisms, and acted with a miserable scroogery that was received with applause from several other key British authorities, both in Calcutta and Whitehall. All, of course, for the sake of the "financial stability" of the Indian budget and to avoid fostering "dependency" among the Indian masses. In the words of the viceroy Bulwer-Lytton (nicknamed by Indians as "our Nero"): "everything must be subordinated to the financial consideration of disbursing the smallest sum of money". The food allotment decreed by Temple for starving Indians (conditioned to them executing hard labour for the authorities, of course, least they become too lazy) known as "Temple wage" amounted to 1627 calories per day. The ration at Buchenwald was 1750 calories per day. The death toll was 5,5 million people, and the British learnt so much about famine control and relief that in the following great famines of 1896-97 and 1899-1900, "only" 1 million Indians died in the first and between 1 and 4,5 million in the second. Also, during those three famines (as during the 1943 Bengal famine, or during the Irish 1846-47 Great Famine), India exported grain to Britain.
And saying that "famines occurred prior to British rule" is (in my opinion) quite a weak excuse. According to that, we'd still be asking out of our leaders what we asked of the chiefs of the clans during the Upper Paleolithic. And the British themselves did not recoil from uttering all kind of propaganda about how they were carrying the benefits of european civilization to India, the "white man's burden", etc (not to say that they were far better organized and disposed of technical resources not available to previous Indian governments). But if after all they were going to govern exactly in the same way as Ashoka or the Sultans of Delhi did, frankly they could have saved all their propaganda efforts for themselves.
Considering the rhetoric that Tsarist authorities used when referring to the Jews (in a personal meeting with Theodor Herzl, Count Witte commented casually on Herzl's face that sending the empire's Jews to Palestine was a good solution because having all them drowned in the Black Sea just couldn't be done for public image's sake), they certainly came quite short of their talk.
The idea of slaughtering entire peoples was not a German idea, as if it were a new recipe for "apfelstrudel". It was the consequence of carrying to its "logical" extremes certain ideas and principles that had been brewing in Europe for at least a century: "scientific" racism, social darwinism, etc were not exclusive German ideas. Those ideas had been embraced and enhanced by european governments during the XIX and XX centuries to justify colonialism and to put in place eugenesia programs in several european countries. And wholesale slaughters of entire "problematic" peoples in colonial territories had been done repeatedly without remorse from the XVI century onwards.
Don't forget the brutalizing influence of WW1. Lots of people, who had before only had muddled opinions, came out of that war with very pronounced social-Darwinist ideas and the mindset that compassion towards other people was an unnecessary indulgence.
In my opinion, what the Great War really did was to break down the cultural and moral barrier between what was acceptable "between civilized nations" and what was only acceptable when dealing with "inferior peoples". For example, let's see the opinion of Sir Evelyn Baring, who was the British finance minister during the years of the great Indian famine of 1876-79, who during a later debate over the response of the British authorities admitted openly that "Every benevolent attempt made to mitigate the effects of famine and defective sanitation serves but to enhance the evils resulting from overpopulation". And this was openly expressed in a public debate. The private dispatches between the Withehall and Calcutta authorities were far more callous, and those of certain members of the Indian government (especially the viceroy Bulwer-Lytton or sir Richard Temple) were worthy of Himmler or Heydrich at their worst.
EDIT: Here you have an extract of the final report issued by the Famine Comission of 1878-80: “The doctrine that in time of famine the poor are entitled to demand relief … would probably lead to the doctrine that they are entitled to such relief at all times, and thus the foundation would be laid of a system of general poor relief, which we cannot contemplate without serious apprehension.…” You can say it in a louder, but not clearer, way.
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Harsh or senseless treatment of the poor is something pretty common for the XIXth century Europe. I see nothing shocking in these opinions, nor significantly different from the way the poor were treated "at home". The idea was that poverty is a moral fault and public welfare is a bad idea because it encourages poverty(you can see that in Dickens' Christmas Carol, and this is what lead to the establishment of the workinghouses). I do not see anything directly related to Himmler.
