By which I mean, colonizing powers actually do the thing they say they do and educate their subjects, set up functioning societies, etc.
Reading rast's A Shift in Priorities, I was fascinated by the idea of Germany's central African colonies going from your bog-standard colony to a great power in its own right, modeled on German society but nevertheless wholly native run. It seems too good to be true, so it probably is. I don't want it to be, though!
It'd go against the grain of every "self-respecting" European colonizing nation, but would it be possible for a nation to actually treat their subjects with dignity and try to build a self-governing nation state tied to the "mother country", rather than as sources of cheap labor and stolen resources?
Reading rast's A Shift in Priorities, I was fascinated by the idea of Germany's central African colonies going from your bog-standard colony to a great power in its own right, modeled on German society but nevertheless wholly native run. It seems too good to be true, so it probably is. I don't want it to be, though!
It'd go against the grain of every "self-respecting" European colonizing nation, but would it be possible for a nation to actually treat their subjects with dignity and try to build a self-governing nation state tied to the "mother country", rather than as sources of cheap labor and stolen resources?