NationStates Jolt Archive

Intelligent answers only please and provide some evidence to back up your answer aswell if possible.

Yes, it was a bloody good thing. It spread civilization, health, education and democracy throughout the world. And most of the countries we conquered came off quite well. After all, just look at the African Countries we colonised. With the exception of Zimbabwe, they're all doing rather better than other african nations that were colonised by other European powers. And without us, India wouldn't be the thriving industrial powerhouse it is today, with a population of 1 billion+. And Australia wouldn't exist at all. Nor would many other places.

Very good thing, the Empire.

I don't think so. Colonialism basically exploited the natural resources of areas. That's why Africa is so poor although it is so rich in natural resources. There is no infrastructure for an industry to make use of these products and no capital to begin such an industry. The British Empire, as the biggest colonial empire of the time, is much to blame for this.
Not to mention the racist ideology that Europeans took with them. "Take up ye white man's burden"? We still think that Africans are "children" that don't know how to help themselves and that we need to "guide" them. The foundation for this mentality was set by the past colonial empires.

Yes, it was a bloody good thing. It spread civilization, health, education and democracy throughout the world. And most of the countries we conquered came off quite well. After all, just look at the African Countries we colonised. With the exception of Zimbabwe, they're all doing rather better than other african nations that were colonised by other European powers. And without us, India wouldn't be the thriving industrial powerhouse it is today, with a population of 1 billion+. And Australia wouldn't exist at all. Nor would many other places.

Very good thing, the Empire.I'm pretty sure the Tasmanian indigenous population is very grateful.

Good for Britain?
Certainly. It fuelled the Industrial Revolution in that country.

Good for the Occupied?
Hard to say. It's seldomly good to be brutally conquered, and to have your civilisation supressed. The forced bringing of Christ wasn't a good thing either.
Worst though was the establishment of these monocrops, that were only there to be exported to Britain. When the British left, those countries (namely African nations) had no viable economic legs to stand on.
But then again, it did introduce technologies to some of these colonies.

So I would say that to discuss it is about as useful as discussing whether Feudalism was a good thing. It happened, and it was always going to. Turned out to be a lot worse for the Colonies than it had been had they just been provided with some technologies and been able to modernise themselves (see Japan), but I guess they could've all been exterminated, which would've been even worse.

id have to say no, because in africa most of the problems of civil wars and genocides result from the British and French empires in the first place. As well as that look at the war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, surely thats our fault for trying to spilt up countries when we leave. And palastine as course, another problem caused by the British empire, the list just goes on and on.

I'm pretty sure the Tasmanian indigenous population is very grateful

good point, any empire that can exterminate an indegionous population of 20,000 in 80 years cant be great.

Yes it was a good thing, I blame India for the British Empire demise!

id have to say no, because in africa most of the problems of civil wars and genocides result from the British and French empires in the first place. As well as that look at the war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, surely thats our fault for trying to spilt up countries when we leave. And palastine as course, another problem caused by the British empire, the list just goes on and on.Not to mention the wonderful borders of African nations. They completely ignored ethnic background, which is why warring factions ignore borders. Rwandans cross into Congo because the share the same ethnicity as some of the Congolese. It's called Balkanization, after a similar screw up after WWI...

I think it was a good thing for the world, because it spread a basic level of certian cultural values around the world, thus creating a limited degree of hemogeny of ideas. Had it not happened and every civilisation encountered every other civilisation when they were far more developed, global frictions would have been far greater than they are now.

I loved the idea!

In response to all these people saying we didn't leave them with economic legs and that Africa fell into war because of us:

1) If the Colonies in Africa had given us a few years to leave so that we could teach their people how to run the country, they wouldn't be where they are today. But no, instead, they all pick up their spears and start screaming 'we want independence, get out now' without bothering to think how they would run the country.

2) Things such as Kashmir aren't entirely our fault. The people of these regions asked for the different places to be split like this, without thinking of the repercussions. And then, once we agreed to these requests, they went down the same route of Africa, waving spears and screaming for independence. Fortunately, India and the like managed to run the country because of the good things we had done for the country, like Railways and a good Education and Health System.

Yes it was a good thing, I blame India for the British Empire demise!
Maybe you should blame Germany instead. By the time India became independent the Empire had long fallen to bits, held together by witless revisionists in London.

Very good, it was an empire established more on trade take over than conquest.
They basically learned the superior dutch system of commerce, then after beating the Dutch finally at the end of the 17th C took over alot of their trade routes around the world, this set up the first British Empire, you have the Dutch to thank, who fought you tooth and nail for a hundred and fifty years.

Weve also got to remember that although the british empire was quite bad, it was by no means the worst empire, look at belgium in the congo for example, by comparing it with instances like that it begins to look a little better.

In response to all these people saying we didn't leave them with economic legs and that Africa fell into war because of us:

1) If the Colonies in Africa had given us a few years to leave so that we could teach their people how to run the country, they wouldn't be where they are today. But no, instead, they all pick up their spears and start screaming 'we want independence, get out now' without bothering to think how they would run the country.That's not true. There was no industrial base or infrastructure beyond what was needed to exploit the local natural resources. And there largely isn't today. The colonial powers weren't interested in establishing something like that. That's one of the main reasons why the economies in Africa suck, not because the picked up their spears.

2) Things such as Kashmir aren't entirely our fault. The people of these regions asked for the different places to be split like this, without thinking of the repercussions. And then, once we agreed to these requests, they went down the same route of Africa, waving spears and screaming for independence. Fortunately, India and the like managed to run the country because of the good things we had done for the country, like Railways and a good Education and Health System.Kashmir maybe less, but Africa was a serious screw up. By establishing borders that completely ignored ethnicity in the first place, Europeans fucked Africa. People cried for shame when the Wall went up in Germany, but we have yet to hear about it in a context with Africa. And don't blame people crying for "independence" in the balkans. The British Empire is just as much to blame for that as some others.
And don't even try to let me get started on slave trade.

