Comment by philipallstar
20 days ago
Definitely not nearly as vile. It certainly wasn't perfect, particularly things like the awful penal colonies, but jump-starting a giant civilisation, say, 1000+ years into the future is not straightforward either. India is experiencing a rise in nationalism, but would do well to imagine the counterfactual of what India would be like had Europe never visited.
> jump-starting a giant civilisation, say, 1000+ years into the future is not straightforward either
The various East India companies went to India (and the other east Indies) because those places had things rich Europeans desired - spices yes, but also high-end, high-quality textiles and handcrafted items. They were already the height of civilization and had high economic productivity.
> would do well to imagine the counterfactual of what India would be like had Europe never visited
It would probably not be one country. Best case scenario: like a South Asian EU. Why do you think they wouldn't have copied European industrialization and developed themselves? Japan did it. Turkey did it.
Speaking of Japan, isn't it interesting that the first Asian country to industrialize is also one of the only Asian countries never colonized by Europeans? Why do people still believe colonization was good for economic development?
> Speaking of Japan, ...
IIR, Japan was a pretty xenophobic, unified, and militarized place when the Europeans showed up. And without either reputed or obvious Tier 1 riches - such as Central & South America's precious metals - to motivate a hard-fought conquest. Especially when 'most everywhere else in South & East Asia was comparatively easy pickings.
> Why do people still believe ...
Because, if you use sufficiently Eurocentric metrics, it usually was. And picking those metrics feels pretty good, if you identify uncomfortably closely with that sort of capitalism.
> Japan was a pretty xenophobic, unified, and militarized place when the Europeans showed up.
Other than unified, that describes most places in the 15th or 16th century.
> Because, if you use sufficiently Eurocentric metrics, it usually was.
The one country in Asia* to not suffer colonialism (Japan) is way ahead of all the others that did have it, especially on "Eurocentric" metrics such as GDP and productivity and democracy and human rights. That alone should be a rebuke to colonialism's purported development powers.
* Arguably Thailand is another but it was forced to cede land to colonial powers. It too is considerably richer than its immediate neighbors.
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> jump-starting a giant civilisation, say, 1000+ years into the future is not straightforward either.
Not sure what you are suggesting here.
It's pretty clear lol. OP definitely thinks we were living in mud huts before the British gifted us railroads.
1000 years ago is not mud huts. Although in terms of civics and rights I would say India seems quite a lot further back than 1000 years, if you take the ancient Greeks as your yardstick.
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