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Cythereal posted:I think it goes back to the very founding cultures of both as modern nations. The US is still a newcomer to the world scene, and it was founded on war, slaughter of natives, and village militias where every farmer was expected to have a gun and know how to use it. That kind of dangerous environment for settlers didn't end until not a lot more than a century ago - and even then, large parts of the US have very dangerous purely animal predators that can warrant going armed. I just feel like this can't be it, as the English Civil War proceeded after colonization had already started in a big way. Armies were on the march across the British Isles while Boston was a 20 year old settlement and parts of Virginia had been inhabited for almost 40 years. And then it's not til 1660 that you've got royalty back in power and all that. Vast amounts of the formerly peaceful countryside had to get involved in various battles and protecting themselves against both main factions during the Civil War and continued unrest after it officially ended but before the restoration.
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Nov 29, 2018 16:38
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sullat posted:It's normal to bribe a policemen in this century, though? when cops were invented in england there was a concerted, deliberate effort to make them as little like soldiers as possible, and this is probably related to that. that's why they wear blue.in britain the very earliest cops wore top hats. soldiers were used for domestic law enforcement in france and the german states and that freaked the brits out. anything that might look like a standing army was bad because that equaled state repression. considering that in some areas this dated back into the seventeenth century, folk memories of the people i study are probably influencing this feeling. imagine your local pocket lord renting a few hundred of my guys to keep the peace HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Nov 29, 2018 |
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Nov 29, 2018 16:41
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SeanBeansShako posted:No you'd go to prison unless you are a rich and or famous. And then eventually you'll go to prison. Fine, it was normal to bribe a policeman in the 20th century, up until the 70s or 80s or so when a combination of police reform, the war on drugs, crackdowns on organized crime, and the rise of revenuing put an end to the widespread practice... in the US at least.
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Nov 29, 2018 16:41
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sullat posted:It's normal to bribe a policemen in this century, though? Well bribery is still common around the world, yes. But my point was that in 19th century England this is something done openly, and doesn't seem to have any sense of impropriety attached to it. A policeman is lower class, so a gentleman tips him, and he accepts it. It's just an in-built class response on both sides. I very much doubt that a policeman would have taken a shilling from a working class person.
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Nov 29, 2018 16:44
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Mr Enderby posted:A policeman is lower class, so a gentleman tips him, and he accepts it. It's just an in-built class response on both sides.
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Nov 29, 2018 16:45
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did you guys not wonder what "the holiday bonus" is? it's a mark of service, from the person who gives it to the person who accepts it, the last vestige of an ancient practice. edit: there's a case in the masnfeld regiment legal books where a squad of musketeers demands a tip for following orders. the guy they demand this from walks back to the company captain and gets the money.
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Nov 29, 2018 16:48
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HEY GUNS posted:
The adorably nicknamed Peelers named after Robert Peel who brought them in.
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Nov 29, 2018 16:58
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Pinkertons are pretty drat fascinating. hey gal is right that they weren't particularly unique in their thuggishness...they were probably even on the mild side when it came to late 19th century American cops (I'll offer 1860s NYC cops as the most thuggish of the era). What made them different is that there were a lot of them, and they were available to hire to anyone with the cash. American law enforcement post-war was...inconsistent, at best, and a couple dozen well armed and organized guys coming into a rural area basically became that area's police force. That was the Pinkerton business model...they provided rich guys with private police that the real police couldn't do poo poo about.
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Nov 29, 2018 17:15
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bewbies posted:hey gal is right that they weren't particularly unique in their thuggishness...they were probably even on the mild side when it came to late 19th century American cops (I'll offer 1860s NYC cops as the most thuggish of the era).
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Nov 29, 2018 17:20
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HEY GUNS posted:don't forget big-city fire departments, which are also full of heavily-armed thugs in the mid 19th century, because America Ah yeah, the "fire b'hoys" of First Bull Run.
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Nov 29, 2018 17:23
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HEY GUNS posted:there are other kinds of lower class people a gentleman wouldn't even willingly interact with Unless horses, dogs, or bareknuckle boxing were involved.
