What if colonialism was still going on? If none of the independence movements had ever happened? How would history be different if much of the world were still British/French/Spanish colonies? I’m not just talking about the United States, how would other countries be different too, historically and culturally?
I think the biggest difference might be Africa. You probably wouldn’t have the same levels of poverty and corruption. The AIDS epidemic might not exist either, or at least not at its present level. The things that the British colonies did have that the independant countries don’t have now are solid infrastructiure construction programmes (sanitation, healthcare, education and power), skilled administrators and law enforcement. At least that’s what my father reckons, he grew up in Kenya, and worked in urban development there in the late 50’s. Not everything that colonialism brought to africa was bad, they did a lot of good (a lot of awful, heinous things too though).
Gee, that really would be different.
Colonialism collapsed both because the two prime colonial powers (Britain and France) were irrevocably weakened by WW2, and because the Soviet Union was there to actively support communist insurgencies with weapons. In a world where WW2 somehow never happened, I think history from 1940 on would be primarily an increasingly bloody anticolonial struggle. At some indefinite point the colonies would be advanced enough to throw off British and French rule, while Britain and France would fight bitterly against the loss of their power and global rank. It might have been something like the Algerian revolt only on a global scale.
I’m not sure if this question rises to Great Debates, but let’s move it there for now, with the title edited to be more descriptive(remember to check your bait 
) .
samclem GQ Moderator
World war two ended colonialism, primarily because the Allies were liberating countries (France Belgium etc) which were occupying other countries themselves. Not to mention the growth of two anti-colonial powers, the USSR and the United States.
In many ways, the colonial powers weren’t all that different from the local rulers, and were if anything less troublesome. Meet the new boss, a lot like the old boss. The problem was that after the colonial powers left, the locals wanted to take up where the left off, only now with a less stable, secure “nation” and with the advantage of brutal new technologies. See Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea, etc.
Instead of being routinely beaten at cricket and rugby by Australians, we’d be routinely beaten at cricket, rugby and football by Americans. Thank god for 1776.
Colonialism ended because it was no longer profitable. Colonies were always run as for-profit enterprises with a rather simple business model: The colony provided cheap raw materials, cheap untrained labor for harvesting and maybe very light manufacture, and a guaranteed market for finished goods produced by the heavy industry back in the home country. That is why the British got so annoyed when Gandhi lead the Indians down to gather their own salt (salt manufacture had been a British monopoly in India) and encouraged them to use spinning wheels to spin their own textiles (Britian was a big textile country for a long, long time). The colonies becoming self-sufficient was anathema to the colonial economic system.
After WWII, it became cheaper for the formerly imperialist countries to do away with domestic manufacture and create factories in places with laxer environmental laws and lower average wages. Thus, self-sufficiency was no longer a danger and, more importantly, the last vestiges of the mercantilist horror at importation were swept away.
From a British point of view, that is rather over simplified.
Colonies were places that the British went to, settled down and stayed there. The USA is an early example, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are other examples. In Africa I can only think of three colonies, S. Africa, Rhodesia and Kenya.
Other places were adminstered by the British, basically a few young highly trained and well paid administrators who regarded the UK as ‘home’ and had little intention of settling down. Examples are India, Malaya and most of Africa.
The Indian mutiny alarmed the British, before then the ‘empire’ was pretty much a private enterprize affair, after the mutiny the Empire was established (no Empress = no empire) and administration was firmly under government control.
Bearing in mind the whole setup was a free trade zone (with special interest groups), there was not much incentive to move heavy industry to different places - better spend resources on setting up local infrastructure than build unneeded factories. Regardless the economics were not under government control - the Empire was not a ‘planned economy’.
WWI knocked the stuffing out of the British Empire, it also showed up its weaknesses. By the end of WWII the lion looked toothless, and it was skint, the king had been shown to have few clothes - also the 1945 Labour government had little interest in hanging onto overseas areas.
It was just a matter of dismantling the structure and replacing it with the Commonwealth. The UK could not have hung onto India and while it fought police actions in Malaya and Kenya, it was not capable suppressing entire populations. More importantly, it did not want to.
Dismantling the Empire was not down to exploiting ‘cheap labour’. More it was down to there being no alternative. Also the whole concept of ‘environmental laws’ was as unknown as ‘global warming’.
One could spin some sort of Machiavellian plot with economic dominance as the theme tune - but an earnest, paternal administration and a few fundamental economic realities are closer to the truth.
Here is an example of ‘motives’ from the eminently reliable Wikpedia
Not much point in shipping cotton from the USA to India to manufacture garments to be shipped worldwide.
Now I’m sure one could spin a conspiracy theory to explain the absence of major cotton weaving in India on cunning Americans determined to keep the Empire unindustrialized so that it would get narked and yelp for independence.
[slight hijack]
Colonialism is still alive and well.
