According to critical race theory, whites are historic oppressors, and ‘people of colour’ are historic victims. British imperial history – white history – must therefore be thoroughly deconstructed. Yet when we look back through world history, we see people of colour engaged in positive orgies of oppression, brutality, colonial exploitation, enslavement, violence, and barbarity.
‘People of colour’, given the chance, have behaved just like whites. The annals of coloured oppression are so extensive and grisly that it is hard to know where to begin. But a few examples will suffice.
The Barbary pirates of North Africa are estimated to have enslaved a million and a half Europeans living mostly along the Mediterranean coast between the 16th and 18th centuries. Slave markets across the Middle East traded in the victims. In the 17th century, raids on Devon and Cornwall were a daily occurrence, with 240 men, women and children being carried away in a single raid in 1645.
The Arab slave trade saw an estimated ten million black Africans transported to the Middle East over a period of over a thousand years. Up to half died in transit. Women and girls were especially popular as sex slaves, while men and boys were often castrated to ensure they never reproduced, assuming they survived the operation. David Livingstone was instrumental in ending the trade in the 19th century, and Royal Naval ships enforced the ban.
Then there is the Muslim conquest of India. The American historian Will Durant argued in his The Story of Civilisation: Our Oriental Heritage that ‘The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. The Islamic historians and scholars have recorded with great glee and pride the slaughters of Hindus, forced conversions, abduction of Hindu women and children to slave markets and the destruction of temples.’
More recently, Francois Gautier has gone further and written, in Rewriting Indian History, that ‘The massacres perpetrated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese.’
The Japanese empire or ‘co-prosperity sphere’ of the 1930s and early 1940s deserves honourable mention, short-lived but unspeakably barbaric. Even Nazi Germany protested at the infamous Rape of Nanking, during which Japanese soldiers disembowelled women, decapitated men, conducted live burials and castrations, roasted people alive, and bayonetted babies among other horrors that left up to half a million dead.
But pride of place must inevitably go to Genghis Khan and his Mongolian hordes, who are estimated to have killed ten per cent of the world’s population, an achievement that Hitler or Stalin could only have dreamed of, even in the age of mechanised warfare. Genghis specialised in empire building through exterminating every man, woman, and child of the host population. The skulls of the victims were often piled high in great ‘white’ pyramids.
None of these episodes should really surprise us because imperial conquest, enslavement, and oppression have characterised the history of the world from the dawn of time, implicating people of all races and ethnicities. One tribe subjugated another because it was more powerful, more numerous, more technologically advanced, or more skilled in its military tactics.
For there is no doubt that people of all colours, races and creeds share the same positive and negative human characteristics. The annals of human barbarity are truly colour blind. Yet the history books fall strangely silent when it comes to the annals of coloured oppression. Were there no victims? Was there no racism? Was there no legacy of historic victimhood? Must the Taj Mahal be left standing as a monument to Mughal oppression?
It is high time these hidden histories were told, the voices of the victims heard. Perhaps the National Trust could be brought on board. The British empire could then be appraised and judged as it always should have been, which is relative to other empires.
Compared to the gratuitous slaughter indulged in by the Mongols, the Mughals, and the Japanese (for example), it was positively benign. Its civilising mission was real. Let us once again celebrate Drake, Raleigh, Captain Cook, Clive of India, Cecil Rhodes, and Baden Powell.
The following passages bear repeating (if you rely on Leftie William Dalrymple’s books on India (e.g. ‘The Anarchy’, his history of the East India Company) you’d think that only the British were capable of brutality):
The American historian Will Durant argued in his The Story of Civilisation: Our Oriental Heritage that ‘The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. The Islamic historians and scholars have recorded with great glee and pride the slaughters of Hindus, forced conversions, abduction of Hindu women and children to slave markets and the destruction of temples.’
More recently, Francois Gautier has gone further and written, in Rewriting Indian History, that ‘The massacres perpetrated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese.’
And are there any sources on the scale of the Muslim murder and rape of locals and associated dispossession of property as the Muslims plundered their way through what is now Indonesia, the Phillipines and Malaysia?
