Evenings And Endings
Tide And Twilight
Empires recede. Dominic Flandry is stationed on a planet that lies "...like a piece of wreckage at the edge of the receding tide of empire." (See the second link.)
Like empires, heavy industry also recedes. Factories are gone from Lancaster and graffiti in an underpass declared, "Once we had an Empire. Now we have a slum."
Although Stieg Larsson indicates that Norrtalje does still have an industrial area, he goes on to describe a derelict building from which productive activity has definitely receded:
"...at the edge of the industrial area, about four hundred metres from the road was a dismal brick building with a crumbling chimney stack. The factory stood like a last outpost of the industrial area..."
-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest (London, 2010), p. 720.
In my mind, that last outpost of the industrial area joins Anderson's receding tide of empire as an evocative description of an ending but I am writing this at the end of a day and should really retire to make a fresh start tomorrow.
13 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I strongly suspect a disgusted Tory wrote that graffiti you noticed! And it expresses a sentiment I have sympathy for.
One of the most amazing and, frankly, disturbing reversals of history has been how RAPIDLY the British Empire disintegrated within about thirty years after WW II. It was certainly not like the Roman Empire, which fought tooth and nail for centuries to avoid disintegrating.
Ad astra! Sean
The areas around British heavy industry were slums all through the growth and maturity of the Empire.
When Glasgow was the second city of the Empire and a world center of commerce and advanced industry (shipbuilding and engineering particularly) the Gorbals was the worst slum in Europe and one of the worst in the world.
So was Small Heath in Birmingham, the setting for the "Peaky Blinders" series. Outsiders who travelled in the Black Country in its glory days almost always recoiled in horror, even as they admired the wealth and power it produced.
Sean: the Empire is doing fairly well; it's just headquartered on the western side of the Atlantic these days -- as Benjamin Franklin predicted in the 1750's.
That is certainly one way of putting it!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Re slums: I do see your point. But slums are not GOOD for the people living in them. And, in fact, there were movements by the later 19th century for cleaning them up and at least make them not too terribly unhealthy places. I mean things like modernizing water and sewage systems and removing rotting dead horses. Which I'm sure you agree would be good things.
I understand as well that the US is the dominant power within what some call the Anglosphere. There can be "empires" which are not formally EMPIRES. I'm simply not so sure the US is doing as good a job of running things as the British did in India and Africa.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
British divide and rule tactics had disastrous consequences in India and Ireland.
Paul.
Note that efforts to divide the Chinese weren't nearly as successful, because they always had a strong sense of themselves as "Han people" -- Japanese ethnic solidarity was even stronger.
In a sense, you have to be divided in the first place for "divide and rule" to work on you.
Makes sense. But how vile the divisions become once they have been encouraged and exacerbated.
I heard of cases of practitioners of different religions sharing each others' celebrations and festivals - and Christian missionaries regarding such sharing as a threat to the Faith.
Kaor, Paul!
In Ireland, yes, for reasons like those given by Stirling. But, not in India. British rule of India was far more successful there than in Ireland. As the Mughal Empire disintegrated in the 1700's, the British simply restored order and brought in many reforms and useful modernizations.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But there was horrible conflict and partition when the British left India.
Why was there so much opposition in India to British rule?
Paul.
Paul: when Muslims ruled most of India, they didn't exactly endear themselves to the Hindus -- or the Sikhs.
Until the 1920's, there wasn't actually much resistance to British rule; some to British -conquest-, but that was generally the rulers and their nobles and retainers.
To the average peasant, it didn't make all that much difference; a Brit was no more foreign to a Bengali or Tamil peasant than someone from the Punjab was. All the rulers squeezed him for taxes, and many of them offended the local religious sensibility that was the main form of collective identity. As Christians, the British were actually in a better position to present themselves as neutral arbiters.
It was the existence of the British Raj, the first state to actually unify South Asia, that created the possibility of an Indian national sentiment, as opposed to regional, religious or caste consciousness.
Railways, telegraphs, education in English, and a common system of government preceded and made possible Indian nationalism.
The Indian National Congress started out as an organization of upper-class educated English-speaking Indians, mostly Hindu, who simply wanted to help run the Raj on an equal basis; they deliberately avoided popular mobilization before 1914 because they feared and despised the "ignorant masses", especially their social conservatism and religious particularism.
Once the Congress -did- start mass mobilization and Indian independence became a realistic possibility, Hindu-Muslim splits started immediately, because many Muslims despised the Hindu "kufr" and found the prospect of majority rule in a united India intolerable.
The ostensible secularism of the Congress never really extended beyond the Anglicized elite like the Nehru family. The 'popular masses' were more inclined to religion-based movements, which is the force that Gandhi tapped into.
The current Hindu-nationalist government of India is much more in tune with mass tastes.
Kaor, Paul!
Being again working, I am liable to fall behind matters in the blog.
And Mr. Stirling's comments amplified and expanded on what I would have said in defense of the Raj. I would have added that the reason why the British eventually gave up ruling India was because they no longer felt able to be as HARD as even decent leaders sometimes have to be. E.g., * I * would have shot or exiled Gandhi and his chief hencemen as the traitors they actually were. And I would have worked very hard to co-opt the Congress Party into taking a major role in running India under the Raj. Including Indian viceroys, governors, commissioners, residents, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
In Ireland, the British summarily executed the leaders of the Easter Rising, thus provoking the War of Independence.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I know, and it backfired there because Ireland was not INDIA, with its many peoples, castes, faiths, etc. What would probably have worked in India did not in Ireland, where subtler, more indirect methods were called for. Which is exactly what we see Theodore Roosevelt persuading the British to do in Stirling's BLACK CHAMBER.
Ad astra! Sean
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