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Nov 29, 2018 17:30
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Deptfordx posted:A good friend was a then very junior member of the British negotiating team that sold them to Canada. Sounds about right for Silly Procurement Games. I would argue that the UK hasn't really had any use for diesel boats since 1989 so it's not the absolute stupidest move they could have pulled. My understanding is that they were fine when we decided to sell them and then they spent the best part of a decade in limbo with no maintenance and sat in salt water because as you've said, there wasn't any money going for their upkeep. If the Canadians had picked them up for their initial asking price they'd probably have been alright, give them a lick of paint and whatever inferior Yank systems you favour and job's a good one. Problem is that it was then the turn of the Canadian Government to get clever and try to negotiate while the actual value of the submarines was deteriorating faster than they could knock the price down. Cythereal posted:The English on the other hand had completely subdued the British Isles centuries before the US came along I'm too white, too middle class and too rural to have a sensible discussion about police brutality in the UK, but I can definitely pick out terrible history when I see it. The "English" did not subdue Scotland, Great Britain wasn't unified until 1707 (with subsequent Catholic insurrections in 1715 and 1745) and Ireland wasn't subdued at all. Depending on who you ask Northern Ireland was either subdued in 1998 or is still a work in progress. None of this means that the yeoman archer didn't disappear much faster than the minuteman did, but it does perhaps indicate there's more to it than that.
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Nov 29, 2018 17:33
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HEY GUNS posted:soldiers were used for domestic law enforcement in france and the german states and that freaked the brits out. anything that might look like a standing army was bad because that equaled state repression. considering that in some areas this dated back into the seventeenth century, folk memories of the people i study are probably influencing this feeling. I mean it's not really 'in some areas', the whole notion of having a standing army under royal control freaked out what would become the Parliamentarian side in the Civil War because, yes, it is exactly what you need if you're an autocratically-minded King who wants to rule without a Parliament, though they weren't looking at your guys so much as France, I suspect. There's a reason we have a Royal Air Force and a Royal Navy but not a Royal Army. Can't institute a countrywide dictatorship with just boats.
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Nov 29, 2018 17:40
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FrangibleCover posted:I'm too white, too middle class and too rural to have a sensible discussion about police brutality in the UK, but I can definitely pick out terrible history when I see it. The "English" did not subdue Scotland, Great Britain wasn't unified until 1707 (with subsequent Catholic insurrections in 1715 and 1745) and Ireland wasn't subdued at all. Depending on who you ask Northern Ireland was either subdued in 1998 or is still a work in progress. None of this means that the yeoman archer didn't disappear much faster than the minuteman did, but it does perhaps indicate there's more to it than that. Fair enough, I am not British and it appears my knowledge of Britain was badly mistaken.
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Nov 29, 2018 17:44
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FrangibleCover posted:The "English" did not subdue Scotland, Great Britain wasn't unified until 1707 (with subsequent Catholic insurrections in 1715 and 1745) and Ireland wasn't subdued at all. Nitpicky point, but the 15 and 45 weren't Catholic insurrections. The large majority of rebelling Scots (and almost all Jacobites in England) were non-juring Episcopalians.
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Nov 29, 2018 17:49
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Mr Enderby posted:Nitpicky point, but the 15 and 45 weren't Catholic insurrections. The large majority of rebelling Scots (and almost all Jacobites in England) were non-juring Episcopalians. Attempting to install a Catholic King, though. In the '15 the Old Pretender explicitly appealed to the Pope for help. That sounds p Catholic to me, to be honest. I mean the dude is buried in the frigging Vatican.
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Nov 29, 2018 17:52
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feedmegin posted:Attempting to install a Catholic King, though. In the '15 the Old Pretender explicitly appealed to the Pope for help. That sounds p Catholic to me, to be honest. I mean the dude is buried in the frigging Vatican. Quite so. At least it was part of the rebellion for sure: "It is not so much a devoted son, oppressed by the injustices of his enemies, as a persecuted Church threatened with destruction, which appeals for the protection and help of its worthy pontiff"
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Nov 29, 2018 17:56
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feedmegin posted:Attempting to install a Catholic King, though. In the '15 the Old Pretender explicitly appealed to the Pope for help. That sounds p Catholic to me, to be honest. I mean the dude is buried in the frigging Vatican. But Bonnie Prince Charlie was willing to convert, and actually did so in secret after the 1745 uprising.
