> Murder of the British is a strange take on the events of Lexington and Concord.

The outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775 can fairly be called an act of violence. The American colonies in the early days of the conflict were pretty evenly split between loyalists and revolutionaries. The latter ultimately won the day in large part by burning down loyalists’ houses or tarring and feathering them, sending some of the loyalists into exile in Canada or the Caribbean and encouraging others to stay low lest they be attacked, too.

These facts don’t get talked about much in the American school system, because like in most countries the public school system seeks to perpetuate a national mythology for the sake of civic unity. However, revolutions anywhere in the world tend to initially play out as a civil war of sorts among the country’s own people, and the American Revolution was no exception.

Nobody is doubting it was an act of violence. The oddity is that they're calling it an act of murder as opposed to an act of war. Murder sounds like a bunch of criminals, which is a really one sided take. The british soldiers were there to destroy colonial military supplies. It may be technically correct, but you don't hear about how the GIs murdered a bunch of Nazis on the beaches of Normandy or whatever other war suits your fancy. Save for the particularly one sided conflicts.

I got history from american public education, and while half of it was garbage, and half of it was dull internal politics of isolationism, there was no ambiguity that the revolutionary war was a bloody conflict.

I'm not a historian but isn't there some ambiguity here? If war hadn't already been declared by the relevant governments, you can't be killing in the name of war.

The British troops had set out to disarm the local militia. I have a hard time seeing how something that began with armed infantry units confronting each other at Lexington was not a war.

And by the way, when the British seized a Spanish fleet--which had imagined itself to be neutral--during the Napoleonic wars, their government stated that the United Kingdom had never been in the habit of starting wars with a declaration.

This is just semantics, but I think not. If you're attacking a military unit to achieve a military objective, murder feels inappropriate. In my opinion, murder tends:

* to be done by an individual, not a group

* tends to happen to one, or a few victims. It's odd to describe someone as murdering 70 people at once.

* tends to imply the victim was not professionally engaged in such a way that their death in those circumstances is not a plausible concern

* the motive is not political, else it is an assassination

You don’t want to open up that can of worms. Thousands of war deaths would qualify as murders if you used a declaration as the deciding factor.

What's the danger in "opening that can of worms"? IMHO the world might be a better place if there were a lot less killing, whether it's in the context of a war or not. Some killings throughout history are certainly justifiable or excusable, but it seems far more dangerous to me to stick one's head in the sand and avoid reflecting on whether each killing really needed to happen, or if the victim could reasonably have been spared without significant risk of harm or jeopardizing the larger cause (presuming the cause itself is just). "Murder" doesn't seem like an unreasonable label in the latter case. (Whether and how the killer should be punished in such situations is a separate question that I'm not taking a position on here.)

The danger is there are plenty of rebellions, revolutions and other "positive" conflicts where wars were never declared. You're basically going to be painting the people that took part in conflicts like the American revolution, Irish War of Independence, Indian War of Independence, Cuban Revolution, etc as "murders".

Well, back in the day wars did usually start with a declaration of war.

> It may be technically correct, but you don't hear about how the GIs murdered a bunch of Nazis on the beaches of Normandy or whatever other war suits your fancy. Save for the particularly one sided conflicts.

That's because the nazis lost. If they had won, as Robert McNamara said, we'd be called murderers and criminals and our leaders would have been hanged for crimes against humanity.

Not only did the british call the revolutionaries murderers, they also called them terrorists since the revolutionaries were attacking and terrorizing the loyalists. Ironic huh? One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.

As strange as it sounds, in an alternate universe where the brits won, the history books probably describe the revolutionaries as murderers and terrorists. Can you imagine how odd it would be to view Benedict Arnold as a hero and George Washington as the villain?

> there was no ambiguity that the revolutionary war was a bloody conflict.

And there certainly was no ambuigity about who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.

History is just one part of nation building propaganda. The people in charge ( usually the winners ) get to write it. Fundamentally, there are no good guys or bad guys, just winners and losers in history.

> That's because the nazis lost. If they had won, as Robert McNamara said, we'd be called murderers and criminals and our leaders would have been hanged for crimes against humanity.

Perhaps this is just an American thing, but I wouldn't call the Nazi soldiers killing American soldiers murderers either. The holocaust is murder, if not superceded by the term genocide. Something can be an unjust killing and still not be murder.

As a Canadian: A tar and feather illustration is among the most memorable from my childhood.

Yes, important to keep in mind that revolutions always have their roots in civil war, and that's always brutal.

They were presented in my education, though mine wasn't a public education.

They were presented in mine, though New York being the center of Loyalist America probably had something to do with it.

