His reservations about black majority rule were based on considerations of class, education and culture, rather than race and colour. In 1955, Churchill expressed his support for the slogan "Keep England White" with regards to immigration from the West Indies. Indeed, the empire itself was rapidly disintegrating, starting with India in 1947, and finishing up with all the African colonies in the 1950s. Among younger Britons, especially in academic circles, criticism grew sharper. The British public rejected the Churchillian notion of an imperial race predestined by moral character to rule and refashion the world in the British image. After the Second World War, old arguments about white racial superiority were no longer acceptable.
Colonialism was now seen as a crude device for the oppression of the weak by the strong. to advance the principle of equal rights of civilized men irrespective of colour." īy the 1940s, Churchill still cherished the ideals of imperialism that he had followed since the 1890s, whilst much of British opinion had abandoned them. In 1906, Churchill stated that "We will endeavour. In 1902, Churchill stated that the "great barbaric nations" would "menace civilised nations", and that "The Aryan stock is bound to triumph". nor is a tigress robbed of her cubs more furious than is the Boer at this prospect. Black is to be proclaimed the same as white….
In 1899, a Boer jailer asked Churchill: “…is it right that a dirty Kaffir should walk on the pavement?… That’s what they do in your British Colonies.” Churchill termed this the root of Boer discontent:īritish government is associated in the Boer farmer’s mind with violent social revolution.
Ĭhurchill advocated against black or indigenous self-rule in Africa, Australia, the Caribbean, the Americas and India, believing that the British Empire promoted and maintained the welfare of those who lived in the colonies he insisted that "our responsibility to the native races remains a real one". However, historian Richard Toye follows on from this by saying that Churchill was not unique in having these views, and that although Churchill may have thought that white people were superior, it did not mean he thought it was therefore correct to treat non-white people in an inhumane way - he did not. Charmley adds the he believes that Churchill saw himself and Britain as being the winners in a social Darwinian hierarchy. Charmley argued that similar to many of Churchill's contemporaries, he held a hierarchical perspective on race, believing white Protestant Christians to be at the top of this hierarchy, and white Catholics beneath them, while Indians were higher on this hierarchy than Black Africans. Historian John Charmley has written that Churchill viewed British domination around the globe, such as the British Empire, as a natural consequence of social Darwinism.
0 kommentar(er)