A colony is a source of raw materials and a customer of finished goods. America was a colony of England not because it was settled by Englishmen but because it exported cotton and imported fabric. Kind of like now. We export steel to Japan and import cars.
[/sight hijack]
Hmm… you make a strange definition of ‘colony’
col·o·ny (kŏl’ə-nē)
n., pl. -nies.
Your version seems to be a variation of ‘dependency’ with lashings of economic activity thrown in for luck.
I’m beginning to think that a standard line is taught in USA schools
Of course a word means anything I want it to mean
- in a Looking Glass world http://sundials.org/about/humpty.htm
This is completely false. In the 1880s, the British passed a number of tarrif and trade laws designed to supress Indian native manufacturing and industry. These laws completely left native Indians unable to compete against British imports, unable to export, and unable to establish any modern manufacturing. The British planned India along mercantilist lines, and trade favoritism was heavily slanted towards Britain.
The dependency is economic not political.
The British also passed laws preventing automobile manufacture in Australia
- so they had to buy sh/tty British Leyland cars until we shafted them on joining the EEC
Now of course Australia does not buy Japanese cars - in fact Australia is a major exporter of vehicles.
Do you really think that we needed to suppress cotton weaving in India ?
- if there had been a buck in it, it would have happened.
Actually it did, but rather late on.
I find it rather flattering that the USA educational system portrays the UK as an all powerful and demonic centrally controlled economy - when it was more of a mess trying to clean up after private enterprize.
We played a con game, we ran most of the planet on the cheap, using a system copied from the Chinese.
I didn’t say they explicitly supressed Indian manufacturing. I said they structured the tarrif and tax regime in order to achieve the same result. They also engaged in currency manipulation in order to suppres manufacturing. Finally, they restructured the system of land ownership in order to promote specific crops for use in manufacturing rather than general food crops.
The reason cotton weaving or any manufacturing didn’t happen in India is because the British made sure there wouldn’t be a buck in it.
Well, apparently all they teach you in British schools is nothing more than propoganda. You should read a good history book about the British Raj. Their economic exploitation of the subcontinent is well documented. If you want to pretend it didn’t happen, that’s up to you.
It might not be a bad idea to read more then one book on any given subject,preferably some that at least have a pretence at being impartial and objective .
The trouble with picking out a book that reinforces your own preconceived prejudices is that it always does that,every single time .
If you want to pretend that is wasnt what happened in your case,thats up to you.
I think your getting confused with Irelands education systems mostly fictional accounts of how History actually happened.Apparently Britain was responsible for the Black Death,the potato Famine(brought to europe from the U.S. by Irish emigre’s as it happens)
El Ninio and the meteor strike that wiped out the dinosaurs and all the while the plucky ,honest non murdering ,nontorturing and especially non raping Irish bravely
struggled against a British (just say English for gods sake its all our fault) regime that by the standards of the time made Belsen look like a holiday camp,oh sorry I got confused there Imeant to say the standards of U.S slaves and Irish and Chinese railroad workers.
British history teaching makes it clear that we’re all total bastards with no redeeming qualities .
It makes you wonder why over the years we’ve had and are still having millions of Irish permament settlers in England
But I cant fault you on the exploitation theme ,even today in western europe we get international corporations trying to set up businesses and we tell them to take a hike .
Jobs ?economic growth?new infrastructure?new investment ? yeah right mate on your bike your not exploiting us we’re not total fuckheads.
You know, it’s not as if British laws are some big secret. They were all published for everyone to see. There’s a good Oxford Press book which lists all the British Raj laws. I’ll see if I can find it when I’m down at school later this week.
I think you’re the one who is confused. I am speaking about British economic policy in India. I have no idea what they did or didn’t do in Ireland. It might well be that you are an expert on Britain’s Ireland policy, but that has diddly squat to do with India.
Is this incoherence supposed to be a rebuttal?
I have no idea if all British people are bastards or not. If you say they are, I guess I’ll have to defer to you, since I haven’t studied the parentage of British individuals. However, I have read quite a bit about British economic policy in India, and any claim that it was some sort of libertarian free-for-all is simply false.
Well, for those of us who live in the real world, a country’s economic policy is liable to change over time. What the British do today is not an indication of what they did a hundred years ago.
A question. Is the US the only remaining nation with colonies? Guam and American Samoa both fit definition #2 in FRDE’s post #12.
Here’s one example during the East India Company period:
“A new class of industrial capitalists in England demanded a change in the British policy towards India. The measures taken by the Parliament under their influence resulted in closing the British markets for Indian products and the East India Company had to take measures to crush Indian manufacturers. British goods had a free entry into the country while the Indian manufacturers were subject to internal duties. Indian Textile Industry almost collapsed and a great number of weavers and artisans were thrown out of work.” Advanced History of India by Sastri and Srinivasachari (bolding added).
I’ll try and find some more examples later on in the week.