r/polandball • u/StopTimes Moravia • Feb 11 '15
redditormade British colonial policy, Ep.1
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u/EngineerPON3 Feb 11 '15
So this is going to be a series?
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u/StopTimes Feb 11 '15
Maybe. I have some, only slightly dumb ideas that relate to the british colonialism. I'll probably stop at episode two and let everyone wait for episode three for eleven years.
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u/Thetonn Feb 11 '15
Then, when everyone lets down their guard after a century of no expansion, you launch the second wave of conquest which restores your nation to its just dignity? Correct?
Art anticipating life, I suppose.
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Feb 12 '15
Last panel. Is he of drinking green tea, and with sugar lumps? Horrendous travesty in both ways!
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u/DickRhino Feb 12 '15
According to legend, a British journalist chronicling the colonial wars wrote that the Maxim gun was such a disgusting and inhumane weapon that "it could only ever be allowed to be used in colonial wars". Aaah, good ol' 19th century racism.
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u/New_Katipunan Feb 12 '15
You know, in that sense, WW1 is a kind of cosmic revenge on Europeans.
They saw for themselves what machine guns could do to people during their colonial campaigns. For some reason, they didn't think machine guns could do the same thing to them. (I'm paraphrasing a memorable passage I read in a book; trying to remember which book it was).
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Feb 12 '15
Rapid-fire, breech-loading artillery firing high-explosive shells did more to create static trench warfare than the machine gun ever did.
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Feb 12 '15
They had some experience in the Boer campaign.
WWI actually started out pretty mobile, and the powers that be thought that it would go much like that.
Then it got bogged down. The Somme, Verdun, etc...
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u/PerfectHair Feb 12 '15
Well I mean have you ever tried to run through that much mud? No surprise they got stuck.
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u/ddosn Feb 14 '15
Except, you know, the British didnt just turn up in Africa one day and start mowing down people with machine guns.
There were wuite a few large, powerful tribes who saw the British as just another tribe. And, as large powerful tribes were usually lead by headstrong war-chiefs, warlords and kings, they would attack the British, and the British would fight back.
Its not our fault we had better weapons.
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u/heatseekingwhale Feb 18 '15
I hear you. You just want to loot the place and people just keep bothering you. So barbaric.
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u/International_KB Feb 12 '15
One of the interesting side-effects of the movement towards international law in the 19th C was that it actually disadvantaged the non-Europeans. The Geneva and Hague conventions were only applicable to the 'civilised' peoples who signed them, therefore providing a legal fig-leaf for the bombing and massacring of African and Asian populations.
There were some chilling legal manoeuvres to show how massacring and bombing 'savage' civilians, to a degree increasingly unacceptable in Europe, was actually the most 'humane' option.
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Feb 17 '15
This is one if the reasons why Britain and France had so few at the start of WW1, only a few hundred between them. German (expecting a war with Russia) had produced 12,000 machine guns giving them a massive tech advantage.
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u/International_KB Feb 11 '15
Are you suggesting that massacring people to steal their land isn't civilised? Piffle paffle!
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Feb 11 '15
There was no raping or decapitating involved, so it was civilised.
And we didn't steal their land, we conquered it, just as an alpha male conquers a rival's territory after they submit or are killed.
The fact that the rivals happened to be closer to prey than rivals is besides the point.
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u/DrunkRobot97 Feb 11 '15
There was no raping or decapitating involved, so it was civilised.
If you're going to kill someone, it costs nothing to be polite about it.
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Feb 11 '15
Oh, the British decapitated all right. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahadur_Shah_II#Reign.
Also strapped people to cannons and lit the fuses. http://www.executedtoday.com/2011/06/13/1857-blown-from-cannons-sepoy-rebellion/
Sooo...no, not civilized by your definition.
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u/Primarycore Feb 11 '15
He never said strapping people to cannons and blowing them to a thousand pieces wasn't civilised though. I mean Stalin just sent everybody to the firing squads, where's the creativity in that? Brits were polite enough to execute people in new ways, kind of when an American prisoner gets the honour of being the first one executed with a brand-new drug combination.
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u/1gnominious Feb 12 '15
jots down "piffle paffle" in his British to English dictionary. Right next to pish posh and twit twat
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Feb 11 '15
The classic poems on this theme:
A Mutiny resulted.
I never shall forget the way
That Blood upon this awful day
Preserved us all from death.
He stood upon a little mound,
Cast his lethargic eyes around,
And said beneath his breath :
"Whatever happens we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not."
He marked them in their rude advance,
He hushed their rebel cheers ;
With one extremely vulgar glance
He broke the Mutineers.
(I have a picture in my book
Of how he quelled them with a look.)
We shot and hanged a few, and then
The rest became devoted men.
From THE MODERN TRAVELLER, Hilaire Belloc.
Take up the White Man's burden, Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.
From The White Man's Burden, Rudyard Kipling, 1899.
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u/1CEb3ar Feb 11 '15
Bringing light to the Dark ContinentTM , now with tea included on your travels.
How come that the Brits didn't conquer any land in Europe except some islands, but conquered every island and other uncivilized places everywhere else in the world?
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Feb 11 '15 edited Feb 11 '15
but conquered every island and other uncivilized places everywhere else in the world?
Because we wanted to live somewhere with better weather.
And India was just as uncivilised as continental Europe at the time, fyi.
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u/W1ndwolf Feb 11 '15
Whilst colonising I do believe you drink Gin & Tonic. It helps deal with the ungodly heat and malaria.
