Comment by jacquesm
10 years ago
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?
He's probably talking about Malvinas (Falklands) among other places.
If the Falklands had actually had any native inhabitants at the time it was "colonised", and the UK's military involvement hadn't been at the behest of the Falklands' contemporary native inhabitants to repel an invading foreign military dictatorship, they might have had more of a point...
"Other places" do not exist unless you name them. Even the Chagos Islands, the UK's most questionable overseas possession, have only been fought over in the courts.
The Falklands are not a colonial story (unless you count the Argentinian desire to conquer them against the wishes of their citizens).
Any actual places?
Gibraltar
I had no idea the UK had fought a war to stop the people of Gibraltar obtaining independence and self determination. Can you point me towards some references on the subject?
Who overwhelmingly don't want to become Spanish.
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.
Colonialism typically siphons profits generated by capital from the colony to the colonial masters. This is an economic fact. It's not extortion but it does leech capital from the colony and is systematic.