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From: FBInCIAnNSATerroristSlayer@yahoo.com

HOW THE RACIST WHITE CHRISTIAN BRITISH THIEVES "PLUNDERED INDIA AND
DESTROYED A GREAT CIVILIZATION" - by Will Durant https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.sport.cricket/kQi3eckXQYE/hQVTkbaDAwAJ


WHITE CHRISTIAN THIEVES NOT ONLY STOLE INDIAN WEALTH BUT ALSO INDIAN
KNOWLEDGE AND CLAIMED AS THEIR OWN https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.sport.cricket/CS3gizIKXEs/V3nKXtAQDAAJ

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https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/national-trust-colonialism-slavery/index.html


The grim truth behind Britain's stately homes

Joe Minihane, CNN • Updated 27th September 2020

Grand buildings replete with turrets, picture windows and kitchen
gardens. Perfectly manicured lawns. And hundreds of rooms stuffed with
antiques and objet d'arts from across the globe.
Few things are as quintessentially English as a stately home. Tourists
love them. And they're a guaranteed box office draw, as "Downton Abbey"
and "Pride and Prejudice" can attest.
But there's a more disturbing side.
Many of these country estates are indelibly linked to brutal legacies of slavery and colonialism. And while their grim origins may have been
previously overlooked, they're now facing a new level of scrutiny that
-- amid raging debates over how Britain reckons with its imperial past
-- has exploded into its own cultural conflict.
At the center of the controversy is a new report into the matter by the National Trust, a heritage body created in 1895 to preserve places of
natural beauty and historic interest across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Published this month, the report identifies 93 places, roughly one third
of all of its properties, that it says were built, benefited from or
connected to the spoils of slavery and colonialism.
They include Chartwell, Winston Churchill's former home in the
southeastern county of Kent, Devon's spectacular Lundy Island, where
convicts were used as unpaid labor and Speke Hall, near Liverpool, whose
owner, Richard Watt traded rum made by slaves and purchased a slave ship
in 1793 that trafficked slaves from Africa to Jamaica.
Some 29 properties were found to have benefited from compensation after
owning slaves was abolished in Great Britain in 1837, including Hare
Hill in Cheshire, where the owners, the Hibbert family, received the
equivalent of £7 million ($8.8 million) to make up for the loss of slaves.
The National Trust says it's chosen now to highlight this issue because
of rising public awareness that, in the UK, hit the headlines with the
divisive tearing down of an 18th-century slave trader's statue in the
port city of Bristol.
"At a time when there's an enormous interest around colonialism more
broadly and indeed slavery more specifically, it felt very appropriate,
given that we care for so many of these places of historical interest,
to commission a report that looks right across them and try to assess
the extent of those colonial legacies still reflected in the places we
look after today," says John Orna-Ornstein, the National Trust's
director of culture and engagement.
Not everyone agrees. And in some cases the response has been one of
indignation and fury.

'Shameful manifesto'

When the National Trust first trailed its report and highlighted the connections on Twitter to mark UNESCO's Day for Remembrance of the Slave
Trade and its Abolition, there was an inevitable backlash.
Replies to a Twitter thread that detailed how mahogany felled by
enslaved Africans was used to build furniture for stately homes in the
18th century were swift in their disdain.
One complained, "Are you for real?" Others said they were canceling
their National Trust membership in protest, saying the past couldn't be
changed and that historical buildings were there to be enjoyed, no
matter their past.
One said they did not want the National Trust to "ram it down our
throats," while others talked darkly of "history being erased." Opinion
pieces in newspapers decried supposed attempts by the Trust to somehow
talk Britain down by revealing the truth about its past.
Former newspaper editor Charles Moore, writing in the right-leaning
Spectator magazine, accused the Trust of creating a "shameful manifesto"
that rejects objectivity in favor of a binary interpretation of history designed to make its members "ashamed to be British."

The report's mention of revered wartime leader Winston Churchill in
connection with contentious colonial era governance has drawn particular
ire.
Oliver Dowden, the UK's culture minister, told the Daily Telegraph
newspaper the organization should focus on "preserving and protecting"
British heritage.
"Churchill is one of Britain's greatest heroes," he told the paper. "He
rallied the free world to defeat fascism. It will surprise and
disappoint people that the National Trust appears to be making him a
subject of criticism and controversy."
For its part, the National Trust says that it is merely providing added historical context.
"The role of the National Trust is a very clear one," says
Orna-Ornstein. "Our role is to be as open and honest as we can, to tell
the full history of the places and collections that we care for and to
not do more than that."
Despite threats online to cancel memberships these have remained steady
and many people have expressed interest in hearing more about these connections, he says.
'Part of history'
The National Trust has identified 93 estates or properties with links to slavery or colonialism.

