Being better than the Taliban doesn’t make a government “fairly sane.” The Amin government was fairly nutso in its own right.
You’re right, just that the examples of British governance in those areas was a good by-product. Hence the UK being the ‘mother of all parliaments’
I heard a couple of years ago there was some protesters in a West African country demanding a Tory MP(I think) to come and govern them. Anyone else remember that?
Certainly it’s better for a country to be an ex-colony of Britain than of any other European power. But some people in this thread seem to think that retroactively justifies colonialism, and it doesn’t.
The Taliban didn’t begin to form until the early 1990s. The rebels at the time of the fraternal assistance were simply anti-communist, or more simply, anti-any-government-which-wasn’t-them.
I’d like to point out to Brain Glutton that I did not use the word “invasion” in that post, as his nitpick was correct. 
Yes, I’m aware of when the Taliban formed. FRDE seemed to be claiming that the Amin government was a better alternative to the eventual subsequent fundamentalist Islamic government. While I’d agree, I don’t think we should be painting the Afghan commies as sane. Their nuttiness was just directed at other Afghanis rather than at the US.
Nevertheless, nowadays some Afghans remember that period with fondness, compared to everything that came after, up to the present day. At least Amin/the Soviets built roads and clinics and schools.
There was infrastructure development under the monarchy (courtesy of the Soviet’s of course). If we’re going to pick previous governments that were the least nutty–then as much as I dislike the concept of monarchy, I’m going to have to go with the Constitutional Monarchy period.
It does in a perverse kind of way. Because although we established an empire to produce profit, the natives were allowed to institute some of their own laws, trade, become educated, business minded, alot of the Indian upper classes were educated in Oxford and Cambridge, like Ghandi.
Yeah, I mean they were so fond of the regime almost 3 million refugees packed their bags and headed off to Pakistan or Iran. Thanks to the Soviets, some of the farming areas in southern Afghanistan can’t ever be used again. Well done.
Afghanistan was never a constitutional monarch, not when major governmental positions were doled out to his family. Regardless though as to whether you like the Monarchs or not, that period in Afghanistan during Zahir Shahs reign has been probably the most stable period in Afghanistans entire history, to claim that the Communist government was somewhat a force for good when it barely had support from 5% of the population is exaggerating a bit, don’t you think?
I fail to see how foriegn rule is tantamount to racism. It might be ethnocentrism to enforce the culture and principles of the ruling society on the colonial one but it isn’t racist.
In principle, no, but most colonial-imperial regimes in history were extremely racist in practice.
This is bullshit. The trade regime was dictated by the British to the detriment of the Indian economy. And any laws that Indians could implement were always subject to override by the British. Post a cite that the same wasn’t true in most of colonial Africa.
Wow. Because nobody in India ever thought of the concept of education before the British showed up. And certainly there was no way to allow foreigners into UK universities without conquering their homes and impoverishing their populations. What an elitist prig you are.
Are you serious? Is this another one of those made up definitions? They had a constitution and a monarchy–that’s a constitutional monarchy.
Did you notice where I called the Afghan commies nutty? Did you notice where I said the constitutional monarchy was less nutty then the commies? Are you able to read?
But if we’re going to advocate a return to immoral systems like Colonialism, why not pick an immoral system like Soviet-style communism? At least it has the possibility of bringing industrialization, far more widespread education and infrastructure than European colonialism ever did in India and most of Africa.
No disagreement there, however the OP was ranting that anyone who advocated colonial rule was a racist. Even in the pit, I cringe to see that term thrown around so loosely. A non-racist neo-colonialist would merely be calling the current goverment incompetent; and further, that the population for whatever reasons, cultural, educational or otherwise, are also for the most part incompetent of running a goverment in the modern global society. Calling someone a racist is a lame cop-out; just because in historical terms the system was administered by racists. If the ruling population was also black, that term, and most of the vitriol of the OP wouldn’t apply. It’s a nitpick, but one that bugs the shit out of me.
How else are we supposed to interpret this. If someone is advocating a return to a system that was racist in practice, then why shouldn’t we take that to mean that they’re advocating a return to a racist system?
If people are proposing a non-racist system, then they’re not proposing European colonialism.
I mean, theoretically, one could implement a Jim-Crow like system that was based around something other than race. But if someone advocates a return to Jim-Crow, how can we not think that they’re advocating a return to a racist system?
They almost have to be, in order to maintain the exploitive status quo, which is really the whole point of colonialism. After all, if you are ruling them for their own good, you should logically be trying to help them gain in capability until they don’t need you; but that defeats the purpose of colonialism. Unless, of course, they are innately inferior and can never be permitted independence “for their own good”; that’s racism. IIRC the racism came after the exploitation of the non-Europeans, not before.
Because if it didn’t happen to be a White/Black situation, the term would have no application whatsoever.
You forgot to make some sort of incredibly bad statement damning the US here.
Then if European Colonialism doesn’t happen in a racist context, the term has no meaning either.
[random musing] In practice I find it difficult to separate Soviet communism from colonialism, given that while the European powers were, with varying degrees of grace, divesting themselves of their colonies post-WWII, the Soviets somehow forgot to give back the Central Asian territories that Russia had acquired during 19th Century during the period of Tsarist expansion: if the Russians had won the Great Game and made it down through the Khyber Pass, Indian independence would have come about fifty years later than it did. Of course, then Russia would have been embroiled in Afghanistan a century early. [/random musing]
Well, most of what the Russians conquered in Central Asia was thinly populated territory. There’s no reason to think that their conquest of Central Asia would have translated to a push into the sub-continent.
Post WWII, I suppose it’s theoretically possible, but good luck trying to implement an atheistic form of government on the subcontinent.