BUT due to a combination of war and famine and general merchant-ing we mostly wound up in Gujarat and Punjab. In the case of my & Zohran’s family, it was Gujarat. We were at this point mostly Hindu and mostly worshipped the goddess Shakti, but some were already Muslim.
Meanwhile, there was this group of Shia Muslims over in the Levant and Iran called Ismailis. Ismailis are a weird and quirky sect based mostly on social justice and being nerds, and we were doing well for a while—we ruled the Fatimid Empire, it was cool—and then the Mongols decided to kill us all.
It's too bad that so many important conflicts seem to be related to different religions. I grew up Roman Catholic and was taught ours was the only true religion. (I guess all ppl think there's is the only true religion) Mother was Protestant. My teacher told me I shouldn't associate with her. 🤑
People may know the Aga Khan and related hospitals, etc.
Describing the Fatimid Caliphate rulers as weird and quirky SJW nerds gives Miku binder Thomas Jefferson...
> Ismailis are a weird and quirky sect based mostly on social justice and being nerds I can’t decide if this is beautiful or heartbreaking.
Now, most genocides do not actually kill most people, because it’s quite difficult to kill all of a people! The Mongols, however, were really good at genocide. Something like 99% of Ismailis were killed and the rest went into hiding.
I strongly suspected he was Ismaili based on demographics and politics. Lovely group of people
So I’d read that one of the reasons the Mongols never got into India was that there were a group of extremely dedicated Muslim refugees from Baghdad who helped Infirm and prepare the defenses… is that connected?
This thread is killing me sis 😭
Up until, despite ruling an empire Ismailis mostly didn’t recruit, on account of being quirky nerds who just wanted to argue about books all day (does this sound familiar to anyone) BUT our numbers were real real low SO a dude named Pir Sadardin went off to Gujarat.
Lohana, as mentioned, were worshippers of the goddess Shakti, and her whole thing is song and dance. So Pir Sadardin was like, “huh, these people sure like songs huh” and he and the remaining Ismailis converted a bunch of us by writing really good songs. I am not joking.
Love that 🎶🎶
So interesting! And love songs 🎶
music is really something
Would you consider queer people a self-creating diaspora? The principle of getting constantly fucked over by everyone else creates the strongest bonds, and that's why fascism targets the poor and minorities - cos we grow up fucking metal and it's so easy to make us feel like we have nothing to lose.
The Lohana who converted were called Khoja, which is Indians trying to say Kwaja, the Farsi word for teacher. A different group of Shia Muslims called Ithna’asheri also converted a bunch of Lohana. Ismailis and Ithna’asheri are almost the same so of course they hated each other’s guts.
But apart from some fun spats, things were mostly fine. We sang our songs, we sold our wares, some of us were rich, some of us were poor, some of us tried to sneakily recruit each other, good times. AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP.
That last sentence applies to too many places.
Thank you for sharing your beautiful and fascinating history. 🕊️🖖🏽
Yes and it counts.
Ugh the British lol
Loved reading this! Thanks for sharing!
Omg, tysm for this. Dad’s side is from Kenya & Tanzania (African 1st) & though he’s Hindu, his best friend of 70+ yrs is Ismaili as are most of his childhood friends. Mom’s is Sikh Panjabi & everyone got out w/the UK on 1 side & US on the other. Mixed & in the diaspora, I ended up w/a white guy.
It is really hard being British and wanting so hard to defend peoples but knowing its our fault they need defending. Its why the Irish are so pro-Palestine and why our govt are being so over the top trying to prosecute them. Somehow the Brits ruin everything...
If it's any consolation, the current UK government doesn't seem to be capable of anything, let alone colonization.
The British were not the only European colonialists. Let’s not forget the Belgians, French or Germans. They were, however the most successful. If tribalism were not the curse of our species you’d not need to defend anyone
::Spain has entered the chat::
Did I say they were? Am I Belgian? Why are you assuming that my relevant comment on a specific subject means I know nothing outside of that specific subject? Don't mansplain. It just makes you look like a dick.
I don’t. I’m sorry if I came off sounding that way. Just been wondering how come the Europeans were the way they were. That’s all.
