On which data do you base that assertion, exactly ? What did the British bring to India that modernist Indians couldn’t have figured out on their own, besides musket firing drills ?
Oh, you’re right : their misrule brought the worst famines in recorded history. 10 to 20 million dead, give or take. Guess that’s something.
Oh, bullshit. A feudal Maratha system would have tumbled down from within eventually, just as the monarchies of Europe and Asia fell one after the other. Who are you to say what would have replaced them without the friendly and caring iron yoke of Britain on the region ?
Wow. Way to conflate things that have nothing in common. Or have you heard leftists opine that the health care system of Bhutan is really crap and the US should invade them to get things right, maybe ?
Besides, “leftists” can and should get to have a say in what goes on within the confines of their own country. It’s when you start ruling on what’s best for the cack-handed peasants of other small, uncivilized and uncultured nations* who must be led gently by the hand** into the shining light of Western democracy*** that we’re gonna have a problem with you.
(which have 9 millenia of history behind them)
(* and by that I of course mean “bombed and shot the shit out of until they get the idea”)
(*** read “complacent puppet state”)
cite ?
Well, Hindu castes are still there, for the most part (although the younger generations tend to care less and less about them).
So, what did the British (who **enforced **them) bring to the table again, remind me ? Or are you arguing that, had those uppity Indians kept well in their place and not thrown the British Raj out the window, there would be no castes at all today ?
Not to mention, his little scenario hinges on France “taking one for the team” and not resenting or trying to overthrow their new Deutscher overlords for the next thousand years.
Yeah, that’s likely… it’s not like the French have a marked cultural identity or anything.
OTOH, if you thought WW2 German uniforms were the shit, just think what a French Nazi regime (which would have inevitably risen from the exact same kind of bitterness and revanchism that led to the rise of Hitler in Germany) would have done for military fashion !
ETA : I also fail to grasp the logical step between “Germans take France” and “no Russian Revolution”. Help, anyone ?
BTW, Curtis, the Bolsheviks were NOT responsible for the Russian Revolution. It started out as a bread riot in St. Petersburg and ended up as a revolt against the Tsar. Lenin and company weren’t even IN Russia. From February of 1917 until about, oh, October?, a provisional government under Alexander Kerensky was in charge. (Democratic, I might add)
India did not unlike the West have a tradition of limited power or democracy-democracy might have come but not for many, many centuries.
Well than what human rights violations should we ignore? Should we ignore Darfur? The ethnic cleansing in the Balkans?
All those businessmen like Carnegie and so on, of the US Presidents since World War II only the Bushes and Kennedy came from anything like a privileged background, the enormous middle class, lack of a religion based class system, need I go on?
No. Decolonization probably was inevitable but had it happened more wisely India may have remained united and not subject to the massacres between the Hindu and Muslim populations.
If France falls in 1914 Germany will concentrate all it’s energy on Russia. Russia will either see defeat is inevitable or be defeated by 1916 or such. Also the Bolsheviks took power because the Germans sent Lenin to Russia to cause revolution. In a shorter war such a thing would not have happened.
We stand now currently about eighty years away from according to Spengler’s projection the rise of Caesarism. I don’t think it will happen but considering how much Spengler has been correct I won’t rule it out completely.
What tradition are you speaking of ? Do you mean the limited power of guys like Louis “State” XIV and Napoleon ? Gals like Queen Victoria ? The very democratic Spanish and Portuguese empires maybe ? Perhaps were you thinking of the famous People’s Republic of Prussia ? The smattering of ever-feuding principalities composing the Roman Empire ? Well, they had Prince-electors, so that must mean they elected something or other, QED. Y’know, democratically and stuff.
Newsflash : in the age of colonization, there were two major Republics in Europe : the Dutch and Venice. That’s it. And even they were, like the United States at first, plutocracies more than anything.
Oh, and of course the French had their Republican stint (read : tyranny by different unelected autocrats) and utterly corrupt Directory before deciding that no, really, emperors it is.
Strong Western tradition indeed…
Now what caused those, hmm… could it have been… Western meddling and arbitrary drawing of borders to suit their own interests and power games, without any regards for the local populations whatsoever ? I mean, it could be that.
I’ll grant you it could also be the inevitable result of the inherent barbarism, vulgarity and blood thirst of non-WASP Europeans. Inferior genes and zero culture, all of them.
Not talking about the US, who as far as I am aware didn’t colonize India, nor Africa. I could be wrong, of course - we obviously don’t operate from the same history book.
Great. So, what about them castes ? Those that still exist, and we were discussing ?
Right. Because there wouldn’t be a need for soldiers to keep France in check, as we’ve already established the French, spineless and humble that they are, would have happily welcomed and accepted German subjugation. The huge shift in the European balance of powers would also have zipped completely past Britain, Italy and the Ottomans, who would have happily taken it in their stride, knowing what’s best for Germany is best for everyone. Europeans were nothing if not mutually co-operative, thanks to their centuries’ worth of tolerant and democratic traditions.
We further establish that, like all invasions of Russia before and since, Kaiser Wilhelm’s would have of course succeeded admirably, in the space of a few months, a year at best.
Finally, we can establish that the Russian Revolution wasn’t in fact a national uprising of the lower classes following centuries of oppression at the hand of a decadent, tyrannical and oppressive Tsarist autocracy (spread among God only knows how many individual factions, from bolsheviks, to Makhno’s anarchists, to college idealists, to half the army and navy, to disenfranchised peasants, to hungry factory workers, to the Cossacks…), but all the devious work of that one guy. Man, was he *ever *clever.
I really wasn’t kidding about you working from an different history book altogether.
It’s also somewhat amusing how, to you, the Mughals & Marathas were horrible feudal oppressors who enforced a ‘orrible, human rights’ defying caste system, but Tsarist Russia was just A-OK. Hey, at least they weren’t commies. Like the Indians, I suppose them uppity kulaks should have just shut up and kept their place, in order to… avoid a century of oppression at the hands of their own State, I guess. Wait, that doesn’t sound right :dubious:.
Actually, while I agree with nothing else he has to say, Curtis is kind of right about WW1.
Unlike Hitler, Wilhelm and his generals were not conquerors, and they had no interest in making major changes to the map of Europe. If they had won at the Marne and taken Paris, there probably would have been a repeat of 1870 - the French would have handed over a few choice colonies in Africa or Indochina in return for a full German retreat, Russia would have handed over a few tracks of land in Poland or the Ukraine for a peace treaty of its own, Britain would have realized that there was no percentage in fighting a Continental war, and the Great Game would have continued for a few more decades until the next crisis.
In other words, the last thing the Germans wanted was to actually conquer France or Russia - just as the Allies had no interest in conquering Germany in return.
C’mon now, Curtis is only saying things that are undeniably true. Without the background provided by Britain’s rule of India, Gandhi could not possibly have led the independence movement for which he is now celebrated…
The only thing Spengler wasn’t wrong about, perhaps, was the spelling of his own name. Joseph Tainter offers a devastating critique of Spengler in his The Collapse of Complex Societies. It’s not a great book, but he is absolutely dead on about Spengler.
Curtis, I would submit that on reflection, you might change your mind about the Fin de Siecle. I also love the period, but not for the reasons you do. It was one of the craziest times in European history.