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Nov 29, 2018 17:56
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Epicurius posted:Right, but "armed private security who might shoot you dead" also applies to my grandfather, who was the night watchman at a steel plant during WWII. It's a pretty big category. Generally the difference between Pinkertons and a security guard is a what approach and scale they are working at. If I am contracting out security guards then I am generally thinking in a defensive posture. Protect the location and hopefully the staff. Pinkertons take on a more offensive role. They are seeking out potential threats and in the old days shooting them. Yes, they provide armed security but they did that because they were planning on breaking some heads and they needed to protect their employer from retaliation. What separates the Pinkerton Agency from other private detectives in the late 1800s is two things. The first is a being a large organization, but the second is that when the DOJ was tasked with setting up an organization to handle federal law enforcement, they felt they weren't given enough money, so they simply contracted it out to the Pinkertons. So you have a private organization, mostly funded by rear end in a top hat businessmen, but whose members are also law enforcement agents. With all of the rights and powers of federal agents with none of the modern oversight. For those who are curious the Pinkertons are still around. The agency was bought by Securitas AB in the 90's and is operated under the Pinkerton name still. And they still do the same job they did in the strikebreaking days minus the violence. Companies hire them to look for potential malcontents, union activity and for counter intelligence for corporate espionage.
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Nov 29, 2018 18:13
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HEY GUNS posted:
And now we’re back to the Pinkertons 
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Nov 29, 2018 18:19
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Mr Enderby posted:And just to restate my thesis, in case it isn't clear, any romantic notion of British "policing by consent" go out of the window if you look at Ulster, let alone Burma or Kenya. See, I'd argue that in none of those places did the Empire ever attempt to police by consent. The whole concept doesn't become invalid just because it's been selectively applied; you can police Manchester and Birmingham by consent while using paramilitary policing in Belfast and Derry. Re NI: You can make an argument, maybe, for things changing there after the RUC became the PSNI, but I reckon that doesn't fly until the PSNI is fully representative and all its officers can police anywhere without the risk of getting shot as collaborators.
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Nov 29, 2018 19:25
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Trin Tragula posted:See, I'd argue that in none of those places did the Empire ever attempt to police by consent. The whole concept doesn't become invalid just because it's been selectively applied; you can police Manchester and Birmingham by consent while using paramilitary policing in Belfast and Derry. Yes, I agree with that. My point was that overseas colonies and Great Britain were part of one system, and saying that British police weren't violent to British people is a bit like the saying that police in 1960s Alabama didn't beat up white people. The only difference is roles of being a nice police for whites, and a nasty police for non whites where geographically separate. America's subaltern classes lived nextdoor, and Britain's lived overseas. Edit: I mean subaltern in the Spivak sense, not the Kipling sense. Mr Enderby fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Nov 29, 2018 |
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Nov 29, 2018 20:30
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Mr Enderby posted:My point was that overseas colonies and Great Britain were part of one system, and saying that British police weren't violent to British people is a bit like the saying that police in 1960s Alabama didn't beat up white people. The only difference is roles of being a nice police for whites, and a nasty police for non whites where geographically separate. America's subaltern classes lived nextdoor, and Britain's lived overseas. Well, but you don't have the same people doing the same things, though. You don't appoint constables to go and pacify the natives. Blankford Town Police isn't necessarily looking for the same kind of person as the Blankshire Regiment is (and the Siamese Imperial Police are looking for someone different again to do another different job), and even if you are recruiting from the same people, you don't train them the same way. The town police are policing by consent and that's the only job they'll do, the Blankshires are going to be used as gendarmes and that's the only job they'll do. You don't have people from Blankford Town Police being shipped to Siam to deal with a crime wave or put down a riot, in the same way that an Alabama cop in the 60s might expect to spend some of his time helping nice old white ladies across the street, and some of his time helping (as he might say) disrespectful young black thugs to fall down the stairs.