It's every empire ever. Empires are a bad idea for everyone involved except the rich and power-mad. Before the Internet people credited them with spreading cool stuff as well, but now they're obsolete.
True, but you do have great writers.
Paul Scott, “The Jewel in the Crown.”
Ah yes, “Seriously? …He never changes. …It’s always the same with this guy.” youtu.be/ARSNaSeT9hw?...
*cringes*
Thank you.
The most perfectly situated readmore i have ever encountered
A professor of mine once said, “Show a 20th century war anywhere in the world and I’ll show you a border drawn by the British”
Oh no I hate this cameo
A genetic study using Oxford Nanopore sequencers would likely produce a very interesting map.
Thanks for giving me a cultural lesson! AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP - now that’s a Jeopardy category.
never a good thing -___-
You know things are going to get bad when The British Showed Up comes into a story.
The first 850 years are the worst
“and then the fucking British showed up” love common themes 🥲🫠
Honestly I was expecting this. Somewhere in half of all nations' histories, the British show up and do a big Empire all over the carpets.
Nicely put
Speaking as a native of the UK - can concur that we screwed up a lot of places.
As another UK resident, I say British rulers and governments have done a lot worse than "screw up" the world. But the word "we" is problematic. The powerful did let some 'spoils' of the rigged global economy trickle down to ordinary 'brits', and indoctrinated them too think this was ok. Now
"Not all British people?" Really?
That's not the point I am trying to make. Alongside doing our best to oppose the current British government's support for Israel, and acknowledge the awful colonial past, we have to look out for the changing layers of oppression and where they continue to arise. Watch the rich, and the corporations.
it's our job to re-educate ourselves, and speak out against what our government is doing. It's not that I disagree with you Jay, but I think that the mindset of the wealthy and powerful need to be challenged everywhere.
I know not every descendent of colonialist oppressors has the same wealth as this family, but former BBC reporter @lauratrevelyan.bsky.social and her family are something of a model, correcting via reparations (etc.) some of the harms their family did. Just imagine if the royal family did the same.
Ain't enough time in the world.
As someone who lives in a place where the British showed up and still haven't fucked off this is the best post I have ever read in the entire history of social media. Thank you.
So - you'd identify as an African American? 🤔
@skyview.social unroll
One of my South Asian friends uses the collective noun "WHITE OPPRESSORS" so that we Americans of pallor don't feel left out of the imperialist guilt 🇺🇸 I'm just saying, you could be more inclusive 😉
Thank you for the history lesson! It is always a good thing to be more informed. ❤️
Thank you for sharing this. 😊😊
There we were, hauling human cargo back and forth across the Atlantic. AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP.
>be britain >second largest participant in the transatlantic slave trade >after centuries of protests finally decide slave trading is bad >realize ending the slave trade is a great excuse to capture ships >200 years later people on the internet make opposing the slave trade our entire legacy >mfw :D
Yes, I did intend to represent that single event as the entire legacy of Great Britain, and never intended to point out only that history is complicated and no side is incapable of either right or wrong. The Middle Passage was arguably the worst part of slavery. The naval power needed to end it
would have been unfeasible without Great Britain. Nations and people who did wrong can do right instead. A slave trader can become an abolitionist. He can write a song about the moment he changed his mind: “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!”
The Mughal incursion into India resulted in the death of millions of Hindus. AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP.
Would love a fucking source showing that the Mughal incursion killed more people than the British incursion, let alone millions
I apologize: you must have been under the impression that wars of conquest and mass murder only started with the British.
Here’s a few “fucking sources.” The argument is only about just how many millions were killed.
kulveersamra.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/t...
politicsofindia.quora.com/The-biggest-...
ijemh.com/issue_dcp/Re...
kailaasa.org/persecution/
Originally, I read about it in Will Durant’s “Our Oriental Heritage.” I believe there was one “hunting trip” that resulted in 600,000 casualties - one incident among many.
www.sikhnet.com/news/islamic...
What didn’t the New York Times not get? Did they not understand that people can be from places their ancestors weren’t? Like they think we’re all a mix of Navajo/Powhatan/Chippewa right now, just like the Brothers Grimm and King Arthur before us?
