O,

You really are a very stupid person.

Hi there FOXY...

Thank you for your kind words, but I'm okay, really. I lost Dave about 15 years ago now, and it's funny, neither the NVA nor the Viet Cong managed to knock him, but a brain tumour finally did! One of Australia's unsung heroes in my book! Thanks again, FOXY.

ttbn,

No, you're wrong. I'm really smart, especially after studying history at university. Something you'll never know anything about.

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Dear ttbn,

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You wrote :

« "The nostalgia of British colonisation".

« What a load of BS! I've pretty much given up commenting on what other posters have to say; I don't read most of the leftist garbage at all. But, now and again, something really stupid comes up »
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The acute personal sensitivity you express in reaction to the evocation of “British colonial nostalgia” is something you alone can explain, ttbn. Let me simply expand a little on the subject of colonial nostalgia in general.

Susan Bayly indicates in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology that "some 80% to 90% of the global landmass and a majority of the world’s population came under direct or indirect colonial rule by the processes initially set in train during the so-called early modern Age of Discovery (15th to 18th century), though greatly accelerated in their range and impact by the early twentieth century".

Not only has colonisation had a massive impact on the world population, post-colonisation has too. There are winners, losers … and the nostalgic !

In the late 1970s, a few anthropologists began to notice and reflect on what Richard Werbner, an American anthropologist, later called “a boom in colonial nostalgia”. Since then, a lot has been written not only about colonial nostalgia but also about imperial nostalgia.

Fred Davis, the American sociologist argued in his book “Yearning for Yesterday” that nostalgic reactions originate in perceived threats to the continuity of identity in the context of present fears, discontents, and uncertainties when identities have been “badly bruised by the turmoil of the times”. Against the idea of retrospective yearnings as politically regressive and emotionally disturbed, Davis sees nostalgia as an act anchored in the present context that says a lot more about contemporary social configurations than about the past, as it plays a crucial role in “constructing, maintaining, and reconstructing our identities” :

http://is.muni.cz/el/fss/jaro2013/SOC564/um/41480210/Yearning_for_Yesterday_Nostalgia.pdf

Here is a book on “Engaging Colonial Nostalgia” :

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3651534?refreqid=excelsior%3A9e9056269a90fdae79232a6dcb9accfe&seq=1

And here is an article (which you may have already seen) entitled “The British Empire is something to be proud of” :

http://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2014/07/26/britain-proud-its-empire

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Banjo Paterson,

You're wasting your time discussing sociology and history with the likes of ttbn.

He has never studied these subjects.

He has never studied these subjects.
Mr Opinion,
Living these subjects is a much, much higher qualification than merely reading about them !