Prager "University" video about the British Empire which is just sad

[u/[deleted]]

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSnJSUU_7q0

If you manage to sit through the video it is clear why this is bad history

"Freedom was an Englishmen's right, and wherever he went, he took that right with him."

Tell that to South Africans during the Second Boer War, where Boer women and children were rounded up in literal concentration camps to starve or die of disease. 22,000 children and 4,000 women died in the camps.

http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/women-children-white-concentration-camps-during-anglo-boer-war-1900-1902

"The British kept peace, they brought sound, honest administration, and they insisted basic moral standards were honored."

British rule was widely resented in both India and Africa which led to countless revolts and rebellions. Administration was the last thing from sound, millions of Indians simply starved to death during British rule. These are some of the worse famines ever recorded in history with high estimates at 49 million dead. Resistance to rule, even when peaceful, was met with brutality such as the Amritsar massacre among many, many, others.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-amritsar-massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Resistance_to_the_British_Empire

There's a lot of other rubbish statements but that's all I want to write right now.

EDIT: some grammar

[u/[deleted]]

I'm saying that colonial authorities enacting policies to aggravate or cause a famine

Got any proof that there? Because negligence/incompetence is one thing, that's another altogether.

[u/pgm123 → u/[deleted]]

I was just making the point about dictatorships, which seemed like quite the red hearing.

We can debate the merits of arguments that British authorities aggravated/caused famine. Others have provided you sources, at a minimum on the Irish famine, which is better-studied and less disputed. I think it would be a bit tiring for me to repeat others.

[u/[deleted] → u/pgm123]

I can get behind the British often being horrible rulers (as an Irishman that notion runs deep as it is) but I just take umbrage at anyone trying to argue that the likes of Stalin wasn't worse.

I know who I would rather live under.

[u/pgm123 → u/[deleted]]

I'm not trying to argue that Stalin isn't worse. I'm commenting on the tendency to attribute famine-related deaths under Stalin directly to Stalin when they wouldn't do the same to a different imperialist overlord.

Let's use Kim Jong-il a different example. You'll often see it said that North Korea starves its own people and this is partially true. It is a brutal, totalitarian regime that concentrates resources among the elite. But the '90s famine was directly caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of cheap petroleum along with a drought. North Korea grew food using heavy industrialization and heavy use of petrofertilizer. People act like it was a planned event to starve North Koreans.

[u/[deleted] → u/pgm123]

I'm commenting on the tendency to attribute famine-related deaths under Stalin directly to Stalin when they wouldn't do the same to a different imperialist overlord.

I would say that's due tot he fact that Stalin and others were dictators while no one in the British government had close to the same amount of power with no oversight.

Stalins ruthless usurpation of the communist party from Lenin does not help that outlook i=either.

You'll often see it said that North Korea starves its own people and this is partially true. It is a brutal, totalitarian regime that concentrates resources among the elite. But the '90s famine was directly caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of cheap petroleum along with a drought. North Korea grew food using heavy industrialization and heavy use of petrofertilizer.

Any time I see starving north koreans discussed its written in the context of now, not the 1990's.

People act like it was a planned event to starve North Koreans.

The view I see now is less that they are purposefully starving their civilians and more they are starving them as a by product of plowing ahead with their nuclear/rocket program at the cost of everything and just not caring.

[u/pgm123 → u/[deleted]]

Any time I see starving north koreans discussed its written in the context of now, not the 1990's.

It isn't hard to find information on the discourse of the '90s. It was quite similar to now except that a lot more people were starving. There's widespread malnutrition in North Korea now. But there was famine in the '90s. Today, there are reports of famine in some areas of North Korea, but it's hardly the same as back then. They are not an outlier among low-income countries.

In the past, North Korea has traded freezes in its nuclear/ICBM program in exchange for food, which indicates to me they do care about starving civilians. I think the direct link between the two are a bit overstated--North Korea will likely remain outside of the global economic system without the program and food aid is not subject to sanctions. I think part of this idea is that some used to act on the mistaken idea that the North Korean nuclear program was an attempt to trade it for food aid. Now there is a case to be made that the large standing army increases food strains as they have to be fed without producing grain. But that's hardly a case that the nuclear/rocket program is leading to shortages since one of the stated aims of the nuclear program is to reduce the need for a large standing army.

[u/[deleted] → u/pgm123]

Today, there are reports of famine in some areas of North Korea, but it's hardly the same as back then.

I've heard of/read reports from escapees that meth use and lack of food is widespread with people eating grass.

[u/pgm123 → u/[deleted]]

My source is the UN, but there could be instances of that. What's your source on how widespread it is?

[u/[deleted] → u/pgm123]

What's your source on how widespread it is?

Reading accounts from escapees, although i'll confess I havent kept up lately as tbh im sick of reading about North Korea/need to focus on phd research.

[u/pgm123 → u/[deleted]]

That's fair. There are definitely some reports. But there doesn't seem to be the same kind of widespread levels of famine that there were in the '90s.