[rovek]

I feel this about anything I read about empire in the last few years.

I enjoyed Paxman's book Empire for the very reason that he mocks the self-righteousness of the "heroes of Empire", their "divine mission", the way the country at home responded (or didn't care at all anymore) but doesn't shy away from giving the same critical eye to the colonised people.

[coldtea]

>but doesn't shy away from giving the same critical eye to the colonised people.

That's a common approach in certain academic and popular works about colonialism and Empires.

And it's not much different to "giving the same critical eye" to the the rapist and the rape victim.

[rovek]

Analogies tend to remove any meaningful detail from a situation, as in this case

[coldtea]

Actually they tend to highlight the meaningful details - and remove the unimportant ones.

That, like in the analogy mentioned, it's not the place of an author to cricially see both the abused and the perpetrator, and that colonization was an abuse.

More "subtlely" excuses this abuse, and there's no excuse, even if the subjects of colonization where "bad people", "uncultivated", "underdeveloped" or whatever, there's no excuse to invade their sovereignity, and it's not up to the colonizer to judge them or fix them.

[411111111111111]

> More "subtlely" excuses this abuse, and there's no excuse, even if the subjects of colonization where "bad people", "uncultivated", "underdeveloped" or whatever, there's no excuse to invade their sovereignity, and it's not up to the colonizer to judge them or fix them.

I don't disagree, but it's kinda hard to talk like that on historical contexts. Might-makes-right has always been the truth until pretty recently, though you could make a case that it's true even now. I don't think judging the people living that way when everyone else around them did that too (albeit less successfully) is useful.

Do remember that most of misery in the colonies came from collaborators. Yes, they were paid by the colonial oppressors, but they just wanted to profit too, damning their fellow people.

[coldtea]

>Might-makes-right has always been the truth until pretty recently,

Sure, it is the truth even now and will be forever. It's just that it's popular for might, after Christianity and Englightenment changed the public perception, to want to dress its actions in a moral disguise (from the Crusades to "bringing democracy to Iraq").

But the case being "might makes right" doesn't preclude people telling it for what it is - and even less so it should preclude historians and pundits. People knew what it is in Thucilides time, and they know it now.

So I don't take particularly well to historians etc being "equally critical" of the opressed too.

[deertick1]

Did you have to take it there?

What a silly and flippant comparison. Chill out.

[coldtea]

Sorry, not everybody believes in taboo comparisons or belongs to a culture that paralyzes them lest they say something off and hurt someone's feelings.

And if you feel like "something like rape is so much hurtful/important to just use in a comparison" well, be assured that colonization, our subject here, among other abuses, also resulted in an untold number of rapes and sex abuses of its subjects. So it's not just some "lighter" subject unfit to compare with it, but a superset of abuse.

[deertick1]

Dude you are so off in left field I can't even respond to this. Nothing to do with the taboo of rape you gotta try a lot harder than that to offend me. Its more like you went from A to D without anything in between because D is a hip cultural reference ("victim blaming")