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Nov 29, 2018 21:16
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Mr Enderby posted:My point was that overseas colonies and Great Britain were part of one system [like the different ethnic groups in the US]... there was no point in time when americans lived in an ethnically homogeneous society. hispanics and anglos genocided the original inhabitants and oppressed the survivors. anglo black people and anglo white people came to what is now the us at the same time. you had a time before your empire and therefore could think about an imagined community in which, as robert peel said, "the people [could be] the police and the police [could be] the people." we never had that and i do not believe his american counterpart would have said the same thing. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Nov 29, 2018 |
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Nov 29, 2018 21:19
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Mr Enderby posted:Edit: I mean subaltern in the Spivak sense, not the Kipling sense.
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Nov 29, 2018 21:28
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Cythereal posted:I think it goes back to the very founding cultures of both as modern nations. The US is still a newcomer to the world scene, and it was founded on war, slaughter of natives, and village militias where every farmer was expected to have a gun and know how to use it. That kind of dangerous environment for settlers didn't end until not a lot more than a century ago - and even then, large parts of the US have very dangerous purely animal predators that can warrant going armed. Don't forget about slavery. The fear of an uprising was another factor in the desire for armed militias.
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Nov 29, 2018 21:51
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HEY GUNS posted:anglo black people and anglo white people I feel dumb asking this but in what way are you intending to mean the word "anglo"? Because in every way I can think of, "anglo black people" sounds...kind of odd?
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Nov 29, 2018 21:51
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Spacewolf posted:I feel dumb asking this but in what way are you intending to mean the word "anglo"? Because in every way I can think of, "anglo black people" sounds...kind of odd?
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Nov 29, 2018 21:57
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ponzicar posted:Don't forget about slavery. The fear of an uprising was another factor in the desire for armed militias.
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Nov 29, 2018 21:58
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Cythereal posted:The US is an order of magnitude more vast, and I don't think approaches the British level of a tamed countryside anywhere, not even in New England or the tidewater that have been inhabited the longest. Just think of all the healthy and uninjured people who manage to get lost and die in the woods/desert in the US or Canada. I can't really imagine that happening in Europe outside of say, Scandinavia or Northern Scotland, or some of the really rugged alpine regions, most other places you could probably just pick a direction and keep walking until you find a farm or road or something. Hell IIRC that's the common theory about what happened with the Death Valley Germans, they got lost and figured "oh we'll just go to this military base and get found by a perimeter patrol", except bases like China Lake are built in barren wastelands because nobody wants the land and they don't have to do patrols, so they died.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:02
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Trin Tragula posted:Well, but you don't have the same people doing the same things, though. You don't appoint constables to go and pacify the natives. Blankford Town Police isn't necessarily looking for the same kind of person as the Blankshire Regiment is (and the Siamese Imperial Police are looking for someone different again to do another different job), and even if you are recruiting from the same people, you don't train them the same way. The town police are policing by consent and that's the only job they'll do, the Blankshires are going to be used as gendarmes and that's the only job they'll do. You don't have people from Blankford Town Police being shipped to Siam to deal with a crime wave or put down a riot, in the same way that an Alabama cop in the 60s might expect to spend some of his time helping nice old white ladies across the street, and some of his time helping (as he might say) disrespectful young black thugs to fall down the stairs. There's more crossover than you'd expect. Some colonies at some times were explicitly recruiting Metropolitan officers to form the nucleus of the colonial force. I finished my MA dissertation over the summer on the EIC police in the Straits Settlements (well, a bit broader than that but policing was at the core) and the push (by white merchants) in the 1840s and 50s was for a force essentially based on the Met, but with a racially segregated set of lower ranks and the ability to shoot the Chinese when deemed necessary (spoiler, it was often deemed necessary). The Straits frequently recruited or tried to recruit Met officers, often Sergeants who were then put into Inspector positions. It should be noted there was opposition to this, particularly from er... the head of police in the Straits who pointed out it was probably helpful to have the ability to speak local languages (And to be aware of the 'racial characteristics' that were lacking in the east end. There was also at least a nod towards policing with consent- there were repeated drives to have laws translated into local languages and in the aftermath of communal disturbances in 1857 one of the points raised by a delegation of European and Chinese merchants to the government was that it was somewhat unjust to expect people to trust or follow laws they couldn't understand. It was a style of policing that would never be acceptable in Britain itself, but there was certainly cross fertilisation of ideas (at least in the early 19th century- obviously the mutiny affects things somewhat).
