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PrettyText t1_ja78q3f wrote

Reply to comment by vibrant_crab in TIL a year after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the English sent their own Armada to Spain, leading to similar losses of ships and men, and an ignominious English defeat by malektewaus

The UK managed to get their version of history taught in the entire west, for some reason:

- The Spanish armada's failure is known, this isn't known

- Everyone knows about the devastating English longbow and Agincourt, even though England, you know, lost that war.

- The Irish potato famine and the Bengal famine, if they're known about at all, are mostly seen as a tragic accident and not the fault of the Brits at all. Conversely, for example the Holodomor is seen as a malicious and intentional genocide. I'm not saying those situations are the exact same, but it still seems a bit skewed to say that the Brits were 0% at fault for their famines while the Soviets were 100% at fault for their famines.

- While obviously the UK was important in WW2, frankly its role is a bit overstated while the Soviet Union's role is a bit understated.

- Even though the Brits had the largest empire ever, they're still thought of as polite, cultured people as opposed to people who ran an empire.

- India's colonization is seen as quasi-positive in the west.

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IronicBread t1_ja7ohpz wrote

> The Irish potato famine and the Bengal famine, if they're known about at all, are mostly seen as a tragic accident and not the fault of the Brits at all. Conversely, for example the Holodomor is seen as a malicious and intentional genocide. I'm not saying those situations are the exact same, but it still seems a bit skewed to say that the Brits were 0% at fault for their famines while the Soviets were 100% at fault for their famines.

Lmao what? Anytime Churchill gets mentioned someone mentions it...the Irish very much mention it and most in the UK are FULLY aware. As for nations abroad, England is not responsible for your education.

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HobgoblinKhanate1 t1_ja7iov1 wrote

What makes you think the Irish potato famine might not been known about at all? Or that it was wholly a tragic accident? I don’t know anyone that thinks this

In school in the 90’s, all we were taught was that the British Empire was a bad thing. I don’t ever remember being taught the empire was glorious at all

A good example (because I know someone is going to bring it up) is Oliver Cromwell. We learned about him in school as basically a dictator. He banned Christmas (probably didn’t personally) and was a Puritan. We’re taught that life under him wasn’t very good at all. In fact, after he died, the English exhumed his body and cut his head off. But, there is the article people get giddy over of “top 100 Britons” that they love to link. This gets twisted by people on the attack as “Brits see Cromwell as a hero”. In fact, people are just stupid and simply don’t know more than 10 historical Britons and that’s how he made the list.

Who is understating the role of the Soviet Union? What decade are you referring to, the 1950’s?

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marioquartz t1_ja8pp1d wrote

>What makes you think the Irish potato famine might not been known about at all?

Im from Spain. Is not learned. Im only watch about it in Internet. And in very few times.

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Spank86 t1_ja95aik wrote

Probably because it's not massively relevant to the spanish. It's definitely taught in the uk and not as some sort of accident. When i was at school it was fairly bluntly explained that english landowners exported grain while the irish starved.

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HobgoblinKhanate1 t1_ja913nf wrote

Op was talking about British people though

I don’t remember learning about the second naval battle a year later. But most of everything else he said is bullshit

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teabagmoustache t1_ja81syd wrote

Where did you learn your history? I must be one of a very few people who was taught a well rounded view of history, going by some of these comments.

Also people don't think we are polite and cultured, any post on here about the UK is full of people shitting on the British.

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PrettyText t1_ja825ul wrote

Dutch secondary school system, internet.

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reykholt t1_ja8sp5n wrote

How is the Dutch Empire taught? Good, bad, neutral?

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CulpableSnail t1_ja9rjhf wrote

No no the Dutch didn't have an empire, their king did but that's not the same as the country, so we don't have to cover that.... /s

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carcinoma_kid t1_ja7tugw wrote

>While the UK was obviously important in WW2, frankly its role is a bit overstated while the Soviet Union’s role is a bit understated

I would say ‘a bit’ is an understatement in itself. The British lost 800,000 soldiers. The Americans lost 400,000. The Soviets lost possibly up to 14,000,000. Only one in 5 Russian men born in 1926 lived past 1945. They absolutely won the war for the Allies, and did so with unimaginable losses.

Edit: corrected numbers

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Pale__Face t1_ja7vw2o wrote

Eh. Feeding men into machine gun fire is not that impressive.

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carcinoma_kid t1_ja7ygmn wrote

Stopping the Nazi war machine dead in its tracks and fighting them tooth and nail all the way back to Berlin is pretty impressive

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HoNose t1_ja8n6rd wrote

The Soviets lost 27,000,000 citizens. They lost 8-14,000,000 soldiers.

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RedTheDopeKing t1_ja7kicx wrote

Because they made the world their bitch back then, probably. The victors write history, right?

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Dieg_1990 t1_ja7mli1 wrote

The British were always very focused on the narrative in my opinion. That's why together with the Dutch they created the duality of peaceful settlers vs violent conquistadores. Just check nowadays english-speaking and spanish-speaking countries and see where you see more characteristics of the native (pre-invasion) population. Or number of indigenous individuals.

As a fun story, I was told of the "legends" of the english armada, including Maria Pita or how some army attacks were repelled by literally country people with very little war experience. Quite embarrassing if true, but difficulty to confirm since none of us lived at that time.

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RhyminSimonWyman t1_ja89wrj wrote

If you're referring to the discrepancy between the amount of indigenous Americans in Spanish versus English speaking areas as though that provides evidence of a greater propensity for genocide among British settlers that's not a good comparison. There were simply many more native people in areas the Spanish conquered, nothing more to it than that.

You will note that there are still a lot of native people in South Africa and Nigeria, for example. In fact, very few people of British descent in either place. Of course the British committed genocide in all their colonies, but not more than the Spanish did

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anonymity_is_bliss t1_ja8y0jv wrote

Not to mention Canada has many more than the United States so it's not even an ex-british colony thing.

Like I'm 90% sure the whole manifest destiny thing skewed the statistics for native population too much to consider. Canada sure hasn't been angels with theirs (shoutout to Saskatoon RCMP), but simply trying to reduce it to Spanish vs English is a vast oversimplification of a complex issue given nearly every country handled it differently.

Also not to mention Argentina, where the native population is minuscule, and India (where they have the biggest native population despite being under the British Raj for a long time).

It's just a stupid notion that Brits were more vicious than conquistadors; they were both awful in their own special ways. The resulting native populations, although decimated by the conquerors, suffered under both.

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TheRealVillain666 t1_ja7tqaw wrote

We were taught "the good bits" in school where we explored new worlds, brought civilization to savages, etc but I learned more about English history when I left school than when I was in school.

We stole, plundered and enslaved en route to our explorations.

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teabagmoustache t1_ja80vhv wrote

When did you go to school? Because that's not how I was taught. Of course there was focus on victories and proud moments but the negative effects of the empire definitely were not glossed over.

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mintvilla t1_ja8aicz wrote

Yeah the national curriculum is very neutral, you learn history from both sides of the story.

Its not exactly a british trait to boast/brag... we are known for under playing the situation, compared for example to our american cousins

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TheRealVillain666 t1_ja81dk9 wrote

It was many years ago and many things were glossed over.

I'm proud of many things England achieved and not so proud about others.

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teabagmoustache t1_ja842b6 wrote

Exactly how it should be.

I find it's mainly people who had a similar education to yourself, that are the hardest to reason with when it comes to British history.

Acknowledging atrocities were carried out by the Empire doesn't mean you can't be proud of positive contributions at the same time.

We should be proud of doing good in the world and learning about the not so good, means we can learn from it and not repeat it.

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