|
The British empire's for-profit famines and slave massacres killed more people than either the Holocaust or Japan's civilian massacres in the Asia-Pacific. While this was often down to greed rather than genocidal intent, and while these crimes happened over a larger slice of history, the results are the same. People do not really give a poo poo whether they're massacred by racists in 1944 or starved to death for profit in 1760 (or indeed in 1944, when the last major British famine took place). British revisionists are as bad as Holocaust deniers, and the only reason they're not seen as such is because their victims did not include American soldiers or white Jews, crimes against whom deserve a special kind of human sympathy not usually allocated to the brown. The US deserves credit for helping (selectively) to shut down the farces of late European imperialism, but British and French revisionism has been mostly ignored by American state and mass culture (in a way that German or Japanese state revisionism never is) because their crimes did not involve favoured groups and the idea of benevolent Western imperialism is basically seen as worth protecting from attack. Opinions?
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 02:44
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 17:24 |
|
|
I'd argue that this shift is a recent phenomenon- American public opinion was very anticolonial in the 1930s and 1940s- and probably has a lot to do with the vicissitudes of the Cold War, where the US bound together with the former colonial empires, and since the British and French were allies rather than the reconstructed enemies of German and Japan, it became psychologically necessary to paper over their crimes. For example, revisionist interpretations of the USSR are closer to Germany and Japan than to Britain and France, which is consistent with this and not so much with the USSR, where significant parts of the victims are also in those unfavored groups. But your argument is still sound, I think.
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 02:50
|
|
|
Funnily enough I was randomly browsing through open survey questions on YouGov yesterday and came across this corker: I agree with the arguments above though. The main reasons British imperial revisionism has ended up seeming more acceptable than German/Japanese is 1) because Britain was a victorious power and Germany and Japan weren't, and 2) because the imperialism of the latter two targeted white people -- despite the obvious fact that Japan's colonialism was directed towards other Asian countries, most Westerners at the time viewed the war in the Pacific as basically a white v. Asian race war, a view that Japan itself had no small interest in promoting. I think another, additional, reason is that the Nazi and (excluding Korea) Japanese empires lasted for a very short time, meaning that by and large they never got the chance to build institutions and imbue a colonial culture. Instead they were basically hurricanes of violent destruction that swept through Europe and Asia before being promptly shut down, and it's much harder for apologists to dig up positive justifications for their existence. By contrast the British Empire also wreaked plenty of havoc but, in places like Hong Kong, it had the opportunity to build up a functioning state structure with solid institutions working to assimilate natives into a partially Anglicised culture, which means there are ostensibly 'good' things that imperial apologists can point to aside from the actual violence of imperialism. Of course, given its inherently unstable totalitarian nature I'm not sure Nazi Germany could ever have built those kinds of long-lasting structures, but I still think it's an importance point of difference.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 03:00
|
|
|
Ssssh, don't point it out, we're all dead if anyone cottons on. In seriousness there's some truth to the argument that Britain was a little bit like Rome in the sense that it built some impressive things with its plundered colonial wealth, so people seem willing to overlook the brutality and destruction that funded them because the results have people willing to defend them. Also the whole "being on the winning side of world war 2 and therefore Morally Correct Forever" helped a lot I think. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Aug 17, 2015 |
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 03:14
|
|
|
As far as Empires go, Great Britain was basically the most ideal there could have been. They're a funny people, the British, very different from their continental neighbors. I recently read "Waterloo: A Near Run Thing" and one of the most interesting takeaways I got from that book was that the British were basically the only nation that didn't openly slaughter wounded soldiers. Like, if you were wounded and not still fighting, you were free to crawl/stumble/be carried back to your lines. There was an interesting anecdote wherein a couple of Belgian soldiers were looting a wounded French cavalry officer and they took his wallet, his watch, and his two pistols with which they promptly blew his brains out. Cries of "For shame!" and loud booing emanated from the British lines. The point is, the British were a particularly merciful and tolerant group compared to the rest of continental Europe at the time. We just aren't super familiar with it because we come out of that tradition so its "normal" to us, and we all hate colonialism so we don't really look for the good in it. Instead we're asking if they should have done more whereas the question back in the day is should they be doing anything at all.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 03:18
|
|
|
Always funny to see how many people are undecided on bigtime serious questions like this. "Was slavery ok?" "Meh."