Rashid ad-Din Sinan? The Old Man of the Mountain. Is he yours? Hash-hashin. A very renowned figure.
I was wondering if someone would mention this. Though I haven't specialized in the area that Babai knows, I did look into the Assassins a while ago...yes, they were a branch of Ismaili Islam. The Mongols wiped 'em out. Caliphs of neighboring powers respected them up to that point...(1)
... having the ability to send dagger-men into an enemy's castle can get you plenty of respect, or at least a healthy fear.
So the modernized version of this principle is John Wick
🤣🤣🤣 don’t forget the hashish from which the word assassin arises. As in the “hashashin” per Tales of the Dervish I believe by the great Idries Shah
The story, which may be a legend goes “the old man drugged them and they awoke in a garden w beautiful women and food. When they fell asleep they were carried to their rooms. When they awoke the old man recounted their “dreams” so he earned their undying commitment”
I've heard the story, yes...it is almost certainly a legend. The Assassins were highly disciplined, because they had to be. Going on an undercover mission that ends in killing a target (& probably ensuring one's own death right after that) requires traits most stoners don't possess.
AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP. Yep applies to my country as well.
Not all fucking British.
Just the upper class rich ones. Who screwed over their own poorer citizens just as much as they screwed over other countries. Hang on...the US is about to find out exactly what this feels like 😬
amen to that en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Con...
The Brits were TERRIBLE, here when they were colonizing Canada. At one point they spread small pox virus in "gifts" they gave indigenous people here. Nice (NOT!) Colonization was all about exploiting labour in different countries. Resource extraction continues today.
When colonizing other countries becomes too hard, the rich turn to greater exploitation of people in their own vicinity. That's what's going on now. Slowly pushing us down so the few can reap big riches. Then speedily. Greedy misers want to stay rich.
So many stories take a terrible turn when this happens.
Thanks for the history lesson. This first person insider view of history is hard to come by in most other forums. The truth is that most of us are the same race: Mongrel.
And becoming more so. If you want to set certain people off, remind them that in the not so distant future, we’ll all be kind of an average tan color.
If you're ever struggling to connect with someone from a different culture, just shit-talk the British. Or English. Either way, there's a good chance they agree for a reason of their own.
No thanks. That's disgusting to me. I'd rather not find common cause in hating the contemporary Brits/English.
I'm British. Trust me, we deserve it.
Just the government, not the people
As a British Tolkien fan with an Irish surname, I very much appreciate that!
You're welcome.
That’s hilarious and so true!
I’m of British descent and my husband of Irish descent loves to remind me of this constantly 😏
The Irish are like that 🤭
Who is the final character?
Sauron's boss, Morgoth. The source of all evil. (Named him in the alt.)
My apologies
Statues of her all over the place too
Statues. Fousands of em.
Independence from Britain is the most common holiday in the world.
Scotland is hoping to leave the U.K. very soon 👍🏴
I think so many cultures globally can relate to "AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP!"
Sadly. The damage we did is unimaginable
Imperial Britannia was another country that believed its own bullshit. And look at them now.
And *not* coincidentally the British showed up in Gujarat (1608) at almost the EXACT same time they showed up in Jamestown (1607).
I was waiting for THAT.
The British ruined the world.
You should design a t-shirt and sell it to raise money for genocide victims worldwide with the words AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP
I'd buy one.
take my money
It would sell well in Ireland too 😂
I’m English by birth and I’d wear it.
Probably easier to just say AND THEN THE FUCKING WHITE MAN SHOWED UP
I’d buy one
To be fair, large numbers of ‘Ugandan Asians’ who were kicked out by Amin in the 1970s were given refugee status in Britain.
I’d buy it.
Nobody expects the british inquisition!
They were involved in so much stuff. So much of the current issues can be traced back to British and/or US interference.
Reminds me of a bit by the Irish comedian Dara o’ Briain: every tourist attraction in Ireland has a tour guide going through its history, and there’s always a bit where they say “and then the English came and ruined it!”
Followed by ‘And then the Irish burned it down’.
Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands were much the same during colonisation, if not more brutal. Maybe its AND THEN THE FUCKING EUROPEANS SHOWED UP
Seems fair, because that’ll then pick up the Germans (Namibia) and Belgians (Congo) not to mention Italy (Ethiopia).
Don’t forget the Belgians!
And the French!
MAN FUCK FRANCE. ALL MY HOMIES HATE FRANCE (i am algerian i’m allowed!)
And the Belgians.
We can have one for each day of the week BRITISH - MONDAY BELGIAN - TUESDAY FRENCH - WEDNESDAY PORTUGUESE- THURSDAY SPANISH- FRIDAY DUTCH - SATURDAY TAKING NOMINEES FOR SUNDAY
And the Belgians and Germans!
And the Belgians!
Don't forget Belgium. Also, Germany of course.
yep.. I always say the current mass migrations to Europe are colonialism's chickens coming home to roost.... 😏
I would buy that right now.
I’d buy one!!
That would be primo! The second best is "Britain is responsible for more independence days than any other country."
Absolutely. Sorry.
It's not *always* a bad thing though. www.nam.ac.uk/explore/libe...
I love that's where it decided to collapse the thread, because that's never a good cliff hanger in any story
Ireland joins the chat….
Thanks for announcing us! I was so busy laughing my head off my thumbs couldn’t type straight.
😁
Then everything changed when the British showed up.
People are brave, creative, and resilient. He's made from some very tough ancestry.
Yeah. No backing down there.
A people who understand what is happening really well.
Maybe amend this to the English turned up?
I was reading through this very interesting thread, and in the back of my head a voice was going 'it's going to be the fault of the British' because if there is one thing I've learned about history, and especially diasporas, it's that 95% of the time we Brits are to blame.
Irish people concur
And before anyone asks the rest of the time it was the French, Dutch and Belgians at fault.
Don't forget about the Germans...
Wild how nobody has even mentioned Spain yet
Thank you so much for sharing this in painstaking detail! I’m really grateful to understand more about your community’s history and experiences. I wish nothing but health and happiness for you and your whole family. America should be the place where that’s guaranteed for everyone
This one skeet is like the cliff notes version of the last 400 years of history for like 2/3 of the planet.
For my family... THEN THE FUCKING PORTUGUESE SHOWED UP AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP
For Jamaicans it's the fucking Spanish first and they got their asses kicked, so then the fucking British. For the Haitians it's "and then the fucking French showed up, the Jamaicans helped us to kick them out, and then the French billed us for a century because we kicked their asses".
Religion showed up too… Crusades and worse
Religion was not the reason but a tool used wrongly by power hungry men.
Quite like the republicans in power in the USA now, their “Christianity” is an abomination to what Christianity is about.
Christianity, like all religions, is a means of controlling, thought, knowledge, wealth, business & the masses, especially women.
Have you ever read 'Fields of Blood' by Karen Armstrong? I think you might like it .
Will read it, thanks for the suggestion!
I was treated like royalty on my trips to South Yemen just because I was British. They took me to see generators and other infrastructure installed by the Victorians. Hardworking, generous people. But the society is pre-Biblical.
"THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP" should really be a series of history books or documentaries explaining how they just messed up the whole damn world.🥴
A companion series to “Stuff the British Stole” really.
A perfect opportunity to link to James Acaster youtu.be/x73PkUvArJY?...
But Britain had an original stock of people and THEN THE VIKINGS TURNED UP, and the ROMANS TURNED UP. The last invasion was THE NORMANS, and they still own most of the land and power and continue to colonialise from this base. Ironic that the poor old ancient Britons get the global blame.
Fine if you want to get pedantic it was not the ancient Britons but that's from where the term BRITISH is derived so if you want to be more specific THEN THE POST 1066 ENGLISH TURNED UP.
Whataboutry at its best.
Great thread. It’s very cool to me because after much effort and research my family history is basically “Some illiterate Scotch/ Irish Hillbillies wandered out of the Appalachians in the late 1800s and got jobs in factories.”
You might enjoy this book. It fills in a lot of history I was unaware of that may connect to your family and a lot of families who emigrated to America. No offense intended in the title. Says more about the ones who throw around insults than the people they target with insults.
Or mines.