If the Colonies in Africa had given us a few years to leave so that we could teach their people how to run the country, they wouldn't be where they are today. But no, instead, they all pick up their spears and start screaming 'we want independence, get out now' without bothering to think how they would run the country.
You people are no better than the Yanks. To think that some of you guys accuse them of arrogance...
There was zero attempt made by the British Government to help out anyone. The mere idea of independent African nations was enough to make those Lords in London cringe. Besides, Britain had no resources left by then to help anyone.

I know and then some people have the nerve to say that the British empire helped to stop slavery, what they forget is that they only gave it up when it stopped making them money, and that they had already exloited slavery for over 200 years before they finally banned it.

Weve also got to remember that although the british empire was quite bad, it was by no means the worst empire, look at belgium in the congo for example, by comparing it with instances like that it begins to look a little better.Yes, but that's like comparing Hitler and Stalin. They're both in the same category. The Belgians were worse in the little bit of land they had (and they still maintain their *proud* history) than the British were in their entire Empire, but that shouldn't be used to excuse what the Empire did.

It was a great thing.

















If you were white.

Yes, but that's like comparing Hitler and Stalin. They're both in the same category. The Belgians were worse in the little bit of land they had (and they still maintain their *proud* history) than the British were in their entire Empire, but that shouldn't be used to excuse what the Empire did

sorry, you missunderstood me, i was just saying that it shouldnt be singled out as the only oppressive emipre, not trying to defend it

sorry, you missunderstood me, i was just saying that it shouldnt be singled out as the only oppressive emipre, not trying to defend it
I don't think anyone is singling out the British. Their empire was the biggest, but I think people have a problem with Imperialism and Colonialism as a whole, not specifically with the Brits.

I for one would never be proud of what Germany did to the Hottentots, or anything that stood for.

sorry, you missunderstood me, i was just saying that it shouldnt be singled out as the only oppressive emipre, not trying to defend itI see what you mean now. Sorry, I felt slightly attacked, because although I've been singling the BE out, it's because it's the topic of the thread, and I've been accusing it of being a colonial Empire like the rest.

It's a conspiracy I tell you, 1948-9 India gets independence, 1948 a huge chunk of our battleships are decomissioned and sold, it's a CONSPIRACY!

The British Empire was a magnificent thing and noone has the right, unless your a Yankee flagwaver or a jealous Frenchmen, to criticise it. I'll use Nepolonia's points cus I can't be bothered to retype it all from a diff. thread.

Why would france be jelous of our Empire?, theirs was just almost as big

The British Empire was a magnificent thing and noone has the right, unless your a Yankee flagwaver or a jealous Frenchmen, to criticise it. I'll use Nepolonia's points cus I can't be bothered to retype it all from a diff. thread.I'm half Yankee, but most certainly not a flagwaver, and part German.
Anyway, please tell me you're being sarcastic. We've been pointing out just how "good" the concept of the White Man's Burden has been for the developing world.

Sorry. I have this problem where I don't think before I speak. The yankee flagwaver part was formed from months of criticism from Americans on XBL calling me and my friends tea drinking, queen fucking, crumpet eating brits.

that annoys me too, i dont get why they think we're all upper class snobs

The White Man's Burden

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

-Rudyard Kipling

This poem was written in response to the American seizure of the Phillipines. It is not being sarcastic, but it reflects the opinion of imperialists at the time.

thanks for putting that up Laerod, it really proves the point well

thanks for putting that up Laerod, it really proves the point well
So you don't get it, do you?

yes im saying it proves the point of the attitudes of those at the time of the empires themselves, and how attitudes have changed in most people, are you insulting my intelligence?

yes im saying it proves the point of the attitudes of those at the time of the empires themselves, and how attitudes have changed in most people, are you insulting my intelligence?
No. If that is what you're taking out of it then that's good.
If you'd take it literally, then I would be insulting your intelligence, yes. :)

and if id have taken it literally you would have my permission to insult my intelligence :)

and if id have taken it literally you would have my permission to insult my intelligence :)Oh, come on! I've been on NationStates long enough to know that if you'd have taken it literally you wouldn't give him permission to insult your intelligence :p

yeah what i said didnt really make sense did it, im sure you worked out what i was tryin to say though :p

Any political venture or experiment, including colonialism, is too difficult an issue to glibly lable "Good" or "Bad". The best we can do is, with hindsight, say wether it a) has possitive effects, b) had negative effect, c) achieved its objectives and d) why did it fall.

As a product of the Empire I have to say one point, I sometimes can't stand the term British Empire. While the empire was built by British people (predominantly, but not exclusively, Scotts Irish and Yorkshiremen) , more oftern than not it was against the wishes of Whitehall, against the expressed orders of the mandarins and courties that ran Britain and often contraty to Britain's geopolitical ambitions. The Empire was built in an ad hoc manner by missionaries, mercanaries, adventures and those wishing to escape the dirge of Victorian sensibilities. This may seem harsh, but I'll say it anyway, there is a feeling that the best and worst of British society went out into the wide world and tried to conquer it, the indifferent stayed at home - and that they inherited the wealth of the blood sweat and tears shed by colonisers and the colonised.

The biggest problem with the Empire is that, unlike the French, the colonised were never given the impression that they could become British, and the Empire was so scared of another Boston in Africa that they never let the colonisers become intrenched except in South Africa and Zimbabwe, where we did become another America in the 1960s.

I'd say that the British Empire benefitted the ancestors of its "victims." India, the U.S., etc. wouldn't be the powerhouses they are today if it weren't for British actions. Further, without colonialism and the international exchange of resources/ideas we would all still be wandering around in mud huts. IMNSHO all people alive today owe what they have to the existance of empires many years ago.
Of course, that isn't to say that we need them back. The British Empire wasn't so pleasant for those people who had to live under it, and ideas and trade travel quickly around the world without the need for massive world powers.

