As for the reason #99 Elton John a Knight, I didn't make that up or anything, I just saw that reason on the Evil Empire web page. It was on the flash image.
I'm not that clever in real life. Oh well.
As for Steven A. Grasse, I think he is trying to piss-off people into reading his book. He is probably doing it to get noticed. Frankly he could be doing it as a harsh joke because the idea seems absurd. However, the Reparations seem to state the opposite.
So, here's my choices, read the book and look into his words and persona, then make an informed decision. Or not read the book, then play some video games and not give a [darn] about How England Ruined The World.
Tough choice because I am curious exactly how the world 'got ruined.'
One thing is for sure, I wont pay for his book in order to read it.
Penny Rimbaud, seems weird as well, just look at his picture on that site. He is taking a shite.
You've summed it up in one, my friend. I've actually read his book, and that is why I'm upset about it. I feel sorry for the Americans for having to put up with an idiot like him, especially as he seems to think he's "the world's greatest lay historian" and "the voice of the American people". I was always led to the believe that the Presidency and the Senate were meant to be the voice of America, and he's not much of a historian if he doesn't mention any sources.
On that note, he's also been slandering anybody who cites his work as historically accurate. On his site, I noticed that he accused somebody from the University of Sussex of "knowing nothing" and that British universities were deliberately tricking us into thinking that the Nazis caused the Holocaust.
I haven't had a university education yet, but I know enough to prove where he's going wrong, and below are a list of just some of the areas where Grasse has been getting carried away:
NUMBER ONE - Slavery
GRASSE: The British Empire invented the Slave Trade while in Africa
TRUTH: Slavery can be traced as far back as c.1800 BC. According to the Code of Hammurabi, it was an institution in Mesopatamia, and both Herodotus and Thucydides (In "The Histories" and "The History of the Peloponnesian War" respectively) note that both the Persians in 500 BC and Athens between 416 BC and 404 BC had used slavery themselves. The British Empire did not start slavery, but were the first to abolish it in 1807, with the United States following suit in 1808.
NUMBER TWO - Manners
GRASSE: The British race are far too polite to people
TRUTH: Given the bad manners in society today, I would personally consider this a plus.
NUMBER THREE - Pollution
GRASSE: The Industrial Revolution in England solely caused global warming
TRUTH: For a start, the Industrial Revolution affected Europe and North America, not just England, thanks to the works of Samuel Slater (1768 - 1835) - the founding father of the American Industrial Revolution - and the industrialisation of the Ruhr Valley in 1809. Secondly, pollution had been going on in much earlier times; the Pharos Lighthouse of 247 BC omitted considerable fumes during its operation, and the habit of burning buildings during sieges in Medieval times must have contributed as well, not to mention a mysterious surge of Greenhouse Gasses detected by the Open University in 2004 that took place in the Jurassic period, many years before the first flame was lit by primitive man.
NUMBER FOUR - Language
GRASSE: The British make their words complicated so that nobody can understand them
TRUTH: In Europe as a whole, to speak in a complex form was considered the norm during the Rennaisance and 19th Century, and the works of Miguel de Cervantes (creator of Don Quixote) are, while complicated, written for a middle - lower class audience. Here, it seems more likely that Grasse is irate because he isn't intelligent enough to understand the works of William Shakespeare and other such writers.
NUMBER FIVE - Tea
GRASSE: The British were fanatically obsessed with Tea
TRUTH: Tea did not become known in Britain until the marriage of King Charles II to Catherine of Braganza in 1660, when the Portuguese princess introduced her own tea-drinking habit to the nation. Whilst many consider tea to be part of British culture, the United Kingdom is only the second largest tea-consumer (the first biggest being Ireland, according to a 2007 survey). Before 1660, Tea-drinking had been restricted to China, Japan, Korea, India and Taiwan. In any case, I personally fail to see how the UK can be obsessed with Tea if Ireland drinks more of it than the British.
NUMBER SIX - Homosexuality
GRASSE: The entire British race is homosexual
TRUTH: How Grasse came to this conclusion is beyond me, as same-sex relationships had been in practice since the time of Ancient Greece, as the Trial of Socrates in 399 BC (recorded by Plato and Xenophon) proves. If anything, Homophobia was ripe in Europe throughout the Regency, and until 1835, Sodomy was considered an executionable crime in Britain. (I mention this here because Homosexuality was considered Sodomy - sexual deviancy - at the time)
NUMBER SEVEN - Nazism
GRASSE: Britain was on friendly terms with Hitler
TRUTH: Anglo-German relations were cordial in the 1930's only because Germany provided a buffer-zone against Soviet Russia, who at that time had caused tensions in Europe as a result of the Mass Purges under Stalin and siding with the communist rebels during the Spanish Civil War. This does not, however, mean that Britain was pro-Nazi. During the Czechoslovakia Crisis of 1938, Britain maintained that only the German quarters of Czechoslovakia be returned to Germany, but Hitler defied this order and took Czechoslovakia as a whole. Grasse then goes on to say that this was deliberately conducted on the part of the British, although this seems very unlikely, as Britain would have had little to gain from Czechoslovakia.