Yes, it was common. But do you really think that if such a deadly famine affected, let's say the Midlands, the British government would have reacted in the same way? Or was the fact that the famine happened to take place in India relevant in how the British authorities reacted to it?
It should be noted also that the only thing that caused the London authorities to intervene (through Lord Salisbury, the Secretary of State for India) and try to mitigate viceroy's Bulwer-Lytton's enthusiasm for budgetary frugality (at his Indian subjects' sake, of course) were the increasingly noisy protests by some activists in Britain (among them Florence Nightingale) and also the first sprouts of nationalist organizations in India (spurned into action by the disaster that India was going through). If it wasn't because of this, the British authorities would have been perfectly happy with letting things follow their "natural course".
India was to be ruled as a plantation, nothing more and nothing less. The differences (very important differences) between it and Nazi atrocities was that in the case of the British it was pure disinterest and indifference regarding the fate of their Indian subjects opposed to the Nazis' active will to engage in genocide, and the fact that the British political system allowed the possibility for those who were outraged (and in Britain) to protest, added to British unwillingness to engage in mass repression in India itself (the Nazis would have dealed with the Congress Party and Gandhi in less than ten minutes).
The difference between both attitudes, in my opinion, was one of degree and not of substance. Once the victims have been classified as disposable non-entities, parasites and useless mouths, the first step is just to let Nature do its job, and the second step is to actively help her. But the key first assumption (dehumanizing the victims) has already been made in both cases.
Yes, I also looked at the wikipedia article.
I'm not seeing your point. The calorie amounts were lower than Buchenwald- so? Buchenwald primarily had adult males, while I believe Temple provided food to women and children (who have much lower calories demands). He also didn't prevent them from getting food from outside sources.
Yes, India exported food. As I mentioned before the transportation network might have made it so that it wasn't possible to move food to where it was needed. It is also possible that the Indians couldn't eat the food; the first attempt to deal with the Irish famine involved importing food that it turned out the Irish couldn't digest. People who are starving often are unable to eat unusual foods.
Why is it a weak excuse? The poor agricultural practices, impoverished peasentry and monsoons didn't disappear just because the British flag waved over the subcontinent. Importing food from Burma was their solution, but they didn't control Burma until 1840-1880.
And they did in fact bring the benefits of European civilization or do they not get credit for the lack of continent wide famines during the 20th century because of 1943?
You mean they admitted they'd kill them but they couldn't because of public image and once they no longer cared about public image they started to kill the Jews? That sounds entirely consistent.
I never claimed that- in fact given I brought up the US as an example as well, I have no idea where you got that idea. But when you are talking about German voters looking at what German politicians would do then looking at past German actions is helpful.
16th century onwards? No, I'm pretty sure massacering people is as old as human history. The Europeans were hardly unique in this. Killing the weak and malformed was also not new. The terms used to defend this were new, but the behavior was not.
Yes. Workhouses were origionally a way to deal with the poor in England. We are talking about a government that taxed food imports in order to benefit aristocrats.
That doesn't really mesh with the creation of steel mills and other industry that started to proliferate across the subcontinent (the big driver was the war when demand shot up). The British had an internal tariff to deal with textile competition, but textile mills existed in India.
You do realize the British never adopted a government eugenics program, right? I believe they were the only non-communist European power not to go down that path.
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You're exaggerating. There's nothing really racist about such comments. They're just reflective of the callous world view typical among protestant (!) upper classes at that time. They would have talked the same way if it had been in, say, Ireland. And you can still find that sort of self-righteous upper-class miser attitude among many people today, who aren't fascists or nazis at all. Just bigoted misers without empathy.
Well not everywhere in Europe. Catholic ethics never quite embraced the miser attitude like protestantism did.
