# Which is the most evil episode in British history? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 29, 2010, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444 "2010-09-29T05:02:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/121 "2010-10-06T14:43:11Z")
> [@villa](#): > > And **smiling bandit** , before his went on his ludicrous racist (or nationalistic, or xenophobic or whatever) tirade, makes a good point about slavery being comparatively beneficial to England’s enemies. Hey, even a blind squirrel, you know. Yeah, I was _totally_ being a complete racist by pointing out that the gentle, kind, decent English quite literally forgot to even tnoice the suffering, dying, and misery of the people right on their doorstep. :rolleyes: Every people may do evil, but the way and how they do is always their own. England’s manifests itself in a kind of freakish callousness, very genteel and proper, which is so absolutely certain of its own superiority it fails to even think of its enemies as human. Whether you think this better or worse than than some other evils, such as the Nazi’s dehumanization of their perceived enemies so they could kill them, or America’s often shameful treatment of AmerIndians as a weird foreign people (but who were obviously human) who had stuff we wanted, is really a personal matter. I’m not convinced that the people involved were neccesarily any better or worse man-for-man. And certainly the people on the receiving end of British indifference, Nazi hate, or American aggression wouldn’t care much. Tolstoy was wrong about families. Unhappy families are always unhappy in the same way: it’s the happy ones which are beautifully diverse. But in the realm of nations, he did get it right. What’s good in America is not the same as what’s good in Britain (or England). And what’s wrong with either isn’t the same as what’s wrong with germany, or the Dem. Rep. of Congo, or what not. It may be unkind, but it isn’t dishonest to remember that. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/122 "2010-10-06T16:40:19Z")
> [@Wallenstein](#): > > You’d get a strong argument from some quarters that the bombing of [Dresden](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II)and [Hamburg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg)during WW2 count as “evil” episodes. > > This tends to polarise opinion in the UK - many claim that it was a justified tactic of war, others that it was pure civilian slaughter - but objectively it led to the death of 25,000 people (Dresden) and 50,000 people (Hamburg) in the space of a couple of days. > > Empire killed more people as a whole, as did the Religious Terrors of Cromwell etc, but as discrete acts these two events arguably killed more people than anything before. > > The fact it was during a war clouds things slightly, but you could argue that the Indian mutinies, or Irish supression, were also part of an ongoing conflict. Historian John Keegan has described the origin of the theory of “area bombing” in the frustrations of the First World War. [QUOTE=Keegan] In the 1920s, the Royal Air Force was creating the first ‘air navy’ of strategic bombers the world had ever seen. The roots of its operational function lay in a study prepared by the ‘father’ of the RAF, Sir Hugh Trenchard, for the Allied Supreme War Council in the last months of the First World War. By advocating this simple and brutal strategy - to bomb factories and terrorise those who worked there and lived nearby - Trenchard proposed to extend to general warfare a principle so far admitted by civilised nations only in the siege of cities. In siege warfare armies had always operated by the code that citizens who chose to remain within a city’s walls after siege was laid thereby exposed themselves to its hardships: starvation, bombardment and, once the walls had been breached and the offer of capitulation refused, rapine and pillage. The almost uncontested generalisation of siege-warfare morality demonstrates both how closely the First World War had come to resemble siege on a continental scale and how grossly its prosecution had blunted the sensitivities of war leaders, civilian and military alike. Indeed, Trenchard’s proposals went almost uncontested: they met no principled objection among the Western Allies at the time. [/QUOTE] After lengthy passages detailing the horrors of area bombing (the practice of drenching the living quarters of a city with explosives and incendiaries), Keegan sums up the difficulty the British had, after the war, in acknowledging how low they’d sunk. [QUOTE=Keegan] The Allied bombing campaign, though it gave a dour satisfaction to the majority of the British people in the depths of the war against Hitler, never commanded the support of the whole nation… with their backs to the wall the British people had chosen not to acknowledge that they had descended to the enemy’s level. In victory they remembered that they believed in fair play. Strategic bombing, which may not even have been sound strategy, was certainly not fair play. Over its course and outcome its most consistent practitioners drew a veil. [/QUOTE] The leader of Bomber Command, Arthur Harris, was the only senior leader in Britain not to be singled out for honors after the war, and he [remains controversial](http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/air_marshall_arthur_harris.htm) – in 1992 a statue of him was unveiled in London and within 24 hours, someone had poured red paint over it. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2010, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/123 "2010-10-07T17:32:14Z")