NUMBER EIGHT - Finances (Part One)
GRASSE: The British forced the Germans to pay massive reparations after World War One
TRUTH: This is a very bold statement from a man who thinks that Great Britain should pay $58 trillion (£31 trillion) for his absurd claims. If anything, Britain was trying to reverse the 6,600 Billion DM bill that was forwarded by a Franco-Belgian alliance in 1919. In 1922, at the Geneva Conference, Britain tried to significantly lower the figure to a more realistic mark, but the move was defeated. The Treaty of Locarno in 1925 that restored Germany's original borders confiscated under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles was composed by the British after France refused to co-operate at the outset.
NUMBER NINE - Finances (Part Two)
GRASSE: The British caused the Great Depression
TRUTH: The Wall Street Crash of 1929 is widely-creditted as the cause of the Great Depression, The Crash occured after American stockbrokers and investors overbought stock and sent the Stock Market spiralling downward between October 24 and October 29, 1929. The British had absolutely no involvement with the cause of the Crash, and thus cannot be blamed for the Depression itself.
NUMBER TEN - Hip-Hop Culture
GRASSE: The British cannot deal with hip-hop culture
TRUTH: Evidently, Grasse is clutching at straws to reach the "101" mark and is just finding excuses to slander the British rather than write a history about the British Empire. The Hip-hop culture itself began in 1970's New York, and considering that the culture itself centres on drugs and violence, I think it's no wonder the British are reluctant to deal with it.
NUMBER ELEVEN - The Boy Scouts
GRASSE: British youths are indoctrinated by the Boy Scout Movement
TRUTH: The Scout Movement began in 1907, created by British Lt. General Robert Baden-Powell as a means of helping young people to develop mentally and physically. Baden-Powell himself had no government backing, although his movement was later accepted and used throughout the world as a means of helping young children through life. How Grasse has found any political motivations behind it is inexplicable, as there were, and are, no politics behind the Scouts except to help people and the environment.
NUMBER TWELVE - World War One
GRASSE: Britain caused World War One because the German Empire modelled itself after the British
TRUTH: The only similarity between the British Empire and the Kaiserreich of 1871 - 1918 was the interest in the sea. Besides a naval arms race during the early 1900's, there was little in common other than a handful of colonies in Africa. Grasse seems completely ignore events in Serbia and the assassination of Archduck Franz Ferdinand of Austria by Gavrilo Princip in 1914, which is accepted by many as the true cause of the war. In revenge, Austro-Hungary took aggressive measures against Serbia, who appealled for help from France, and were threatened by Germany. This tangled web, you'll find, triggered the "War to end all wars" in 1914, and not some petty rivalry between two countries.
NUMBER THIRTEEN - Concentration Camps
GRASSE: Britain invented the Concentration Camp in South Africa
TRUTH: The phrase "concentration camp" is British in origin, but the idea of such a camp is actually Greek in origin, having been used by Alexander the Great in his campaigns. Many (Grasse included) think of concentration camps as the forced-labour camps the Nazis used such as Auschwitz. The camps used by the British after the Zulu War of 1879 were intended as makeshift prisons, and the majority of deaths there were through disease and not executions as Grasse believes.
NUMBER FOURTEEN - Religion
GRASSE: The British are all Pagans
TRUTH: Britain, like many other countries, has been a staunchly Christian nation ever since Saint Augustine of Canterbury converted King Aethelbert of Kent to Christianity in 594 AD. Grasse appears to have overlooked the Crusades, the English Reformation of the 1520's and other such events that are proof of Britain's Christian origins. Instead, Grasse has watched "The Wicker Man" and thought that it sums up British religion in one.
NUMBER FIFTEEN - The Black Death
GRASSE: The British spread the Black Death because of Poor Hygiene
TRUTH: The Black Death of c.1340 to 1400 originated in Central Asia, and spread into Europe rather than from it, as "The Decameron" by Giovanni Boccaccio (first printed 1353) has proven. Blaming one country for a major pandemic originating in a location 2,000 miles away stops short of sheer stupidity.
NUMBER SEVENTEEN - The War of 1812
GRASSE: The British are still sore over the War of 1812
TRUTH: The War of 1812 is practically forgotten in the United Kingdom, compared to the United States where it is still taught in history. The British are unconcerned about the conflict, and Grasse does not seem to realise that.
