How much is Queen E to blame for Britain's colonism, really?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The Indian Subcontinent was leading the world in it’s GDP prior to British Colonization. More than 25% of the world’s GDP.

When the Brits were through looting, pillaging, enslaving, and genocide-ing it was 2%. They stole, in today’s value, upwards of 45 TRILLION. Money that the subcontinent is only now starting to climb back too.

Please use your Anglophile reasoning to exploit these numbers. I’m sure it makes you feel justified. Warm fuzzies for the Queen all around.

+
Queen had nothing to do with this. Nothing. Nor did an royal. By the time this happened royals held no power. And your numbers just don’t make any sense. No India never had that much economic power.

Perhaps you should crack open a real history book not just the one the Queen sent out to all households under the taxpayers dime.

+100. The queen's ancestors caused the death of 4-10 million Indians. Some would call it a genocide but of course, history is written by the victors so we don't call it that.
She could have changed things by 1) giving all the stolen jewels back, 2) apologizing for all the atrocities 3) reparations.

Do you understand that the British forced Indians to grow crops/produce resources for British mainland use, to further their industrial revolution, while India was dealing with intense famines? Indians were barred from growing food for their own use, in their own country.

She was an old lady with no power and lots of money, and her death makes no difference in my life now at all. I'd appreciate it if the media outlets would stop covering this so much. But I would have appreciated her memory more if she had behaved as a compassionate human being, and at least freaking APOLOGIZED for her forefathers' actions.

Exactly, members of the royal family were in Indian running various parts of that plundering murderous operation. The information is available to you to read if you just look. Or you can continue to read the history sanitized by that family.

It's not ancestors as in ancient history. Mountbatten was her uncle and Philip's relative as well. He was the colonial governor of India until 1947 and responsible for Partition where millions died.

Partition where Indians killed those of different religions. Ummm... I guess the British were keeping that from happening before they left?

That was pre-meditated and stoked by their indiscriminate slicing of entire villages and ancestral lands to create two separate countries, one based on religion, that they knew would be perfect to keep the region unstable.

There’s a reason nearly all middle eastern countries are of one religion. Neighbors that aren’t the same, tend not to survive or remain in constant states of war.

There’s a lot of nuance that led to the atrocities of Partition and people from both countries acknowledge that it was bloody and awful. This was recent history. My uncle was burned alive in a train trying to get from one side to the next.

Between the atrocities at the northern border and the Hindu Genocide in Bangladesh from East Pakistan, the South Asians are the ones that suffered this. And she was witness to the rape and murder. The explosion of emotions after being colonized for so long. The throne on which she sat and watched is tainted with blood from her family.

Sure... the British wanted the Indians to kill each other.

First you argue that they shouldn't have sliced up the country because it caused murders. Then you argue that they Middle East is almost all one religion because otherwise there are constant states of war. So, what SHOULD the British have done at independence? Sliced it up or left it together? And if slicing it up by religion, there was no avoiding people having to move because the populations were mixed.

Do Hindu nationalists and Muslim nationalists have no responsibility for the rapes and murders that they committed? I am sorry for your uncle, but it was his fellow citizens who murdered him, not the British.

The British should never have gotten involved in India. They made a complicated situation worse and exploited it for their own financial gain. How is this even in question?

[Anonymous]

Right because if all these places were never colonized they would have all joined hands across Asia or Africa and lived in harmony. The world happens. Wrongs cannot be made right. Blood money doesn't wash away the blood. There is no going back, only forward.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The anger is at the position largely - not necessarily the person. It is legitimate to object to the glorification of the british crown which is what alot of the media coverage and social media posts are doing.

Elizabeth the private person is largely unknown. People are not picking on her "personally" they are objecting to the undiluted praise of a role that is very problematic historically

People have the right to be uncomfortable with that for many reasons

The role of the US Presidency is equally problematic and — recently — has been far worse than the UK. You better start cancelling every US President since George Washington whose land came from Lord Fairfax, a Brit

Who said anything about cancelling Elizabeth? I think more people are saying as Americans she's not our queen, we don't have a royal family and why are so many people so obsessed with her when the British empire had a pretty negative impact on alot of places where current Americans came from. No one is talking about "cancelling" her - just looking for some nuance in the ridiculous canonization that's going on right now

[Anonymous]

To what extent are France and Portugal also being held responsible for colonizing India, in the public opinion? Their monarchies were obviously long gone by the 1950s and 60s when their Indian colonies finally gained independence. Britain and France traded Pondicherry back and forth between them for centuries. I've yet to hear an outcry about the French and Portuguese governments, or any demand for reparations from them, which makes the sudden backlash against British constitutional monarchy sound contrived. Clearly European colonialism flourished despite the absence of monarchies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Right because if all these places were never colonized they would have all joined hands across Asia or Africa and lived in harmony. The world happens. Wrongs cannot be made right. Blood money doesn't wash away the blood. There is no going back, only forward.

