Comment by geofft
10 years ago
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!
There is a lot of debate about the origins of the word, and the skull story is a nice (but brutal) party story. Let me give you another version.
Back in the days people were drinking off bowls, instead of cups as we do today. And guess what the danish word for bowl is? "Skål".
A "skål" is a flat version of "trebolle". You can see one if you Google Image search for "trebolle" to get an idea of how it looks.
That is all bullshit. The word is not “Skull”, it is “Skål”, and it is a normal noun, meaning “Bowl”.
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.
When you are weak, you take what you can get. It was much better to have been colonized by the British, who actually had an interest in nation-building and respect for law and human rights (to the extent they deemed their subjects capable of handling them), than, say, to have become the personal fiefdom of Leopold II of Belgium.
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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.
None of the other sensible men like Napier gave such a pithy and powerful quote on the topic.
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What you say is true to your name. Take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4
What utter nonsense. Do the Romans likewise owe reparations to the Turks, French, Spanish, and English?
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.
That's not the context the OP used... It was: "you should thank", not "you should be thankful". A very subtle difference, but in this case (to you), it's the difference between offending and not.
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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.