what british really learnt

[nagarifle]

thanks Grumpy, most informative, am almost a nagasher as can eat a chilly and not the dog.

[timmy]

With apologies to my American friends, the original Americans are still enslaved. Oh OK, not really enslaved, but on reservations and are trotted out as tourist attractions a la Wild Bill Hickock's Wild West show (I knew a native American exchange student once, and these observations are from talks with him. Things might have changed in the last 14-15 years, so I may be wrong).

Regarding this statement, I don't think it is valid, yet there are a lot of injustices that still remain with Native Americans today. It's just that this characterization doesn't match, IMO. Casino companies, in some cases, do take advantage of the tribes. In other cases, the tribes do quite well owning their own casinos and use the income from them responsibly. Then there are occasions when one tribe, gaining money from its casinos, whips up the anti-gambling fury of some sectors of the public to block other tribes from cashing in with their own casinos (The Jack Abramoff case).

I think that the subject is fairly complex, and I haven't touched on its most important points.

Washington and the other founding fathers, although I respect them greatly (and wish our founders were as enlightened) were, at one level, dissident colonialists, who wanted to part ways with the mother country, due to certain differences with the government of the said mother country.

Yes, and they also wrote about inalienable rights and owned slaves. Some even impregnated them, and owned their own children. The chief intellectual among them, Thomas Jefferson, is one of these. When I point this out, I never avoid a barrage of criticism from almost every American, except I always get agreement from African Americans...

Apparently, it makes a difference if one profited from slavery or looked like a slave owner, as opposed to being a descendant of someone who was "owned."

Just as an interesting point: The Five Native American Nations that Andrew Jackson dispossessed in Georgia and who were sent to Oklahoma were noted for their adoption of the White Man's ways. In Oklahoma, they owned slaves and fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. When, in recent years, the descendants of these slaves asked to share in the tribal benefits and wealth their forefathers helped create as slaves with no recompense, they were refused.

See what I mean about complexity?

Colonialism in the US continued even after Independence, with the only difference being that now the home government (instead of the King sitting across the "pond") expanded into virgin territory (or at least virgin for the people of European descent (aka "palefaces"). The "redskins" were pushed out, massacred (anyone remember Custer?), and generally treated worse than the Brits ever treated us. (my use of "paleface" and "redskin" above is not racist, but only quoting what was common in those days).

Moreover, since the colonialists were expanding into hitherto unexplored (by whites) country and fighting against Native Americans, wildlife, Spanish / Mexicans (in Texas, say), and amongst each other, guns & weapons were a need. So most of them were armed.

Regarding Custer, he was a colorful figure with his own faults, who got caught up in a much larger set of conditions and has become the figure for the US's treatment of Native American tribes as a whole.

Regarding the imperialism you mention, there was the issue of Texas, which had a lot to do with the attempts of slave owners to perpetuate their slave economy, even as it was fading and even as, economically, they were beginning to be a colony of the North and the bankers of New York. One of those bankers, Stillman, owned a bank in New York and plantations in Texas. When the Civil War broke out, he carted his cotton, and had others pay him to cart theirs, to Matamoros, Mexico (right across the Rio Grande) and smuggled it out to markets in New York, where it was sold to contribute to the Union war effort. An interesting way of "double dipping."

After the Civil War, Benito Juarez's resistance to the French puppet Maximilian in Mexico was funded by loans from Yankee businessmen. The strength of those loans and the size of the debt tied Mexico to an imperialistic economic American structure that defeated the attempts of the British, French, and Germans to break into for their own imperialistic purposes. The force of that imperialistic economics guided the course of Porfirio Diaz, when America removed more wealth from Mexico in 30 years than the Spanish had been unable to do in 300, shaped the course of the Mexican Revolution, and prevented Mexico from ever establishing a true democracy.

You are also leaving out stories about Haiti, Nicaragua, Honduras, Columbia, Panama, The Philippines, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. And Hawaii.

It is a sad commentary on human affairs that, despite all of the differences between groups of people (however you divide them up), we all put our pants on one leg at a time.

