Most British people I know (including myself) are a bit embarrassed about the whole Empire thing. We murdered and enslaved millions of people over hundreds of years, for money. It’s not a part of our history we can be proud of, even if it did net us lots of pretty things to put in the British Museum. First-world Westerners are still materially benefitting from the mechanisms of exploitation that 19th-century European imperialism put in place – in that sense, I think you could say the British Empire is still around – and it’s not good or pleasant. Who the hell would be wounded by ingratitude from the people we destroyed?
I’d say the slavery part was one in which we can feel shame and pride at being the first nation to actually impose a ban on it, and prevent others in doing it. I for one, as British, am not ashamed of the Empire we had, because to use moral equivalency of now and the 19th Century is ignorant. To say we murdered people for money intentionally is an even more ignorant assertion.
I’d say the institutions we left for instance, in British India in terms of Governance would be something to be proud of.
I really do not understand the mentality behind Empire = Bad. Empires can be evil or good or inbetween but never necessarily just one thing.
Except the problem is that India was destroyed economically by the empire. In the 1700s Indians had a higher standard of living than the British. Remember the idea of “the riches of the orient”? The idea existed because China, India, and the Ottoman Empire really were wealthier than Europe.
The Indian economy was deliberately wrecked to turn India from a producer of finished goods to a producer of resources and a customer for finished goods produced in Britain. It was literally illegal to produce cloth or salt. Why? Because if Indians couldn’t produce cloth or salt locally, they would buy it from Britain. And so the empire produced a small amount of wealth for Britain at the cost of huge losses for India.
It is because the most basic, ancient formulation of the idea of empire, as I once heard Jerry Pournelle state it (in defense of it, yet), is, “We are stronger than you. We will come and use your water as we please. You will not use our water.” It is not even a matter of “might makes right,” it is simply a matter of “might is might.” Now, can you see how some people might have a problem with that, just on general principles?
“My God, Mr. Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation!”
And had he not been suffering extreme pain and illness, he might have accepted command of British forces in North America just before the outbreak of the Revolution! The guy who conquered India for the British tasked with suppressing the colonial rebellion? Talk about a what-if…
Well, watching Obama bowing to the new world president (Hu Jin Tao) made me realize that the USA is now a vassal (in all but name) to the Middle Kingdom.
Our role will henceforth be dictate by the mandates of Heaven, and interpretated by the Emperoro.
Yes, but that’s applicable to anything in Human society, if anything, we should blame the Ottomans for having a virtual monopoly on trade with the east (as well as the Venetians) I mean, in reality the empires that existed after 1492 were by and large a reaction to that blockade.
With the process of Imperialism, I doubt very much of the technology or progress we take for granted would of been realised at this point in time, and it was the appeal of empires which helped bring about the dominance of the laws and acts which you hold so dearly today, because they incubated them.
All of which were Empires and all of which were, if I take your example, just as bad, if not worse, than British Imperialists.
India was ‘destroyed’ by the internal weakness of the Mughal establishment and the ability of local potentates to usurp the power of Mughal officials. Did you ever hear of the Maratha Confederacy, the sacking of Dehli by the Persians and Afghans? It was British policy in the beginning with it’s factories in Calcutta and whatnot, to not have colonies in Asia. It was only when the advent of instability threatened the stability of trade (and the lucre of land taxes) did the EIC actually have to govern.
I don’t see how becoming a producer of resources is necessarily a bad thing in consideration to the fact that India is a vast territory which compromised of various resources which could be manufactured more efficiently in the factories of Industrial revolution era UK, which I might add, was a major factor in relation to the UKs economic power.
India by the time of Independence, had a surplus in its central bank and it’s economy albeit slowly had been growing for most of the century upward with also the tax burden for the average Indian lower than in Mughal-era India.
And this also ignores the large scale investments the British Government put into India itself, such as the railway system, educational institutions, infrastructure of a modern government (ICS) and the fact that we left India through the efforts of an Indian educated at Oxford who had trained as a lawyer.
I’m nit picking, but the guy did not conquer India, he acquired Bengal, and if by anything, India was a gradual conquest, not something which was taken in one swoop, it took at least 157 years.
Well, now you’re opening the door to a more specific topic, not empire-as-such but the whole nearly-500-year run of European colonial imperialism, and all the carnage and progress it caused, and all the transformative effects it had on the world for good and for ill. I doubt any consensus will ever be reached on whether that was a good thing or a bad thing on balance. But, again, you should be able to see why people who are not Europeans or of European-derived cultures should have a problem with that, just on general principles.
And the American “empire” or whatever you call it can reasonably be taken – certainly we should expect nonwhite foreigners to take it – as merely the latest iteration of European colonial imperialism.
Perhaps I could’ve worded that better . . .
No, actually, it’s perfect.
Why does it have to have a racial element in it. If anything it’s more cultural than racial.
Unless you’re saying Martin Luther King, who was within the confines of European inspired culture, is not by and large a product of European values.
That’s why I said "nonwhite foreigners."
MLK is black, does his values which were from the US a continuance of European cultural imperialism, that’s what I’m getting at.
Another what-if was Lord Jeffery Amherst. Amherst had fought in North America during the Seven Years War and Pontiac’s Rebellion and he was one of the senior generals in the British army. He was considered to be the first choice to command the British forces when the colonies declared independence. But Amherst was very ambivalent about the job - he sympathized with the Americans (several of whom he knew) and appreciated that defeating them would not be as easy as Parliament and the King expected. So he had his name withdrawn.
Well, yes and no. One would have assumed so – that is, African-Americans’ loyalty to the U.S. at least as against all foreigners was something that for most of American history (post-1866) could be safely assumed – but MLK flourished in a time when more flamboyant black activists were snarling, “No Viet Cong ever called me ‘nigger’!” But I’m pretty sure that’s all in the past now and African-Americans are for most purposes simply Americans, i.e., about-as-imperialist-as-the-white-people.
That’s a cop out, you were saying that America was just another extention of European Imperialism against the coloured people of the world, when the said country you described, had people of colour who adapted so called ‘White’ legalities and used them for their own advantage, which in turn inspired many more copycat style protests around the world.
Go back to post #70. Read for comprehension.
You mean a requirement to fly in an American warplane so that he could land on the deck of an Aircraft carrier? Sorry, but that stunt was right out of some Soviet imperial playbook and the subjects ate it up.