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Impact of the British Empire in India
Impact of the British Empire in India
The influence of the British empire
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The British attitude towards immigration is very well depicted in the movie “Marigold Hotel”. The characters of Muriel and Mrs Ainslie seem to be living in the past, more specifically during the British Empire. They are still convinced that Britain is as important and as powerful as it used to be during the British Empire. The scene in the hospital, in which Muriel is introduced, perfectly illustrates the arrogance of some British born citizens. Muriel, who is in urgent need of a new hip, sends a doctor, who wanted to look after her, away merely because of his skin colour. She says, “He can wash all he likes. That colour isn’t coming out. I want an English doctor”. This shows that Muriel judges someone’s abilities and skills by their colour …show more content…
Moreover, she lists stereotypical characteristics of Indians, “they smell of curry” and “they’re never alone”, a cause of the public resentment towards immigrants. Mrs Ainslie is similar to Muriel, once arrived in India; she refuses to leave the hotel. This implies that she is threatened by the Indians and believes that everything is infectious. Of course on some level this is true due to sanitation problems in India, however, she brings this issue to another level. She exaggerates a lot; she walks around with a clothes peg for her nose and is overwhelmed by the fact that Indians only surround her. Well, she is in India, so she really shouldn’t be that surprised. Both characters perfectly embody British people, who live in the past and idolise the period of the British …show more content…
London is today a world city, meaning that it plays an important role in the global economic system. Thereby, the impact the Empire had in London was undeniable vast. Before the British Empire, Great Britain was merely a small island with a monarchy. Currently, there’re 350 million people around the globe, who speak English and in at least 50 countries English is the official language. Thanks to the British Empire, English is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world. Due to having had one of the greatest Empires in the world, the British are incredibly proud of their
Britain is shown as multicultural and multiethnic, because we have Hortense, a black woman, as the main character, who interacts with white and black people equally. Black people integration in society is seen as something natural, and there is not any problem derived from that during the majority of the film.
Already in the 15th century England was a very powerful country that colonized big parts of the world. This phenomenon is called imperialism and it was primarily founded to gain power and control, but also for political and economical reasons. The strong and larger countries took control over the smaller countries. When a country was colonized it lost its uniqueness and it was forced to live by the circumstances of England. The British Empire replaced countries languages with English. This was seen as a sign of weakness and it created a sense of inferiority and not least shame towards the “destroyed” countries. This have had a large impact on the citizens, for instance: Tom Law who lives in Wales, is furious and he has written the article:
It explains why she believes she would be uncomfortable and feel unsafe traveling in British Guyana where her father’s family came from, precisely because of the differences among native born individuals and those who were raised outside the area. She would have a difficult time assimilating to that culture, despite being a part of it. They would view her as an American. Her father exhibits selective assimilation in the aspects of Indian culture which he has brought with him to the United States, the celebration of Diwali and his Hindu religion, for example. However, aside from those cultural aspects which he has chosen to maintain from Indian culture, he has also largely assimilated to American culture through language, habits, and values.
It is established that there are four factors of racial inequality among African Americans. The four factors are: prejudism, difference in work capital, difference in family structure, and residential/social segregations. In the movie “Fruitvale Station”, there are many examples that are that tie the four factors/reasons of racial inequality (among African Americans) and the movie. By understanding the relationship between the factors and how it is demonstrated in the movie, one will be able to understand it’s connection in modern society.
Written by Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet follows the life of Henry Lee, a young Chinese-American boy living in Seattle in the 1940’s during World War II, and his reflections on his youth later, in the 1980’s. The novel illustrates the theme that loyalty is important in times of hardship. Henry deals with both loyalty and the absence of it as he copes with his broken relationship with his father, his forbidden, but strong friendship with a Japanese girl, Keiko, and his awkward connection with his son.
In the short stories, Marigolds by Eugenia Collier, and The Bet by Anton Chekhov, both Lizabeth and the Lawyer, along with their understanding of life, are similar, as well as very different. While both Lizabeth and the Lawyer develop a deeper understanding and knowledge of their situations by the end of each story, the processes that lead them to these realizations are very different, as race, gender, and social class all play a role in how the two characters develop.
The story of “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (Hoffman, 2012) focuses on a group of British retirees who decide to travel for their retirement to less costly and exotic Indian retirement community/ hotel. The group is lured by promotions for the recently reconstructed Marigold Hotel and are surprised when they arrive to find the hotel in disarray. Though the new surroundings is less luxurious than they had imagined, they are changed by their experiences.