Interesting! I wonder how it has influenced political parties etc. to the present?

I don't think it has influenced political parties per se, because New York has had so much immigration that descendants of the original colonial population is a negligible percentage. (That, and many Loyalists fled to other British colonies to escape persecution.)

Where this shows up is maybe general political philosophy. New York has a strong tradition of concentrated government, with Alexander Hamilton behind proposals for a US Senate with lifetime appointment and a central bank. And the state executive is unusually strong and the most celebrated figures in state government, elected or otherwise, are known for wielding their powers in nearly dictatorial ways. (Andrew Cuomo is currently trying to emulate this, invoking the images of former members of government like Robert Moses and Nelson Rockefeller. And yes, that Rockefeller.)

> As is still so often the case when white, powerful men felt threatened, they banded together to create, and separate, the other.

What, this is a behavior specific to white, powerful men?

What went down in and around Lexington and Concord was a more serious crime than murder, it was an act of rebellion.

The author appears committed to a particular affect which seems out of context with the history he presents.

It’s not. In Bangladesh, we precisely identify the town or village ethnic Bangladeshis come from, but have a single word to refer to all non-Bangladeshis (“bideshi,” meaning “foreigner”).

The article reads like the author wrote it, and then sprinkled in “white men” randomly wherever it fit grammatically. Maybe it helped get the thing published.

I once described the caste system as “racism invented by people who look alike” and my girlfriend from Madya Pradesh (Central Indian Province) thought that was very apt.

Humans are great, until you let them form groups, once that happens you’ll get tribalism and prejudice almost every time as far as I can tell.

Even sports’ fans will beat eachother up sometimes.

I'm increasingly hearing the idea (from Hindu nationalists?) that the caste system was the invention of the British, not anything indigenous. If anyone's in the know, I'd be curious to hear what's broadly accepted among historians nowadays.

The scholarly opinion of this question has been quite dynamic over the last century.

Nowadays, the consensus seems to be that Caste was definitely a thing before the Raj took over, but it was more fluid and regional, and was not the centralized, static hierarchy it is today. There were other power structures (feudal, religious, etc) that were not colored by caste, and competed with caste to triangulate people.

The British Raj took calculated steps to centralize, formalize, and entrench the caste system, shaping it into a form that is recognizable today, where it is strictly tied to opportunity and wealth.

It’s worth noting that is a common pattern of colonialism: to divide the colonized people against themselves along arbitrary, existing lines and elevate an arbitrary group, aligning the interest of that group with the interests of the colonizers. It’s a timeless and tragic human story.

I’ve only started researching this subject, so if anybody would like to correct or qualify anything I’ve said, I welcome it.

> It’s worth noting that is a common pattern of colonialism: to divide the colonized people against themselves along arbitrary, existing lines and elevate an arbitrary group, aligning the interest of that group with the interests of the colonizers. It’s a timeless and tragic human story.

The Tutsi and Hutu of Rwanda immediately come to mind.

It can’t be a British invention. My understanding of Bangladeshi history is that we converted to Islam to escape the caste system. That predated British rule by hundreds of years.

What classical Hinduism had was the varna system, where you were a member of a particular varna according your jobs and qualifications (for eg, bhramans were supposed to be learners and teachers of scriptures, analogous to professors and phd's today). And even this varna system was debated and discusses throughout classical Hinduism, as with every other idea in Hinduism was.

But overtime, especially when people of different cultures and languages interact, things can become twisted and lost in incorrect translations, whether through genuine error,any inherent biases of the translator or malicious intent.

And also overtime, cultures can evolve in response or in interactions with outside forces (especially the Islamic and later European invaders over a 1000 year period) that would seek to implement their own hierarchies and systems. Infact, the indigenous Indians were treated as second class citizens in empires established by outside invaders (Jaziya collection is common example of this).

But what generally makes the system as being attributed to the British is due to the Divide and Conquer strategy implemented by the British. Dividing the populace becomes a lot easier if you can mutate or deepen existing lines in the system.

But truthfully, the exact lineage is very hard to find, especially for a culture that is not only 5000+ years old but has also been interacting with and assimilating just about every other global culture during that 5000 years period (Indians have been interacting with everyone from Chinese, SE Asians, Romans, Greeks, Persians, Mesopotomians, Africans, Arabs, Ancient Egyptians, Turkic Nomads, etc)

This isn't my area, but my understanding is that like most things related to history (especially Indian history), it's complicated. There are a lot of very old antecedents, but the modern caste system probably "originated" with the later Mughals. The British Raj took those scattered, vaguely related systems and codified them into what we recognize today.

