Comment by rcurry
10 years ago
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation To call upon a neighbour and to say: -- "We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight, Unless you pay us cash to go away."
And that is called asking for Dane-geld, And the people who ask it explain That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld And then you'll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look important and to say: -- "Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you. We will therefore pay you cash to go away."
And that is called paying the Dane-geld; But we've proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation, For fear they should succumb and go astray; So when you are requested to pay up or be molested, You will find it better policy to say: --
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld, No matter how trifling the cost; For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that pays it is lost!"
- Rudyard Kipling
Sometimes this is good advice. For some rather vivid counterexamples, read up on Genghis Khan.
Computer security is of course a whole different thing.
The wrath of the Khans was amazing.
Seemed like your odds of dying were pretty high either way. Give him all your stuff and starve. Or say no and get beheaded..
And let's not forget that 1 in 200 people around the world are his direct descendants
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"Give him all your stuff and starve. Or say no and get beheaded.."
I'm not sure about the starving part, would you have any references? If a city surrendered he did not sack it. If it did not - yeah, bad.
Yes, pros and cons, its quite possible that by paying one then has enough breathing space to set up better defences.
I guess Kipling's knowledge of this had a practical basis, since he was one of the chief apologists for the systematic extortion the British Empire used to enrich itself.
(Note - I am from one of the countries invaded and occupied by Britain)
I must come to Britain's defence here - it's behaviour was normal in those times but it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars. That was pretty amazing.
By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable, but a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits - rule of law, economic infrastructure, transport networks etc. Being invaded (not just plundered) by major cultures has generally had good benefits - in the long term - for the invaded nation as they get a lot of the characteristics of the stronger nation.
Again, keep in mind that this is not the modern way of looking at things, which is why we have the United Nations and other international organizations.
See also: The life of Brian, 'What have the Romans ever done for us'.
As for Britain giving up its ownership: To this date formally England lays claim to a whole bunch of places that they have colonized and in some cases it has gone to war to keep that situation as it is.
That the UK gave up India is a pretty complex affair but you can bet that the 'let's fight' option was only taken off the table when someone did some basic math.
Whether or not the invaded countries got 'enormous benefits' is immaterial, we do not live in the alternate universe where India was not a British colony, in which universe India may have been better off or it may have been worse, we simply can not know.
All we do know is that in this universe we (nowadays) take a dim view of such colonization, including those colonizations in our collective past. That some countries were 'not as bad' as others and that they left the places they invaded (and usually plundered) in some ways in better shape is imo immaterial to that.
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> I must come to Britain's defence here - it's behaviour was normal in those times
Yes, all of Europe was engaging in the monster known as colonialism.
That doesn't make it any less morally repugnant.
> it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars
It gave up its ownership only after being devastated by two World Wars.
> By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable, but a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits - rule of law, economic infrastructure, transport networks etc.
None of these things couldn't have been achieved without the British. And all these things came with a cost.
This justification has been used for colonialism time and time again. We saw this last year in Ukraine. It doesn't make it right.
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> a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits
Those "benefits" stopped innovation and progress of their own cultures. And it led to the present day of conflict between traditionalists and progressives, slowing harmonious progress indefinitely. The traditionalists would have eventually progressed to a more "civil" society in a different way. And then we would have a far richer diversity than today's system.
Indeed, it could have been worse, such as being colonised by the Belgians, who were (by some estimates) more genocidal than the Nazis.
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I'm not sure what you are saying here. That by past standards they were not totally horrible, or that becoming colonized was a fair trade due to all of the "benefits"?
As an example, Japan nor China was never colonized, they were totally ass-backwardian to late 19th century and appear at least to foreign eyes quite modern nowadays.
Would those countries have the same benefits without British rule? I think they would.
And as for Britain "giving up" their claims, they simply couldn't afford to keep India after the Indian military rebelled, and without India, they simply had not enough colonies to make profitable quickly after the devastation of WWII.
Nice to someone with a balanced perspective. Usually you talk to an ex-colonist and it's all doom and gloom regarding the Empire.
Was he really? The White Man's Burden isn't that ambiguous. Not now, and not even when it was written.
It was about the Philippine-American war. 2 days after publication in America, it was read in the Senate to argue for the US to end the war.