> [@Wallenstein](#): > > > [@amanset](#): > > > > Just sharing my experience. I grew up in Kenilworth, Warwickshire and I honestly didn’t lie. I lived for just over two years in London and I never knowingly met a Jew. > > I currently live in Kenilworth, and I know [or know of] a couple of Jewish families. > > There’s a synagogue in Solihull, and a house-synagogue circuit in Leamington. > > The Jewish families here tend not ultra-orthodox so you wouldn’t necessarily identify people as Jewish if you saw them in Sainsburys. > > That’s not to mention people who are non-practising, so you’d never know either way. I worked with a Jewish bloke for a year when I was young and only discovered that he was Jewish when I offered him a bacon sandwhich after he said that he was hungry. I and the other employees probably would never have known if it hadn’t been for that. ot that it made any difference to any of us. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2010, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/124 "2010-10-07T18:50:57Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Yeah, I was _totally_ being a complete racist by pointing out that the gentle, kind, decent English quite literally forgot to even tnoice the suffering, dying, and misery of the people right on their doorstep. :rolleyes: Every people may do evil, but the way and how they do is always their own. England’s manifests itself in a kind of freakish callousness, very genteel and proper, which is so absolutely certain of its own superiority it fails to even think of its enemies as human. Well, you are painting the attitude of some onto an entire nation. Call that what you will. It’s also a typical mistake made by peopel who will tie themselves into pretzel shaped knots to pretend class has no influence, and to maintain history as a top-down subject. It’s much easier to think of countries as monolithic entities, rather than accepting that the actions udnertaken in a country’s name may have incredibly negative consequences, often deliberate, on social groupings within that country itself. Take the Great Potato Famine, for example. You can portray it as “the kind, decent English quite literally [forgetting] to even (_sic_) [notice] the suffering, dying, and misery of the people right on their doorstep.” Alternatively, you can realize that the Potato Famine resulted from the Irish and British upper classes being willing to sit back and watch the Irish working class starve. That the effect on the English, and more noticeably the Scottish working class was hardly a positive - Irish workers came into the market place, and were used as scab labor by British employers, thus undermining unionization in Britain. It also had the long term effect of increasing sectarian distinctions, particularly again in Scotland though also in some areas of England, with a similar (unplanned) beneficial for the upper classes effect of retarding working class unity. Now, I know one is a little more complex a viewpoint than the other. But it’s very childish to think of history in terms of black and white. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2010, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/125 "2010-10-07T19:31:29Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Yeah, I was _totally_ being a complete racist by pointing out that the gentle, kind, decent English quite literally forgot to even tnoice the suffering, dying, and misery of the people right on their doorstep. :rolleyes: Every people may do evil, but the way and how they do is always their own. England’s manifests itself in a kind of freakish callousness, very genteel and proper, which is so absolutely certain of its own superiority it fails to even think of its enemies as human. Hey, don’t be overly harsh on the Brits. They’ve gone to great lengths over the years to develop humane weapon to kill ingrates who resisted colonization. It also saved on bullets, which is good for the environment.;):rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/126 "2010-10-08T05:38:24Z")
> [@MarcusF](#): > > _Missed the edit window._ > > I should have added that I am not saying there was no anti-semitism in Britain over the last hundred years - clearly there was - but I do not feel it has been a major factor in how Jews in Britain have thrived. I would also suggest the anti-semitism has probably fallen significantly in the last fifty years as the natural bigots and racists have had a much more obvious target since the arrival of large Asian and Afro-Caribbean populations in the 50s and 60s. And regular people who are annoyed about afro-carribean crime. That probably isn’t an example of British govt evil, but negligence. > **[Access Restricted](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7856787/Violent-inner-city-crime-the-figures-and-a-question-of-race.html)** ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/127 "2010-10-08T10:42:48Z")
