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My Corona Diary December 2020 - 2021


Nasiadai
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I have just finished reading George Orwell's Burmese Days.
Here is my assessment; just a few brief thoughts.


In his debut novel, “Tage in Burma”, “Burmese Days”, George Orwell paints a devastating picture of British colonial rule.
"Burmese Days" deals with traumatic experiences Orwell, an Eton graduate born in British India in 1903 and fluent in Burmese, had in his early twenties as a policeman in the colonial service in the Irrawaddy Delta.

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Burmese Days

Orwell describes corruption and imperial bigotry in a society where "natives were natives after all - interesting, no doubt, but ultimately ... an inferior people". When John Flory, a English teakwood trader, befriends an Indian, Dr Veraswami, he defies this doctrine. The doctor is in danger: U Po Kyin, a corrupt magistrate, a native Burmese, is plotting his downfall. The only thing that can save the Indian doctor is membership in the European club, and Flory can help him. Meeting the beautiful but stupid and conceited Elizabeth Lackersteen changes Flory's life fundamentally. She shows him a way out of loneliness and the "lie" of colonial life.


The outsider in the community
It is not only because of the birthmark that Flory is an outsider. It is above all his socio-political views that meet with disapproval among the British administrators and businessmen living in the fictional town of Kyauktada. They meet in the so-called European Club, where they provide themselves with copious amounts of gin and whisky at all hours of the day and night, read the newspaper and, above all, vent about the inferiority of the local population. They call anyone who is not white "nigger", they consistently treat young women like prostitutes and the servants and workers like their slaves. One of the English, Ellis, the police chief of Kyauktada, also knows how to deal with these "niggers".
Orwell portrays the racism and brutal arrogance of the beneficiaries of British colonialism with clear directness. On reading it, every reader realises how much blood, countless human lives, human suffering, enslavement, exploitation of human and natural resources, etc., British colonianism and imperialism brought to the subjugated peoples.
Before the British heap Nazi accusations on today's Germans, take a look at your own history. The Nazis had only 12 years to ravage Germany and Europe and commit their countless murders.
The British had over 3 centuries to conquer, exploit and subjugate a quarter of the world by force of arms.
Authors like Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham expressed this much better and more forcefully in their literary work than Orwell in his first novel.

 

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Just as the vast majority of Germans distance themselves from the NSDPA, National Socialist German Workers' Party Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, past the majority of British disown / resent our imperialist past.

What people don’t / didn’t realize is that Britain had a strong Anti Catholic sentiment, and the less than 10% of the population (yours truly included) were also persecuted and treated just like the natives who the imperialist twats used to lord it over. 
Even to this day they still burn an effigy of a famous Catholic / Anti Royalist, Guy Fawkes, every year on numerous bonfires around the country.  He, and his friends, only tried to blow up Parliament when the King was opening it for session, in The Gunpowder Plot

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Yes and whilst agreeing with the two previous posts, I'll step a step further, in the direction of royalty and say most of the bad stuff that happened from mother England, here in Middle Earth, was at the behest of, and for the advantage of, Queen Victoria and her ilk.

I'm not anti royal per se. I do wonder what the numbers of moneys are,  that flow back to England as part of our continuing to be a member of the commonwealth. Common Wealth...

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Hi Nas

 

What makes it relevant to me is that it's based on Orwell experience while living in Myanmar working as a policeman I seem to remember

 

It's a good book,

 

Another good book to read if your also interested in the Teak trade of the early 19th C is a book called

 

The Teak Wallah

 

It's about an Englishman working in Thailand on the teak industry in remote places.

 

He goes there as he was shell shocked from time in the navy (not mentioned in the book, just that he was suffering in society after WW1)

 

Fascinating, also shows how much Thailand has grown since 1920.

 

Places named as tiny villages are now big cities.

 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1821485.Teak_Wallah

 

 

 

 

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