Even though in the West, non-whites kill, rape and maim non-whites and whites more than whites inflict harm of any kind on non-whites and whites, by proportion, the anti-Reality Big Statists Forces (which includes Big Tech, Big Media, Big Law and Big Education) force down our throats that only BLM -that’s right, see: white lives do not matter in the Big Statists’ anti-Reality universe. And there is nothing that ordinary white people can do to protect themselves. End of Western Civ, even though few whites realise it.
And across the Anglosphere, the productive, striving white classes are forced to transfer their wealth, the products of their labours, to non-whites who hate whites, and who seek to enslave these very whites who make the lives of non-whites far better than non-whites can make for themselves. Meanwhile, the anti-Reality forces of the Big State insist that striving, productive, law-abiding whites must pretend this ain’t so.
Lots of Asians work incredibly hard (like my dentist, my local Chinese take away, my local Sikh corner shop) and lots of whites are sadly bone idle, taking up residence in the local pub as soon as they clock off. This is a red herring. The important question is the loss of our national culture. Mass immigration has much to do with it, but it is not a matter of race per se.
PS Is it necessary to repeat your productive whites/non-productive non-whites argument on every blog?
Yes, and you can add Nigerian Christian refugees, Ugandan Hindu refugees, and at least one Nepalese gentleman who’s been mentioned in these columns, to the list of welcome immigrants.
But experience suggests that few, if any, Pakistanis and West Indians have been beneficial to the UK.
I continue to advocate selective compulsory repatriation of millions of anti-British invaders as the necessary preliminary to the solution to our problems.
Tomas, it is not a red herring. In groups that are overall good, there are always the non-productives who hate whites, and who destroy white lives and white-owned property. And I know full well about the boozing, unproductive, criminal and violent whites. And I believe that much could be done to rectify their wasteful, destructive, violent lives if the costs of multiculturalism and racial mixing were not the huge drain on the time and the assets created by the productive, striving classes. I have nothing against any person on the basis of skin colour -nothing. But I am able to see the massive nett costs, direct and shadow, tangible and intangible, of the racial mixing that now overwhelms the West. Note that most Asian, African and Islamic precincts are run on the basis of no entry or very limited, very controlled entry for non-locals -reasons obvious.
Well said. The current exclusive focus of “outrage” upon the history of Europe is itself motivated by racial hatred and – unless checked – shows every sign of leading to discrimination (already with us), persecution and beyond. The so-called “educated class” is in the grip of an appalling hysteria and its power, which flows from the taxpayer into bloated government, should be at once curtailed. If the Johnson administration continues making nothing but baby steps towards this end, another party – perhaps “Reform” – must replace it. We live in dark times, but more and more of us are holding up the torches of individual conscience and hailing each other across the gloom.
This is only part of the case that can be made. And it is high time.
Note, for example, that the great African emperor the “medieval” Muslim Mansa Musa, hailed as the richest man who ever lived, lived off the surplus value of his slaves in the mines and army. So much for Wakanda.
The British Empire was the most successful, despite a number of cruelties, because white technology was superior. Our people developed virgin territory; the descendants of their beneficiaries who migrate here are taking advantage of a developed society.
Yes, there is no non-white group today, living anywhere on Earth, that is not materially better off than their forebears were before white science, white creativity, white engineering, and white practical ingenuity arose. Well, except for a few hold-out groups, in various jungles and on a couple small islands, which prefer the old ways.
James Jordan. My question too. Why are you offended is there anything factually wrong?
And if the English/British had not occupied large parts of India, the Muslims would have conquered far more of it -with all the destructive constraints on human flourishing that Islam imposes. As for black Africans and Australian Aborigines, send ’em a bill for literacy, numeracy, transport infrastructure, public administration, and all manner of proper healthcare and sanitation.
Ta-ra cancel my subscription.
Why are you offended?
He won’t say because virtue signallers feel that, from their lofty positions, they have no need to explain anything.
Good riddance