Thanks Ugo,
And of course, I meant Indochina, not instantly and badly spell checking
Indonesia!
Indonesia!
Pablo
Sent from my grandfather's typewriter
Pablo,
Thanks a lot for adding flesh and nuance to your initial brief remarks. I'm not a student of Churchill, so I really appreciate your deft insights.
To be frank, there is hardly anything you have said I would, or intended to, disagree with. Churchill's place as a hard-boiled and unrepentant imperialist prefect is assured. Nobody would seriously dispute that. He it was who stated as late as 1941, "I have not become the king's first minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire."
My intention was simply to point out that the quality of the statement in question is not as good good evidence to measure Islam as its purveyors no doubt would like the world to believe.
Ugo
From my mobile phone
On Feb 17, 2015 5:22 AM, "Pablo Idahosa" <pidahosa@yorku.ca> wrote:----Ugo,I gave read over 20 books and numerous articles on Churchill, and, without wishing to be ad ignoratum towards people, I know a little about this man, but, of course, can also know a great more, such is the voluminous literature on him. Much of that literature is, frankly, useless celebratory conservative hagiography, like the recent Boris Johnson's book, which also cites the letter in the Independent article, which is only of value to the extent that it expands and solidifies a genre of veneration that has political value during an election. By any measure, he was a great man, but by the same token he was a racist, and a person who believed in the innate superiority of the English in particular, and Europeans in general, but like any dispositional social darwinist, he has ranking amongst them too.He was, however, first and foremost a politician, so can read in old fashioned realpolitik, too. His primary interests lay in the British empire, which of course he never wanted to see die, but over which many parts he saw lose, most especially India and South Asia-- and about which he was marginalized, even by his own Conservative party over his views-- he really didn't want that sun to set. His other major interest lay in his alliance between Britain and the United States where, of course, his mother was born and grew up. As a politician, these were his two primary concerns; and like any politician should be read through those lens, which are also realpolitik lens too. So much so, that he would be willing to undermine and have jettisoned la France's colonial "possessions" in Indonesia, but supporting the United States' interests there to further and foster that British-US alliance at the expense of a colonial enterprise.Yes, he was a complex person who evolved, and he did retain an ambiguous relationship with the savage races, including some unremarkable noble savage views about Mau Mau and the Kikuyu, but ultimately supported the brutal suppression of Kenyans, and, lest we be reminded, used tactics worthy of the Nazi's in Europe and the French in Algeria. Similarly towards Zionism and the Arabs, as he had some residual Orientalist, romanticized views that tempered some of his views, but they never, politically, got in the way of his support for the state of Israel and his commitment to Zionism.That he was a great, complex person is not at issue, and my earlier one liners appeared to reduce that view: to a flat and de-contextaulaized, unnuanced historical, multilayered one. It was done to re-contextualize a series of quotes about multitudes of peoples who speak many languages, who come from many places and cultures, and are of many faiths within the faith/religion they subscribe, which by the standards of his day when he wrote them, was commonplace amongst a certain educated class, but should have no resonance today.And by the way, that one letter amongst the thousands of that were written to (including many, many memos-- and they only scratch a surface) is silly, and is an example of what I call bio-fetichism -- the one letter that disproves or proves all. I does no such thing; it only points to a window that has to be fully open to see what might be meant. To my knowledge, he had very little, one way or another, to say about Nigeria, but then that too is for further archival workI have a book of Churchill's letters, many are funny, many, no more, are equally brilliant in their insightfulness, and many are equally chilling in their realpolitik. Churchill was, as would be expected, a very complex figure, but he was also a racist. On that, he didn't evolve. If he would be alive to day, who knows? But he isn't.Pablo
Sent from my grandfather's typewriterInteresting! I had just before I read this sent my response to Ogugua, in which I suggested that Churchill may have modified the disparaging views he had made in his early-mid 20s. This article confirms that.Ugo--G. Ugo NwokejiDirector, Center for African StudiesAssociate Professor of African American Studies
University of California, Berkeley
686 Barrows Hall #2572
Berkeley, CA 94720
Tel. (510) 542-8140
Fax (510) 642-0318Twitter: @UgoNwokejiFacebook: facebook.com/ugo.nwokejiOn Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 11:38 PM, 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:--I remember this item of news passed through this forum a while ago. When this new thread about Churchill surfaced, I thought to search for it. The challenge now is to connect the dots in the seeming divergence of historical interpretations.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/sir-winston-churchills-family-begged-him-not-to-convert-to-islam-letter-reveals-9946787.htmlSent from Samsung Mobile
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