The brits tested mustard gas on indian soldiers who were volunteers, after also testing it on 3 times as many British soldiers who had also volunteered for the experiment.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/...india.military

An article from back when the story got highlighted. British soldiers were apparently duped into it and the Ministry of Defense could not say if Indian soldiers gave consent. If the people with the information couldn't say either way, then why are you making out it was above board so confidently?

Given the barbarity of the Empire, I think it's a stretch to believe that Indian soldiers were given all the information and were given a choice when british soldiers said they were duped.

No, I prefer reality to delusion.

After propagating it and profiting from it. Fixing a problem you created isn't heroism. Those lives were lost because we profited from the Slave Trade. We aren't the heroes of this story that you think we are.

'History is only bad if you don't ignore the bad bits, we're heroes if you don't think about all the bad **** we did during the empire days!'

Spain and Portugal eradicated whole cultures in South America. It's no coincidence that they all speak Spanish. No one ever mentions it. Russia annexed huge areas of Europe and Asia and still hang on to most of it. It's only the British Empire that's ever criticised because, I believe, a lack of education.

Trying to fix wrongs of the past doesn't absolve them, but the only guilt isn't inherited by those who followed. Some of the tribes who profited from the slave trade, such as the Dahomeys, wanted the European slave trade to continue.
it's not a case of "whites bad, blacks good" when it comes to slavery. But guilt and responsibility for actions aren't inheritable.

Yeah, slavery. Thank God that doesn't happen anymore.

'Acts of genocide by us are okay because other people did it too!' JFC.... You just get worse and worse.

You're engaging in stupid amounts of whataboutism. This is a thread about the UK and the empire, how the **** does other atrocities have any relevance here? Why do you think that our atrocities can't be discussed in a thread about this country without talking about other countries? Spain and Portugal's rampages through South America doesn't make us look better or worse, the crimes of Russia does not vindicate us.

The empire doesn't get criticised much in this country, we never learn about the horrors of the empire in school. The world criticises the empire because they suffered at it's hands. If someone was to say the exact same thing to you, but about Nazi Germany, how would you respond? How would you feel if they tried to make out you couldn't talk about those atrocities without qualifying them with other atrocities? How would you feel if that person said you weren't educated?

I'll answer that question for you, you would rage, and quite rightly so, so why have that attitude to other people, especially when most of the criticism of the empire comes from the descendants of those who suffered under it?

Tribes profiteering from slavery doesn't really make our role in it better or worse. It's whataboutism to bury your head in the sand, to protect the image of what you want this country to be, and not the bones and suffering of other cultures that built it.

True, I did say it doesn't absolve anything. But only one side wanted to end it.

North African arabs were up and down the channel lifting people from England, France, Ireland and taking them as slaves. Our own government sent poor white people to North America... and actually the first slaves in the USA were white... but shhhhhhhhh.... black people are always the biggest victim.

Grand Wizard Livia's at it again.

Again, doesn't really change a thing. It was a problem we helped create in the first place. There's no way to cut that story that makes us the heroes unless you disregard huge parts of history.

"We" didn't. No-one living can personally claim heroism for helping to abolish the slave trade, just like no-one living should be made to feel guilty for it. If one part of that piece of history should be taught in schools, so should the other.

Are your future grandkids responsible for your posts on here?

I think you're choosing to purposefully misunderstand the intent of 'we' to push a point that doesn't really work.

'We' in this context is not referring to us as individuals but as the UK as an entity throughout the centuries.

Again, to go back to the WW2 example. One day, Nazi Germany's atrocities will be as distant in the past as the slave trade is to us, but do you think that Germany's stance on teaching the horrors of WW2 and what Germany did to their kids will change? I doubt they ever will, because it's important to learn from history. The good and the bad.

The problem with so many people in this country is that they refuse to engage in reality when it comes to the past. We're heroes of the world, the empire was the greatest thing that ever existed and we never did anything wrong ever. None of that is true, and we committed atrocity after atrocity. Just because we, as individuals, weren't born during those times doesn't mean that we, as a nation, should pretend that history that paints us in a bad light is fiction or that it no longer matters.

It matters to those who still live with the impact of the empire generations later.

As with anything there's a lot more to it than the black and white (literally, there are entire degree courses on Empire/Colonialism that I imagine still barely scratch the surface. It will always be the case that real history is far more complex than the buzz topics and phrases... And the most simple reality is that human history is incredibly murky. We've not been very good to each other.

LOOSELY though - it's very difficult to take the stance that the British Empire (or any other empire) was in any way a good or benevolent thing... Empires from the beginning of history to right now have ultimately been about selfish resource hoarding by wealthy people, to the detriment of pretty much everyone else, but affecting some far more than others.

Its also a pretty spectacularly ill considered take the stance that "Britain heroic" for being one of the first to outlaw slavery or for making efforts to help end it in other places too. I mean yes, they did do those things, but ... They wouldn't have been able to "heroically" stop trading slaves if they'd never traded slaves in the first place, and making amends by utilising the Royal Navy to help stop slavers wasn't heroic either, it was really the least they could do at the time as part of making amends.

Imagine someone keeping a human locked in their basement for years, and then one night having an epiphany and letting them go the next day... Would anyone say "Wow a hero!!". It seems unlikely. And if that person dedicated the rest of their life to getting other people out of basements that would be the right thing - but really the least they could do. And you wouldn't expect the person who had been in their basement to say, "You know what? You're actually an OK guy!".

Then there's the idea that the Empire "brought civilisation" to the world which of course, it didn't. It brought capitalism to the world, and people who equate capitalism with civilisation might see it that way... But it really all rests on that old premise that before the Empire brought order, people in colonial areas were "Savages" with no culture when of course that wasn't the case at all, it was just different culture, and thus rejected as being culture at all.

This is a good video if you have a spare 25 minutes.

It's by Carl Benjamin aka Sargon, that's the guy who did the rape joke about Jess Phillips. So I fully expect some to totally dismiss it with phrases like "I don't listen to bigots" And that's perfectly fine, everyone is free to be ignorant if they wish to be. I ain't forcing you to watch.

He does this video in response to something Frankie Boyle wrote, slagging of Britain (Dezzy esque). So he spends the first couple of minutes of the video talking about Frankie Boyle. After that he gives a fantastic take on slavery and the slave trade.

Worth a watch, I recommend it.

To quote him at the end of this video, speaking directly to Frankie Boyle. "Frankie, you live in a World without slavery because of Britain"

You can watch this a different way. There's many YouTube vloggers that have done reaction videos to this Carl Benjamin video. So you can watch it along with them and see their take on it too.






Here are some Americans reacting to it, watch along with them if you find that way more interesting.

The dead sailors didnt profit from it, or create it. They died for the cause of ending it all though.

Well I've always thought that Britain is a pretty good country to live in and grow up in.

The fact the the likes of Dezzy is allowed to just call it the most horrible things tells you how great it is. He won't appreciate it until the Globalists fully take over.

And they wouldn't have died ending it if we didn't basically create it.

I’m moving to Australia next year and can safely say the only thing I’m going to miss is my family. This country is the pits

In some respects you have a point. There are elements that are "the pits" as you call it.

Australia also has it's bad points though. As I showed you during Covid 19 - 21. Bleeding government of their's were shooting at the citizens for legally protesting.

Yeah cool.

It’s still a better way of life and paradise compared to this hell hole