The traditional aristocrat also did not look down like that on the suffering of commoners. It's an attitude much more commonly found with bourgeois people. Aristocrats are normally quite aware that they owe their fortunes to their birth, and that it's the upbringing, not virtue, which sets them apart from the commoner. So they often embrace the charitable attitudes.
The successful bourgeois, on the other hand, often thinks his fortune is all due to his own virtue ("I worked hard for this!") and thus feels entitled to look down on the less fortunate ("They ought to work harder then they wouldn't be so badly off"). That Englishman sounds more like such a type of person, than the average aristocrat.
I did not take the data directly from the Wikipedia article, but from Mike Davis' book "Late Victorian Holocausts". To be precise, the comparison with Buchenwald is drawn from Table 1.3 "The 'Temple wage´ in persepective", in Chapter 1 (I cannot provide the exact page, as I own a digital copy of it). And to clarify things (perhaps it's not stated in the Wikipedia article): the "Temple wage" was not a "dole". Starving Indians could only "earn" it if they went and entered special "relief" camps where they were to be separated from their families and forced to do hard labour. No labour done, no food earned. According to that table, the minimum calorical intake needed to keep an adult's metabolism going on at zero activity levels is 1,500 calories. A 7-year-old child under normal activity conditions needs a daily intake of 2,050 calories, and an adult performing hard labour needs 4,200 calories. For the record, the very same Sir Richard during his earlier relief efforts in Bihar had established in 1874 a ration of 2,500 calories per day, also subjected to heavy labour.
And I suspect that Sir Richard (with the viceroy's approval) knew exactly what he was doing, because other Englishmen warned him clearly. Madras' sanitary commissioner, dr. Cornish, declared openly that such conditions meant certain starvation. It was such a miserable diet that even the daily rations in Indian prisones were higher than that (with the previsible consequence that many starving people commited crimes on purpose to be arrested and thrown into jail).
It's a poor excuse because by the same standard after the USA today invaded Iraq, it would be perfectly normal if it conducted Iraqi internal affairs as its previous rulers had done. After all, it wouldn't all disappear because of the American flag was waving over Baghdad, wouldn't it? And again, by 1876 (and even more in 1943) the British had had a more than considerable amount of time to patch things up a little bit.
There's also the little question of the British trumpeting urbi et orbe the wonders that their rule was doing for India. But if after all they couldn't do better than all the previous sultans, nawabs and maharajas (despite having, I repeat, much improved organizational and technical means at their disposal), what had been their justification for conquering India, other than the same that all conquerors have had along history?
And I insist: India produced, during all of these famines (as had Ireland during the 1846-47 one) enough food to feed its own population. The solution did not lay in importing rice from Burma or elsewhere, as Indian peasants were just too destitute to buy it at soaring prices. In fact, the railways and improved communications built by the British made things worse, as they made possible to send the grain away to ultramarine markets (like Britain) where grain could be sold at a higher profit.
If after 186 years of continued British rule in Bengal they were unable to prevent medieval-style famines, I'd dare say that they had been at least a bit slow in bringing those benefits to light. But maybe they would've needed two centuries more, who knows.
Witte admitted it to Herzl in a personal tête-a-tête interview, one more among the series of meetings and appointments that he was trying to conduct in order to "sell" his Zionist program to European governments. For example, he also conducted a personal meeting with Wilhelm II (who in his usual responsible and statemanlike way expressed his sympathy for Herzl's ideas, despite Germany being friendly to the Ottomans). I think that it's understandable that in such private circumstances, such an experienced old fox like Witte would be less careful than when making speeches from the speaker's stall at the Duma and indulged himself with a little sincerity.
I'm sorry if I put in your mouth things that you'd not said.
Of course it's as old as humanity itself, but in here we were talking about european colonialism, which in my opinion was one of the roots of Nazism. The same cannot be said of Sennacherib's or Gengis Khan's actions, I'd say.
