Professor Woody Holton of the University of South Carolina has joined the ranks of opportunist and intellectually dishonest academics who deprecate the American Revolution as a reactionary rebellion of slaveowners against the progressive British Empire. washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/0… 1/
The British Empire, Holton claims, was a great emancipatory force. He overlooks the fact that British imperialism devoted considerable energy in the 19th and 20th centuries to enslaving millions of people in Africa, the Middle East and Asia in colonial bondage. 2/
It would be interesting to hear Holton explain how his efforts to cast Britain as the would-be liberator of American slaves meshes with its bloody record of colonial barbarism. What about the "Scramble for Africa"? Has he ever heard of the wars against the Zulus in the 1870s? 3/
Then there are the bloody exploits of Lord Kitchener of Khartoum? Even Churchill was sickened by his depraved brutality. The bloody deeds continued into the 20th century: The Amritsar Massacre in India in 1919 and the suppression of the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya in the 1950s. 4/
The catalog of horrors is endless: the use of poison gas against Iraqis in 1920, the invasion of Egypt in 1956, the suppression of the Malayan insurgency between 1948 and 1960. And, of course, the unrelenting violence against the Irish people. 5/
The American Revolution ranks among the most progressive events in world history. Its victory opened the path for the destruction of slavery between 1861 and 1865. It should be noted that the British government under Lord Palmerston favored the victory of the Confederacy. 6/6
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