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 03:19
|
|
|
Britain still gives people honours in the name of the British Empire, even. What about the Confederacy? They lost a war, but their evil was directed at nonwhites.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 03:22
|
|
|
RaySmuckles posted:The point is, the British were a particularly merciful and tolerant group compared to the rest of continental Europe at the time. Hahahahahahaha. Even if that were true I think you may have reached the platonic idea of "damning with faint praise" with that statement.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 03:24
|
|
|
Massacres don't matter before nationalist awakening - nobody cheers for the losers of German and Italian unification. It probably helps that Britain actively shepherded decolonization, meaning that the triumphant generation of leaders that obtained independence would be those with assorted British personal or cultural links, not those most averse to British institutions and sentiment. Nehru, Kuan Yew, and Abdul Rahman are all Cambridge alumni. Nnamdi Azikiwe sat in the Privy Council. If you have these sorts of credentials, you can hardly go around denouncing association with Britain. Regardless, it depends on political context, especially the direction of contemporary politics in the former Empire. Often the legacy of the colonial period that is most rejected is multicultural coexistence (esp in the lived experience of the nonwhite intelligentsia) and the English-speaking professionalized civil service (since populist cronyism). Hindutva in South Asia is not terribly appealing. Since the death of assorted Islamic/Arab Fabian socialisms, regional alternative ideologies are readily abhorrent. In Malaya the political diversity and liberalism of the post-war pre-independence period remains a highwater mark for romantic dissidence; in Hong Kong the immediate concern is Beijing's aversion to self-rule, not London's historic aversion to self-rule - fifty years on it is hard to weep for a few dead protesters in a Kowloon street. The immediate humiliations of white favouritism and self-serving British foreign policy are long forgotten; the incompetence, corruption, and cronyism of their triumphant successor governments is in immediate evidence. (the same applies for Japanese revisionism, anyway; lived experiences as under Japanese conquest are contested in Taiwan, Malaya, and India. In Taiwan, the pan-Blues favour a more murderous Japanese narrative whereas the pan-Greens emphasize the brutality of the post-Civil-War KMT government and the contributions of the Japanese period. In Malaya the anti-Japanese narrative is complicated by the anti-communist-Chinese Emergency period that followed. In India the legacy and ethics of Bose is still controversial. So some degree of Japanese revisionism does happen outside Japan. With Germany, there's no shortage of Arab states that like to revise the Holocaust. But one doesn't need to go that far. Interpretations of why, exactly, fascism is abhorrent varied massively between Western European and Soviet blocs) ronya fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Aug 17, 2015 |
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 03:29
|
|
|
One contributing factor, imo, is that the British Empire's records and writings are all in English, which makes its inner workings more accessible than the innards of the German or Japanese colonial empires. That means it's easier to see more of what individual colonial bureaucrats and officers and such were thinking and saying. It's easier to find records of Brits from the time talking about they're doing, what they think of it, and whether they actually approve of what's going on or not. In turn, that often (but certainly not in all cases, there really were some tremendous bloodthirsty assholes) helps humanize the empire as a whole and makes it easier for someone so inclined to think "yes, colonialism and empires are bad as a rule, but the British weren't monsters", if not outright apologism.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 03:35
|
|
|
The British abolished slavery, whereas others continue to seek its practice. What is wrong with abolishing slavery and preventing genocide?
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 03:37
|
|
|
More or less the same thing that is wrong with me abolishing punching you in the dick. It's not really good when you stop doing the thing you started doing which was abhorrent. You don't get points for stopping. Also we were REALLY GOOD at genocide without slavery!
