AHC: Make European colonialism economically beneficial for the colonies

One of the oldest stone settlements in West Africa, Tichitt Walata, dates to around 2000 BCE, long before Carthage was founded. The surrounding area is associated with the domestication of Pearl Millet at around the same time. The archaeological sites consist of clusters of villages and hamlets and the surrounding cliffs include narrow streets, open plazas and storage areas delineated by dry-stone walls.
 

scholar

Banned
One of the oldest stone settlements in West Africa, Tichitt Walata, dates to around 2000 BCE, long before Carthage was founded. The surrounding area is associated with the domestication of Pearl Millet at around the same time. The archaeological sites consist of clusters of villages and hamlets and the surrounding cliffs include narrow streets, open plazas and storage areas delineated by dry-stone walls.
It may seem like splitting hairs, but Catal Huyuk and Jericho aren't considered cradles of civilization either. The reason why is because civilization is more than just cities, cities just tend to be one of the primary prerequisites.
 
It may seem like splitting hairs, but Catal Huyuk and Jericho aren't considered cradles of civilization either. The reason why is because civilization is more than just cities, cities just tend to be one of the primary prerequisites.
What would you consider to be the prerequisites for an independent cradle of civilization? Are an independent development of agriculture and urbanization not enough? You yourself understand that many civilizations developed unique technologies and forms of organization that need not be analogous to each other or require a specific order of steps.

I know I'm off topic but I feel the line between these societies as well as measuring progress by "years ahead/behind" is more arbitrary than anything considering all these societies developed so differently and under such unique circumstances.
 

scholar

Banned
What would you consider to be the prerequisites for an independent cradle of civilization? Are an independent development of agriculture and urbanization not enough? You yourself understand that many civilizations developed unique technologies and forms of organization that need not be analogous to each other or require a specific order of steps.

I know I'm off topic but I feel the line between these societies as well as measuring progress by "years ahead/behind" is more arbitrary than anything considering all these societies developed so differently and under such unique circumstances.
The ability to radiate outward and play an influencing factor on the development of secondary regions. While there were some isolated urban and walled communities before Egypt and Mesopotamia rose in the middle east, they never carried with them a defining influence on their surrounding lands. Instead, they were quickly consumed or abandoned by the radial spread from the cradle. While we do have some evidence for walled cities and some primitive manufactures in West Africa, we do not see much in the way of substantial civilization until after contact and trade with Egypt and Carthage was established. At the time of Niger's first cities, the Sahara was greener, wetter, and travel was not impossible, or even overtly burdensome if you knew the paths. There is evidence of Egyptians trading with peoples along the river Chad in the old kingdom, and Carthage was known to profit immensely from the transaharan trade, though it made far more from the mediterranean. Rome sent armies and expeditions to the region, but there was nothing beyond local settlements and traveling pastoralists and traders. The first civilization we really attest to, the first state, formed around 300 AD. This was a revolution brought about by the introduction of the Camel by way of Rome. It allowed for the formation of empire. Before this we know almost nothing from them, and we had only a little more. By the time that civilization was defeated and the Mali rose in its place, its development and its writings were substantially influenced by the expansive Arab civilization. Not only that, but Chadic languages broke off from Egyptian language, and there is evidence that Egypt may have influenced the development of Chad. This is also in the same language family as Arabic, which has had a domineering influence upon the local area since the early middle ages.

Cities propped up and faded in many different areas around the world, but never developed civilization as we seem to recognize it. This happened half a dozen times, perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less. Depending on who you ask, there has only been one civilization and everyone just copied from them. But cities... they propped up, sometimes in unexpected places. Should I mention that there were burgeoning cities in Russia and Kazakhstan around this time as well, Arkaim and cities like it were the birthplace of the wheeled chariot, and perhaps had the potential to be a cradle of civilization as well? But they never advanced beyond townships and most became nomadic instead after a couple thousand years. They never became one, and were more or less wiped out by the time of the Mongols until the Russians came. There were some walled cities in Niger, but civilization had to wait until it had a discussion with the Middle East and Puno-Roman society. I also do not intend this to mean that Africa never developed a civilization. Even if you claim Egypt for the Middle East or the Mediterranean, Africa undeniable developed a cradle of civilization along the Congo river valley - and developed a varied and diverse economy, complex governmental structures, and was spreading further at the time of contact with Portugal. Had Portugal not shown up, there's no reason to state that the Congo couldn't have become at least as developed as Mesoamerica and the Inca, though more may have required at least indirect contact with other civilizations.
 
