"The British developed similar stereotypes in India. They saw the Bengalis, in a telling choice of words, as effeminate. By contrast the British admired the ‘martial races’; peoples such as the Gurkhas, Pathans or Coorgs who lived in cooler climates and were said to have the right military qualities as a result. By the time of the First World War, the descendants of the British who had settled in Australia, Canada or New Zealand were held to be tougher and more brutal than their cousins in Britain, thanks to their geography. When the ‘less civilised’ and therefore the less adept at war won victories, these had to be written off as mistakes. When a Maori force defeated a British one in the wars in New Zealand in the mid-nineteenth century, The Times of London was quick with an explanation: ‘just as at chess a bad and reckless player is sometimes more formidable than a master of the game’."
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Margaret MacMillan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us (2020)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_United_Kingdom
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Racism in the United Kingdom
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