You have some nerve, I have to say,😡. Goes back to the assumption that people living there were savages who would have killed each other. British went to places that they could loot and benefit from. Simple

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right because if all these places were never colonized they would have all joined hands across Asia or Africa and lived in harmony. The world happens. Wrongs cannot be made right. Blood money doesn't wash away the blood. There is no going back, only forward.

You have some nerve, I have to say,😡. Goes back to the assumption that people living there were savages who would have killed each other. British went to places that they could loot and benefit from. Simple

I am assuming that humans are savage and will always operate in their own best interests to the best of their abilities. The Europeans got gunpowder first. China is currently colonizing Africa economically. Humans, regardless of their nation of origin will always seek dominance and affluence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right because if all these places were never colonized they would have all joined hands across Asia or Africa and lived in harmony. The world happens. Wrongs cannot be made right. Blood money doesn't wash away the blood. There is no going back, only forward.

You have some nerve, I have to say,😡. Goes back to the assumption that people living there were savages who would have killed each other. British went to places that they could loot and benefit from. Simple

And, of course, all the colonizers of Africa were also drivers of the slave trade and then used the trade to justify colonization (because of course any non-European group that participated in the trade must be incapable of self-rule).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The anger is at the position largely - not necessarily the person. It is legitimate to object to the glorification of the british crown which is what alot of the media coverage and social media posts are doing.

Elizabeth the private person is largely unknown. People are not picking on her "personally" they are objecting to the undiluted praise of a role that is very problematic historically

People have the right to be uncomfortable with that for many reasons

+1

Totally agree that it's not so much her life /.existence as the way trh BRF is still glorified and whitewashed today, and especially right now

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To what extent are France and Portugal also being held responsible for colonizing India, in the public opinion? Their monarchies were obviously long gone by the 1950s and 60s when their Indian colonies finally gained independence. Britain and France traded Pondicherry back and forth between them for centuries. I've yet to hear an outcry about the French and Portuguese governments, or any demand for reparations from them, which makes the sudden backlash against British constitutional monarchy sound contrived. Clearly European colonialism flourished despite the absence of monarchies.

Absolutely Indians from that region (Goa) feel the Portuguese were brutal. Doesn't make British colonization "okay" (like, everyone's doing it so who cares?)

[Anonymous]

She was literally the figurehead of the whole damn operation for her entire reign. Really, you don't get this?

[Anonymous]

Im honestly flabbergasted that so many on DCUM are lionizing the queen as we are literally in the throes of defending our own democracy from Trump maniacs who stormed the Capitol. It’s not about having gotten an A in AP History, it’s about having ever stayed awake in a social studies class in elementary school. Remember the Boston tea party? America was founded in opposition to monarchy and colonialism!

[Anonymous]

Blame Winston Churchill for the famines in India. The Queen had not started her reign at this time. The monarchy are not involved in politics. They are the head of state, the head of the Uniting Church.

The British empire colonised countries back in the 1700's. This thread shows how mis informed people are. You are blaming people who had no say in what happened during wars. There is the monarchy and the government. They are separate from each other.

[Anonymous]

People are talking about the violence in countries in Africa during the Queens reign there. Look at the Rwandan massacre 1994. Read up on the genocides occurring in India recently all are related to differing tribes or religion. None of it related to the royal family.

People blame the Queen when this violence has occurred all throughout history and is still happening today. It is narrow minded to solely point the finger at one group of people when these types of things have happened throughout all of history.

At least the Queen reigned in peace. She chose a different path to her ancestors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was at a lecture where the speaker began her talk by first acknowledging the tribe of native Americans who had lived in that region (Chesapeake Bay) before the (British) White Man came over the ocean and took their land. Then she gave her talk. Really? Does that make it OK? Are we all supposed to feel guilt because we own property, the deeds for which were set up by Lord Fairfax or another British colonist?

I'm wonder if I was at the same talk.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:When most of the world across several continents is saying she and all she represented was bad and yes she shares in the blame.
Maybe take your fingers out of your ears and listen.

Huge exaggeration. I have seen one or two minor stories amid the hundreds of stories revering her and her life.

You’re clearly not tapped into the world of Africans, Indians, Caribbeans, and Irish.

Western Europe, the US, and Australia are not the majority of this world.

Irish are fine with queen. Those issues are long gone. Irish Americans may feel different.

To be fair, she didn't take any jewels from us. We can't really say "Give us back our bread from 1845!!!" (I guess reparations? What's the market value of all that food we shipped over there?). "Fine" might be a bit of an overstatement, though.