We misremember them

Britain’s memorial ceremonies would be improved by a history lesson

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Jack Broadnax

Most of the places the Brits colonized were rotten and oppressive places before. Most were ruled by other foreign empires, albeit usually a bit closer at hand. None of the despots, foreign or domestic, asked the people what they wanted or would have cared had they answered.
If the Brits and others had simply stayed home, the world would be very different today, but probably not better. One reason the colonizers could take over is because many locals were so unhappy with existing conditions that they were willing to try their luck with the newcomers.
I love the idea that we now study non-Western cultures more. One of the great benefits of studying non-Western history is that we learn that oppression, slavery and exploitation were not brought for the first time by the European colonialists.
A variation of an old glib saying applies. Under colonial governments, man exploited his fellow man; before that it was the other way around.


I am sorry for the Captain Eustace Jotham killed in Afghanistan, his actions were heroic. However he had absolutely no right to go invading someone else's country in the first place.

Although I believe Ms Farrington is right to tend these graves. These are the people who died for the colossal mistake which was to try create a British empire. Jotham and others were sent to the colonies, by stupid vainglorious leaders.

Although patriotic, they were naive, just as many of those who died in the trenches were naive. However, you can't fault the young for being naive. Instead we should blame the fact that Imperial Britain was plagued with incredibly stupid leadership drawn from a dimwit class of landed plutocrats. They died in an ignoble cause, but they didn't realise this at the time, and do not deserve to be forgotten.

This is the lesson that needs to be drawn, and this is what Sassoon meant when he wrote about bald puffy scarlet majors speeding glum heroes up the line to death.

Britain needs memorials to the colonial wars, not just to remember the fate of Captain Jotham, but also as a reminder of the consequences of allowing people end up in positions of power like the following:

Major-General William George Keith Elphinstone and
Sir William Hay Macnaghten who thought they could take over Afghanistan
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, commander at the Somme,
Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, who starved ~28,000 civilians to death in concentration camps in order to defeat the Boers
Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, who opened fire on massed civilians at Amritsar, killing 300-1000, losing India

So, yes, I agree with the tagline, "Britain's memorial ceremonies would be improved by a history lesson." Such a lesson must recognise that the loss of its empire while painful, was the best thing that could have happened to country.

Sebastianin in reply to Jack Broadnax

Are you still on about the noble british bringing light to the ignorant heathen?

Theft was and is still the name of the game.

Do you also think that George Bush was out to save Iraqi lives when he invaded? Either you are being deliberatly disingenuous or willfully naive.

The not so great british were in India for nothing more than plunder. To think otherwise is idiotic. Why work when you can steal the work of others. That is why the Spanish were in the Americas, and the French were in Southeast Asia.


I'm sure there would be plenty of indigenous tribes that would appreciate being around today had the great british stayed home and not committed genocide. Surely they would feel happier if they were not so dead.

One reason the european colonizers could take over was because five hundred years of slaughtering and being slaughtered by their fellow europeans taught the great british the value of brute force and superior weaponry.

RichardMackay in reply to Manneken

I hope TE thinks about an 'Unrecommend' button for these comments: This comment fits the bill perfectly.
Manneken my friend, all empires have their up and down sides. It's not all bad as you say. And if you think that it's the end of empires think again!


The British Empire is a story of genocide, plunder, slavery, murder and abuse on every continent on the globe.
There is a thin veneer of "bringing civilization" (a racist comment if ever there was one), used by apologists who don't even realize their own racism.
Why honor those who carried out crimes against humanity at a staggering scale?


Why should remembering and honoring war dead hinge on whether some liberal historian years later deems the war "imperialist" or "misguided"?
The British have just as much right to honor their colonial war dead as the Japanese have to honor their dead in the Yasukuni Shrine.
Politics did not matter to the vast majority of the soldiers that died and they should not matter to those they died for when remembering them.
We can honor the soldier without sanctioning the war.


Add a moments silence for the victims of these colonialists who had no honest business being there in the first place. And for those that died in the First World War thinking that their sacrifices might accelerate their countries' walk to independence.

Vanbrugh in reply to Manneken

I honour the men and not necessarily the cause for which they fought, but both must be kept in mind on November 11 to make sure mistakes of the past are never repeated.
For me that's what remembrance day is.


For a moment, on reading the title and looking at the photo montage, I thought the article would be about the Afghan and Pakistani dead.

It would have been an interesting slant. We tacitly consider them vermin, in colonial times as now, with no families or individuality. But the idea that they too could grieve, uphold the memory of those who died to defend their country and pass it on to their children makes obvious sense and would also be a useful history lesson.


It is "lest we forget" and Bagehot would know this is also found where poppies are sold, if bagehot actually cared.

Many died defending a noble cause, yet the reasons for the calamities arising comes from weak politicians that stood by and looked on till no other option was left.

Never should the people of this country ever forget the reasons why so many died, nor forgive those that bought about such an outcome.

Manneken in reply to john4law

Sorry, but this is revisionism in the extreme.
a) the article is not about WWI (I presume the 880K dead you mention are about that), but about the soldiers who died as part of the British Empire's wars of aggression, genocide and plunder (Afghanistan 19th century being a good example)
b) the British soldiers in WWI did not fight or die for the cause of democracy. They fought and died for a war of power politics, clash of empires and nationalism. To portray them as champions of free speech is, quite simply, nonsense. They had an agenda of giving the boche a good whipping, to show who was top dog, and to steal German colonies.