[QUOTE=Walkerstown]id have to say no, because in africa most of the problems of civil wars and genocides result from the British and French empires in the first place. As well as that look at the war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, surely thats our fault for trying to spilt up countries when we leave. And palastine as course, another problem caused by the British empire, the list just goes on and on.

I don't think Palestine is in any way a British fault. After all, it is zionist terrorism that got them out of there, without them being able to exploit the opportunity of being the sole arbitrers.
In general, the Empire requires a more careful analysis. I woul say it was rather more fortunate (and more of a fortune) than others... on the whole.

Good for Britain?
Certainly. It fuelled the Industrial Revolution in that country.

Actually, many economists would dispute that. The Empire - both de jure and de facto (ie, south America was pretty much part of the UKs economic Empire) - ate into the investment that could have been turned towards British Industry. And the money economy it engendered (so says Will Hutton in his pivotal "The Shape We are In") has been a major cause of the decline of British industry, because why bother with R'n'D in the UK when you could just ship the factories to somewhere third world and make the product cheaper?

Keynes and Adam Smith, to name but two differing thinkers, thought that Imperialism cost the UK more than it gained them.

[QUOTE=Walkerstown]id have to say no, because in africa most of the problems of civil wars and genocides result from the British and French empires in the first place. As well as that look at the war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, surely thats our fault for trying to spilt up countries when we leave. And palastine as course, another problem caused by the British empire, the list just goes on and on.

I don't think Palestine is in any way a British fault. After all, it is zionist terrorism that got them out of there, without them being able to exploit the opportunity of being the sole arbitrers.
In general, the Empire requires a more careful analysis. I woul say it was rather more fortunate (and more of a fortune) than others... on the whole.

There was a thing called "The Balfour Declaration", you may have heard of it? That kinda gave Zionists the nod that they were approved.

Yes, it was a bloody good thing. It spread civilization, health, education and democracy throughout the world. And most of the countries we conquered came off quite well. After all, just look at the African Countries we colonised. With the exception of Zimbabwe, they're all doing rather better than other african nations that were colonised by other European powers. And without us, India wouldn't be the thriving industrial powerhouse it is today, with a population of 1 billion+. And Australia wouldn't exist at all. Nor would many other places.

Very good thing, the Empire.

Actually, thats a very shallow analysis of the African situation. One wonders whether the Sudan - for instance - is seen as doing better than the Ivory Coast.

In response to all these people saying we didn't leave them with economic legs and that Africa fell into war because of us:

1) If the Colonies in Africa had given us a few years to leave so that we could teach their people how to run the country, they wouldn't be where they are today. But no, instead, they all pick up their spears and start screaming 'we want independence, get out now' without bothering to think how they would run the country.

2) Things such as Kashmir aren't entirely our fault. The people of these regions asked for the different places to be split like this, without thinking of the repercussions. And then, once we agreed to these requests, they went down the same route of Africa, waving spears and screaming for independence. Fortunately, India and the like managed to run the country because of the good things we had done for the country, like Railways and a good Education and Health System.

1) See, what you have here is a germ of a point which ignores the context. The point with regards to Africa is this:- East Africa had had 100 years more of British rule, by and large, and had a native bureacracy built up (and also massive skilled immigration from the Indian subcontinent). There was also far less ad hoc government on ground, which basically pandered to tribalism as was the case in West Africa (where quite a lot of people were appointed chiefs through completely erroneous readings of the situation on the ground and went on to become the "Big Man" of the area simply because they were the only people the British authorities would deal with). To a degree, West Africa was not ready for self government because the infrastructure had not been developed in the same was as East Africa. But...

The infrastructure would not have been developed. The reason West Africa recieved far less attention than the East was there were no viable economic reasons for owning most of it. It was not in the British economies interests to build up a viable infrastructure. So they wouldn't have. Meanwhile, on the ground, the administration under the British consisted of an incredibly small amount of people, using, as i said before, ad hoc "traditions" which actually built up problems for the future rather than solving them. Then, of course, you get the whole issue of the division of the nations, not under any tribal lines, not under any ethnic lines, but seemingly under "what looks pretty on the map". Yes, once in, Britain should have stayed and helped the various West African nations develop.

But it should never have been "in" in the first place.

2) Nonsense. The "people" of Kashmir asked no such thing. It was the inevitable end result of the Curzon era-fantasy of the Raj, where local "princes" were still given titular powers. Come partition, the titular leader of Kashmir went one way, and the British supported him. A majority of his people, on the other hand...

Whilst India *is* a special case, the "distinctions" between most ethnic groups in the Empire were invented by the British Empire for administrative purposes. A century or so later, the descendants of X group now thinks that it is racially different to the descendants of Y group.
And so the troubles begin.

I'd say that the British Empire benefitted the ancestors of its "victims." India, the U.S., etc. wouldn't be the powerhouses they are today if it weren't for British actions. Further, without colonialism and the international exchange of resources/ideas we would all still be wandering around in mud huts. IMNSHO all people alive today owe what they have to the existance of empires many years ago.
Of course, that isn't to say that we need them back. The British Empire wasn't so pleasant for those people who had to live under it, and ideas and trade travel quickly around the world without the need for massive world powers.So the USA was a "victim" of the British Empire? That is one of the cruelest, most misguided statements I have heard today. Native Americans were the victims, not the white settlers. I'm pretty sure they're not benefitting from what the Empire gave.
India: A vast portion of the Indian population still lives in abject poverty. They don't have the infrastructural stability they need, as the horrific flooding after the monsoon rains has shown.
You failed to mention the places that suffered most, mainly the African countries. Those countries have no infrastructure and no industrial base to exploit their natural resources. They certainly got a good deal out of it.
There was no "exchange" of ideas or resources. Resources went to the colonial powers and the locals were expected to buy whatever the motherland produced. There wasn't much passing on ideas, and there still isn't copyright laws are the new form of preventing information or benefits thereof being shared.