I find it so heartening that there are people who are so deeply affected by the plight of long dead people from history. I can almost see them agonising over their fates on a daily basis. Of course those a lot more cynical then myself might believe them to be crying crocodile tears in an effort to have a stick to beat the Brits with, any stick. Why should they wish to do so ? Well a hatred born of envy: springs to mind. I of course am not one of them, not a day passes by without me feeling bad about the lives of the Indians under the tyranny of the Moghul empire or the Bushmen wiped out the Zulus, or the West Africans sold into slavery by their Black brothers to the Americans and Europeans. Thank god that there are other people like me out there . ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/128 "2010-10-08T13:00:33Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > > [@villa](#): > > > > And **smiling bandit** , before his went on his ludicrous racist (or nationalistic, or xenophobic or whatever) tirade, makes a good point about slavery being comparatively beneficial to England’s enemies. Hey, even a blind squirrel, you know. > > Yeah, I was _totally_ being a complete racist by pointing out that the gentle, kind, decent English quite literally forgot to even tnoice the suffering, dying, and misery of the people right on their doorstep. :rolleyes: Every people may do evil, but the way and how they do is always their own. England’s manifests itself in a kind of freakish callousness, very genteel and proper, which is so absolutely certain of its own superiority it fails to even think of its enemies as human. > > Whether you think this better or worse than than some other evils, such as the Nazi’s dehumanization of their perceived enemies so they could kill them, or America’s often shameful treatment of AmerIndians as a weird foreign people (but who were obviously human) who had stuff we wanted, is really a personal matter. I’m not convinced that the people involved were neccesarily any better or worse man-for-man. And certainly the people on the receiving end of British indifference, Nazi hate, or American aggression wouldn’t care much. > > Tolstoy was wrong about families. Unhappy families are always unhappy in the same way: it’s the happy ones which are beautifully diverse. But in the realm of nations, he did get it right. What’s good in America is not the same as what’s good in Britain (or England). And what’s wrong with either isn’t the same as what’s wrong with germany, or the Dem. Rep. of Congo, or what not. It may be unkind, but it isn’t dishonest to remember that. **smiling bandit** , what evidence is there that the anti-slavery movement in the UK was motivated by getting one over on Britain’s international rivals? ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/129 "2010-10-08T13:04:43Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > I find it so heartening that there are people who are so deeply affected by the plight of long dead people from history. > I can almost see them agonising over their fates on a daily basis. > > Of course those a lot more cynical then myself might believe them to be crying crocodile tears in an effort to have a stick to beat the Brits with, any stick. I see no reason to suspect people wanting to discuss the more shameful aspects of Britain’s past as wanting to “beat the Brits with a stick”. Most of the events discussed in this thread are hundreds of years old (in the case of the expulsion of the Jews, we’re talking about the best part of a millennium). Modern Brits have no connection with the people who carried out many of these atrocities. ---
**Author:** ![Fuji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a9a28c/32.png) [@Fuji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuji)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/130 "2010-10-08T16:27:24Z")
I’m a little late to the thread here, but relieved to see that nobody so far has mentioned two of my “favorite” episodes of British perfidy: 1. After the Armistice ended the fighting in WW1, the British maintained their [blockade](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_of_World_War_I#Blockade_of_Germany) of Germany for _eight more months_, killing thousands of civilians through starvation. 2. I grew up in a town named after [this villain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffery_Amherst,_1st_Baron_Amherst), who was an avid practitioner of [germ warfare](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare#The_18th_century) against the Native Americans. As someone with 1/2 Irish, 1/4 East Indian, and 1/4 German ancestry, believe me - I have _more_ than enough reasons to hate the British. However, since they also gave us penicillin, the Who, and the world’s greatest breakfasts, I’m inclined to let bygones be bygones.😉 ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/131 "2010-10-08T16:34:35Z")