Well, that's your opinion, and as that's in fact conterfactual history, your opinion is as valid as mine or anyone else's. But there's also the fact that in the Midlands there were English voters that could have been upset by such behaviour on the part of their government, while Indians, whether they were upset or not, could not vote.
When the British conquered India, there was no modern industry in India, and the industrial era was just beginning in Britain itself. When the British left India, there was a purely testimonial industrial presence in India. Again, if 190 years (counting from the battle of Plassey in 1757 to the indepence of India and Pakistan in 1947) was not enough, then the British did a pretty mediocre job out of their "modernising" efforts there (as every other colonial nation did, by the way).
Yes, I'm totally aware of it, and I think that (despite English not being obviously my first language) I've never said that. Britain never adopted such a program, but neither did Spain, for example (neither Italy, nor other majorly Catholic countries, due to the Church's opposition to the idea). But the point was that eugenics was an idea perfectly acceptable in the public discourse of many european countries. As was social darwinism, scientific racism, etc. And that in all of them politics were influenced by them.
I think that after all these posts, I should clarify that I have not any kind of anti-British phobia, it's just that as Britain was the main colonial power during the timeframe that we were originally discussing, when talking about the european powers and their colonial policies, Britain comes naturally to the front. But the French in Algeria (and probably elsewhere), the Belgians in the Congo, the Dutch in the East Indies, the Germans themselves in their African and Asian territories, the Spaniards in America or the Portuguese in their varied colonies acted in quite similar ways.
In my opinion, they key factor in there is not race (or racism) itself, but the open willingness to accept that such things were "inevitable" and part of a "natural order", as long as they happened as far away from Britain as possible, and to non-British people (quite obviously, the Irish were not considered to be so), even if those people were subjects of the British Crown. First came Britain's needs (obviously decided by its upper classes who got to elect the government through a restricted and until the 1830s, thoroughly corrupt, franchise), then the global geopolitical needs of the British empire, and then, and only then, at the very bottom of the list, if something could be spared, let's care for the colonial subjects (who by the way got to pay taxes like everybody else and without any decision power over them). From there to the attitudes of the National Socialists ("naturally superior" peoples versus "naturally inferior" peoples, whe the first ones are "entitled" to exploit or exterminate the second ones) it's just a radicalization process, with very few new doctrinal elements.
1) A modern History is fine formation for this subject.
2) Agree.
3) Define 'real' - he makes a living by studying history... He is a popular historian.
I suspect the wiki article is drawn from it; your first post has the same data the article does. I retract my statement about the comparison although wiki mentions there was seperate relief for non able bodied.
Famines are an inevitable feature of preindustrial society and the nature of India (monsoons and poor transportation) made them worse. Changing that required uplifting Indian agriculture, a process that took over a century.
The 1876 Famine as you noted was after a successful relief in 1873. The 76 responce was considered a screw up which lead to the famine codes. The British did figure out how to solve famines; they just kept on becoming complacent and thinking measures were not needed. Such incompetance isn't unpresidented in the British civil service.
As for 1943, given the typical measure for famines was "import rice from Burma" and the Japanese had occupied Burma, I'm not seeing how it is comparable to other famines.
The situation isn't necesarily comparable. India had rapid population growth under the British (note I'm only covering after the East India Company. The Company was not a humanitarian enterprise). China during the time period underwent similar strains and had a similar string of devestating famines (wiki gives 6 in India and 7 in China during the 19th century although one of the Chinese took place during Taiping).
While Ireland exported food, they were a net importer of food during the famine. I need to look up the numbers to be positive.
And rail didn't make things worse; they helped insure local shortfalls didn't lead to famine. That, along with crop diversification are what ended the threat of these large devestating famines.
Germany suffered from famine in world war 1, but I'd hardly blame their administration. The British did end continent wide famines outside of the world wars which had famines experienced by multiple participants.