It was a great thing.





If you were white.


:rolleyes:

The White Man's Burden

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

-Rudyard Kipling

This poem was written in response to the American seizure of the Phillipines. It is not being sarcastic, but it reflects the opinion of imperialists at the time.

actually it was a vehement anti imperialist poem :headbang:

When working in a law firm in London in the early 90's I was approached by one of the partners who asked in a beautifully patronising tone, "You're from the colonies aren't you? Why are you here?" Numerous things ran through my head- should I pop him in the snoot and claim I tripped, thus accidently hitting him? How about claiming not to speak English? My response in the end was something like this. "Yes I am from what you refer to as the colonies despite their being granted independence many decades ago, I'm so sorry you missed that history lesson. Why am I here? Well I thought it was about time that I was remunerated for some of the money and spoils you raped and pillaged from my country in the name of the metropole. Besides I also came to screw your women. Do you have a daughter?"

The look on his face was priceless, my internship ended shortly thereafter. :)

actually it was a vehement anti imperialist poem :headbang:

I think - sadly - you are misreading Kipling and mistaking it with your - and my - modern sensibilities. Now, whilst i would say Kipling was...conflicted on the whole Imperial extravaganza (he felt at home more in India than he did in the UK, at least until old age), it's actually mainly a imperialist battle-cry. HE DID BELIEVE THIS SHIT. No irony, no sarcasm. He believed it.

I think - sadly - you are misreading Kipling and mistaking it with your - and my - modern sensibilities. Now, whilst i would say Kipling was...conflicted on the whole Imperial extravaganza (he felt at home more in India than he did in the UK, at least until old age), it's actually mainly a imperialist battle-cry. HE DID BELIEVE THIS SHIT. No irony, no sarcasm. He believed it.
i know :( I was testing out how well sarcasm comes across - apparently not well at all- eurocentrism was alive and well and his support for the American domination of the Phillipines was calculated i believe in order to help sway american public opinion in favour of their "imperialist" stance.

i know :( I was testing out how well sarcasm comes across - apparently not well at all- eurocentrism was alive and well and his support for the American domination of the Phillipines was calculated i believe in order to help sway american public opinion in favour of their "imperialist" stance.

Yeah but to give him his due, he was far more complex than - say - a simple Cecil Rhodes "lets turn the map red" kind of imperialist, more one of the ones who gets sucked in to the culture they are supposedly civilizing and is both horrified and attracted to it in equal measures. A very English upper-middle class thing that (see also TE Lawrence).

The British empire was good for the british.

It is for the person from the colonised country to say if it was good for his country or not.

As an Indian, I HATE the British empire, every little piece of it.

I remember writing a lot about this in an earlier thread of the same nature and I hate to go through this again.

The British found India rich and left it poor. That is the truth.

They killed more than 10 million of us in man-made famines (Bengal famines, anyone ? ). They treated us with utmost contempt, the English clubs had the signboards "Indians and Dogs not allowed !". Oh and the occasional massacres. Jalianwala Bagh, anyone ? Gen.Dyer who emptied more than thousand bullets into an unarmed peaceful crowd in that incident was felicitated handsomely and was allowed to discharge honorably.

They looted our country...visit the London museum..everything Indian there is stolen from us..including the Kohinoor diamond that is in the crown. The British divided our society into "Aryans" and "Dravidians" and later played a part in dividing our country itself which resulted in another 5 million deaths and an unsolved problem of Kashmir.

The less talked about the benefits of British education, the better. The British "education" was geared to make us an army of subservient clerks not independant thinking scientists. It is utter idiocy to think that Indians who achieve in fields of science today are doing that because they are studying in English. How the heck do the Japanese produce so many scientists without studying in English ? It is because it would be counter productive to change course at this point of time, Indians continue with English education. To say that it is because of English rule and resultant English education that Indians are progressing in the world today is utter idiocy and is like pissing on the graves of the millions who died due to the British rule.

Whatever benefits that came to India was UNINTENTIONAL. For ex, the Railways only enabled faster extraction of resources out of India and faster dumping of manufactured goods into India, which made the craftsmen lose their income and take to begging. In just two centuries, India was made an agricultural colony of British empire...

First you make us poor and wretched in the 200 years that you rule us. Then we improve our lot through our hard work in just 60 odd years and now you take credit for that saying that because of your rule we are improving !!!

Great self-serving logic there !

Also alot of people like to say how oppressive the British Empire was to native people, despite the fact that England was the first nation to outlaw slavery, 1834 I think, around that time anyway.

Meh, I doubt many people would admit their countries were already backwards before the Brits got there. They brought to these peoples centuries if not millenia worth of technology and development. You'd think Africa was Atlantis before the Empire came, the way some speak.

:rolleyes:

I am touching upon just the famines in India caused by the British.


The Gujarat episode.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,436495,00.html
The facile explanations are 'poverty' and 'underdevelopment', yet there is another, more ghostly, culprit: the enduring disaster of the Raj.

A hundred years ago, the residents of Ahmedabad were also burning their dead on huge, makeshift funeral pyres. The death toll in 1901, however, was a full order of magnitude greater than today's. Drought, famine and cholera in tandem scythed down one in six of Gandhi's fellow Gujaratis. Among outcast or tribal people, the mortality was closer to 30 per cent.

As in the latest tragedy, the proximate cause was environmental: an epic monsoon failure, probably arising from the global El Niño event of 1899-1900 that turned Gujarat's 'once green as a park' countryside (according to an American missionary) into 'a blasted waste of barren stumps and burned fields'. A correspondent of the Times of India was unnerved by the vast dome of blue, cloudless sky over a slowly dying landscape: 'I do do not think I ever hated blue before, but I do now.'