In India, the "gun ban", as per my information, started post-1857 Mutiny.

However, all said and done, it is not a wonder that the British ruled the way they did. It was expected from Macaulay, Dalhousie, etc. etc. as employees of the Honourable East India Company (to give its full name) or as representatives of His/Her Majesty to ensure that the Empire was safe and sound, the taxes flowed in, British citizens were not massacred, etc.

The wonder is that our "native" government has continued the same laws. One wonders whether these guys are as afraid of being overthrown as the British were!!

It would appear that the same advantages that flowed to the British as a result of their policies are welcomed by others.

[goodboy_mentor]

It would appear that the same advantages that flowed to the British as a result of their policies are welcomed by others.

Welcomed by others because sometimes their aims, objectives and goals are same but under the cover of "democracy" etc.. Also largely due to the ignorance and silence of the local population.

[Grumpy]

By the way Naga, the oft expressed complaint that the British royal family are of German descent is something of a `red herring` as English and British Kings imported wives from Europe for centuries. The Tudors were Welsh and the Stuarts were Scottish. Hardly an unbroken`British` pedigree ..... and anyway, George I was a great grandson of the Stuart King James I.
There were approximately 50 individuals who were more closely related to Queen Anne but they were all prevented from accession to the British throne because of being catholic - the 1701 Act of Settlement prevented catholics acceding to the throne.
The British, genetically, are mostly British - the term `Anglo-Saxon is a misnomer and inaccurate. Britain was invaded by the Romans, Angles, Saxon, Jutes, Frisians, Swabians, Franks, Danes, Normans who all had a minimal effect upon the British as a race. The actual situation is even more complicated but I can`t be bothered to go into that. Anyway, what it all means is that whilst the British might be something of a mongrel race ( but not much ) the British royal family are greater mongrels as regards their breeding.

[timmy]

I have seen a genealogy of the Russian royal family, the Romanovs. It figured that Nicholas II was 1/256th Russian, assuming that Catherine the Great was actually impregnated by her husband, which has some doubt about it. Almost all the rest was German.

I would guess that, with the Windsor-Mountbatten family (I think that's what they call themselves now) are hardly different.

The big joke about this is that everyone comes from some other group of people.

The genetic difference between us and a banana is about 50% -- we share half of our genes with a banana.

The genetic difference between us and chimpanzees is between 1% and 4%.

The genetic difference between all humans is between 0.1% and 0.4%. I think a lot of these stereotypes about different people come from too much pot smoking. So many of our differences are cultural and environmentally influenced.

[Grumpy]

Absolutely right !
We also share 70% of our genes with slugs.
It all goes to show just how ridiculous racism is.
Is it racist to not like bananas ?
Nicholas II`s mother was Danish. His paternal grandmother was German. His maternal grandfather was Danish and his maternal grandmother German. That`s only two generations and already he`s only one quarter Russian ! Go back a little further and the French make a showing and he becomes even more German.
The British Royal Family are the House of Windsor. George V changed it from Saxe Coburg Gotha ( after Prince Albert, Queen Victoria`s consort ) in 1917 .... for obvious reasons.
It`s reckoned that Nicholas II looked very much like His first cousin Kaiser Wilhelm. I reckon he looks just as much like George V who was also a first cousin.

[Sujay]

> Which they successfully did and got away with it
> The wheels of time are turning - UK will follow the way of the USSR.
> Change is constant & consistent - The Old order changes, Yielding to the new, Lest one old tradition be corrupted by the new!
Briha

If so , what will happen to us Indians ( usually the best of the lot among Indians ) queuing up to settle down in Britain and other countries
administered by the "White Man" ?

[timmy]

Nicholas II did look a lot like George V. Their mothers were Danish sisters, Dagmar (throne name: Marie) and Alexandra.

As far as "Willy" looking like "Nicky," I don't see a resemblance. The only relation I can see between those two is that Wilhelm II's mother and Alexandra's (Nicholas II's wife) mother were sisters, daughters of Queen Victoria. So Willy was a first cousin of Nicky's wife, not Nicky.

