Wisdom in the Best Books and Films Podcast
Sep 27, 2026 · 23 min · 8 segments
Link to the full story. Feel free to contact me with any questions, recommendations, or…
Jake BaerHost
The only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.
I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way, anti-European feeling was very bitter.
No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone, somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress.
As a police officer, I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so.
When a nimble Burman tripped me up on a football field, and the referee, another Burman, looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter.
In the end, the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves.
There were several thousands of them in the town, and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.
All this was perplexing and upsetting, for at that time, I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing, and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it, the better.
As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear.
In a job like that, you see the dirty work of empire at close quarters, the wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the gray, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been bogged with bamboos.
I was young and ill-educated, and I had had to think out my problems in utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East.
I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, and still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it.
All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible.
With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down in secula seculorum upon the will of prostrate peoples.
It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism, the real motives for which despotic governments act.
The only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.
I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way, anti-European feeling was very bitter.
No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone, somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress.
As a police officer, I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so.
When a nimble Burman tripped me up on a football field, and the referee, another Burman, looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter.
In the end, the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves.
There were several thousands of them in the town, and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.
All this was perplexing and upsetting, for at that time, I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing, and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it, the better.
As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear.
In a job like that, you see the dirty work of empire at close quarters, the wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the gray, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been bogged with bamboos.
I was young and ill-educated, and I had had to think out my problems in utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East.
I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, and still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it.
All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible.
With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down in secula seculorum upon the will of prostrate peoples.
It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism, the real motives for which despotic governments act.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
