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I'm so sorry La Mer, I think that they've all gone now. I think that the last one is on it's way to the States, but if it hasn't gone yet I'll get my mate to hang on to it.
<IMG alt="image" SRC="http://www.thesite.org/ubb/frown.gif">
J9
PS
I've got a signed copy of an Anne McCaffrey book too. (and somewhere I've got a beer bottle signed by Alan Moore, I wonder where that went?)
[This message has been edited by j9j9 (edited 24-09-2000).]
The only reason the British government set up concentration camps in Africa was to house PRIOSNERS OF WAR. We were fighting a war against the Boers (Dutch settlers) and that is where we put them. Despite what people have said about the empire, think about the good it has brought:
1.We were the first country to actively PREVENT slavery
2.We provided the countries we occupied with free roads, schools, education, elcetricity, industrialisation to name but a few.
3.Every person living in a British colony was automatically granted BRITISH CITIZENSHIP which in those days was very influential. This meant they had free will of movement within the empire.
The government may have made mistakes but we righted them by providing for the people we controlled and allowing them to leave the empire after WW2 if they chose to do so. Look at the countries that did leave, apart from australia and canada they arent doing to well because they opted out of our governance, their mistake.
Or even "prisioners of war". <IMG alt="image" SRC="http://www.thesite.org/ubb/smile.gif">
Sort of true, but it was actually part of a 'scorched earch' policy ordered by Lord Kitchener to speed up the very expensive war. The British destroyed everything that could possibly support the Boers (villages, livestock etc.) and put all the women, children in concentration camps in appalling conditions where huge numbers died (nearly 30000).
See: http://www.anglo-boer.co.za/concent.htm
You're ignoring many facts and oversimplifying things. For one thing, these peoples could not govern themselves in any way while in the Empire and were very much under the thumb of the English, treated like immature, incapable children who were capable of nothing more. Never mind the various atrocities that have been committed by the British, and the way that English people were able to take advantage of their priviledged positions in smaller less obvious ways on a daily basis.
That whole thing about free will of movement (shurely 'freedom of movement'?) is, I think, flawed. While I haven't (and don't have time to) looked up the actual legalities of the thing, the fact is that no average person in a British colony would ever have achieved the status, the free time or accrue the wealth to travel away from even their area. Plus on larger scale Britain could not have allowed this - Britain's wealth and success during the earlier/mid days of empire was based on the exploitation of their colonies and the subjects (i.e. they needed them 'in their places').
In fact a lot of places were actively encouraged out of and away from British governance by the British. It wasn't and isn't possible for one country (Britain) to manage, sustain and devlop properly and fairly a large proportion of the world which was (and is) massively underdeveloped and underorganised. In some cases Britain also made a bit of a mess with the independence process, leaving the countries with very insecure democracies without resolving any of the underlying problems there (e.g. inter-tribal conflict, only suppressed previously by the use of British force and superiority - see Kenya).
Having said this, I do believe that relative to other past Empires, Britain managed its transformation / decline / deconstruction of empire / etc. relatively well and peacefully (how many other empires in history of comparable size in relation to the known world have done this?). Also, it is true that Britain often tried to do what it thought was right (thinking combined with racism, oversimplification, egotism, imperialism and a superiority complex is always going to be interesting...). I sometimes like to think that as Britain matured as a society, it realised that its oppressive, imperialistic practices were wrong.
BTW, on my dad's side of the family there's masses of colonial involvement, mostly in India and Kenya.
Giving ppl a few roads and schools does not take away centuries of wrong doing such slavery and rape!
Don't type any more of this neo-nazi style shite! I'm sorry I had to say it but how can u start off your paragraph with 'I am not a nazi' and then go on to present your ill-informed shpeel to other young and impressionable minds. Where did u develop these opinions anyway?
JB, u answered perfectly but I just had to get my angry part in <IMG alt="image" SRC="http://www.thesite.org/ubb/smile.gif">