She points out how white tourists think that the establishments and systems left behind from colonization are things that the natives should be thankful for. White tourists think that the natives “are not responsible for what you have; you owe them nothing; in fact, you did them a big favour, and you can provide one hundred examples.” (10) Ironically, while they seem to think that the natives should be thankful for certain remnants of colonization, white tourists refuse to take responsibility for the actions of their ancestors that caused former colonies to be in the state they are in now. In thinking that the “West got rich not from the free …and then undervalued labour” (10), but instead through the “ingenuity of small shopkeepers in Sheffield and Yorkshire and Lancashire, or wherever”, white tourists refuse to acknowledge that it was the oppression of these former colonies that led to the growth of their own race whilst attributing to the decline of these colonies. In believing in their own superiority and refusing to acknowledge this, white tourists continue to willingly take part in a system that oppresses natives of formerly colonized islands because they see no wrong in doing
It was a dark stormy night John and I were talking about improvements that could be made on the house. We were very poor we had the most ramshackled house in our town. John thought that we should work on adding on to the house but that would get rid of my Marigolds. Just thinking of that takes me back to the day I planted those beautiful plants. It was a warm sunny day that day. Oh I remember that day like it was yesterday. The Marigolds were the only beautiful thing in the whole entire town and they belonged to me. That day was probably one of the very few happy days of my life. It all began when a package arrived on my doorstep no address where it came from nothing. It kind of surprised me that someone was this generous in this small disgusting town. In the package seeds and a note appeared. The note read “ A little something to spice up that tasteless town of yours” and the seeds were Marigolds. Also on the note instructed proper care and instructions on how to care and plant the seeds.
The Idea of White Supremacy in 1960s Britain: Different Perspectives Buchi Emecheta’s novel Second Class Citizen is heavily based on Buchi’s personal experiences being an immigrant in 1960s Britain. In the book she refers to herself as Adah, a woman who had to deal with racism and sexism throughout her youth. The racism she experienced in specific was that of the white majority against the incoming immigrants of Britain.
Antoinette’s occupation of a hybrid position dismantles the stable binary of white/black, colonizer/colonized. Hybridity interrogates and deconstructs the western hegemonic assumption of stable subjectivity and meaning. Destabilising the notion of the self and the Other as envisioned by the western grand narratives hybridity proposes that the self is constructed by multiple ideologies and multiple discourses at the same time. Antoinette’s frustration and instability stem from her inability to belong to any particular community and culture. As a white creole, she oscillates between the European world of her ancestors and the Caribbean culture into which she is born. The fact that she is born in Jamaica as a white creole with a European background problematizes her identity belonging to neither of them fully thereby creating a hybrid status. Rhys through Antoinette’s ‘in-between space’ or a ‘Third Space’, as Homi K. Bhabha argues, takes a position that identity is ambivalent and crucially challenged in the hegemonic colonial setting.
The play is set in the early twentieth century in London. This time in period was referred to as the Victorian era. During this era women had not gained the basic rights and privileges given to man. Women were looked at as housewives, their main role being to act properly, marry, and tend to the house and bear children. Although Higgins felt he knew what was best for Liza and how she should behave and act, he treated her as if she was inferior to him. Liza, now wiser and more confident in herself, began to feel as if she was being treated unjust and showed she was not to back down and she was to stand up for herself. This is best depicted through the body language and actions reflected in the narration and stage directions. Directions such as [Defiantly non-Resistant], [Snapping her fingers], [Disdainfully], [Composedly], and [Determinedly] (PDF Act IV Page 39 and Act V Page 49) allow one to imagine and picture her being confident as she is conversing with Higgins and telling him that she does not need him she is independent and the woman she has always wanted to be. The descriptive elements used for stage direction and in the narration convey more emotion to what the character is saying because the reader can imagine what is taking
Since the establishment of the British Empire, the spread of English language has been experienced in many parts of the globe. The success can be attributed significantly to the colonization activities that the empire had embarked on. They would train the indigenous community English language as they suppressed the local dialect. This massive spread is termed as lingual imperialism (Osterhammel 2005, pp. 14). The English language has become the first and second language of many nations across the world, and this makes it an international language. The native’s proportion to the non-native who speaks English cannot be compared with nations in the isle of Britain and far are speaking the language .considering that more than 70%
Written London English of the close of the fourteenth century as used by a number of Middle English authors, such as John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer, had not achieved the status of a regional standard but was soon to become the basis for a new national literary standard of English. It is the language of the capital. Geographically, it occupies a position midway between the extreme North and the extreme South. Already by 1430, this new standard had assumed a relatively mature form. It was spread throughout England by professional clerks in the administrative apparatus of the country and also became the model for business and private correspondence in English.
To understand how English became the lingua franca for the world one must begin by understanding the colonization influence of the British Empire, beginning with the Americas in the early 1600’s. Once the language itself had been somewhat established in Great Britain, although not necessarily agreed upon, the next obvious step was to take the language and the culture to new parts of the world and colonize. The British Empire set out to the Americas in two vastly different manners, yet both had major influences on the language of what soon would become America.