Absolutely true. I think we are on the same page. I am claiming, though, that had Britain walked away in late 1916 without a victory, then you might have seen a revolution in the UK. Even with the victory, you saw the massive changes - and also saw overtly political strike action, such as the dockers refusing to load munitions to fight the Reds, and the police strike in London. Had the Entente won in 1914, then yes, I agree, no social unrest. But by late 1916, things were very different.
In order to establish that the British considered the native Indians to be sub-human you would need to come up with some evidence (any evidence at all) that anyone ever said or did anything that showed they held that viewpoint.
Even your own quotes show that the British treated the Pequot as people with legal rights -
It may be a bullshit rationale but it shows they considered the Indians to have legal rights the same as anyone else.
As regards the war. The Pequot allied with the Dutch against the British which was a bad move. There was also a series of attacks from the Pequot against the settlers. Back then the British didn’t tend to lose wars and they did whatever was necessary to overcome the enemy. That usually meant using overwhelming force although they did allow several hundred women and children to leave the fight zone when they had the Pequot surrounded in a swamp near Fairfield.
The Pequot could have surrendered at the swamp battle but they refused. So once again - evidence that they had a peaceful exit strategy should they wish to take it. Evidence that the British were not particularly set on destruction.
Another factor is that the British never really got a proper hold on north America. The settlers that were there were all puritans who had extreme feelings about “heathens” typical of most religious extremists even today. These puritans exerted a lot of pressure on the small British force that was there. This pressure allied to the occasional maniac commanding officer led to excessive force being used against the Indians in the case of the Pequot. But the British army were never really in North America in great numbers. If they had been then the pressure exerted by the Puritans would have been easier to resist and they may have been able to use more reasonable amounts of force to subdue the enemy.
Ultimately though, losing was not an option for the British. Whether that be against the Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Indians or whoever. The British didn’t care who the opponents were. But they didn’t consider any of them to be sub-human and they weren’t hell bent on destruction unless absolutely necessary to win a war. Unfortunately the Pequot were up against three main opponents:
- the british army who didn’t lose wars
- the Puritans who considered them heathens
- some maniac British officers who, far away from their base of command in Britain, acted on their own instincts
It’s a very sad story but in terms of the actual numbers of people who died, I’m sure it’s nowhere near the top in terms of number of people killed by the British during the course of a war
There weren’t really any British regular officers in the Pequot War. The soldiers were all colonial militia.
Yeah although John Mason was an officer in the army before he emigrated to America.
So was Myles Standish, and John Underhill in the Dutch army.
Actually I wasn’t very clear above. I was kind of combining the whole North America adventure with the specific Pequot thing in one post. I meant that if the proper army had been there in more numbers then things might have panned out differently and also that the soldiers who were there (ex-soldiers) still had the same mentality of British superiority.
I don’t know if the British Army in the 1630s was the same sort of thing it would go on to be, though. This was even before the New Model Army. There wasn’t the kind of professionalism yet that there would go on to be.
Actually, if I couldn’t conceive of it being true I would have flat out denied it.
I asked for cites because I CAN imagine it being true, but I’m not willing to accept it as such without some evidence.
Well, BrainGlutton’s reply to my initial post in this thread refers back to one of Cecil’s columns. In that column, Cecil quotes a letter sent from Colonel Henry Bouquet to Lord Jeffrey Amherst, dated July 13, 1763:
“P.S. I will try to inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to oppose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniard’s Method, and hunt them with English Dogs. Supported by Rangers, and some Light Horse, who would I think effectively extirpate or remove that Vermine.”
I think referring to them as “vermin” satisfies your request for evidence in this case.
It may have been a German war aim, but it was one which utterly unrealized. Besides - who started trying to starve whose populace first?
Moreover, by the same logic, as the quest for Lebensraum was one of Germany’s war aims in WW2, the Allies would have been morally justified in enslaving and exterminating the Germans in the spring of 1945.
And whose navy was it that enforced the prohibition on Baltic fishing in the months subsequent to the Armisitce? :dubious:
It was an option that was never offered, as far as I am aware.
That’s more than a little unfair. I said I don’t feel a lot of sympathy - not saying whether it is right or wrong based on that. And naval blockades are, I believe, within the accepted rules of war. Enslaving and exterminating populations isn’t.
Don’t understimate too the privations suffered by the English working class as a result of the war and the U-boat blockades, as well as the diversion of fuel in particular to the military. So I wouldn’t say utterly unrealized.
And I have never understood the argument (that’s made a lot about bombing in WW2) that seems to excuse the Germans for not being as good at something. That Coventry was an order of magnitude significantly lower than Hamburg & Cologne doesn’t reallys eem relevant to me - it’s simply because the Luftwaffe had limited numbers of crappy bombers.