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Nov 29, 2018 22:05
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Mr Enderby posted:None of this is to disagree with the idea that the roots of this societal tolerance of police violence isn't racial in nature, but it doesn't just relate to non-white people. Friendly fire.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:16
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C.M. Kruger posted:Just think of all the healthy and uninjured people who manage to get lost and die in the woods/desert in the US or Canada. I can't really imagine that happening in Europe outside of say, Scandinavia or Northern Scotland, or some of the really rugged alpine regions, most other places you could probably just pick a direction and keep walking until you find a farm or road or something. On the note of them, they went missing in 1996. The first body wasn't found until 2009. And the description of how the first body was found is pretty wild, http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/ Dude's great at giving description of just how tough and little visited the general terrain is.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:42
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i was arguing with my partner about gun control, and i asked him "well in england, don't you have towns that aren't on the map, they don't officially exist, so nobody will know where you are if you call 911? or don't you have places that are so small there are no cops?" and he said "what" and i said "what" edit: i was thinking of west mesa when i said that, a high ground overlooking albuquerque in which people have settled unofficiallybut which has no official roads, water, or location on maps. a serial killer may have operated there for a while. a goon from new mexico wrote some good posts about this case a while back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Mesa_murders HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Nov 29, 2018 |
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Nov 29, 2018 22:46
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HEY GUNS posted:where i grew up, there were hispanics, anglos, native americans, and asians. you're an anglo if you speak english natively and probably also the other non-spanish languages, like there was one french restaurant in town To expand on this think of the difference between a black guy who grew up in Atlanta and one who grew up in the Dominican Republic. There are reasons why the census asks “are you Hispanic” before moving on to what color your skin is.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:55
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Cyrano4747 posted:To expand on this think of the difference between a black guy who grew up in Atlanta and one who grew up in the Dominican Republic. There are reasons why the census asks “are you Hispanic” before moving on to what color your skin is.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:59
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HEY GUNS posted:edit: i was thinking of west mesa when i said that, a high ground overlooking albuquerque in which people have settled unofficiallybut which has no official roads, water, or location on maps. a serial killer may have operated there for a while. a goon from new mexico wrote some good posts about this case a while back.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:03
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C.M. Kruger posted:Just think of all the healthy and uninjured people who manage to get lost and die in the woods/desert in the US or Canada. I can't really imagine that happening in Europe outside of say, Scandinavia or Northern Scotland, or some of the really rugged alpine regions, most other places you could probably just pick a direction and keep walking until you find a farm or road or something. I can think of places in my home state of Florida where that could - and does - happen. Plus we have big predators, often in shockingly close quarters with civilization. Bears, wolves, coyotes, and here in Florida, alligators, pythons, panthers, and a whole truckload of poisonous snakes. Here in Florida, there are regular news articles from various parts of the state about peoples' pets getting nabbed by some of those above critters (and others that aren't a threat to humans, like great horned owls) and occasionally people getting attacked or even killed by them. Europe, from what I understand, massively culled its large predator population a long time ago in most areas.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:10
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C.M. Kruger posted:Just think of all the healthy and uninjured people who manage to get lost and die in the woods/desert in the US or Canada. I can't really imagine that happening in Europe outside of say, Scandinavia or Northern Scotland, or some of the really rugged alpine regions, most other places you could probably just pick a direction and keep walking until you find a farm or road or something. This is something that European visitors to Australia occasionally don't quite grasp, as well. Back before the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, there was a (then-novel) function on the website of either the Games themselves or some government tourism body to ask questions about Australia. One of them was something along the lines of "How long does it take to walk from Perth to Sydney?" According to Google it's 741 hours (3,674.7 km)
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Nov 29, 2018 23:18
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Cythereal posted:I can think of places in my home state of Florida where that could - and does - happen. Plus we have big predators, often in shockingly close quarters with civilization. Bears, wolves, coyotes, and here in Florida, alligators, pythons, panthers, and a whole truckload of poisonous snakes. I live in a decent suburb less than a mile from the urban sprawl that extends outward from Orlando. Multiple times I've had bears going through my trash and we recently had coyote and bobcat sightings in the neighborhood next door almost simultaneously. Even before you get into any risk of crime, there's a very good case for carrying a gun when taking out the trash at night in a normal suburb.
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Nov 29, 2018 23:19
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