The drought, which afflicted most of north-central India, was counterbalanced by bumper harvests in Bengal and Burma. As the official famine report would later emphasise: 'Owing to the excellent system of communications which now brings every portion of the presidency into close connection with the great market, the supplies of food were at all times sufficient.'

Traditional Indian polities like the Moguls and the Marathas had zealously policed the grain trade in the public interest, distributing free food, fixing prices and embargoing exports. As one horrified British writer discovered, these 'oriental despots' sometimes punished traders who short-changed peasants during famines by amputating equivalent weights of merchant flesh.

The British worshipped a savage god known as the 'Invisible Hand' that forbade state interference in the grain trade. Like previous viceroys (Lytton in 1877 and Elgin in 1897), [B]Lord Curzon allowed food surpluses to be exported to England or hoarded by speculators in heavily guarded depots. Curzon, whose appetite for viceregal pomp and circumstance was legendary, lectured starving villagers that 'any government which imperilled the financial position of India in the interests of prodigal philanthropy would be open to serious criticism; but any government which by indiscriminate alms-giving weakened the fibre and demoralised the self-reliance of the population, would be guilty of a public crime'.

Vaughan Nash of the Manchester Guardian and Louis Klopsch of the New York Christian Herald were appalled by Curzon's 'penal minimum' ration (15 ounces of rice for a day's hard labour) as well as the shocking conditions tolerated in the squalid relief camps, where tens of thousands perished from cholera.

'Millions of flies,' wrote Klopsch, 'were permitted undisturbed to pester the unhappy victims. One young woman who had lost every one dear to her, and had turned stark mad, sat at the door vacantly staring at the awful scenes around her.'

Despite Kiplingesque myths of heroic benevolence, official attitudes were nonchalant. British officials rated Indian ethnicities like cattle, and vented contempt against them even when they were dying in their multitudes. Asked to explain why mortality in Gujarat was so high, a district officer told the famine commission: 'The Gujarati is a soft man... accustomed to earn his good food easily. In the hot weather, he seldom worked at all and at no time did he form the habit of continuous labour. Very many even among the poorest had never taken a tool in hand in their lives. They lived by watching cattle and crops, by sitting in the fields to weed, by picking cotton, grain and fruit, and by... pilfering.'

Gujaratis are famously industrious and probably enjoyed a higher average level of nutrition and well-being than their English contemporaries before the arrival of the East India Company.

In 1901, before the famine had run its course, the Lancet suggested that a conservative estimate of 'excess mortality' in India from starvation and hunger-related disease during the previous decade was 19 million.

As the great Indian political economist Romesh Chunder Dutt pointed out in one of his Open Letters to Lord Curzon , British Progress was India's Ruin. The railroads, ports and canals which enthused Karl Marx in the 1850s were for resource extraction, not indigenous development. The taxes that financed the railroads and the Indian army pauperised the peasantry.

Even in the macabre denouement of the Gujarat famine, the Government announced that 'the revenue must at all costs be gathered in', an act which Vaughan Nash denounced as 'picking the bones of the people'. When patidar farmers, ruined by the drought, combined to refuse a 24 per cent increase in their taxes, the collectors simply confiscated their land.

On the expenditure side, a colonial budget largely financed by taxes on farm and land returned less than 2 per cent to agriculture and education. While a progressive and independent Asian nation like Siam was annually investing two shillings per capita on education and public health, the Raj expended barely one penny per person as 'human capital'.

Not surprisingly, there was no increase in India's per capita income during the whole period of British overlordship from 1757 to 1947. Celebrated cash-crop booms went hand in hand with declining agrarian productivity and food security. Moreover, two decades of demographic growth (in the 1870s and 1890s) were entirely wiped out in avoidable famines, while throughout that 'glorious imperial half century' from 1871 to 1921 immortalised by Kipling, the life expectancy of ordinary Indians fell by a staggering 20 per cent.

This is the catastrophic past from which Indians are still trying to dig themselves free.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/jun/29franc.htm
according to British records, one million Indians died of famine between 1800 and 1825, 4 million between 1825 and 1850, 5 million between 1850 and 1875 and 15 million between 1875 and 1900. Thus 25 million Indians died in 100 years! (Since Independence, there has been no such famines, a record of which India should be proud.)

William Samuel Lilly, in his book "India and Its Problems"

During the first eighty years of the nineteenth century, 18,000,000 of people perished of famine. In one year alone -- the year when her late Majesty assumed the title of Empress -- 5,000,000 of the people in Southern India were starved to death. In the District of Bellary, with which I am personally acquainted, -- a region twice the size of Wales, -- one-fourth of the population perished in the famine of 1816-77. I shall never forget my own famine experiences: how, as I rode out on horseback, morning after morning, I passed crowds of wandering skeletons, and saw human corpses by the roadside, unburied, uncared for, and half devoured by dogs and vultures; how, sadder sight still, children, 'the joy of the world,' as the old Greeks deemed, had become its ineffable sorrow, and were forsaken by the very women who had borne them, wolfish hunger killing even the maternal instinct. Those children, their bright eyes shining from hollow sockets, their nesh utterly wasted away, and only gristle and sinew and cold shivering skin remaining, their heads mere skulls, their puny frames full of loathsome diseases, engendered by the starvation in which they had been conceived and born and nurtured -- they haunt me still.

The forgotten holocaust
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s19040.htm
In contrast, during the Second World War, a man-made catastrophe occurred within the British Empire that killed almost as many people as died in the Jewish Holocaust, but which has been effectively deleted from history, it is a 'forgotten holocaust'. The man-made famine in British-ruled Bengal in 1943-1944 ultimately took the lives of about 4-million people, about 90% of the total British Empire casualties of that conflict, and was accompanied by a multitude of horrors, not the least being massive civilian and military sexual abuse of starving women and young girls that compares unfavourable with the comfort women abuses of the Japanese Army.