On both sides, the debate is passionate and, to some extent, polarized.
"I'm confused by the response of some people saying that they're erasing history," says freelance journalist and commentator Seun Matiluko, who
has written extensively about the issue.
"It's not like they're taking anything away; they're just saying that
this is part of history and they're adding context to a particular
artifact. It's adding something. I struggle to find a way to be offended
by it."
Matiluko believes that it's vital that the National Trust doesn't find
itself dragged into an online debate about its report. "It's important
for them to listen to what their board and members are saying and not
focus too much on social media," she says.
"It's a little bit surprising that anybody would have any response to
this because it seems to be a very non-controversial thing to talk
about," says Trevor Burnard, a professor specializing in slavery and emancipation at the UK's Hull University. "We've known for a very long
time that Britain was heavily implicated both in slavery and in its
abolition.
He says the Trust's report not only gives vital context to these
buildings and estates, but makes them more interesting.

"I think we've moved a long way from hiding things about the past to
preserve some kind of propriety that no longer exists," he says.
"And as long as it's not done didactically -- we shouldn't expect people
in the past to have attitudes that correspond to our own -- it seems to
me any organization should be looking at its history in a wider
perspective than sometimes is currently done."
Anshuman Mondal, professor of modern literature at the University of
East Anglia, feels the National Trust's report and the reaction to it,
speak to a lack of racial literacy in Western countries. He also
believes the connections run even deeper than the Trust's report says.
"A headline figure might say one thing, but nearly every country house
built in that period had some relationship to the wealth generated by
slavery," he says. "And not just slavery but by both, firstly,
mercantile colonialism and, secondly, territorial imperialism.

'We should be embarrassed'

Mondal criticizes the arguments of some who say that Britons are being
unfairly made to feel embarrassed about their history.
"I think we should be embarrassed about it," he says. "We should be
ashamed of it. Now obviously this doesn't mean you then try to forget
about it, but the attitude you take to the past is the key question. If
you say we shouldn't be embarrassed about it, well, what are people
really saying? We should be proud of these people?"
Orna-Ornstein says that while he was shocked at the scale of the links
between properties and slavery, especially Hare Hill, it's not hugely surprising that such links exist in the first place.

"When you think that a lot of the places that the National Trust cares
for saw their greatest development in the 17th, 18th and 19th
centuries... a period when colonialism was absolutely intertwined with
society and the world was becoming increasingly international and a part
of that international trade was through colonial relationships, in that
sense it is much less surprising."
Anti-racism protesters have torn down a statue of 17th century slave
owner Edward Colston in Bristol, United Kingdom on Sunday.
Mondal believes that the National Trust's report, coupled with Black
Lives Matter and other movements looking to bring down statues of slave
owners in the UK, reflect a wider point.
"If you think about indirect links to slavery, our entire society is
structured by that," he says." The Industrial Revolution was made
possible by the profits by slavery."
Speaking about the negative reaction on social media, Seun Matiluko says
it reveals "that some people are scared of approaching history that
might make them look bad."
'Rational conversations'

She argues that such attempts to reckon with the past are not exercises
in dismantling national pride.
"At this point, to move forward, we just need more rational
conversations and not to get stuck in the binary of 'Britain's good or Britain's bad.' Just say 'this is what happened' and ask 'how do we feel
about it?'"

The National Trust has already started acting on the report and making
the historic links between its places and slavery and colonialism
clearer. "We've already updated interpretations on our website or in the
places themselves, about 30 so far," says Orna-Ornstein. "Over time, we
plan to do that more widely."
He also highlights an existing project, Colonial Countryside, run in conjunction with the University of Leicester, that aims to educate
younger people about the links between the British Empire's colonies,
slavery, oppression and the homes that were built as a result.
The places themselves aren't changing. The houses will still be opulent.
The gardens perfectly tended. The atmosphere as English as afternoon tea
and complaining bitterly about the weather.
But by providing more context, the chances are that next time you visit
a National Trust property, you'll come away knowing more about how it
was built and where the money used to build it came from.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)