1800-1859 | Racism

21 AUGUST

ByAlisdare Hickson

LORD ELGIN’S NOTES ON ‘LIVING AMONG INFERIOR RACES’

Lord Elgin c. 1860 –
via the Getty Centre and Wikimedia Commons.

[ 21 August 1857 ]

Today in 1857 Lord Elgin, who was later appointed Viceroy of India, made some illuminating observations in his diary about the British attitude to Indians in the Raj:

‘It is a terrible business, however, this living among inferior races… There are some three or four hundred servants in this house… One moves among them with perfect indifference, treating them not as dogs, because in that case one would whistle to them and pat them, but as machines with which one can have no communion of sympathy.’1

TONY BLAIR BACKS U.S. ATTACK ON A SUDANESE PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY.

[ 21 August 1998 ]

On 21 August 1998, Prime Minister Tony Blair gave his full backing to a U.S. cruise missile attack on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in the suburbs of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, declaring  ‘I strongly support this American action against international terrorists.’2

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FOOTNOTES

  1. Lord Elgin’s diary cited in Theodore Walrond (editor), James Earl of Elgin, Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin, Outlook Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 2018, p. 187.
  2. ‘World Reacts to US strikes,’ CBS News, 21 August 1998 accessed online at url https://www.cbsnews.com/news/world-reacts-to-us-strikes/

Please feel welcome to post comments below.  If you have any questions please email alisdare@gmail.com

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