> [@Fuji](#): > > I’m a little late to the thread here, but relieved to see that nobody so far has mentioned two of my “favorite” episodes of British perfidy: > > 1. After the Armistice ended the fighting in WW1, the British maintained their [blockade](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_of_World_War_I#Blockade_of_Germany) of Germany for _eight more months_, killing thousands of civilians through starvation. Well, if the blockade was justifiable (and I think it probably was) then the war was still going on. Germany was allowed to import food - I think it is pretty reasonable that the Allies wanted to ensure it was only food that was coming in, and Germany was not seeking to gain advantage of a respite to prepare to continue war. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/132 "2010-10-08T16:46:53Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > I worked with a Jewish bloke for a year when I was young and only discovered that he was Jewish when I offered him a bacon sandwhich after he said that he was hungry. > I and the other employees probably would never have known if it hadn’t been for that. > > ot that it made any difference to any of us. As far as I was aware, I didn’t meet a single Jewish person the entire time I lived in Britain. That is to say, I’m sure I did, but they didn’t mention it (or I was sufficiently unaware of Jewish culture to know what they meant). I lived within a few miles of the Solihull synagogue, for one thing. ---
**Author:** ![Fuji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a9a28c/32.png) [@Fuji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuji)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/133 "2010-10-08T16:49:39Z")
> [@villa](#): > > > [@Fuji](#): > > > > I’m a little late to the thread here, but relieved to see that nobody so far has mentioned two of my “favorite” episodes of British perfidy: > > > > 1. After the Armistice ended the fighting in WW1, the British maintained their [blockade](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_of_World_War_I#Blockade_of_Germany) of Germany for _eight more months_, killing thousands of civilians through starvation. > > Well, if the blockade was justifiable (and I think it probably was) then the war was still going on. Germany was allowed to import food - I think it is pretty reasonable that the Allies wanted to ensure it was only food that was coming in, and Germany was not seeking to gain advantage of a respite to prepare to continue war. I’m a bit confused here - I thought the whole point of the Armisitice was to signal the _end_ of the fighting? I understand that the treaties were not signed 'til the following summer, but I still fail to see the justification in maintaing the blockade. The British could hardly be unaware of the suffering inflicted upon the German populace. However, in a somewhat related vein, I wouldn’t describe the RAF’s (and USAAF’s) bombing out of Germany’s largest cities as evil, or at least not anymore evil necessarily than war itself. When I visited Hamburg, Cologne, Bremen, and Munich and saw for myself just how many of the old buildings were gone, I didn’t get mad at the Allies - I got mad at Herr Schickelgruber. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/134 "2010-10-08T16:58:53Z")
I would have thought the point of continuing the blockade was obvious: force the Germans to agree to more favorable treaty terms (as well as ensuring they didn’t get back on a war footing in the meantime). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/135 "2010-10-08T19:00:59Z")
> [@Fuji](#): > > 1. I grew up in a town named after [this villain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffery_Amherst,_1st_Baron_Amherst), who was an avid practitioner of [germ warfare](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare#The_18th_century) against the Native Americans. [The Master Speaks.](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1088/did-whites-ever-give-native-americans-blankets-infected-with-smallpox) ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/136 "2010-10-08T19:31:12Z")
