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35 Dark Facts About Colonialism and Colonial Rule

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26Great Potato Famine

Great Potato Famine

During the Great Potato Famine, the Ottoman Empire sent ships full of food to Ireland, but they turned away by the British. These ships were then snuck into Dublin illegally to provide aid to the starving Irish.


27. During the height of the Bengal famine of 1770, the ruling British East India Company raised taxes on land from 50-60% and forbid farmers from eating their crops, maximizing company profits while nearly 10 million people died.


28. The Bengal Famine and the American Revolution are directly related. After the Bengal famine eliminated one-third of the population of Bengal, there was a huge reduction in land revenues of the British East India Company, which then influenced the British to pass the Tea Act to reduce its troubles which led to the Boston Tea Party.


29. The Great Bengal Famine of 1770 resulted in the deaths of 10 million people, approximately one-third of the population of the affected area. The famine occurred or was made more severe largely due to the British East India Company's policies in Bengal. Winston Churchill even asked Leopold Amery "why, if the famine was so horrible, Gandhi had not yet died of starvation."


30. Each mile of Indian railway construction in the 1850s and 1860s cost an average of £18,000, as against the dollar equivalent of £2000 at the same time in the US. The extra costs were collected by the British colonizers from the Indians through added taxes and revenues. This was a prime example of "British Colonial Looting."


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31Herero Genocide

Herero Genocide

The first genocide of the 20th century was committed by the Imperial State of Germany in 1904. When the Herero tribesmen of Namibia rebelled against the German colonial rule, the German colonizers in turned killed 65000 Herero tribes-people by trapping them in a desert with poisoned wells, while they fled.


32. The Spanish colonial authorities in Cuba castrated "sodomites" and forced them to eat their testicles covered in dirt.


33. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 started because the East India Trading Company was asking its Hindu and muslim soldiers to bite the seals of their ammo cartridges, which were sealed with pork and beef fats. This was against their religious beliefs.


34. During the British conquest of Tasmania, the British Lieutenant-General declared Martial law which allowed the British colonists to kill the aboriginal Tasmanians with impunity. Historians still to this day debate on whether to label ‘The Black War’ as genocide.


35. When King Leopold II of Belgium personally acquired the "Congo Free State" in 1885, it was 76 times the size of Belgium. He claimed the land at the 1884-1885 Berlin conference promising to improve the lives of the locals but ended up enslaving them to gather ivory and natural rubber.

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