Looking over all of those figures from history, it seems that the inbreeding produced a surprising number of culls.

Look at all of the German princesses here in the Romanov line (Catherine the Great was, of course, German):
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_F2SDoy4so8s/S ... omanov.jpg

Victoria's daughters related almost all of Europe into one hemophilic family:

http://newsletters.britannica.com/image ... indsor.jpg

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/image ... sp_so3.gif

Regarding name changes, don't forget Prince Philip's family changing theirs from Battenberg to Mountbatten is interesting. The Battenbergs descend from another daughter of Queen Victoria, so Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth are some kind of cousins, as well.

The whole business reminds me of an Aspen Tree grove out in the American West. They all look like individual trees above the ground, but underneath, they are all sproutings of the same root network underneath, and are genetically identical.

[timmy]

If so , what will happen to us Indians ( usually the best of the lot among Indians ) queuing up to settle down in Britain and other countries
administered by the "White Man" ?

Let's see:

Tata has Jaguar and Land Rover

BMW has Rolls Royce and Mini

Volkswagen has Bentley

It seems to me that you need to push in the queue and fight with the Germans to get there, and not worry about the Russians.

My recommendation would be to stick with Rajinikanth and do what he does.

[Grumpy]

Cracking up at your pointing-out the similarities of a group of trees to european monarchy. Are you implying that they`re all woodentops ? LOL.
Yup, HM and Prince Phillip are third cousins ...... Whatever that is. I`m not even confident I know what a second cousin is.
Phillip was actually Prince Phillip Schleswig-Holstein-Sondeburg-Glucksberg of Greece and Denmark ..... He gave up his Greek and Danish titles, converted from Greek orthodoxy to Church of England, changed his surname to Mountbatten after his British maternal grandparents and became a British citizen. It was Prince Louis Battenberg who changed the family name to the anglicised form of Mountbatten in 1917 becoming Marquess of Milford Haven. His second son, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was Prince Phillips uncle.
I think you`re right that Nicholas II and Kaiser Bill weren`t first cousins .... probably second cousins but I`ve lost interest in trying to work it all out. lol. His mother, Dagmar/Maria, shared the same ( original ) family name as Prince Phillip so they also were related somehow.
Yeah, a periodic cull was inevitable I reckon ...... With everybody related to everybody, if revolution didn`t kill-off some of them, genetic disorders obliged.

[Grumpy]

Lotus are Malaysian owned ... MG are Chinese owned and any new MGs will be built in China.
A Russian owned TVR but managed to completely balls-up the company. Happily they`re back in British ownership and it looks likely that car manufacture will commence again.
What is Russian owned - apart from Chelsea FC ?

[Grumpy]

I wonder if Tsar Nicholas II had an opinion on Indian gun ownership laws ?

[xl_target]

I wonder if Tsar Nicholas II had an opinion on Indian gun ownership laws ?

I think poor Nicky had more important things to worry about than Indian gun laws .

As far as "Willy" looking like "Nicky," I don't see a resemblance.

I don't know about his resemblance to "Willy", Tim, but he did look a little like George V. Apart from the whiskers, there does appear to be some resemblance.

Tsar Nicholas II and George V

[timmy]

I have heard some say nasty things about TVRs.

Those things may be true or not. All I can say is that I saw one near the BT Labs at Ipswich in 1998, a little metallic blue roadster, and my heart was smitten. A lovely looking machine.

Regarding Tsar Nicholas II's opinion, I'm sure he had many. His opinion changed to conform to that of the last person who talked to him. He was a disingenuous, false, ignorant man, except when it came to his wife. Being the ruler of anything greater than the local dog pound was beyond him, and he apparently knew it, but his pride and arrogance kept him from stepping aside. So his faults plunged a huge nation into a terrible maelstrom, beside killing the family he sought to protect, and quite a bit of the rest of the world with it.

But, as his proponents say, he was a nice man.

[timmy]

XL, I once read in Khrushchev's Memoirs, I believe, Khrushchev's astonishment at seeing a picture of King George V; he thought it was the Tsar.