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u/carbonite_duckface Feb 12 '15
Shortly followed by some hoppy ale. I think that's how IPA got its name. Hops have some natural anti-microbial properties in them. The flavour of the ales that had a lot of hops survived the long sea journeys better.
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u/W1ndwolf Feb 12 '15
Truth be told, the British knew how to have a good time committing atrocities!
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u/Lens_key Feb 12 '15
Well they had half of France before they lost it all in the 100 years war.
If it counts, Britain still has Gibralter, and used to have Malta.
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u/1gnominious Feb 12 '15
Because it's much easier to colonize people who don't shoot back. As soon as the colonies started shooting back the Brits pulled out.
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u/Londonercalling Feb 12 '15
That's really not how decolonisation of India happened at all.
I 'm less familiar with Africam withdrawal
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u/The_Messiah Feb 12 '15
19th century Britain tried to avoid getting involved in European conflicts. Colonising Belgium would have just started long, pointless wars for no real gain.
On the other hand, Australian Aborigines didn't have the weaponry or resistance to disease that the Belgians had. Also they were black, which made them easier to justify conquering back then.
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u/demostravius Feb 13 '15
The population in France and Germany make it far too expensive in both money and manpower to be worth holding onto territories in Europe. The UK specialised in highly trained and effective troops and ships, but never had a standing army large enough to invade France or Germany.
It also has to be worth taking, and make more money than the cost of holding it. Trying to take bits of Spain for example would be difficult and entirely not worth the pay out (with the exception of gibraltar), same with France. Even if we took it, holding a part of France would be incredibly hard and not generate much income.
Taking parts of Scandinavia would probably have been possible but would have resulted in a lot of fighting and not too much gain, as the easier to take parts are heavy in furs and fishing (can get these from elsewhere with a lot less trouble).
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u/Eestiball Feb 11 '15
Ah, the Vickers machine gun. Bringing civilization to unwashed savages one belt at a time.
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u/dtwn Feb 12 '15
That's a Maxim, the Vickers came later. Though it's probably all new tech for you Eesti. It's okay.
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u/Lord_Wrath Feb 12 '15
History tells us that Europeans are easily the most militant groups of humans ever to exist, and yet their notions of "civilized" are actually quite different than the Victorian criteria we might imagine. Being "civilized" in the eyes of a European power means that you're:
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Christian
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White
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All of the above
The entire notion of being "civilized" is just one tool in a systematically racial system of expansion. People will support these wars if they believe that what they're doing is right, huh?
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u/lykanauto Feb 11 '15
There is nothing more civilized than a tea, machine gun and some savages.
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Feb 12 '15
Hm, I read "sausages".
I'd like tea, a machine gun, and some sausages.
Savages, not so much.
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u/ddosn Feb 14 '15
Except, you know, the British didnt just turn up in Africa one day and start mowing down people with machine guns.
There were quite a few large, powerful tribes who saw the British as just another tribe. And, as large powerful tribes were usually lead by headstrong war-chiefs, warlords and kings who thought they could take advantage of the seemingly weak British, they would attack the British, and the British would fight back.
Its not our fault we had better weapons.
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u/Kuevb Feb 11 '15
UK, colonize Kim Jong's house plox!
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u/Creshal Feb 12 '15
But the point of UK's colonization was to get into places less horrible and inhospitable than Britain.
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Feb 11 '15
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u/International_KB Feb 11 '15
Hiram Maxim was God?
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Feb 11 '15
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u/Primarycore Feb 11 '15
Phytophthora infestans
Sigh now I must open a new browser tab and check Wikipedia. You Brits and your fancy schmancy words.
This post was sponsored by the American English Superiority Committee.
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u/NappyDappy Feb 12 '15
It was very clever use of piling and using resources from conquered colonies to take over new areas.
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Feb 12 '15
What is in Africa that Britain could possibly want?
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u/pure_satire Feb 12 '15
Land the french could have taken
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u/Neosantana Feb 12 '15
People underestimate the lengths the English and the French would go to simply to fuck with one another.
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u/Hansafan Feb 13 '15
The "because we can't let them have it"-factor is probably the biggest motivation in colonial history.
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Feb 12 '15
Machine gun targets, duh.
(Also diamonds, gold, bauxite, emeralds, vast swathes of farmland, slaves, iron, copper, donut mines, shrubberies, you name it.)
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u/CountVorkosigan Feb 12 '15
Note red lettering indicating local resources: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Africa_%281909%29.jpg
Highlights include but are not limited to: Fish, whales, wax, feathers, pearls, castor oil, rubber, diamonds, iron, copper, sugar, ivory, tobacco, millet, firs, indigo, cotton, lemons, lead, linseed, mercury, dates, wool, figs, barley, furs, pink corals, gums, bananas, mahogany, gold, palm oil, wine, coal, sesame, oranges, myrrh, cocoa, and ebony.
Not including the strategic locations of ports for refueling or launching ships to the colonies of India, Australia, New Zealand and all points east; ports like Suez, Zanzibar, and Capetown. Plus a strong strategic point in the Mediterranean via Alexandria that let them contest French and Ottoman/Turkish control of the sea. Remember, this is the British Empire. It's hard to rule the waves if you don't have any friendly ports to sail out of.
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u/Blekanly Feb 13 '15
May have to stop a certain offspring from being afraid of spirits and such too, could do with some civilizing.
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u/rindindin Feb 12 '15
Ah yes, nothing like the majesty of the Maxim gun to make colonizing the savages that much easier.
Those damn negros won't be nearing us, no sir. Until the damn French gives them weapons that is. Those frog-loving sons of bitches...
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u/roflplatypus Feb 11 '15
Heart of Darkness much?