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Frank
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The history of nations, how it’s presented and how it’s thought of, matters to countries and their citizens, no less than our own personal history matters to us as individuals. Because just as it’s hard for individuals to think well of themselves if they’re ashamed of their past, likewise, it’s hard for countries to be strong and self-confident if they’re constantly self-flagellating over their alleged historical crimes. This is what Orwell was driving at when he said that he who controls the past controls the future.
And there’s no doubt that the past of countries like Britain, the United States, and Australia too, is now being comprehensively recast as a story of shame. Americans are expected to angst over slavery, even though they fought their bloodiest war to be rid of it. Britons are expected to angst over the empire, even though it was actually the Royal Navy that stamped out the transatlantic slave trade. And Australians are expected to fret over the dispossession of the original inhabitants, even though British settlement marked the arrival on an ancient continent of science, technology, the rule of law and the notions of human rights that have eventually given Aboriginal people a vastly better life.
Mind you, no country’s history is without blemish. Edmund Burke characterised the American Revolution as a revolution for the traditional rights of Englishmen in the New World; but, personally, I reckon Americans might sometimes miss the Crown. There’s been no better illustration of the magic of the monarchy than the fact that the King is the only western leader that Donald Trump hasn’t been rude about!
Blackening a country’s history is one of the most effective ways to undermine the morale of its people. That’s why it’s been so prevalent over the past few decades, as the left’s long march through the institutions has intensified.
For instance, the most recent academic history of Australia, published last November, opens by declaring that the traditional notion of settlement, as a largely peaceful expansion, is no less than the “founding lie” of modern Australia, masking what the author claims was a brutal conquest. Even though it was always official policy – albeit imperfectly observed – that the Aboriginal peoples of Australia should enjoy all the rights and protections of British subjects.
Far from being the tale of near-genocidal oppression, the better story of Australia is how a convict colony, within a century, not only had the world’s highest standard of living but was actually the world’s leading pioneer of liberal democracy. By 1860, the then-self-governing Australian colonies had universal male suffrage – some 60 years before Britain. By the 1890s, in South Australia, people of both sexes and all races could not only vote, but run for office too. And in one of its very first acts, in 1902, the new Australian commonwealth granted all women the right to vote, almost 30 years before Britain.
And yes, there was conflict on the frontiers of settlement. At Myall Creek, for instance, in northern NSW, a group of stockmen brutally murdered up to 30 Aboriginal men, women and children. But there was a sequel. Eventually, seven white men were hanged for the murder of black people – in Australia in 1838 – at that time almost unparalleled in any settler society.
So here’s the problem: countries supposedly tainted by original sin, whether slavery, imperialism, or dispossession of the original inhabitants, fundamentally lack legitimacy. And a country so tainted can hardly have the right to defend itself or to keep its culture, even if the country in question has actually been so colour-blind that it attracts migrants from all over the world. And even if it’s actually the long Anglo-American ascendancy, and the post-war Pax Americana that’s created the world that, despite everything, remains more free, more fair, more safe, and more rich, for more people, than at any time in history.
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