> [@Fuji](#): > > I’m a bit confused here - I thought the whole point of the Armisitice was to signal the _end_ of the fighting? I understand that the treaties were not signed 'til the following summer, but I still fail to see the justification in maintaing the blockade. The British could hardly be unaware of the suffering inflicted upon the German populace. > > However, in a somewhat related vein, I wouldn’t describe the RAF’s (and USAAF’s) bombing out of Germany’s largest cities as evil, or at least not anymore evil necessarily than war itself. When I visited Hamburg, Cologne, Bremen, and Munich and saw for myself just how many of the old buildings were gone, I didn’t get mad at the Allies - I got mad at Herr Schickelgruber. The Armistice was merely a cease fire. OK, that’s an exaggeration, but there was definite fear amongst the British and French military that Germany was simply biding time to rebuild its forces. It wasn’t known how well beld Germany had been, and while the German Army had been soundly beaten, it hadn’t been routed. And remember, they did allow food to be imported. So it wasn’t business as usual in toto. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/137 "2010-10-09T12:58:13Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > > [@Lust4Life](#): > > > > I find it so heartening that there are people who are so deeply affected by the plight of long dead people from history. > > I can almost see them agonising over their fates on a daily basis. > > > > Of course those a lot more cynical then myself might believe them to be crying crocodile tears in an effort to have a stick to beat the Brits with, any stick. > > I see no reason to suspect people wanting to discuss the more shameful aspects of Britain’s past as wanting to “beat the Brits with a stick”. Most of the events discussed in this thread are hundreds of years old (in the case of the expulsion of the Jews, we’re talking about the best part of a millennium). Modern Brits have no connection with the people who carried out many of these atrocities. Irish republicans for one, use amongst other things, Britains actions during the Potato Famine as justification for I.R.A. atrocities, also the so called hundreds of years of oppression of Ireland. So at least one group use historical “sticks” to beat Brits with, and I would not be stunned with amazement if there are other groups out there using the same tactics.(Though not just against Britain) ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2010, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/138 "2010-10-10T03:45:54Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Yeah, and most of the CSA army were poor farmboys, too. Actually, it’s a good bet that a lot of them were. You can’t seriously think that all of the CSA was made up of _Gone with the Wind_-esque plantation owners? :dubious: **Lust4Life** – so because the IRA is anti-British, that means that Britain DIDN’T oppress the Irish for centuries? ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2010, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/139 "2010-10-11T23:45:23Z")
> [@mutantmoose](#): > > > [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > > > But without viewing the world as a place occupied by sub-humans to be destroyed so their resources could be plundered, how could England have paid for its wars? > > They didn’t view the world as a place occupied by sub-humans to be destroyed. They weren’t the Nazis with racial theories. > > a) They didn’t consider anyone to be sub-human and Only the Nazis were Nazis- the British were their own special class. This thread has been very informative in terms of viewing British history in a variety of different lights. But where the Native Americans were concerned, yeah, they treated them pretty much like sub-humans. First, from Columbus’ diary (all these quotes are from A People’s History of the United States). Yeah, I realize he isn’t a Brit, this is to give an idea of what the people were like before the Europeans showed up: > [@](#): > > They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willing traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features… They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane. They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want. Fast forward to the British Invasion: > [@](#): > > In 1585, before there was any permanent English settlement in Virginia, Richard Grenville landed there with seven ships. The Indians he met were hospitable, but when one of them stole a small silver cup, Grenville sacked and burned the whole Indian village. The behavior in the Northeast probably takes the cake: > [@](#): > > Jamestown itself was set up inside the territory of an Indian confederacy; led by the chief, Powhatan. Powhatan watched the English settle on his people’s land, but did not attack, maintaining a posture of coolness. When the English were going through their “starving time” in the winter of 1610, some of them ran off to join the Indians, where they would at least be fed. When the summer came, the governor of the colony sent a messenger to ask Powhatan to return the runaways, whereupon Powhatan, according to the English account, replied with “noe other than prowde and disdaynefull Answers.” Some soldiers were therefore sent out “to take Revendge.” They fell upon an Indian settlement, killed fifteen or sixteen Indians, burned the houses, cut down the corn growing around the village, took the queen of the tribe and her children into boats, then endud up throwing the children overboard “and shoteinge owtt their Braynes in the water.” The queen was later taken off and stabbed to death. That is just the beginning. Indian acts of retaliation for