I am sure the Royal Navy. And looking back, I’ve learned things in this discussion and probably suffered a little bit of knee jerk reaction on this. Looking back at it, with the benefit of hindsight, continuing the blockade agaisnt civilians wasn’t a good thing to do. However, I don’t think I’d call it “the most evil episode” given the uncertainty about the possibility of Germany merely trying to wait out the winter (lets remember in Spring 1918 Operation Michel got within shelling range of Paris). Again, with hindsight, that offensive crippled the German Army, but in the 100 Days Offensive leading up to the Armistice, the Allies had suffered over a million casualties. It wasn’t clear to anyone the German Army was broken beyond repair.
And there’s also the unpleasant, but real consideration that the British and French populace wasn’t going to accept mollycoddling the Germans.
I’m not sure it was either, but it could have been offered by the Germans, or indeed unilaterally undertaken.
I dunno. He was a military man and no doubt an unpleasant piece of work but that is very weak evidence of an official British view of the Indians as sub-human. I’m sure he didn’t like the Indians and spoke in strong terms about them but that’s just one guy.
From here:
Also here’s an excerpt of a letter from a subordinate of Amherst’s, Henry Bouquet:
Couple of things here:
-
note that no order to extirpate was actually given
-
Bouquet claims that they have forfeited their rights to humanity. This means he accepts that they have rights to humanity but that they have forfeited them by their actions. By contrast, Hitler reckoned the Jews didn’t even have rights to humanity in the first place.
I’m still not seeing a genuine doctrine of sub humanity, just bluff and bluster from angry straight talking military men.
Incredibly disingenuous answer, but fitting with your other contributions to the thread. So the guy says they are vermin that cant be considered part of humanity, but to you that seems as rather benign stuff.
I am often irked by people going back on centuries away treks through history to find something to be mad at (granted, the framing ot the topic kind of leads to that), but the only thing that surpasses it is people actually defending those same atrocities.
P.S: “The British Army doesnt lose any wars”. Just lol.
I didn’t defend any atrocities I just said they didn’t think the Indians were sub human
There was this thing called the Empire which involved fighting (and winning) lots of wars all over the world. Admittedly in the time period we’re talking about the military expansion was just getting going but it was still gradually and inexorably becoming formidable.
OK. Sorry if you thought I was being unfair - I was just going off what I read in your posts. I didn’t mean in any way to imply that you were tolerant of genocide.
Oh sure, they had rationing. But when I meant “unrealized”, I meant specifically deaths directly attributable to starvation. I’m fairly certain that no Britons starved to death because of German U-Boats (in either war).
I didn’t make that argument, and I never would. I fully agree with what you wrote here. The Germans started civilian aerial bombardment (again, both wars), and then had to “reap the whirlwind”. Much like I don’t feel that bad about the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And the Luftwaffe really did have shit for bombers. “Flying Pencils”? Are you kidding me? 
Same here. I probably wouldn’t even had posted at all had not the provocative thread title got me ithcing to make my own contribution.
Agreed that it’s not even in the top 20 of the Evil British Deeds list. But most of the other ones were already taken by the time I posted.
Still disagree that “it wasn’t clear to anyone the German Army was broken beyond repair,” but not enough to pursue it any futher. And I also agree that the British and French citizenry probably wouldn’t have tolerated a lenient peace (thought I doubt that many were aware of the on-going blockade).
I’m not sure there was even much of a functioning German government on 11 November 1918. And without established precedent, how is any fragile coalition even going to conceive of taking this step?
I think this constitutes a moving of goalposts. Referring back to your original post, you asked for some evidence, and I provided some. I never made any comparisons to the Nazi conception of Untermenschen. I think most reasonable people can agree that referring to a group of people as “vermin” is to deny their basic humanity.
Erm, why aren’t repeated acts of genocide (or, 'scuse me, attempted genocide) regarded as a pattern of treating non-Brits as sub-humans?
TBH, it is a very minor distinction but it seems important here. I’d argue that the Brits saw other races not as sub-human but as sub-British. They looked down on other humans just for not being British, not for not being human.
That’s OK. I just think that given it was a German war policy to starve Britain out of the war, the fact Britain managed to do it more successfully to the Germans isn’t a cause for wailing and gnashing of teeth.
I don’t know, and to run the risk of sounding like a lawyer, it depends on what you mean by starve. I have no doubt that the U-boat blockade caused deaths of civilians (apart from Merchant Seamen). Were they out and out starvation? Probably not - but I am certain (though have no proof at the moment) that people died from diseases that were they better fed they wouldn’t have died from. Especially the elderly and young. And it isn’t just food - there are photos of working class streets in London without front doors because people had to burn them to stop themselves from freezing.
I always think Harris is treated badly. What people don’t recognize is that bombing cities developed as an idea to make war less likely. Not that it worked out that way of course.
It’s why I don’t buy all the “what if Germany had got the bomb” scenarios. By the time it was possible to develop it, they had no way of delivering it, and no likelihood of developing a system to do it. V2’s couldn’t carry the weight, and I believe had a 50% failure rate on the launch pad.
The immediate post-war period is fascinating to me. How they sold the intervention in Russia frankly boggles my mind.