The causes of the famine are complex, but ultimately when the price of rice rose above the ability of landless rural poor to pay and in the absence of humane, concerned government, millions simply starved to death or otherwise died of starvation-related causes. Although there was plenty of food potentially available, the price of rice rose through 'market forces', driven by a number of factors including: the cessation of imports from Japanese-occupied Burma, a dramatic wartime decline in other requisite grain imports into India, compounded by the deliberate strategic slashing of Allied Indian Ocean shipping; heavy-handed government action in seizing Bengali rice stocks in sensitive areas; the seizure of boats critically required for food acquisition and rice distribution; and finally the 'divide and rule' policy of giving the various Indian provinces control over their own food stocks. Critically, cashed-up, wartime, industrial, Calcutta could pay for rice and sucked food out of a starving, food-producing countryside.

Ultimately, millions of Bengalis died because their British rulers didn't give a damn and had other strategic imperatives. The Bengal Famine and its aftermath for the debilitated Bengal population consumed its victims over several years in the case of complete British inaction through most of 1943 or insufficient subsequent action. Churchill had a confessed hatred for Indians and during the famine he opposed the humanitarian attempts of people such as the Prime Minister of Canada, Louis Mountbatten, Viceroy General Wavell, and even of Japanese collaborationist leader Subhash Chandra Bose. The hypothesis can be legitimately advanced that the extent of the Bengal Famine derived in part from sustained, deliberate policy.

The wartime Bengal Famine has become a 'forgotten holocaust' and has been effectively deleted from our history books, from school and university curricula and from general public perception. To the best of my knowledge, Churchill only wrote of it once, in a secret letter to Roosevelt dated April 29th 1944 in which he made the following remarkable plea for help in shipping Australian grain to India: 'I am no longer justified in not asking for your help.' Churchill's six-volume 'History of the Second World War' fails to mention the cataclysm that was responsible for about 90% of total British Empire casualties in that conflict but makes the extraordinary obverse claim: 'No great portion of the world population was so effectively protected from the horrors and perils of the World War as were the people of Hindustan. They were carried through the struggle on the shoulders of our small island.' :mad:

This whitewashing of Indian famine extends to two centuries of famine in British India. I have recently published a very detailed account of this two-century holocaust in British India that commenced with the Great Bengal Famine of 1769-1770 (10-million victims) and concluded with the World War 2 Bengal Famine (4-million victims) and took tens of millions of lives in between. In contrast to the response to the Jewish Holocaust, these events have been almost completely written out of history and removed from general perception and there has been no apology nor amends made. While Tony Blair has apologised for the mid-19th century Irish Famine that took over a million lives, there has been no apology for the World War 2 Bengal Famine.

My book is entitled, 'Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History' and sub-titled, 'Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability'. I describe this whitewashing of history as 'Austenising' after Jane Austen, whose exquisite novels were utterly free of the ugly social realities of her time. Some of Jane Austen's siblings and other connections, were involved in the rape of India. Of major note was Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India, who ferociously taxed famine-devastated Bengal and was eventually impeached and tried but ultimately acquitted for his manifold abuses in India. Warren Hastings almost certainly seduced Jane Austen's aunt, Philadelphia Hancock. This adultery gave rise to Jane Austen's lively cousin Eliza who is an evident model for the more advanced women of Jane Austen's novels. While much of the huge academic Jane Austen industry has ignored (or 'Austenised') such interesting aspects of the lives of Jane Austen's relatives, Jane Austen herself was much more forthcoming; thus to the initiated, 'Sense and Sensibility', the most Indian of her novels, includes a very detailed and barely disguised account of the Warren Hastings Scandal.

While it was legitimate for Jane Austen, the artist, to render her exquisite novels free of the contemporary awfulness in which her connections participated, the continuing 'Austenising' of British history is a holocaust-denying outrage....

That's right. The British empire killed upwards of 20 millions of us. And I am supposed to take it that the empire was good for my country.

And to those who think that it was a natural famine and not man-made, think again. India never had a famine again after its independance, inspite of tripling of its population from 30 million in 1947 to 1 billion today. And we were supposed to be lowly natives who didn't know how to rule ourselves and has to be taught "civilisation" by the English.

No great portion of the world population was so effectively protected from the horrors and perils of the World War as were the people of Hindustan. They were carried through the struggle on the shoulders of our small island

I particularly resent this comment by the racist Churchill.

The Royal Indian army was the largest all volunteer army to participate in WWII. IIRC, Indians won 30 odd Victoria Crosses (which was more than the Britishers themselves). 4 million Indians died in the famines caused by the diversion of food from Bengal by the British during their war effort. It was the British Indian army which stopped the Japanese advance in Burma theatre.

But still the arrogant Churchill has to make this comment which he very well knew to be wrong.

Meh, I doubt many people would admit their countries were already backwards before the Brits got there.
Actually backwards suggests some ultimate destination, where exactly is that?

They brought to these peoples centuries if not millenia worth of technology and development.
Which people, what technology? The Chinese people they brought the invention of printing to....oh hang on...


You'd think Africa was Atlantis before the Empire came, the way some speak.
What has been Atlantis got to do with it? You talk about development, backwardness and technology in a way that implies societies exist on some linear line that ends in an ultimate, inevitable destination.

If by technologies and development you are referring to 'modernity' I'd have to ask why you think it is such a boon to humanity considering the longevity of the species under 'pre-modernity' subsistence arrangements and the apparent unsustainability of 'modernity' subsistence practises?

[QUOTE=Aryavartha]I particularly resent this comment by the racist Churchill.