Buddhism started in India and from the beginning it criticized castes, so yes they were there and they were not fair

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/dharmadata/fdd53.htm

Is that label typically applied to anyone not an ethnic Bangladeshi, or to people who aren't citizens of Bangladesh? E.g. if there's a Bangladeshi in India, would they be bideshi? Conversely, if there's someone who moved to Bangladesh from Pakistan but are current citizens, do they get that label? (this is to satisfy my own curiosity about identity formation on the subcontinent, not accidentally stumbling on some hot button political issue)

In my experience it is applied to people who are not ethnically Bangladeshi, or who are but were not raised in Bangladesh. E.g. https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2020/01/15/speaking-the-langu...

> In Bengali, the term bideshi is used to describe a foreigner. The literal translation is "without land." This past summer, during six weeks conducting research on a global health project in Bangladesh, I heard the term often -- in reference to me.

> It felt strange, as I was born in Bangladesh and lived there until I was 3. To me, Bangladesh is where I can easily blend into a crowd. Bengali was the first language I learned. I visit often to see family. I feel a sense of ownership and belonging in Bangladesh that I have not always felt in America.

Citizenship isn’t particularly meaningful in Bangladesh. You can’t become Bangladeshi by acquiring citizenship.

> Citizenship isn’t particularly meaningful in Bangladesh. You can’t become Bangladeshi by acquiring citizenship.

This is also true of most European countries, FWIW.

Maybe a better qualifier is dominant culture men in a society because I’ve seen that across the world. Rarely do non dominant cultures band together effectively. But this is all anecdote and conjecture on my part.

It's odd how many people who share this anti-Whitism express this sentiment in the very same breath in which they denigrate, demonise or humiliate Whites.

Either they don't actually believe it and are just zealously taking the opportunity to revel in their socially-acceptable racism, or they're supporting this trend I'm seeing of Whites becoming ethnically conscious and collectivising in the face of the hostility they are being exposed to.

It's probably the former, but the latter is the effect regardless.

Exactly. They denigrate one racial group by point out how they were more apt to denigrate another racial group.

So they are basically doing the same thing they are accusing the group of.

He has some, ah, unique takes scattered throughout:

> American forces – well, the French and Spanish forces, along with the sputtering Americans – managed to win the American Revolution in 1783.

Make no mistake, the French forces were key, but to lay the victory at the feet of the Spanish ahead of the Americans throws the whole piece into question.

With the Spanish getting a mention, it seems odd that the Germans/Hessians don't. They were very nearly as numerous as soldiers from the British Army and were more numerous than Loyalist american troops.

wait till you learn how the same stories are told in different countries. its different everywhere.

...like when you see German museums talking over and over about the "period of migration". First time I saw that it took me a while to understand what they were saying...

"Oh, that's what the Anglosphere calls //the barbarian invasions//".

(...or, I think every country has a statue of its native son who invented the television. Some are people I'd never heard of.)

The naming has nothing to do with Germany but is a common term describing migratory movements that where in part invasions into the Roman Empire, no all of those migrations into Roman territory where violent though. That invasion connotation seems to have carried over into present time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period

By 1780 it was a matter of when and not if. The American people had been so thoroughly brutalized by the British at that point that there was certainly going to be ongoing violence as long as there were British soldiers around to shoot at. So then the British options are genocide or wash their hands of it. And the Bible says you're not supposed to commit genocide against other Christians let alone people who might be British subjects (also you need them alive to work to pay taxes and the population needs to exist as a hedge against French influence) so since that option isn't really on the table the question at that point is at what point do the British wash their hands of it.

Cant treat them like the irish, if the island is to far away..

On Virginia Avenue NW in Washington, DC, there is a statue of one Galvez, who led Spanish forces in the Mississippi Valley area, fighting against the British. But that was a long way from the main theatre of operations.

Agree. Remember the British were already under order to raid the towns for supplies ('powder and ball'). In Lexington, the militia had made a show of force, following which gunfire was exchanged, and the British officers authorized a "huzzah" in celebration of the death of several militia members.

Quite a stretch to call resisting an army under orders to seize munitions by force "murder" per say, this was a clear act of self defense.

Even if you don't side with the militia, by any reasonably modern code of ethics and rules of engagement "resisting a uniformed army by force" is completely and totally fair game. Armies exist to project state violence. Sometimes people take them up on the offer.

I'd be interested to see if anyone applied this argument to Al-Quaeida in Iraq against coalition forces.

> As is still so often the case when white, powerful men felt threatened, they banded together to create, and separate, the ‘other’.

This was gratuitous too. Out-group formation happens across all cultures regardless of ethnicity or sex.

This even online where sex and ethnicity have no value but where topic groups or online clique’s are formed.