One of his more famous stories, The Man Who Would Be King is about two white men who manage to convince an Afghani tribe they're gods. It becomes undone, when one tries to marry one of the women, she attacks him drawing blood, and the tribe's priest declares he is "Neither god nor devil but a man!" (at which point one is brutally killed, and the other manages to flee). It could almost be read as an analogy for colonialism - the white men might have had a technological edge, and used shock and awe to take over, but as the natives catch on to what's happening, the risk of backlash and revolution grows.
Kipling wasn't firmly against colonialism, but he was a savvy (sometimes cynical) realist. Most colonials were pretty cynical about it.
"One of his more famous stories..."
Ever see the John Huston film adaption?
Wouldn't this apply the other way around as well? If you become known as a blackmailer who's true to their word, wouldn't your payment rate go up?
(Off-topic)
That story is absurd, considering that a lot of modern diplomacy is essentially deciding how much Dane-geld you should pay to appease America, Russia, or (insert your regional power here), and how much you could expect in return for promising that you will not pay the Dane-geld to the other side.
If you don't play, you end up like North Korea, ever so proud for their fierce independence, cut off from everyone else.
I find this cute tale, from a subject of the British Empire, doubly insulting. If you are powerful and you can extract Dane-geld from others, fine, but stop insinuating that other people pay Dane-geld because they're stupid.
Poems by the man who romanticized the colonization of my grandparents' country are always cool, but the logic doesn't hold up. If you're not as well-armed as the British Empire, and you very much do not have the resources to defeat the Dane, it's nice that the end of the game is oppression and shame, but you're going to lose well before you even get to endgame.
You do realize why the British called it the "dane geld" and not tribute right? Because the Dane used to plounder the English and demand gold to go away, and the English learned to their sorrow what happens when you pay the dane geld.
And I say that as a Dane.
This is told to me by a Danish classmate (while intoxicated at a party).
He asked me: do you know why we say "Skull" when we drink? I said: No I don't.
He Said: Well, back then during the Viking times. The Danes would fight all the way to the kingdom and cut the off the Skulls of the English princes; Dump out their brains and use the skull as cup for drinks. Hence the word "Skull".
I said: Huh? Interesting!
"And then we also took all their good looking women. And that's why all the Danish girls are soo good looking" Add him.
You got love the Danish people!
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The British created your grandparents' country and you should be thankful to them for it. It was nothing but fortunate for India to have sensible men like Charles James Napier working to put an end to barbarism like Sati:
A story for which Napier is often noted involved Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of Sati by British authorities. This was the custom of burning a widow alive on the funeral pyre of her husband. As first recounted by his brother William, he replied:
"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_James_Napier#Service_i...
The fact that colonialism had some beneficial side-effects does not make it right and does not oblige anybody to be thankful.
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Napier is one of my favorite historical figures, but wasn't sati banned based on the requests of (native) Hindu reformers, and Napier merely spoke in favor of the ban when other Hindu priests complained? It seems like a stretch to argue that it was Napier who worked to put an end to sati.
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What you say is true to your name. Take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4
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If you are talking about India, it wasn't a "country" before the British. It was a mixture of disparate kingdoms and sultanates. Not to mention that before the British, most of India was under Muslim colonizers i.e. the Mughals.
The Indians have always been a conquered people, it is only in the last 70 years that they have had freedom; you should thank the British for it.
The Mughals were not colonizers. The definition of a colony is: "country or area under the full or partial political control of another country". The Mughals were ousted from Central Asia; India was the only country they ruled. So, by definition, they were not colonizers.
India had been ruled by kings who were not originally from India. But, nothing in the history compared to the "loot" of the British (see http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-comp...)
Your comment may be factual, but you could have skipped the "you should be thankful" bit. It's quite a rude thing to say to someone you don't know.
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Yes. I am thankful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre
Define "country". To make your statement above to be true you will need a pretty narrow and tautological definition.
I presume you are not the brightest bulb as far as Indian history is concerned so it will help a bit if you read up a bit on Indian history, even Wikipedia would be a good start.
I really hate to think that some of the btc I donated is now with some criminal.
never deal with terrorists
They are not terrorists though. Their goal isn't to harm their target - their goal is to enrich them selves through ransom.
Bomb their families instead?
If victims need to be consistent. When terrorists are shown that they'll either get a bomb through the roof or nothing, but never payment, then they'll change their business plan.
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Questionable solution but I bet it would help for hackers! Impunity is what fuels this type of criminal behavior.