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 03:50
|
|
|
I would say it's mainly because there's few smoking guns where you can point to deliberately genocidal policies, unlike with Imperial Japan. Most the major, major death tolls just came about due to pure capitalist callousness towards subjugated populations. And because it happened further in the past, and people are bad at history. WWII happened within living memory, there are actually living survivors of those atrocities, of course it's going to be treated very differently than things that happened to people long dead. It does make me laugh, though, when British posters start criticizing "the inherant violence of the US, soaked in the blood of the Native Americans, slavery, etc, etc." I'm not critizing British posters here, it only seems to be a popular argument among Guardianistas.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 03:52
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:More or less the same thing that is wrong with me abolishing punching you in the dick. The British brought civilization to millions. They brought education; agriculture; railroads and steamboats; and freedom from the bonds of mass kidnapping by arabs, in the case of east africa and the horn of africa.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 03:56
|
|
|
The zeitgeist in India makes a big deal out of Bengal famine, but what one makes of it depends on political orientation. The Marxist left (which is still popular in India, in a way that is quite alien to rest of the Anglosphere) tends to take the Sennian position that it was a product of colonial mismanagement and capitalist hoarding; Ireland is often invoked. This is fair position to take - the issue is complex - but it is by no means an obvious position, especially once Hindu and Muslim nationalists stopped being jointly nationalist at the British and began to be nationalist at each other. And most people in India are not English-speaking jholawalas, born too late to participate in a gloriously intellectual anti-capitalist Afro-Asian international communism. e: worth acknowledging, by the by, that the Mughals and Qing were certainly not less genocidal or discriminatory than the British, and for that matter, the British on the eve of decolonization were very definitely less genocidal than a large number of post-independence would-be communal leaders. ronya fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Aug 17, 2015 |
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 03:57
|
|
|
I'm curious, what was the response of the political establishment in Britain/France to the loss of their colonial empires? Did they pretty much just try to forget the whole thing ever happened, like Adenauer era Germany or Japan?
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:00
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:More or less the same thing that is wrong with me abolishing punching you in the dick. Hey dude, I think we get it. Colonialism was bad. We're all on board. Your petulant interjections add nothing of importance. If you have something to contribute, feel free. I'd rather be a colonist under the British than, oh, say King Leopold II of Belgium.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:00
|
|
|
Sucrose posted:And because it happened further in the past, and people are bad at history. WWII happened within living memory, there are actually living survivors of those atrocities, of course it's going to be treated very differently than things that happened to people long dead. Strictly the UK was still supporting Apartheid in South Africa right up until it became an independent republic in 1961. My Imaginary GF posted:The British brought civilization to millions. They brought education; agriculture; railroads and steamboats; and freedom from the bonds of mass kidnapping by arabs, in the case of east africa and the horn of africa. We also brought segregation, destruction of the pre-existing civilisation, subjugation of local customs and religious practices, slavery, wholesale pillaging of valuable works of art and raw materials, and proto-fascist autocracy in order to maintain the former state of affairs! British Colonialism is great if you're British, absolutely poo poo for everyone else. RaySmuckles posted:Hey dude, I think we get it. Colonialism was bad. We're all on board. Your petulant interjections add nothing of importance. If you have something to contribute, feel free. I'm not sure "I read in a book once that British soldiers didn't loot people all the time" really constitutes a representative view of the entirety of British colonial history. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Aug 17, 2015 |
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:03
|
|
|
British revisionism is more acceptable because many of its critics are naked hypocrites. One of independent India's very first actions was to violently invade and conquer the independent state of Hyderabad. It takes quite a brass neck for an American to mount his high horse and pontificate about the evils of colonialism when his country spread Manifest Destiny from sea to shining sea. On the other side of the world, the sprawling continental empire that is China can still rely on apologists on this very forum to openly justify its colonisation of Tibet as necessary to liberate and civilise the feudal natives, so it's strange that another instance of the same is suddenly intolerable. Maybe we should have just called the Raj an "autonomous zone" as well, and that would have been imperialism solved! Hell, even if your ideology demands that you support Argentina over Las Islas Malvinas that itself becomes nonsense when you realise that with its continued domination of Patagonia Argentina currently has a much larger empire than the entire remaining Overseas Territories. kapparomeo fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Aug 17, 2015 |
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:08
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:We also brought segregation, destruction of the pre-existing civilisation, subjugation of local customs and religious practices, slavery, wholesale pillaging of valuable works of art and raw materials, and proto-fascist autocracy in order to maintain the former state of affairs! And in the cases where segregation existed before; where local custom was to enact policies of sexual genocide against minority groups; where custom was to genocide christians, why was it so wrong that human rights were defended by colonial administrators?