Nice way to talk about the man who probably helped save the world from Hitlers racism. He accomplished a lot more than you probably ever could hope to dream of, in any sphere of influence.
Your nothing but a dustmite judging a giant

Learn your place little boy.

The British Empire was a good thing at one point in history, definitely. When they banned the slave trade and used their vast navy to enforce it, despite whatever their motives may have been, it was definitely a good thing. Kudos to the Brits!

Keynes and Adam Smith, to name but two differing thinkers, thought that Imperialism cost the UK more than it gained them.
Adam Smith? Adam Smith was a bit early to make a proper decision about that, wasn't he?

But granted, you could have a debate about this. But I won't. ;)

Your nothing but a dustmite judging a giant

Learn your place little boy.
:rolleyes:

No matter how much the "Britain's empire was evil! The sub human British should be rounded up and shot for DARING to be born in a country which once held dominance!" whiners can sit back and criticise the British empire, it cannot be denied that, on the whole, the world is a better place because of the empire.

I mean - if not the British, then another country would build a similar empire and who do you think would have done a better job? The Spanish 'Convert or be tortured to death!' approach? The Germans?

Face it - the British empire was probably the most compassionate and well intentioned empire in all human history. Yes, it was founded on the racist and ill concieved idea that the 'savages needed to be civilised and saved from hell' - but in general most countries greatly benefitted from it. Look at India before and after the empire and try to argue that it would magically have done better in Britain's absence.

ALL countries who have had power have done things which aren't particuarly great. To pick out Britain just because it happened to be more successful and make out all British people are monsters because of it is just being childish.

Oh, and blaming all famines on Britain is laughable. It's like when the Irish blame the potato famine on Britain as if some insidious Brits genetically engineered the blight just to spite the Irish.

I mean - if not the British, then another country would build a similar empire and who do you think would have done a better job? The Spanish 'Convert or be tortured to death!' approach? The Germans?
Why not the Germans?

Like most things in politics, it had both good and bad points. In many parts of Africa, it was a failiure. The British, French and Germans exploited these countries and used them to make profit. This is one of the reasons that that many are in such a terrible condition.

However, it has also spread the ideas of democracy, freedom and technology. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Singapore and South Africa have developed or devoloping democratic political systems and economies.

I disagree with the ideas of colonialism, from the British Empire to transnational coroprations. But one has to be open minded and see its merits as well as its problems.

I'm indifferent really. Without the British Empire history would have been completely different. If the BE hadn't become an empire some other country would have. I think the way the BE/Britian(as it is now) handeled decolonisation in some areas in an absolutely disgraceful manner, but thats history. I loved the Roman Empire tho-far superior to any other empire! Yeah Romans!

No matter how much the "Britain's empire was evil! The sub human British should be rounded up and shot for DARING to be born in a country which once held dominance!" whiners can sit back and criticise the British empire, it cannot be denied that, on the whole, the world is a better place because of the empire.


OH, now the people who put things into perspective about the British empire are "whiners" ?

Is it not for the colonies to judge if colonisation was good or not?

I mean - if not the British, then another country would build a similar empire and who do you think would have done a better job? The Spanish 'Convert or be tortured to death!' approach? The Germans?

YAY! The British were better than the Nazis. I will concede that.

Face it - the British empire was probably the most compassionate and well intentioned empire in all human history. Yes, it was founded on the racist and ill concieved idea that the 'savages needed to be civilised and saved from hell' - .

:rolleyes:

Compassionate racists !

Look at India before and after the empire and try to argue that it would magically have done better in Britain's absence.

:headbang:

British intervention and subsequent colonisation was disasterous for India. Like I said earlier, whatever good that came out of being a British colony were unintentional benefits and needs to be put into perspective of the evil and horrible things that the Raj did. The Raj sucked us dry for 200 years and left us poor.



Oh, and blaming all famines on Britain is laughable.

Tell that to the MILLIONS who died in the Bengal famines. :mad:

What if the Germans pre-nazism made a big empire?

I can accept peoples views that what British soldiers did in India and many ohter countries was wrong, i believe it myself.
What i dont agree with is being blamed and punished for what my ancestors did because im British, our country should be left alone and not be the target for reprisals. Yes we committed atrocities, but how many countries in the world have committed atrocities?
The British empire was not a good thing, and was not a bad thing. Colonialism was the policy of the time, just like building an empire in the times of the ancients and romans was a foreign policy of the time.
The world ages through different periods and all that we can do is learn from these periods and hope that only the good things will be repeated.

Adam Smith? Adam Smith was a bit early to make a proper decision about that, wasn't he?

But granted, you could have a debate about this. But I won't. ;)

There was a British Empire when Adam Smith lived and wrote. Not *quite* as big a one, admittedly.

And there had been other empires, for the example.

No matter how much the "Britain's empire was evil! The sub human British should be rounded up and shot for DARING to be born in a country which once held dominance!" whiners can sit back and criticise the British empire, it cannot be denied that, on the whole, the world is a better place because of the empire.

I mean - if not the British, then another country would build a similar empire and who do you think would have done a better job? The Spanish 'Convert or be tortured to death!' approach? The Germans?

Face it - the British empire was probably the most compassionate and well intentioned empire in all human history. Yes, it was founded on the racist and ill concieved idea that the 'savages needed to be civilised and saved from hell' - but in general most countries greatly benefitted from it. Look at India before and after the empire and try to argue that it would magically have done better in Britain's absence.

ALL countries who have had power have done things which aren't particuarly great. To pick out Britain just because it happened to be more successful and make out all British people are monsters because of it is just being childish.

Oh, and blaming all famines on Britain is laughable. It's like when the Irish blame the potato famine on Britain as if some insidious Brits genetically engineered the blight just to spite the Irish.

The famine in India...and in Ireland....was palpably not the fault of the UK Government.