I have heard the Ba-Damp! through the text somehow.
"AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP" Thanks for sharing this fascinating thread. Reading here in Ireland, certain points struck a chord.
Also here in Aotearoa New Zealand....
Oh, shit. I think I know how this goes from here. It’s never good.
As someone who is a *direct* descendant of AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP... I feel like we can rename whole history courses that. Possibly whole degrees. Several for North America/Oceania, a few for the Caribbean, oodles for South Asia and a ton for Africa...
Yeah. Maybe expand it to “Europeans showed up” to include some of the other screw ups and exploitations of Spain and to a lesser extent Dutch, Portuguese, and French.
I feel like that dilutes the impact each had, though. (And, let's be real, the Brits left an outsized impact in language, alone.) The only other colonial power that left that huge of a linguistic impact is Spain.
I kind of feel as if the Welsh would point out that it’s more the English than the British, given the English ran roughshod over them first.
ENTIRELY VALID.
Ireland since 1170
Oh, that's a PhD. You and the Welsh and the Scots
I did a series of university courses about peace and what are believed to be wars between religious groups across history around the world. Practically every single one of them turned out to be caused by colonialism and the way the colonialists created animosities and divided power when they left.
It's the ominous turning point of far too many countries history.
Master class.
Thank you for a well written and very educational read. We need more of these personalized history lessons.
And still, we have politicians saying we should celebrate the positive side of empire. As far as I can see that amounts to trains, a civil service, cricket and a culture of subjugating and murdering. So it boils down to “I’m really sorry that my ancestors did all that stuff, but - cricket - yeah!1/2
The focus on trains is sold to people as easier transportation, but they are used to make the rich richer by selling goods to a wider population. And then to transport people involuntarily. That's planes and even shipping containers now.
Some days I’m remind of how shit we were to a whole lot of people around the world and we’re being told we should be proud of it. We were awful, and we’ve rewritten our collective memory so we can say we were a force for good. 2/2
Same thing with America. We were the original anti-Brits, now we're re-writing our own history.
I probably can’t use the “fucking” part, but I’d love to use this in my world history class next year to describe several points in history
Sorry about that, some of us just wanted to stay home singing songs and arguing about books but there's always some idiot. Anyway, back to your thread...
All I want in life!
I was a child in the Belgian Congo! We bought supplies from a Gujarati store keeper! Mr Patel. A Sweet kind man. Your story of diaspora is fascinating! 👏
Seek the Light of the Creator in all whom you encounter today! You will see each person differently, allowing love to flow! We are each here for a reason! ❤️👏
I'm cringing as I read on.............
📌
This is where it always goes south.
Wonderful thread. Thank you.
Now, European elites had benefited immensely from this handy thing called antisemitism, which did an amazing job of keeping peasants in line by giving them a highly visible group of outsiders to blame for everything. So they went around recreating this in all their colonies.
Jesus. This penny just dropped for me. UGH.
Great thread! I knew a little of this history on account of having an Ismaili friend but you make it so clear and engaging. Thank you!
"They" always need someone to blame. (Look at Trump)
The British hated the Irish -1st, that’s how they cut their teeth. Then antisemitism started under King John (to steal money from the merchants. He thought they were charging him too much interest on his lending fees.) He expropriated they villages.
Remind me what a Dhimmi is again and how that Pact of Umar fits with this idea?
Thank you, Sophia, for sharing your history. Best thing I'll read today.
In Rwanda the highly visible scapegoat minorities were the Tutsis. In much of North Africa but particularly Algeria they were, well, Jews. In India they were Muslims. Suddenly things got really, really bad for Muslims in India.
I was reading When Victims Become Killers by, well, Mamdani and that is a pretty simplistic view of what happened in Rwanda.
Pretty sure European colonizers took a class concept (Tutsi-Hutu) and turned it into an ethnic one (which was awful and laid the foundations for ethnic violence) but it involved politically and socially elevating the Tutsi as a supposedly superior race, rather than a scapegoat.
So what exactly were the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire and the smaller Muslim emirates and Sultanates? Book clubs? Muslims were not scapegoats, they were proto-conquistadors who despised the wife-burning pagans of Hindustan and made them their hewers of wood and drawers of water.
