Categories: India

Amritsar And Peterloo – Did Massacres Happen Without White Imperialism And Empire?

An interesting question that isn’t being asked. Have massacres, crimes, slaughters, happened without white Europeans building empires?

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] At St Peter’s Field in Manchester, England on Monday August 16 1819, an estimated 18 men, women and a child were massacred by British cavalry and up to 500 were wounded. “Peterloo” has come to play an important role in working-class, radical and reformist history in Britain – as well as in the history of democracy. In contrast to Peterloo, there has been little commemoration of the 1919 Amritsar Massacre in Britain – which saw up to 600 men, women and children murdered by the British Indian Army – and another 1,500 to 1,800 wounded. That Amritsar’s centenary has not received a similar level of attention as Peterloo is unfortunate as to better appreciate British history and understand the country today, it is important to look at the sociopolitical and economic systems that allowed such harms to happen. In this instance, systems that were responsible for producing both Peterloo and the Amritsar Massacre 100 years apart. [/perfectpullquote]

The headline here being:

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Peterloo and Amritsar – 100 years apart but united in the bloody history of Britain’s empire[/perfectpullquote]

So, to the question. Have massacres, slaughters, happened without the British Empire? The Holodomor, Holocauset, the centuries of pogroms. The Mughals weren’t exactly known for pussyfooting it about, Genghis slaughtered all in any number of cities. The Maori went and ate the Moriori.

That is, slaughters are not unique to the British Empire there fore the British Empire perhaps shouldn’t be identified as the cause of the slaughters.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Tim Worstall

View Comments

  • What about Mo of the religion of pieces? One instance - AD627, Banu Qurayza tribe.

    Tribe surrendered and around 900 men and boys beheaded and the women and children enslaved.
    I won't be holding my breath and waiting for the Guardian to do any condemnation of the moslems.

  • You should know by now only White people do bad things, particularly if they are British or American.

  • Lets assume that in a far, far better world, an ancestor of Capt Norton invented the cylindro-conoidal bullet about 1690 AD. (I insist on using the politically incorrect terminology.) And some unknown Frenchman used Rochelle Salt to make a version of a percussion cap about the same time. (With apologies to the Grantville Gazette.)

    We'll further assume that Aurangzeb imported this and rifling technology from Europe about the same time. So roughly American civil war long arm technology became the norm in India by about 1700. In consequence the Mughal empire conquered the whole of India.

    Since the close order drill also imported from Europe would have been far less effective in these circumstances, one may assume that the neither the French nor the British would have conquered India.

    The obvious questions are:

    a. would the Hindus have preferred India to be a united Muslim-ruled empire that exists to this day instead of suffering the awful incursion of the beastly Brits, and

    b. would this empire have been any less trigger-happy than those Brits.

    • Does anyone imagine that Gandhi's non-violent campaigns would have been effective against anyone except the British? Least of all the Japanese empire that useful idiots like Bose were working to achieve.

Share
Published by
Tim Worstall

Recent Posts

The BBC and terrorism

The language we use matters - it provides clarity to our own thoughts and enables…

3 years ago

We Should Pay Medical Personnel For Each Procedure They Perform

It is now generally acknowledged that the structure of the NHS needs to be overhauled…

3 years ago

The Scrubbers Are Failing

In the film Apollo 13, a loss of oxygen causes the crew to start inadvertently…

3 years ago

Wondering whether an idea is actually correct or not

There's an idea out there which seems intuitive but then so many ideas do seem…

4 years ago

Is Cryptocurrency Our Revolution, Or Theirs?

When we think about the darkly opaque goals of modern central bankers as they relate…

4 years ago

Playing The Mischief With Us

As the papers recently filled with the distressing images of desperate souls looking to escape…

4 years ago