Self-proclaimed historian Darryl Cooper claimed Winston Churchill ‘was the villain of Second World War’ and that millions of people ‘ended up dead’ in Nazi concentration camps
I don’t agree with their point comparing it to the Nazis, but I think this interpretation is being way too generous in reaction to that. Famines in India under British colonial rule were a frequent occurrence. Between 1850 and 1899, 15 million Indians died from no less than 24 major famines. The horrors inflicted through Britain’s nakedly colonial rule were not just innocent mistakes or the product of unexpected circumstances - this was simply the modus operendi of the empire. Frequent atrocities, oppression, and mass death were the status quo for much of the world’s population during this time period.
Obviously, the Nazis had no problem with any of that, they were only upset that they weren’t the ones getting to do it.
Pushing back against the idea that Churchill was worse than Hitler is good, but criticism of Churchill’s role in the famine outside of that comparison is perfectly valid and has academic support, for example, Amartya Sen’s work.
Ok, so Churchill was an imperialistic prick, debatable even for his time (though the wellknown history of centuries of atrocities commited by imperialistic Britain seems to contradict that…). Sure. I don’t think many would defend those actions through today’s lens.
But even that article just throws dozens of famine in Indias colonial history squarely at Britain’s feet with zero evidence that they were avoidable.
Droughts, disease, infestations happen, and have happened throughout history. We are now better than we ever have been at addressing those crisis at a global scale, and there is still plenty of famine and food insecurity in the world.
This reads more, as I said before, a strawman argument that doesnt do anything to establish that Churchill is responsible for millions of deaths - genocide to be compared with concentration camps.
I really encourage you to look more into Amartya Sen’s work and his thesis that famines don’t just happen naturally and are virtually always traced back to political causes. Of course there are bad harvests and the like that can exacerbate a bad situation, but farmers are typically able to stockpile enough during good years to weather it. To say that 24 famines over the span of 50 years just happened naturally, at the exact same time that Indians were subject to exorbitantly high taxes and other horribly exploitative conditions, is a completely absurd and revisionist claim. It seems like you’re knee jerk defending Britain even when we’re discussing one of the darkest parts of its history. In addition to Sen’s work, you should also learn more about the conditions in India under colonialism, if you think the British deserve such extreme benefit of the doubt.
Who is defending Britain’s colonialism? I’m pushing back at some pretty extreme historical recharacterizations.
This is all some pretty ridiculous Captain Hindsight retconning. There have been tons of agricultural blunders in humanities history. Depletion of soils, monocultures extremely susceptible to disaster, etc.
We learn and adapt. That’s humanity.
Resource mismanagement is certainly a factor, and colonies were obviously rife with it. And just as obviously, the conquerors historically didn’t exactly care much about the damage they did.
In nature, species boom when there’s abundance, and rubber band back hard when scarcity hits directly after a big boom.
At a glance, India’s population was almost 10% of the world population during WW2.
Literally laying all the blame at the feet of British mismanagement is a pretty extreme take.
So now we’ve veered into full-blown Malthusianism. You can’t treat human populations the way you treat animal populations. More humans means more people working and growing food, whereas animals simply graze or hunt on preexisting resources. Malthusian claims have been thoroughly debunked repeatedly throughout history, and have never been backed by any sort of evidence whatsoever.
Again, if you choose to reject history and evidence in favor of knee jerk defending colonialism and using long discredited theories, then I don’t really see what I can do here. You are simply wrong and in contradiction of scholarly work on the subject.
Rofl. That’s rich coming from someone making wild claims, whose only citation was one sentence from a Churchill hit piece that contained zero justification for their assertion that Churchill was somehow responsible for India’s famines. You then deflect with “read this persons work you ignorant simpleton” without any relevant citations.
Sure buddy. You can keep raging against this machine of yours, I’ve wasted enough of my Friday trying to reason with a dramatic husky.
I don’t agree with their point comparing it to the Nazis, but I think this interpretation is being way too generous in reaction to that. Famines in India under British colonial rule were a frequent occurrence. Between 1850 and 1899, 15 million Indians died from no less than 24 major famines. The horrors inflicted through Britain’s nakedly colonial rule were not just innocent mistakes or the product of unexpected circumstances - this was simply the modus operendi of the empire. Frequent atrocities, oppression, and mass death were the status quo for much of the world’s population during this time period.
Obviously, the Nazis had no problem with any of that, they were only upset that they weren’t the ones getting to do it.
Pushing back against the idea that Churchill was worse than Hitler is good, but criticism of Churchill’s role in the famine outside of that comparison is perfectly valid and has academic support, for example, Amartya Sen’s work.
I read the article in your other post.
Ok, so Churchill was an imperialistic prick, debatable even for his time (though the wellknown history of centuries of atrocities commited by imperialistic Britain seems to contradict that…). Sure. I don’t think many would defend those actions through today’s lens.
But even that article just throws dozens of famine in Indias colonial history squarely at Britain’s feet with zero evidence that they were avoidable.
Droughts, disease, infestations happen, and have happened throughout history. We are now better than we ever have been at addressing those crisis at a global scale, and there is still plenty of famine and food insecurity in the world.
This reads more, as I said before, a strawman argument that doesnt do anything to establish that Churchill is responsible for millions of deaths - genocide to be compared with concentration camps.
I really encourage you to look more into Amartya Sen’s work and his thesis that famines don’t just happen naturally and are virtually always traced back to political causes. Of course there are bad harvests and the like that can exacerbate a bad situation, but farmers are typically able to stockpile enough during good years to weather it. To say that 24 famines over the span of 50 years just happened naturally, at the exact same time that Indians were subject to exorbitantly high taxes and other horribly exploitative conditions, is a completely absurd and revisionist claim. It seems like you’re knee jerk defending Britain even when we’re discussing one of the darkest parts of its history. In addition to Sen’s work, you should also learn more about the conditions in India under colonialism, if you think the British deserve such extreme benefit of the doubt.
Who is defending Britain’s colonialism? I’m pushing back at some pretty extreme historical recharacterizations.
This is all some pretty ridiculous Captain Hindsight retconning. There have been tons of agricultural blunders in humanities history. Depletion of soils, monocultures extremely susceptible to disaster, etc.
We learn and adapt. That’s humanity.
Resource mismanagement is certainly a factor, and colonies were obviously rife with it. And just as obviously, the conquerors historically didn’t exactly care much about the damage they did.
In nature, species boom when there’s abundance, and rubber band back hard when scarcity hits directly after a big boom.
At a glance, India’s population was almost 10% of the world population during WW2.
Literally laying all the blame at the feet of British mismanagement is a pretty extreme take.
So now we’ve veered into full-blown Malthusianism. You can’t treat human populations the way you treat animal populations. More humans means more people working and growing food, whereas animals simply graze or hunt on preexisting resources. Malthusian claims have been thoroughly debunked repeatedly throughout history, and have never been backed by any sort of evidence whatsoever.
Again, if you choose to reject history and evidence in favor of knee jerk defending colonialism and using long discredited theories, then I don’t really see what I can do here. You are simply wrong and in contradiction of scholarly work on the subject.
Rofl. That’s rich coming from someone making wild claims, whose only citation was one sentence from a Churchill hit piece that contained zero justification for their assertion that Churchill was somehow responsible for India’s famines. You then deflect with “read this persons work you ignorant simpleton” without any relevant citations.
Sure buddy. You can keep raging against this machine of yours, I’ve wasted enough of my Friday trying to reason with a dramatic husky.
I haven’t made any wild claims at all and the claims I have made I’ve backed up with scholarly works, but go off I guess.