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:12
|
|
|
icantfindaname posted:I'm curious, what was the response of the political establishment in Britain/France to the loss of their colonial empires? Did they pretty much just try to forget the whole thing ever happened, like Adenauer era Germany or Japan? mainstream Britain (aka outside some Tory factions) accepted decolonization as an inevitability, even of the non-white empire, well before WW2 - see the Balfour Declaration of 1926. The contest was over the timeline and terms of self-government, rather than necessarily whether the empire would be lost as you know, British imperial federation collapsed altogether as an idea following WW2 (largely due to white dominion non-enthusiasm rather than non-white opposition necessarily). Following this, the main priority was controlled withdrawal on terms favourable to Britain. Especially under postwar austerity, overseas commitments were seen as an undesirable and expensive diplomatic commitment rather than the defense of a British possession; if a non-communist government could hold its own, then so be it. the best example of a French-Algeria-esque "this is ours, no really" attitude to possessions in British policy is, of course, Ireland
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:15
|
|
|
My Imaginary GF posted:And in the cases where segregation existed before; where local custom was to enact policies of sexual genocide against minority groups; where custom was to genocide christians, why was it so wrong that human rights were defended by colonial administrators? Because they're almost certainly the exception, rather than the rule. The Empire was not a philanthropic organisation, it was a wholesale attempt to ransack valuables from everywhere it touched, to enrich the home islands. Rudyard Kipling's post-hoc justification notwithstanding.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:16
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:Strictly the UK was still supporting Apartheid in South Africa right up until it became an independent republic in 1961. the Wind of Change speech, by a Tory no less, forgives a host of historic sins OwlFancier posted:Because they're almost certainly the exception, rather than the rule. The Empire was not a philanthropic organisation, it was a wholesale attempt to ransack valuables from everywhere it touched, to enrich the home islands. eeeeeh. It served to enrich a class of British* people, certainly. It is not clear that it principally enriched Britain through extractive transfers, as I have argued with you before * or arguably Dutch aristocrats and merchants ronya fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Aug 17, 2015 |
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:17
|
|
|
The pillaging of works of art is a good thing, particularly in cases like China where the pillaging is the only reason they're still around.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:17
|
|
|
ronya posted:eeeeeh. It served to enrich a class of British* people, certainly. It is not clear that it principally enriched Britain through extractive transfers, as I have argued with you before That's true enough, less the landmass and perhaps more its ruling society, many of whom conceivably would have lived overseas at the time. Still lots of wealth transfer out of the countries of its origin though. Even if only to flog for money.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:22
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:Because they're almost certainly the exception, rather than the rule. The Empire was not a philanthropic organisation, it was a wholesale attempt to ransack valuables from everywhere it touched, to enrich the home islands. Rudyard Kipling's post-hoc justification notwithstanding. No, it's pretty much the rule. All which stands between man and his inner demons are the institutions of nation states, institutions that the British imposed upon others in an appropriate manner.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:26
|
|
|
My Imaginary GF posted:No, it's pretty much the rule. All which stands between man and his inner demons are the institutions of nation states, institutions that the British imposed upon others in an appropriate manner. Go to India or Africa and say that and I'm sure you'll have a lovely time.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:27
|
|
|
ronya posted:The zeitgeist in India makes a big deal out of Bengal famine, but what one makes of it depends on political orientation. The Marxist left (which is still popular in India, in a way that is quite alien to rest of the Anglosphere) tends to take the Sennian position that it was a product of colonial mismanagement and capitalist hoarding; Ireland is often invoked. This is fair position to take - the issue is complex - but it is by no means an obvious position, especially once Hindu and Muslim nationalists stopped being jointly nationalist at the British and began to be nationalist at each other. And most people in India are not English-speaking jholawalas, born too late to participate in a gloriously intellectual anti-capitalist Afro-Asian international communism. That famine was certainly one of the more complex of the 25 major famines the British managed in India, primarily down to a lazy civil service and basic racist disinterest in the population than greed, if that makes a difference. It also produced this choicest of choice Churchill quotes, justifying the redirection food aid to European partisans at the expense of India: "The starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than that of sturdy Greeks". Of course, you're actually responsible for the first of those groups and are drafting their men into your armies, but nevermind. By the way, there were two Benghali famines under British rule and the one you're referring to isn't even the biggest. In the earlier one 10 million died (1.6 Holocausts) after the East India company decided to burn food to make room for poppy plantations.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:29
