Comment by Estragon
10 years ago
I guess Kipling's knowledge of this had a practical basis, since he was one of the chief apologists for the systematic extortion the British Empire used to enrich itself.
10 years ago
I guess Kipling's knowledge of this had a practical basis, since he was one of the chief apologists for the systematic extortion the British Empire used to enrich itself.
(Note - I am from one of the countries invaded and occupied by Britain)
I must come to Britain's defence here - it's behaviour was normal in those times but it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars. That was pretty amazing.
By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable, but a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits - rule of law, economic infrastructure, transport networks etc. Being invaded (not just plundered) by major cultures has generally had good benefits - in the long term - for the invaded nation as they get a lot of the characteristics of the stronger nation.
Again, keep in mind that this is not the modern way of looking at things, which is why we have the United Nations and other international organizations.
See also: The life of Brian, 'What have the Romans ever done for us'.
As for Britain giving up its ownership: To this date formally England lays claim to a whole bunch of places that they have colonized and in some cases it has gone to war to keep that situation as it is.
That the UK gave up India is a pretty complex affair but you can bet that the 'let's fight' option was only taken off the table when someone did some basic math.
Whether or not the invaded countries got 'enormous benefits' is immaterial, we do not live in the alternate universe where India was not a British colony, in which universe India may have been better off or it may have been worse, we simply can not know.
All we do know is that in this universe we (nowadays) take a dim view of such colonization, including those colonizations in our collective past. That some countries were 'not as bad' as others and that they left the places they invaded (and usually plundered) in some ways in better shape is imo immaterial to that.
I seriously doubt that the "let's fight" option was anywhere near the table when India gained independence. The records will all be public by now.
> As for Britain giving up its ownership: To this date formally England lays claim to a whole bunch of places that they have colonized and in some cases it has gone to war to keep that situation as it is.
Examples in post Suez history include?
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But the grandparent was talking about systematic extortion. Which is a specific allegation that i understand to mean bleeding the colony dry under threat of force. The parent states that this specific allegation is not true and that many countries were better off than before or counterfactual without colony rule.
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> I must come to Britain's defence here - it's behaviour was normal in those times
Yes, all of Europe was engaging in the monster known as colonialism.
That doesn't make it any less morally repugnant.
> it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars
It gave up its ownership only after being devastated by two World Wars.
> By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable, but a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits - rule of law, economic infrastructure, transport networks etc.
None of these things couldn't have been achieved without the British. And all these things came with a cost.
This justification has been used for colonialism time and time again. We saw this last year in Ukraine. It doesn't make it right.
would you rather had the British empire or the Belgium or Germans as your colonial masters?
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> a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits
Those "benefits" stopped innovation and progress of their own cultures. And it led to the present day of conflict between traditionalists and progressives, slowing harmonious progress indefinitely. The traditionalists would have eventually progressed to a more "civil" society in a different way. And then we would have a far richer diversity than today's system.
Indeed, it could have been worse, such as being colonised by the Belgians, who were (by some estimates) more genocidal than the Nazis.
The French were pretty awful too. To this day they're dealing with the consequences of bad decisions made a century ago.
http://www.amazon.com/French-Intifada-Between-France-Arabs/d...
I'm not sure what you are saying here. That by past standards they were not totally horrible, or that becoming colonized was a fair trade due to all of the "benefits"?
As an example, Japan nor China was never colonized, they were totally ass-backwardian to late 19th century and appear at least to foreign eyes quite modern nowadays.
Would those countries have the same benefits without British rule? I think they would.
And as for Britain "giving up" their claims, they simply couldn't afford to keep India after the Indian military rebelled, and without India, they simply had not enough colonies to make profitable quickly after the devastation of WWII.
Nice to someone with a balanced perspective. Usually you talk to an ex-colonist and it's all doom and gloom regarding the Empire.
Was he really? The White Man's Burden isn't that ambiguous. Not now, and not even when it was written.
It was about the Philippine-American war. 2 days after publication in America, it was read in the Senate to argue for the US to end the war.
One of his more famous stories, The Man Who Would Be King is about two white men who manage to convince an Afghani tribe they're gods. It becomes undone, when one tries to marry one of the women, she attacks him drawing blood, and the tribe's priest declares he is "Neither god nor devil but a man!" (at which point one is brutally killed, and the other manages to flee). It could almost be read as an analogy for colonialism - the white men might have had a technological edge, and used shock and awe to take over, but as the natives catch on to what's happening, the risk of backlash and revolution grows.
Kipling wasn't firmly against colonialism, but he was a savvy (sometimes cynical) realist. Most colonials were pretty cynical about it.
"One of his more famous stories..."
Ever see the John Huston film adaption?