Read this article with interest. It takes an American historian to report these accounts. This report appears while English speaking European, especially British, historians are busy reporting and writing about Black Legend history. This latter history is obviously "not too politically sensitive" for a writer or publisher in Englsh. Yet it is tragic that these historical archives are available in their own country or former colonies and historians should be discussing these at their national and regional meetings. Goanet is often bombarded with accounts of tortures of the Inquisition in Goa and elsewhere, (in the 17 and 18 century). Yet the English (writing and reading) historians and history buffs (with names like Driscoll) will overlook / ignore / are ignorant of "hundreds of stories of tortures committed in worst of these camps, some in grisly detail: castrations, clamping of women's breast with pliers, fatal beating. Equably compelling is her account of the British denial of the truth, which extended form local colonial officials right up though Winston Churchill and his successors, Antony Eden and Harold Macmillan." The intellectual crime TODAY is the cover-up by current British historians of events in their own backyard in the 20th century. These archives should be easily accessible to them. The same can be said of Dutch historians who would rather investigate Spanish-Portugese atrocities in Iberian colonies (which should be reported) than Dutch atrocities in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Indonesia; or Jewish historians who hate talking and writing about Israel's CONTEMPORARY atrocities within its borders and in its own colony of Gaza and West Bank. Regards, GL
---------------- Frederick Noronha wrote: While researching Kenya, she found shocking truths about the British empire. Caroline Elkins won a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for her book "Imperial Reckoning". (Janet Knott / Globe Staff Photo). ``I was strongly urged by colleagues not to undertake this project, for two reasons," Caroline Elkins said in an interview at her home, not far from the campus. ``One, they felt it was too politically sensitive. Two, they said there wouldn't be enough information. So, me being me, I decided those were good enough reasons to undertake the project." By Elkins's calculations, as many as 320,000 men and women were held in the camps, and as many as 50,000 were killed. Elkins uncovered hundreds of stories of tortures committed in the worst of these camps, some in grisly detail: castrations, clamping of women's breasts with pliers, fatal beatings. Equally compelling is her account of the British denial of the truth, which extended from local colonial officials right up through Winston Churchill and his successors, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan.