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:Go to India or Africa and say that and I'm sure you'll have a lovely time. What is this argument? You assume that I've formed my view without discussing pre- and post-independence with direct stakeholders in the developing world? There are less blunt ways to say it: the world is poo poo, and the British in their colonial rule were slightly less poo poo than what came before for all but the local elites.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:29
|
|
|
My Imaginary GF posted:What is this argument? You assume that I've formed my view without discussing pre- and post-independence with direct stakeholders in the developing world? There are less blunt ways to say it: the world is poo poo, and the British in their colonial rule were slightly less poo poo than what came before for all but the local elites. Must be why they were so popular I'm sure.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:31
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:Go to India or Africa and say that and I'm sure you'll have a lovely time. "We want the Chinese to leave and the old colonial rulers to return. They exploited our natural resources too, but at least they took good care of us. They built schools, taught us their language and brought us the British civilisation. At least Western capitalism has a human face; the Chinese are only out to exploit us.” -Michael Sata, President of Zambia Also, when do the Indians plan on decolonising Hyderabad?
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:31
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:I'm not sure "I read in a book once that British soldiers didn't loot people all the time" really constitutes a representative view of the entirety of British colonial history. Oh look, a mischaracterized shot from the person who has offered 0 opinions about British colonial history other than "it was really bad. seriously everyone, stop talking about it, you're all wrong because it was so bad." Great thread contribution, oh great purveyor of wise truths. Glad someone was in here to remind us all that "colonialism was bad."
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:32
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:Must be why they were so popular I'm sure. For most folk, they were. For the elites who wished to oppress their local populations while avoiding payment of British taxes, they were the worst of tyrants.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:36
|
|
|
There isn't anything positive to say about it. It is as productive as discussing the merits of Nazi Germany because, while it started a shitload of wars and committed all sorts of atrocities as a matter of course for the purpose of self-enrichment and aggrandizement of the elite, they sure made things more orderly under their autocratic rule. There were people then who would have made that argument unironically, and there are people now who would make that argument unironically, both are idiots. I have no patience for imperialist apologism. It deserves and needs none. My Imaginary GF posted:For most folk, they were. For the elites who wished to oppress their local populations while avoiding payment of British taxes, they were the worst of tyrants. Ah yes, known oppressor of the local population "Gandhi". OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Aug 17, 2015 |
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:37
|
|
|
lmaoboy1998 posted:That famine was certainly one of the more complex of the 25 major famines the British managed in India, primarily down to a lazy civil service and basic racist disinterest in the population than greed, if that makes a difference. Winston Churchill also advocated the use of gas on those uppity Arabs as part of a way to economize on counter-insurgency, basically using bomber patrols to attack offending villages to try and scare the enemy into submission. The British Empire did end slavery but they used means not dissimilar to draft labor in their colonies so it didn't really change much internally. Of course, using forced labor in colonies was hardly unique to the British Empire. Changing food crops to cash crops tended only to make British banks and companies richer while starving local populations. In any case where land wasn't already set up for plantations, it was redistributed by colonial authorities to make it possible to run huge plantations. Everything was done to make these territories subservient to the British Isles in every way.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:40
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:Winston Churchill also advocated the use of gas on those uppity Arabs as part of a way to economize on counter-insurgency, basically using bomber patrols to attack offending villages to try and scare the enemy into submission. A common misquote. "Poison gas" wasn't sarin or mustard gas, it was teargas, explicitly for reducing casualties: "It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas."