None of this even addresses my point: the British Empire is a story of worldwide genocide and plunder. Don't honor that.

The Curmudgeon

Today is called Veteran's Day in the US. I am a veteran, having served six years in the Army '85-'91--serving in the first Iraq war before getting out. I got out because, while I agreed that a strong military was necessary to protect from the existential threat posed by the Soviet Union, I didn't see any purpose to killing Iraqis to protect a soccer mom's right to cheap gasoline for her SUV.

There is these days nothing quite so repugnant as the manner with which American vets are fawned over. I can not tell you how many times I have been "thanked for my service" over the last few years. This was not something that ever happened while I actually served, but must be a result of the guilt Americans feel for having asked its servicemembers to fight in two incompetently run wars for no ascertainable purpose except that fighting on the vanguards of empire is what empires do.

Thanking me for my service transfers the thanker's guilt to me. I don't need any thanks. I was amply compensated for my service, just as the contract required, and volunteered for it, just as everyone fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan were. I think the best way to thank today's servicemembers is in doing just what we are doing--bringing them home.

I wish America would give back the petite empires it inherited from Britain, France, Germany, etc., after its victory in WWII. We've no business policing the world. We'd do better to simply defend America such that it remains a shining symbol of freedom.

Manneken in reply to Mad Hatter

I'm afraid your argument that we should judge by historical standards can never be accepted. Otherwise we would not be in a very good position to judge the Holocaust, would we? I'm aware of Godwin's law, but this is not an application, I think - it's a genuine problem of moral judgments.

The argument is how we judge today what happened in the past. Should the UK put up remembrance for its imperial armies?

If the answer is "yes", then how can one criticize the Yasukuni shrine?

Should we then also not "celebrate" how Leopold II brought "civilization" to the Congo by murdering about a quarter if its population?

Should we not put up a celebration for the Italians committing genocide and chemical warfare in Ethiopia? The US doing the same in Vietnam? Cromwell committing genocide in Ireland? Stalin murdering millions of Ukranians and others in the USSR?

The many genocides committed by the British Empire are historical fact. As are the crimes of other nations.

The question is how to deal with them today - worship or even accept the perpetrators by saying "they meant well" (an argument that is controversial at best - they knew perfectly well they were plundering, murdering and looting), or saying "actually, they (we) were wrong in doing this". As e.g. the Germans have done.

So the question is not "Who is innocent?"; you are right, no-one is. But it's "Who is honest and brave enough to recognize and atone for the crimes and mistakes committed by their forefathers?".

Not so the British of today, it would seem. It's them I challenge, not their forefathers.

The British seem too cowardly today to look in the mirror, and recognize the past for its ugly facts.

The article actually makes me think the Economist Bagehot has a deeply racist streak, which (s)he doesn't even recognize him/herself. Sad, I never thought of TE as a fundamentally racist newspaper.

john4law in reply to Jack Broadnax

You can't begin needed redemption until you you have the courage and faith to accept yourself and then believe that a better self can and will be made by you. Britain's Empire was in some respects the least worst of all possible alternative evils at the time it was created. I have no difficulty in concluding JUST THAT for the 18th Century Indian subcontinent which achieved amazing unity for the ONLY time under the aegis of the British Raj. Even the perversely wrongheaded and double faced Gandhi got that right PUBLICLY.

john4law in reply to Ciudadano del Mundo

Yeah, look at Spain. It really has totally gotten over that Empire thing. The dynamism of Spanish Industry and Commerce is now approaching 11th century Moorish/Judaic/Christian standards and headed towards the 10th century.


As a Spaniard living in the midlands, I find it distinctly British remembering the fallen in wars. It is rightly so, in my opinion. One can question the colonial wars, but hardly anyone disputes the need for WWII.

However, I cannot help but think that paying homenage to the British Legion, among others,or at least the way how it is done, leaves a positive picture of the war and ultimately, if only in a way, justifies the horros it entails.

Surely there must be a better way of rememberance while abhorring war more explicitly?

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Kipling - The Young British Soldier

A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail,
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

Kipling - Arithmetic on the Frontier

Never get out of the boat.

Brings to mind a poignant obelisk in the churchyard of the ruined St. Paul's Church in Malacca. On it is inscribed word to this effect "sacred to the memory of private so-and-so, killed in action against dacoits in the employ of Sultan so-and-so, erected by his fellow soldiers of the so-and-so regiment". Dated 1860-something. The unfortunate soldier would have died wearing the red woolen battle dress of the time, and carrying a 60-pound backpack. Anyone who has experienced the stifling heat of Malaysia will feel for that young man even before he got skewered by a dacoit's parang. In the same churchyard is the grave of the daughter of the church's rector, who died at the age of 18 one year after arriving in the country.

Manneken in reply to Mad Hatter

Ah, the ad hominem attack, for lack of actual arguments.

In fact they weren't (except on the moral aspect of things, of course, as I presume were yours).

It's just I don't think I should justify/defend the crimes committed by my ancestors; neither should I pay for them. But I should recognize them for what they were - that is my moral duty.

What is yours?


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