[Marxism] [Fwd:Party for Islamic Renewal: The London Bombing by Frederick Engels writing from the grave!]

[Michael Sims <mjsbpmagen-mxmail@xxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Party for Islamic Renewal

THE LONDON BOMBING
By: Frederick Engels
(Yes: the famous Frederick Engels writing from the grave!)


Persia and China
By: Frederick Engels
Written in London, 22 May 1857;
published in the New York Daily Tribune, No. 5032, 5 June 1857

. . . . There is evidently a different spirit among the Chinese now to what
they showed in the war of 1840 to 1842. Then, the people were quiet; they
left the Emperor’s soldiers to fight the invaders, and submitted after a
defeat with Eastern fatalism to the power of the enemy. But now, at least in
the southern provinces, to which the contest has so far been confined, the
mass of the people take an active, nay, a fanatical part in the struggle
against the foreigners. They poison the bread of the European community at
Hongkong by wholesale, and with the coolest premeditation. (A few loaves
have been sent to Liebig for examination. He found large quantities of
arsenic pervading all parts of them, showing that it had already been worked
into the dough. The dose, however, was so strong that it must have acted as
an emetic, and thereby counteracted the effects of the poison.) They go with
hidden arms on board trading steamers, and, when on the journey, massacre
the crew and European passengers and seize the boat. They kidnap and kill
every foreigner within their reach.  The very coolies emigrating to foreign
countries rise in mutiny, and as if by concert, on board every emigrant
ship, and fight for its possession, and, rather than surrender, go down to
the bottom with it, or perish in its flames. Even out of China, the Chinese
colonists, the most submissive and meek of subjects hitherto, conspire and
suddenly rise in nightly insurrection, as at Sarawak; or, as at Singapore,
are held down by main force and vigilance only. The piratical policy of the
British Government has caused this universal outbreak of all Chinese against
all foreigners, and marked it as a war of extermination.

What is an army to do against a people resorting to such means of warfare?
Where, how far, is it to penetrate into the enemy’s country, how to maintain
itself there? Civilization-mongers who throw hot shell on a defenceless city
and add rape to murder, may call the system cowardly, barbarous, atrocious;
but what matters it to the Chinese if it be only successful? Since the
British treat them as barbarians, they cannot deny to them the full benefit
of their barbarism. If their kidnappings, surprises, midnight massacres are
what we call cowardly, the civilization-mongers should not forget that
according to their own showing they could not stand against European means
of destruction with their ordinary means of warfare.

In short, instead of moralizing on the horrible atrocities of the Chinese,
as the chivalrous English press does, we had better recognize that this is a
war pro aris et focis, [“for altars and hearths”] a popular war for the
maintenance of Chinese nationality, with all its overbearing prejudice,
stupidity, learned ignorance and pedantic barbarism if you like, but yet a
popular war. And in a popular war the means used by the insurgent nation
cannot be measured by the commonly recognized rules of regular warfare, nor
by any other abstract standard, but by the degree of civilization only
attained by that insurgent nation.
(In Marx, Engels, On Colonialism, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974,pp.
123-124.)


للإنسحاب من هذه القائمة:

Party for Islamic Renewal
يرجى من الضغط على الرابط التالي (أو قصه ولصقه في حقل العنوان لمتصفحك):







Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UK_Left_Network/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    UK_Left_Network-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/





        

        
                
___________________________________________________________________________
Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger
Téléchargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com


_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism