C P Brown: Britain 17th Century

7. BRITAIN 17TH CENTURY

Till the Industrial Revolution 1688, most of England and Wales were steeped in abysmal ignorance of – literature, music, and quality of life. The people were living in miserable poverty, the educated being only in the churches. One hut used to be shared by 6 or 7 human beings, a couple of pigs, cats and dogs with a fire in one corner! Try to mentally put together the picture of this group with HAMPI in South India existing at that exact point in time, where pearls and gold ornaments were being sold in open markets! And see the contrast between Britain and India. The whole of Great Britain in 1500A.D. could not have had a single well-educated person. English had no grammar or literature of any kind what so ever. Chaucer is un-understandable today. While, in India by then there were thousands of books in scores of languages, the contents in some unsurpassable today.

CPB was from this stock which spread all over the earth as pirates, gold hunters, traders in slaves, missionaries to harvest souls for Christ. Greed was the only motive force. Eugene O'Neill’s “The Hairy Ape”, is the typical empire builder’s basic stock, Crude to the Core. The Cowboy films, Westerns glorify these burly brutes, with a gun in one hand and a bottle of Rum in the other.

Coming to languages, which is our main concern, they had NOTHING; Poetry next to Nothing; fine arts – Blank. Sculpture? Temples? Religion? Industry? Music? Painting? Dance? You can't find in that society a single parameter that makes life worth living. From amongst this stock, came David Brown, whose father was a farmer in York area.

As NANA of Emile Zola says a dung heap produces only disease carrying worms, which transform into germ carrying flies. The worms and flies exist only to destroy without regard for the usefulness or other wise of what it destroys. It is due to this barbarous background, and solidified ignorance that they attacked the very roots of Indian culture, be it literature or languages, architecture or religion, social structures or educational systems. COETZE Nobel Laureate, 2002 takes up the same theme of barbarianism of the Colonialist.

Now to continue extracts from the, “History of the English Speaking Peoples”.

QUOTE
‘Centuries could scarcely break down the barrier that the ruthless Scottish wars had raised between North and South Britain’.
The Wars of the Roses were, long, bloody, and treacherous. Finally, the English decline into chaos further abetted by the collapse of the moral order.
Local lords with the money and power to corrupt juries, bribe officials, and terrorise witnesses, made a mockery of justice in the fifteenth century. Law and order all but disappeared.
Chaplains were employed regimentally .It cannot be said that these Rev. Gentlemen took their duties seriously; whenever they got a chance they employed deputies. In 1795, when Sir. Ralph Abercrombie ---- wanted not a single chaplain reported for duty .A regiment of chaplains was then created.
The company servants were able to take advantage of the political chaos in India to increase their perquisites. Parliamentary investigations in the 1770s and 1780s and a stream of Company reports revealed that large fortunes were made.
The British Nabobs of the mid 18th century made excessive amounts of money by dubious means to take up social positions, to which they were not entitled and flaunt excessively bad taste. (CPB tried to become one such nabob but failed miserably, but vaingloriously describes his carriage, horses, and ladies parties)
Human relationships had broken down as women and children – the latter in large numbers –were drawn into factories and workshops. Family coherence and individual freedom had both been lost.
Unquote

This in short is the breeding place so thoroughly portrayed by Dickens, to which CPB belonged…. And from this background David Brown escaped into an Eldora-do, called INDIA. LET US NOT FORGET THIS FACT, of origin and background of this Father – Son duo whom the biographers extol as multi lingual miracles.