India’s economy was fine before the British showed up. It went to pot after they came.
I’m going to need a cite that the colonial powers had balanced trade in Africa. The British didn’t in India, so why would they have had it in Africa?
India in the 17th Century was richer than Europe. We’re so used to the idea that Europe is richer and stronger militarily than everyone else that we forget that this was not true until very late.
Colonization in the Americas was possible due to the demographic collapse of the native population due to disease. But the colonization of India is another story. Africa, India, the Middle East, and the far east didn’t experience these demographic collapses, which is why there was no large scale replacement of the indigenous population with Europeans, like what happened in the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. It’s hard to understand exactly how a tiny island thousands of miles away managed to end up ruling hundreds of millions of people. The main answer I suppose the good old “divide and rule”. Allying with the British against your neighbors didn’t seem like such a bad idea, since there was no particular reason you should hate the Brits more than you should hate your neighbors. You only begin to hate the Brits after you’ve been conquered. The almost accidental conquest of India reminds me a bit of the way the Roman republic turned itself into an empire almost by accident, aquired by provincial officials intent on enriching themselves.
That said, it’s not like the British were the first people to colonize India, the Mughal Empire certainly wasn’t an indigenous phenomenon.
I’m not acquainted with India’s precolonial history beyond a superficial reading of the decline of the Maratha Confederacy, so I’ll not contest the point. Certainly British rule had some distinct negatives for India, and the problems were exacerbated by the Partition, so it’s hard to look at modern India and discern which of its manifest problems stem from what intervention.
I mean balanced in the sense that the “colonists” had ready access to European technology and conveniences, not in the sense that the overall population benefitted from fair and equal trade except from the residual hand-me-downs. When the colonial powers pulled out, they left most African nations as “single crop” industries, and in most cases the “crop” was some exploitable, nonrenewable natural resource. Acclimated to a greater or lesser degree to Western goods the nations were reduced to selling whatever assets they had to former colonial masters or their competitors, usually at a small fraction of their eventual market value owing to their inability to survive on their own fruits and wait for a fair offer.
The colonial powers lost very little by pulling out and rid themselves of the signficant administrative problems to boot. Having the sun set on the British Empire was probably the best thing for the Crown. Other nations had it even worse; the French in particular were constantly hemmoraging money and international goodwill to maintain their foreign possessions; releasing their “client states” was the best thing France could have done for themselves; unfortunately, the United States decided to take up the reigns (albeit in the guise of protectors rather than colonists) and we saw how well that went for everybody invovled. There’s no reason to believe that “recolonization” of Africa would go any better.
Stranger
With all due respect, MrDibble, I think you’re misinterpreting my views on the subject.
You’re in South Africa, right? Most of the South Africans I know are either Afrikaans or otherwise European, all of whom left South Africa after Apartheid, and most of whom were displeased with the way “Seth Efreeka” was going. I must accept a rather large degree of bias in their views though, as by in large they were leaving South Africa after the end of Apartheid. On the whole, however, SA is an example of a former African Colony that’s not doing too badly for itself on the whole.
Apartheid was an incredibly bad, fucked up thing that never should have been seriously considered by anyone, so I have no time for people who actually and seriously support it.
However, as I’ve outline before, my views on Imperialism are based not on the ethnicity of the people in the colonial territory, but on the territory’s ability to govern itself effectively. If the vast majority of the local populace are starving, impoverished, lacking medicine, constantly ravaged by civil/tribal warfare etc, then I’d say that that country should be considered incapable of handling its own affairs and that another country without all those problems should step in and incorporate the troubled territory into their own borders, treating the incorporated territory exactly as if it were part of the incorporating country.
And yes, I’d support it even in relation to “European” countries. If, say, New Zealand suddenly collapsed into Anarchy, crops failed, etc, I’d have no issue with Australia or the UK or the US or someone moving in and setting up shop, so to speak.
Yes, I realise it’s not really practical, but I’ve always been an idealist.
This is stretching the definition of colonialism to an absurdity. The Mughals set up a kingdom in India (analogous to the Norman invasion of England). They certainly didn’t bleed the economy of India to send it back to Central Asia.
I’m not even sure what the purpose of this statement is anyway. I’m no fan of the Mughals, and if you want to bash them, I’ll join you (particularly both Aurangzebs), but their actions don’t somehow make European colonialism some great moral endeavor.
There’s no need to look at modern India to analyze colonialism’s problems, though. I can simply look at what India was like before the British showed up, and what it was like when they left. From that, I can draw conclusions as to what the effects of colonialism were.
Post hoc !> propter hoc.
Oh, please. You can look at a wide range of metrics over a time span and try to figure out what policies or events during that time span caused those metrics. This is a field some people call economics. :rolleyes:
If I’m trying to figure out what the impact of colonialism was on India, why on Earth do I have to look at modern India? If I’m trying to figure out whether colonialism has a continuing impact on India, then it makes sense to look at post-independence events. I don’t have to look at post-independence events to determine that British colonialism drained the Indian economy during the time it was in place.