The response to both, however, liberal laissez faire style, was.

Sorry. I have this problem where I don't think before I speak. The yankee flagwaver part was formed from months of criticism from Americans on XBL calling me and my friends tea drinking, queen fucking, crumpet eating brits.

Those folk from the red states can fornicate with their sisters on the front lawn without anyone noticing...

damn rednecks.

Most folk from my part of the states are quite fond of Great Brittain.

I can accept peoples views that what British soldiers did in India and many ohter countries was wrong, i believe it myself.


Thanks.


What i dont agree with is being blamed and punished for what my ancestors did because im British,

I don't get that part. I like UK. I like Britishers. Just not the empire-loving kind. I don't want to exact revenge or retribution, but what I expect is an apology without condescension or a patronising attitude. What I expect is no further meddling in our affairs.


our country should be left alone

Has it ever occured to you that that is what the colonies also wanted. To be left alone. To have nothing to do with your "civilisation". To have nothing to do with the artificial lines the empire drew and the artificial countries that the empire created when it suited it.

Let me be more specific.

Have you heard of the Durrand line between Afghanistan and Pakistan?

In the 1800s there was this great game between Imperialist Britain and Czarist Russia. Britain invaded Afghanistan and failed to subdue the tribals there. Eventually an arbitrary line was drawn called Durrand line in 1895, following a treaty called Durrand treaty between the British and the Afghan monarch which said this side of the line is British India and that side is Afghanistan. The line divides many Pushtun tribes and the treaty was to expire in 1995. But British India got independance and Pakistan inherited the divided Pushtun land.

Now the issue is still unresolved since Pakistan does not recognise the treaty between Britain and Afghanistan, while although Afghanistan is in no position to demand overtly, but Afghan nationalists will never give up their demand for what they see as rightfully theirs. So to prevent the nationalists from consolidating power, Pakistan is propping up the Taliban. Taliban is part of the islamist network that is hand in hand with other Jihadi orgs like Al-Quada and LeT - members of which recently bombed UK.

These things are related. You, as a UK citizen has to suffer for the sins of the past because you are also enjoying the fruits of their actions in the past. That is as inevitable as karma, no escaping it.

What you can do is to help improve the lot of those in the colonies, whose wealth the empire looted which made your country rich, the benefits of which you are enjoying now. This need not be direct reparations. There are many other ways.


Yes we committed atrocities, but how many countries in the world have committed atrocities?

It does not make any difference to a person who died in India in Jalianwalabagh or in Bengal famins because of the oppressive actions of British empire, that the British empire were more moral than the Nazis.

This is the reason why non-western countries don't have the same perspective of WWII as a fight between "good" and "evil" as western folks like to think.

For us it was a more like a war between evil and evil to decide who is the more efficient evil.

Same reason why some Iraqis are resentful of US troops in Iraq. What does it matter to the dead Iraqi, if he was dead due to the evil Saddam or due to the democracy spreading US bombs ?

The British empire was not a good thing, and was not a bad thing. Colonialism was the policy of the time, just like building an empire in the times of the ancients and romans was a foreign policy of the time.
The world ages through different periods and all that we can do is learn from these periods and hope that only the good things will be repeated.

Agreed. History is harsh. History is ...well...history, unchangeable.

But there is also no point in whitewashing history since what lesson will we learn then ?

The famine in India...and in Ireland....was palpably not the fault of the UK Government.

The response to both, however, liberal laissez faire style, was.

read this part again

The causes of the famine are complex, but ultimately when the price of rice rose above the ability of landless rural poor to pay and in the absence of humane, concerned government, millions simply starved to death or otherwise died of starvation-related causes. Although there was plenty of food potentially available, the price of rice rose through 'market forces', driven by a number of factors including: the cessation of imports from Japanese-occupied Burma, a dramatic wartime decline in other requisite grain imports into India, compounded by the deliberate strategic slashing of Allied Indian Ocean shipping; heavy-handed government action in seizing Bengali rice stocks in sensitive areas; the seizure of boats critically required for food acquisition and rice distribution; and finally the 'divide and rule' policy of giving the various Indian provinces control over their own food stocks. Critically, cashed-up, wartime, industrial, Calcutta could pay for rice and sucked food out of a starving, food-producing countryside.

Ultimately, millions of Bengalis died because their British rulers didn't give a damn and had other strategic imperatives. The Bengal Famine and its aftermath for the debilitated Bengal population consumed its victims over several years in the case of complete British inaction through most of 1943 or insufficient subsequent action. Churchill had a confessed hatred for Indians and during the famine he opposed the humanitarian attempts of people such as the Prime Minister of Canada, Louis Mountbatten, Viceroy General Wavell, and even of Japanese collaborationist leader Subhash Chandra Bose. The hypothesis can be legitimately advanced that the extent of the Bengal Famine derived in part from sustained, deliberate policy.


Although the monsoon often fails, there has been no record of famines before the British rule. And there has been no famines after it.

The failure of rains only cause failure of corps in a particular area. But the famines were a result of British policies.

The Empire is still ruining many of its colonies today, this is through the cowardly tactic of Divide and Conquor they used. Favouring one side, thats why civil war is so common in the ex-colonies. The would create a division and let the natives fight eachother. Many of these divisions still stand today. The Brittish empire was pure evil and cowardly in my opinion, most people who like it are jus too proud to see the facts and think rationally.

Im going to draw from facts i know to prove this in my own country, i know it happend in India and other places too, but im not as sure. During the Irish Famine, while people wher starving to death daily, the brittish government wher shipping THOUSANDS OF THOUSANDS of barrells of food A DAY out of Ireland. This is a fact there are regestry books to prove it and all. That is way some people are begining to refer to the Irish famine as "the Irish holocaust", seems extreme, but millions did die. Potatoes were not the only food here ya know, the rest was being shipped away.