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:44
|
|
|
Behind the royal castle in Brussels, the capital of the European Union, stands a statue of Leopold II, the great Builder King of Belgium. In his city you can buy chocolates in the shape of hands to commemorate when, a little over a century ago, Belgians mutilated their Congolese subjects for justice and greatness. It's may seem odd but then the United States still celebrates Columbus Day, monuments to Cortez and Pizarro stand proudly in Spain and across the continent countless other rulers and conquerors continue to remind us of our greatest achievements, perched atop their bronze horses. Occasionally it may be slightly awkward to receive dignitaries from Congo in our capital or for certain South Americans to visit but what are we to do? It's part of our history and history is unchangeable. We live with the monuments to our ancient past as we live with memories of more recent history: “It's not us!” Spain belongs to neither Isabella nor Franco, Italy is not Mussolini’s and colonial France is only a faint, slightly embarrassing memory. We drink our café lattes in the shade of mad men knowing that it's no indictment of us, now, today. We are different so we are free to reminisce of past accomplishments without shame. Except WWII. The only period in a 1000 years we killed on a grand scale for a just cause. The watershed moment in our histories that allows us to define ourselves in a bright, shining light contrasted by a sea of putrid poo poo. That one time we were unequivocally the good guys. Mostly, anyway. We so adore that story that we accept that one – and no other - as a testament to national character and constantly draw parallels to the present. Do you remember the Nazis? So do I! I remember that one time we did good! We tell that story, and quietly relegate the others to the abstract past, so history may better reflect our nauseating self-righteousness and bloated egos.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:45
|
|
|
lmaoboy1998 posted:In the earlier one 10 million died (1.6 Holocausts) More like 1 or 1.1 holocausts, 6 million was the number of Jews, not the total number exterminated
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:46
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:Ah yes, known oppressor of the local population "Gandhi". Well, Gandhi oversaw the commitance of a genocide and was a serial rapist, so, yeah.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 17:24 |
|
|
OwlFancier posted:That's true enough, less the landmass and perhaps more its ruling society, many of whom conceivably would have lived overseas at the time. Still lots of wealth transfer out of the countries of its origin though. Even if only to flog for money. noticed the ninja edit. no, no. even with India the "colonial drain" argument is iffy in the data; conquest was insanely expensive. There's a lot of wealth transfer to officers operating in the colonies, enough to balance the outflow of remittances. this dedication to zero-sum international economics is absurd. Indian nationalist literature makes a huge amount out of the Raj export surplus, but this is basically a historic error due to the idiosyncratic politics of India in the early-mid 20th century (ie, very neo-mercantilist). It is on the order of 1% of Indian GDP between 1868 to 1930 and within measurement error of being zero, even without taking the inflow of gold and silver into account (perhaps about half of that 1%). OTOH consumption spending by British personnel within India itself is on the order of ~5%. It is very annoying to have colonizers spend your own resources oppressing you, certainly, so there is a nationalist case to be made here*, but the export surplus argument just doesn't work. By TYOOL 2015 it should be darned obvious that an export surplus alone is not a sign of wealth transfer out of the country, or modern Germany, Japan, and the East Asian tiger states should be much poorer than they are. Conversely remittances are not in themselves a sign of strength, or Kerala and the Philippines are making collective fools of all their neighbours (30% and 10% of GDP, respectively) * but still less than the Mughals. this is the main prickly problem with attacking the legacy of the Raj - the British certainly passed up a lot of investment in India, but they still invested more than the Mughals did
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2015 04:53
|
|