NUMBER EIGHTEEN - The Roman Empire
GRASSE: The British idolise the Romans
TRUTH: Hero Worship and Curiosity are two different things. The interest in the Romans to the British is an academic one, and it is so because Britain itself was once a Roman province between 43 AD and 410 AD. It is the same in the United States, where there is still a fascination for the American Revolution or the colonisation of the West. Why this is a reason for Britain ruining the world seems unclear.
NUMBER NINETEEN - The Cold War
GRASSE: Britain caused the Cold War
TRUTH: The general agreement is that the Cold War began after Josef Stalin, then-Premier of the Soviet Union, grew suspicious of the West following the fall of Nazism. President Harry S. Truman also objected to the presence of the Polish Committee of National Liberation established in 1945 and sponsered by the Soviet Union, and considered it to be an attempt by the USSR to control the countries formerly under Nazi rule. Further problems at the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, as well as fears of nuclear warfare, led to hostile competition between the United States and USSR on a largely political level. The presence of the UK was little more than to provide support to the USA, and besides the presence of American missile bases in Britain during the 1970's, there was little else Britain contributed personally to the Cold War other than her NATO membership that began on April 4th, 1949.
NUMBER TWENTY - British History
GRASSE: Britain hides its past with False Histories
TRUTH: Few like to admit to their past. America dislikes being reminded of the Bay of Pigs, France dislikes the Battle of Waterloo and Japan dislikes the Bombing of Hiroshima. Britain also has it's skeletons in the closet, but like all countries, Britain grits her teeth and bears it. The Massacre of Elphinstone's Army in 1842 is one of these, as is the American Revolution. But there have been no efforts to conceal or distort these and other events in favour of the British. If anything, the only false history is Grasse's book, particularly when most of the settlers of Pennsylvania, his own home, were actually Loyalists who were loyal to the British in the American Revolution.
NUMBER TWENTY-ONE - Iraq
GRASSE: The British caused the Iraq War because Saddam Hussein was a puppet-ruler installed by Britain
TRUTH: The invasion of Iraq was led by the United States with support from the United Kingdom and Poland. Saddam Hussein gained power in a military coup against Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1963, of which he played a minor part. He became President of Iraq in 1979 by default, and without help from any of the Western powers.
NUMBER TWENTY-TWO - The Confederate States of America
GRASSE: The British supported the Confederacy in the American Civil War
TRUTH: Great Britain remained neutral in the American Civil War and did not take sides. Although it was considering recognising the Confederacy before the war, it backed down following threats of war from the Union. There is no evidence whatsoever for any British intervention or co-operation with the Union or the Confederacy in the American Civil War.
NUMBER TWENTY-THREE - Drug Abuse
GRASSE: The British caused modern-day drug abuse as a result of the Opium Wars
TRUTH: Opium had been used as a drug since the early Bronze Age in Sumeria and Assyria. There is also evidence that Egypt and the Minoans had had unhealthy fixations with the drug. China in the 1400's also promoted it as a recreational drug 400 years before the Opium Wars began. Modern-day drug abuse itself is actually a mixture of not only these laissez-faire attitudes to narcotics, but also the promotion of other drugs such as Marijuana and Cannabis during the 1960's in the United States and Great Britain by the Hippy subculture, which began in the United States and spread from there.
NUMBER TWENTY-FOUR - Slums
GRASSE: Britain invented Slum housing for the Poor
TRUTH: Slum housing is formed when a particular neighbourhood deteriorates and becomes disreputable, usually due to unscrupulous landlords or selfish tenants. They cannot be "invented" on purpose. The housing for the poor were small buildings constructed after Parliament was put under pressure in the 1840's to provide better sanitation and living conditions for the working classes, and only became slums because of a failure to keep the buildings maintained on the part of the local councils, and were not deliberately created at all.
NUMBER TWENTY-FIVE - Capital Punishment
GRASSE: The British are obsessed with Hanging
TRUTH: Capital punishment was abolished in the United Kingdom under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, and earlier under the 1965 Murder Act, it was abolished for the crime of murder. The last hanging was in 1964, when Peter Anthony Allen was executed for the murder of John Allan West. In most cases, criminals were usually imprisoned rather than hanged, and until 1848, others could be transported to penal colonies in Australia and New Zealand. The total number of people executed by Hanging in the United Kingdom is minimal in comparison to the number executed in the United States even today.
I'm sorry if I've touched any raw nerves regarding American history, but I only mention some of the darker areas here to highlight where Grasse is going wrong, and not to spite anybody here.
