Calling Them as They Come

1/21/2008, 10:25 PM

After having seen the presentation, Empire of Good Intentions, I was intrigued to read further upon the history of the politics surrounding the situation. I went to the BBC's website and obtained some relevant information regarding the dispute between Politicians Diraeli and Gladstone. The report submitted by British constitutional historian, Robert Blake, compares their political careers, and ambitiously charts their in-house political disputes.

As the document lingers on, the audience obtains a deeper understanding into who these gentlemen really were. It wasn't their personal lives (or clashing personalities) however, that had lasting implications - it was their political decisions. Their choices, while to them (from a palace in the heart of the Empire of Good Intentions), had lasting and consequential effects on a whole continent, and or culture.

Now, before I venture too quickly into a subject that I merely wish to speculate on, I wish to clarify that I am just surface diving. If I were to be attempting much else, I would be vastly out of place - I have just begun the class, and will hopefully be examining more the literature aspect of it rather than the historical implications.

Regardless, I want to bring the importance of such figures, found in any aristocracy or unjust administration, into question, and call them out on it for the remainder of this blog. As the movie explains, the 1840s disaster on the Irish coast was occurring at a time when, simultaneously, the Victorian Empress of India made a conscientious decision to sacrifice the surplus of grain on the other side of the Coast, thereby excluding a very capable means of sustenance from reaching the mouths of the famished.

The protest, at this point, against my above claim might sound like this: She had a legitimate interest to keep the market steadfast, instead of artificially altering the standard. As such, I am forced to press forward, by simplifying my argument into the starkness of black and white, of which I see the issue: Are human lives not more important than an artificial institution, manmade and fostered by the very people of which are not dying?

Yes, there were programs instated by the English government: luckily, there were Trevallion's policies, akin to FDR's, which made futile jobs in order for the populace to make enough money in which to buy foods, and soup kitchens, along with the whole lot of other socialist policy. However, as stated by the film, the dedication by the government for the policy soon ceased, at a crucial and dire time. Yet as always, the tired beaten populace still remained, having to relocate to the only place available: the work houses.

In derailing off this topic, I wish to highlight other inherent problems in the whole tradition of imperialism. Seeing as expansionist policy is loosely defined as expanding one's territory outward to encompass more land (and hopefully tradition and culture), we should ask where this land suddenly appears from?

UNDER THE FEET OF OTHER PEOPLE, WHO INHABITED THE LAND BEFORE.

Indian citizens were a deeply conservative people with traditions and ways of life not understandable, (FOR A REASON), by the Western culture. The British found a whole civilization, seemingly unsullied by Western ideas, and subsequently injected a supposed vaccine, or cure, to bring them up to date. As sure as dirt though, the vaccine was not a solution, nor was there a problem to begin with.

The premise that there was something wrong with the Eastern Culture (Africa, India or any differing culture) is a premise that I can't accept. Therefore, if there is no premise, then a conclusion can not follow, and the claim that a solution was needed is therefore superfluous.

I think maybe the fundamental root problem for British Expansionists (which eventually brought about their demise), would have to be a lack of tolerance.