Brutal Reality / Some Images From The British Century (?)

Here is another book from my friend Vasu's collection.

This coffee table book, "The British Century", is studded with interesting images and has a fairly non-partisan textual narrative accompanying the photographs.

Published by Random House, New York, in 1997, it seeks to give "A Photographic History of the Last Hundred Years" of this strangely powerful nation and its people.

It is unwieldy and most of the images would not make any sense without the explanations provided in the captions. It is impossible to scan the images and the captions together because several images are bunched together across the double-spreads with one collective caption for all the images on a spread.

Here are 3 photographs from the book with paraphrased explanations:

The Front Cover

A shot down Luftwaffe pilot being escorted through Victoria Station to a POW camp on 7 September 1940. Notice the hauteur and the apparent arrogance of this captured German soldier. 

"Burma did not submit easily to British rule" the caption says, ever so briefly and blithely. Oh well.

Captured Burmese rebels (sometime between 1824 and 1885)

Dissident Burmese on a treadmill. Notice the chains on their feet. Their hands are also chained, I think. If one slipped, he would endanger all his brothers on the treadmill!