I don't believe we can blame european colonialism for something that is endemenic to warfare. You might claim that the seperating foreigners from europeans was important, but the Europeans were more than willing to commit mass murder against each other during that time period as well. The 30 years war, the Vendee revolt, devastation of Palatine- there are plenty of cases where they were willing to slaughter each other in order to win.
Ireland gained seats in the House of Common and Lords in 1800 and the right to have catholic mps in 1839. This isn't a counterfactual claim.
I count from 1857 because the East India Company had no interest in industrialization.
And their modernization was pretty mediocre (although in fairness the post-indepedence government wasn't much better; they had 3.5% gdp growth compared to England 2.9% or the US which got to around 4%), but they did start the process. The problem is the counterfactual "how much would they have had without England"- if you use Africa as the baseline, than colonialism had a big modernization effect in India. If you thailand as the baseline than it looks alot worse.
You didn't say that. However you did mention that there isn't a big difference between letting undesirables die and actively killing them. My point was the British, despite their callous attitudes in the colonies saw those two categories as vastly different. You had people in England thinking famines were a way for God to improve areas by sweeping out excess individuals, but the same individuals would be absolutely horrified if you had suggested to them the idea of artificially causing famines.
Also such attitudes weren't new, just the terminology. You had people celebrating the cleansing power of warfare during the Englightenment as well as the wonders of exclusionary nationalism. What was new was the expansion of such ideas to the general public and the idea of racial decline, purity and negative eugenics, although the last might be simply a result of the steadily decreasing infant mortality rate.
Oh, it is alright to be unfair to the British. They could have run India alot better. I'm just inclined to view less callousness than incompetance because I'm currently reading Castles of Steel. The Royal Navy, Englands priemier institution and bulwark against foreign threats. You'd think they concentrate their very best on it, but despite that they manage to make some incredibly stupid mistakes. Like "if the German admiral hadn't turned back he would have engaged a detachment of the Grand Fleet in 20 minutes, crushed it and eliminated Englands numerical superiority". I'm less of a "the English wanted to turn India into a plantation" and more "the English thought the Indians were too stupid to do anything more complicated".
However comparing it to other powers is a bit unfair. The Spainairds and Portugese ran their colonies alot more exploitively (it was the 16th century) and the Belgians actually ruled quite well (Leopold was the one who killed millions; the government was actually significantly better). I don't believe other colonies suffered famines on the same scale or number as British India. The French in Algeria actually colonized in the origional meaning of the term, settling along the coast and incorporating it into the rest of France.
If you mean they all had a rascist self serving doctrine and believed they were spreading civilization that is true (except the Spanish and Portugese whose ideology when conquering America was different), but what they meant on the ground varied significantly. For example the Italians often restricted access to primary school because they believed educating the natives was dangerous.
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Honestly, the british famines are probably better off compared to Stalin's famines than the Holocaust.
And people are way too kind to the british empire: You don't grow to dominate the world without a good dose of callous ruthlessness.
And people are way too kind to the british empire: You don't grow to dominate the world without a good dose of callous ruthlessness.
Not really. The Hodomor occurred due to collectivization and food requisitioning. While I think there were famines that occurred until the East India Company like that (wiki mentions that the 18th century one caused revenues to drop so they compensated by raising taxes), those features weren't really present during the Raj. Non-Hodomor famines also don't really work- the war years are only comparable to the 1943 famine and the Soviet 1947 famine isn't really comparable to any in India (as it was exacerbated by the agricultural labor force being squeezed by death and conscription).
There are different kinds of callous ruthlessness. I don't think anyone claims the British were unwilling to screw over China with opium just to insure continued access to tea for instance.
An even better comparison would be to the American Dust Bowl famine of the 1930s.
That was a natural disaster made worse by short-sighted economic and agrarian policies; and a government response that took for granted that it wasn't really the State's responsibility to do anything to help poor people or interfere with free markets.