And FWIW, I don’t actually blame colonialism for India’s current state.
Somewhat off topic, but there’s an insurance firm here in Boston whose office I used to deliver to frequently that, had he been a member at the time, would have always made me think that Martini Enfield was their interior decorator. The place was filled with remembrances of the glory days of the British Empire. It was overdone to the point where it was somewhat disturbingly monomaniacal. One room appeared to be a waiting room of some sort and rows of figurines of British soldiers in their red coats and pith helmets.
Pity it was so over-the-top, as I do think the Brits had great style as they went out building their Empire. Morals, those were pretty shitty, or at least grounded in seriously flawed premises, but they did have style.
Stop that right now! We are not bringing Iraq into the Union!
I wasn’t actually referring to the present unpleasantness in Iraq (on which my official position is that I have no official position), but I’m confident the situation in Iraq will eventally sort itself out- just not necessarily to the satisfaction of the US.
The Law Library at University had a Victorian Gentlemen’s Club air to it- big, high backed leather chairs, wood panelled walls, pictures of The Queen, bookshelfs full of leather-bound books- you get the idea. If it had a bar, some rifles, assegais, and shields on the wall, and a whole bunch of black & white photos of people on Safari in Tanganyika in the 1890s, it would have been perfect.
I’ve told my fiancee I want my study to look like that when we buy a house, incidentally. 
And she’s still your fiancee? 
Only because we compromised on only turning my study into something out of an Alan Quatermain novel, instead of, well, the entire house.
As am I. But statehood (that is, U.S. statehood) for Iraq is implicit in what you’re saying about “incorporate the troubled territory into their own borders, treating the incorporated territory exactly as if it were part of the incorporating country.” (Just imagine what would happen if we tried!)
Of course, that’s hardly relevant to the discussion at hand, since European colonial imperialism never actually worked that way, as you know. Generally, the incorporated territory was treated as if it existed to provide economic benefits for the incorporating country (or, rather, for the incorporating country’s ruling class). As George Orwell observed in his classic essay on Kipling:
Elizabeth II, or the real one? 
Hey, I like steampunk and Victoriana as much as the next guy - probably more so. I actually own a pith helmet and a half-hunter, FFS. That doesn’t mean I can’t tell the difference between harmless roleplay and how to actually run a country.
Colonialism failed, time and time again, because it ultimately goes against the grain for both the colonised, as well as the more ethical colonisers (or at least, their countrymen back home). Colonialism will not work again in a postmodern world - we’re all supposed to be partakers of negritude & coolitide , organisms in the coral imaginary, a different colonial organism than the parasitic model that launched the Scramble for Africa. A Creole world supposedly has no place for the violence that is a necessary part of colonialism.
For if even one of the colonised objects, how are you justified in putting him down? I’ve made this point to Martini before, with regards to East Timor, but he waved it aside as though it didn’t matter. Says it all, really.
I find this quite interesting.
One poster makes a statement in GD that colonists in Africa were economic rapists and responsible for all ills, past, present and future.
I reply that in most African colonies the locals were better off under colonial administration than they are now.
At which point another poster interprets my post as advocating neo-colonialism, which is quite a jump, and rather insulting as, except in jest, I would never advocate something that simply would not work.
We then have a little digression on India, which as BrightnShiny should know was hijacked by a form of Haliburton and confiscated from them by the British Government in 1858, after which they put in a proper administration.
We are also treated to a chunk of Eric Blair AKA George Orwell, and while I like his writing I don’t exactly consider him an authority. For example, why on earth would the Burma Police recruit an earnest and idealistic young man who sadly was not tough enough to hack it ? Probably because he was exactly the type of person they wanted to recruit - as is backed up by BBC archive recordings broadcast and published as ‘Plain Tales from The Raj’.
We also see Britain blamed for the Partition of India, oddly that poster has forgotton about Jinnah Muhammad Ali Jinnah - Wikipedia
- although possibly his relationship with Lady Mountbatten did help persuade the British to permit (not encourage) an extremely destructive partition.
I still think that most of Africa was better off under European administration
The British, French and Portuguese were not that bad
East Timor is a perfect example of what happens when the colonialists go home
- someone else moves in and the place becomes a toilet
“Interprets”, my arse! When you said this:
there was no indication of jest, at all. Back-pedal all you want, but your words are still there to read. That wasn’t a joke, and it’s cowardly to pretend it is now.
New colonialists move in?
Ok @MrDibble let us get on to the present day
You know that Zimbabwe is going down the pan, you have immigrants coming in at 50,000 per month - possibly 3m to date - what are you going to do ?
- bring back the ‘pass laws’
My view is that Africa is porous - trouble spills over borders.
My view is also that your lot (and I know who your lot are) should cut your losses and get out to the UK or Oz. Best of luck.
It’s an interesting example for you to bring up because it is precisely contrary to your previous assertion that colonial administration is usually better. Zimbabwe 1980-1990 was, by all measures, as well off or better than it was pre-independence, until Mugabe lost it.