The British didn't do this in Rwanda; it was the Belgians. And they didn't scapegoat the Tutsis, they made them a privileged minority that later was resented by the scapegoated majority.
The leader of the Ismailis, having gone through this once already, were like “guys this is not gonna go well, you should go to Africa, where you will have jobs.” Ismailis mostly listened, and Ithna’asheri mostly followed because again: we are basically the same people.
Thank you so much for this thread, it is extremely interesting! Rhymes with the story of the Jewish Sephardim, who largely got out of Spain/France into Persia and stayed there for a few hundred years (but mine went to Canada)
So you end up with a giant diaspora in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Now! Regardless of where we came from, in Lahore we identified as from Lahore, in Gujarat we identified as from Gujarat. In East Africa we were a bit more insular, somewhat because racism and somewhat because religion.
Very true. Good Post! #JaiHo is an Indian term, greeting, encouragement to stay positive and win. #India #Hindu open.spotify.com/track/4yhXVN...
in India it's still the Muslims.... especially now with Hindutva ruling India... the level of hatred they feel towards Muslins is off hhe charts.... (they also hate all non-Hindus....)
I so understand this... "AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP."
Have a conversation with an Irish… They were the first experiment in 1169. It’s an ice cold peace.
This is what I was referring to.
You’re thread is amazing. They really are just intolerable. I hope you saw Kneecap the biopic and listen to their music. Gandhi was an attorney in South Africa before returning to India. His experiences of the atrocities the British regime committed in South Africa were appalling, before Apartheid
The white European men raped and pillaged the world and here we are now.
The British Empire has been the largest in world history. 172 of 191 countries in the United Nations.
God they ruin everything.
Except fish and chips.
To be fair, those are probably originally Jewish
TIL! Jews from Spain and Portugal problem brought the fried fish. Neat.
Thank you for the history lesson a the British showed up tells it all!
Thank you do very much for this history lesson!
As someone who is British... Yeah. Yeah, that tracks. No one, despite whatever Murdock's rags claim, has fucked up Britain more than the British (the Romans don't count cos it wasn't Britain back then). Not even the Germans did the up-fuckening, and they BOMBED US.
But that's another story entirely. Let's not wander off into revenge and Dresden, and so forth. Pick it up on August 15,1947.
"AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP" accounts for a startlingly high percentage of historic disasters 😔
Having Irish, Welsh, Scottish and French ancestry, im pretty sure thats my family motto
The sun never sets on the British empire… mostly because god doesn’t trust the English in the dark
This made me laugh more than was reasonable 🤣
It needs to be the title of a book on colonial history.
guardianbookshop.com/52-times-bri... even better
Someone pointed out "AND THEN THE USA SHOWED UP" would also cover a lot, & like they're not wrong BUT arguably the USA is kind of our fault so 😬 awkward.
You're selling the sequel book. Hollywood will thank you (but they would like to rework the title).
However you forget that the British government was who the American revolution was fighting against
Am British. Can confirm.
In Ireland we have the contemporary phrase "the brits are at it again"... Because they usually are...
We really are 😔
Uh, yeah, just look at Palestine 🙄
INDEED. One could suggest that showing up, fucking the locals over, then dividing the land in two so we can look on & tut about how "can't they just get along" a British leitmotif. Palestine (& the ottoman empire as a whole), India/Pakistan, Ireland/NI, Cyprus... off the top of my head 😬😬😬
Of course the fire nation attacked, ugh
Well worth the read!
😬
As a Brit, I always think of this sketch whenever colonialism is, rightly, brought up.
Appreciate the information 🇺🇸
AND THEN THE FUCKING BRITISH SHOWED UP Wild how often the goofy times in a cultures history are preceded by those words.
And soon it will be AND THEN TRUMP SHOWED UP.
Yup!
I was wondering when we would appear... Never ones to miss a good opportunity to screw people for some profit...
Thanks for sharing this, Sophia
I am so here for this
The head of the Ismailis is the Aga Khan. They are also the sect which gave us the order of assassins via a breakaway sect www.britannica.com/topic/Nizari...
