Even though some people have praised the crown of Queen Elizabeth II for her long career of service to a specific class of people British in mentality, there has been a plethora of reactions across the former British colonies. For the entirety of history, Britain has stood on three words: civilization, colonization, and extermination, resulting in the fact that the Queen’s death has sparked a heated debate in all former British colonies because the royal family was at the root of all colonial oppressions, cruelties, plunders, and horrendous lootings of indigenous culture, as well as the dehumanization of native people. More importantly, Britain stole indigenous historical treasures from Africa to India under the looting policies of the crown.
The largest historical loot bazaar in the world is still regarded as a British glory, but for colonized countries, the British Museum is a symbol of British colonial looting and atrocities. Many treasures from different nations continue to cry out for justice to be handed back to their native lands, but the shambolic British government and the royal family who is at the back, instead of accepting responsibility for their colonial looting, are still busy creating new structures of oppression to annihilate innocent people across the world.
While talking about the queen’s death, how can we disregard the British industrial revolution, which led to India’s deindustrialization? How can we ignore the fact that the British looting system has transformed from the owner of 24% of the world – wealth into a beggar and still former British colonies are under the brutal economic systems of the World Bank and IMF? How do we neglect that 150 affluent British families stood on 3 million African slaves being traded across the Atlantic in the nineteenth century? How can we overlook the 15 million deaths that occurred while India was ruled by the crown?
Brutality and the Crown
How can we forget the innocent Indians who died in the British world wars, when India provided 3 million pounds to Britain for these wars when Churchill’s militant policies caused 4 million Indians to perish in the Great Bengal famine, and when British officers talked to Churchill to get permission for food, he responded, “Why is Gandhi still living and not died yet?” How can we overlook the massive psychological damage done by British imperialism and the dehumanization of Africans during colonial oppression? Shashi Tharoor said in his Oxford Union speech “the sun never sets on the British empire because even God doesn’t have trust in the English in the dark.”
Numerous observers noted how the British Empire plundered around $45 trillion from India over two centuries of colonialism that resulted in millions of deaths and how the Kohinoor—one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, with an estimated value of $200 million—was stolen from India to be set in the queen mother’s crown. “Why are Indians mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II?” asked Indian economist Manisha Kadyan on Twitter. “Her legacy is colonialism, slavery, racism, loot, and plundering. Despite having chances, she never apologized for her family’s bloody history. She reduced everything to a “difficult past episode” on her visit to India.
An Indian historian tweeted, “There are only 22 countries that Britain has never invaded throughout history. “He wrote that British ships transported a total of three million Africans to the New World as slaves. “An empire that brought misery and famine to Asia and Africa. No tears for the queen. No tears for the British monarchy. “Negative reaction to the queen’s passing was not limited to the Global South. Despite the historic reconciliation between Ireland and Britain this century, there were celebrations in Dublin—as a “We will not mourn for royals who oversaw the protection of known child molesters in the family,” the group said. “We will not mourn for royals who oversaw the active destruction of the Welsh language and the Welsh culture,” the separatists added.
On Thursday, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) a South African left-wing to far-left pan-Africanist political party released a statement declaring the party was not among those mourning the British royal, hours after it was announced that Queen Elizabeth II had passed away. The party used her passing to bring attention to what it stated was her role in a tragic time in the history of South Africa, a former British colony, and of Africa.
The EFF claimed that under the direction of the royal family, Britain seized the Batavian authority over the region in 1795 and imposed permanent dominance on the region in 1806. Later, SA was the name given to that region. The EFF stated that it does not mourn Elizabeth’s death because it continues to serve as a reminder of a tragic period in South African and African history.
According to the Red Berets, South Africa’s interaction with Britain has been one of pain, suffering, death, depression, and brutalization of African people under the leadership of the British royal family. According to the group, Queen Elizabeth “was a proud flag bearer of the atrocities because she ordered savage repression of the Yemeni people’s struggle against British colonialism throughout her reign. “The EFF further said that during her 70-year reign, the late monarch did not even once acknowledge the atrocities that her family inflicted on native people that Britain invaded across the world. “She willingly benefitted from the wealth that was attained from the exploitation and murder of millions of people across the world.”
The British Royal Family stands on the shoulders of millions of slaves who were shipped away from the continent to serve the interests of racist white capital accumulation, at the center of which lies the British royal family. Queen Elizabeth’s death revives criticism of Britain’s legacy of colonialism. Critics are responding to “the relationship of the monarchy to systems of oppression, repression, and forced extraction of labor, particularly African labor, and the exploitation of natural resources and forcing systems of control in these places.
Also read: Darkness under the Crown (Part II)