this were treated as cause for total war. The English set out to starve or kill them all, and it was no matter of inattention or negligence. > [@mutantmoose](#): > > b) They didn’t want to destroy anyone > > They considered people as not British and therefore not civilised and they thought they could educate them and bring the light of civilisation to them. The hell they didn’t want to destroy anyone. And they were not out to bring the light of civilization to all, at least not in all cases. Again from the same source: > [@](#): > > The governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Wintrhop, created the excuse to take Indian land by declaring the area legally “a vacuum”. The Indians, he said, had not “subdued” the land, and therefore had only a “natural” right to it, but not a “civil right.” A “natural right” did not have legal standing. > [@](#): > > Not able to enslave the Indians, not able to live with them, the English decided to exterminate them. Edmund Morgan writes, in his history of early Virginia, American Slavery, American Freedom: > Since the Indians were better woodsmen than the English and virtually impossible to track down, the method was to feign peaceful intentions, let them settle down and plant their corn wherever they chose, and then, just before harvest, fall upon them, killing as many as possible and burning the corn. > [@](#): > > The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalms 2:8: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.” > [@](#): > > The Puritans lived in uneasy truce with the Pequot Indians, who occupied what is now southern Connecticut and Rhode Island. But they wanted them out of the way; they wanted their land. And they seemed to want also to establish their rule firmly over Connecticut settlers in that area. The murder of a white trader, Indian-kidnapper, and troublemaker became an excuse to make war on the Pequots in 1636: > A punitive expedition left Boston to attack the Narragansett Indians on Block Island, who were lumped with the Pequots… The English landed and killed some Indians, but the rest hid in the thick forests of the island and the English went from one deserted village to the next, destroying crops. Then they sailed back to the mainland and raided Pequot villages along the coast, destroying crops again. One of the officers of that expedition, in his account, gives some insight into the Pequots they ecnountered: “The Indians spying of us came running in multitudes along the water side crying, What cheer, Englishmen, what cheer, what do you come for? They not thinking we intended war, went on cheerfully…” > [@](#): > > So the war with the Pequots began. Massacres took place on both sides. The English developed a tactic of warfare used earlier by Cortes and later, in the twentieth century, even more systematically: deliberate attacks on noncombatants for the purpose of terrorizing the enemy. This is ethnohistorian Francis Jennings’s interpretation of Captain John Mason’s attack on a Pequot village on the Mystic River near Long Island Sound: “Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors, which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy’s will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective.” > [@](#): > > William Bradford, in his History of the Plymouth Plantation written at the time, describes John Mason’s raid on the Pequot village: > “Those that scaped the fire were slaine with the sword: some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escaped. It was conceived that they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fryer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and the gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wroght so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie” > [@](#): > > A footnote in Vigil Vogel’s book This Land Was Ours (1972) says: “The official figure on the number of Pequots now in Connecticut is twenty-one persons.” There is quite a bit more. Point is, I don’t know what else it would look like to treat people as sub-humans to be destroyed. So, maybe these events deserve consideration as the winner. ---
**Author:** ![Fuji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a9a28c/32.png) [@Fuji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuji)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2010, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444/140 "2010-10-12T21:23:41Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I would have thought the point of continuing the blockade was obvious: force the Germans to agree to more favorable treaty terms (as well as ensuring they didn’t get back on a war footing in the meantime). I think you are at least partially correct, but I hardly see that as obviating the depravity of this action. After the Armistice, the UK was under no military threat at all from Germany. To continue to starve civilians at this point is morally indefensible, in my opinion. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-is-the-most-evil-episode-in-british-history/555444.md?page=8)