Sepoy
William Dalrymple writes of the Sepoy Mutiny and lessons to be drawn from same. I think he occasionally draws the wrong lessons. At one point Dalrymple says
…One was the rise of British power: in a few years the British had defeated not only the French, but all their other Indian rivals; and, in a manner not unlike the Americans after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the changed balance of power quickly led to undisguised imperial arrogance.
which doesn’t exactly match my memory of that time so much as it matches a stereotype of European anti-americanism.
The article is well worth reading, though; the story Dalrymple tells is one worth telling, and there are lessons to be learned which would be familiar to a Marine in the Philippines a hundred and twenty years later. Violence over time breaks all civilized taboos. War gets uglier as the war goes on. Stopping a jihad has been done using overwhelming brutality and inhumanity. It remains to be seen if jihad can be stopped the way we’re trying it. Those aren’t nice lessons to learn.
8 Responses to “Sepoy”
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October 24th, 2006 at 4:15 am
The ugly flip-side to American exceptionalism has always been arrogance, or at least the *perception* of arrogance by others, which may or may not be the same thing. Despite the truism that “it ain’t arrogant if you can back it up,” that certainly won’t make lesser powers feel any less disrespected or ill-used.
Concur that it’s a very good and worthwhile article.
October 24th, 2006 at 7:54 am
Is it possible that the vanquished always see the victors as arrogant..whether they are, or not?
When we play football we play to win; winners often swagger. Lawyers who win in court frequently are often called arrogant. Isn’t that the nature of winning a zero-sum game. Correct me if I’m wrong, please. I played kickball in grade school.
It’s just worse when you are not only fighting a brutal terror war but also fighting a war of ideas against someone really serious about winning….
B2.
October 24th, 2006 at 8:21 am
Ehh, the country and its people have been called that and worse since before its founding. Nothing immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall appears different as far as I can tell.
October 24th, 2006 at 8:45 am
Chap,
Have you seen Peters today? http://www.nypost.com/seven/10242006/postopinion/opedcolumnists/terror_rules_streets_opedcolumnists_ralph_peters.htm
I’m agreeing.
The delta between what we need to do vs what we are capable of doing grows every day. By capable I mean having the guts neccessary to do what is required…
It’s a Big divide- Nanny State, Soccer Moms, PC, Non-judementalism, secular humanism, etc. ad naseum have made us sheep, led by sheep of various degrees..
B2
October 24th, 2006 at 9:26 am
I expect the change would happen if the enemy miscalculates and does two big strikes on us close enough together that we haven’t forgotten the first of the two. I worry about how violent we’ll be at that point because we weren’t sufficiently violent now. Lots of people are going to die in that case.
October 24th, 2006 at 9:36 am
No one ever looks at these things in historical context. 1862 is not 2006.
I think there are some huge differences between now and then. First, the British were convinced of the superiority of the white man over the Indians. Perhaps in hindsight they were wrong, but at the time it was the white man’s burden. Second, the British wanted to stay and make the territory theirs. So slaughtering significant amounts of the Indian population was acceptable if it would buy them the territory. India was after all the jewel of the empire. There is probably something to be learned from that, e.g. if you are going to occupy a place then OCCUPY IT and beat the natives into submission. It worked for the British for over 140 years in India.
The US, on the other hand, started on the premise that it was not in Iraq to occupy it or claim its territory. Now in hindsight that was probably wrong, becuase the results could be no worse had we gone in with overwhelming amounts of force, levelled cities, killed Arabs and made it clear that the territory was going to be American for as long as we chose to make it so.
Finally the British also used the local tribes and played them off against each other. They were not troubled about democracy for that was a western concerpt reserved for westerners. For Indians divide and conquer was the rule, which we could do with the Kurds et al, except we built a national unity government. The Brits would have partitioned Iraq in its current form in a minute, provided they had control over the parts. We have made it clear we don’t want that.
Finally, Persia was impotent which secured the Western border of India. Sadly, Persia today is not so, but a problem that has to be weighed in the balance when making decisions. As does the east because sadly, pakistan is not part of British territory as it should be, but a so called independent nations.
Rule Britannia!
October 24th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
I think that’s twice this month we’ve been in agreement over something. Is there an eclipse coming?
October 25th, 2006 at 1:25 am
Either that or the Apocaplypse.