Again, you'll have to excuse me. I don't have time to give a full response right now, but just reading the responses, a couple of things come to mind:

What year did the Fertile Crescent become a true civilization? You've dismissed farming, cities, metallurgy, and multi-city polities, as signs of true civilization, so what is the extra thing that made it truly civilized?

You are instead arguing that reaching a certain point is a kickstarter for civilization, and thus civilization develops at a similar rate and hits similar notes once that is accomplished.

Yes. I'm arguing that development leads to further development. It's an observation that they develop at similar rates, and go through similar stages, gardening to farming to cities to multi-city polities. The development I'm talking about is greater sophistication in exploiting their environment, in different environments people develop different technologies (this development is a function of complex societies); and greater sophistication in organizing their societies, as population grows (this growth is a function of exploiting the environment) this becomes more complex.
 
As I saw it the question wasn't "Was Western colonization the best possible contact for the African economy" but "Was colonization preferable to the very little contact Africa had with the outside world from an economic view?"? The answer to the first is no , the answer to the second is arguably yes. No matter how you look at it the West brought in technology (for their own purposes, true) that Africa on its own would not develop for centuries. Africa was a thousand years behind so it would have taken centuries for it to nvent all on its own.

Oh I see. I disagree for two reasons:

1) Technology on its own-especially the shitty version that Europeans brought in colonization-does not by itself outweigh the immense costs of colonialism. These costs obviously plunged countries economies into the depths while they were ruled (you do agree with this right?) but even after, it left horrible scars that prevented economic development. For many people in Africa, their quality of life is worse than before. In the Congo, children literally pretend to rape each other while playing because it's become normalized by the brushfire wars. Look at the common use of child soldiers, something that wouldn't have made any sense in pre-colonial times (Indeed this is something partially enabled by foreign tech). Can you really look at a place like the Democratic Republic of Congo and say it's better off economically than the pre-colonial Kingdom of Kongo? The DRoC is literally a failed state. Theoretical access to technology alone does not equal economic development-as shown by the many brutalized countries that have no or negative growth rates economically. It doesn't matter if a guy has a car, a treadmill, and a tv when he doesn't have the hands, legs, and eyes to use them. Colonialist scars often make it difficult or impossible to even acquire technology. Look at all those people in Africa dying of preventable, curable diseases.

Also, I notice you're still treating technological development as an inevitable line for some reason. It makes very little sense to talk about one state being "1000 years behind" another because technological development fits the need of the circumstances. The Inca didn't have guns but they had more advanced sanitation than all of Europe put together. It is entirely possible that England is literally the only place on Earth that could have formed an Industrial Revolution. I don't know why you seem to be assuming that Africa would invent jet engines on its own automatically after a set period of time.

Still can't see the racism. That poem was written and quite well illustrate how colonialists saw the world. That might be distant and even disgusting today, but if it is racist then the obligation for 3rd world aid from the west is also racist.

The issue is not just that he recited the poem. It's that he did so favorably as part of a argument that the US should conquer other countries for "their own good". He believes in the White Mans Burden. He wants the US to be colonialist as the "successor" to the British Empire. If you don't see how believing in one of the most racist ideas to curse Earth is racist, then I don't think there's anything more to discuss.

I have no idea where your bizarre statement about 3rd world aid being racist comes from.
 
The ability to radiate outward and play an influencing factor on the development of secondary regions. While there were some isolated urban and walled communities before Egypt and Mesopotamia rose in the middle east, they never carried with them a defining influence on their surrounding lands. Instead, they were quickly consumed or abandoned by the radial spread from the cradle. While we do have some evidence for walled cities and some primitive manufactures in West Africa, we do not see much in the way of substantial civilization until after contact and trade with Egypt and Carthage was established. At the time of Niger's first cities, the Sahara was greener, wetter, and travel was not impossible, or even overtly burdensome if you knew the paths. There is evidence of Egyptians trading with peoples along the river Chad in the old kingdom, and Carthage was known to profit immensely from the transaharan trade, though it made far more from the mediterranean. Rome sent armies and expeditions to the region, but there was nothing beyond local settlements and traveling pastoralists and traders. The first civilization we really attest to, the first state, formed around 300 AD. This was a revolution brought about by the introduction of the Camel by way of Rome. It allowed for the formation of empire. Before this we know almost nothing from them, and we had only a little more. By the time that civilization was defeated and the Mali rose in its place, its development and its writings were substantially influenced by the expansive Arab civilization. Not only that, but Chadic languages broke off from Egyptian language, and there is evidence that Egypt may have influenced the development of Chad. This is also in the same language family as Arabic, which has had a domineering influence upon the local area since the early middle ages.

Cities propped up and faded in many different areas around the world, but never developed civilization as we seem to recognize it. This happened half a dozen times, perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less. Depending on who you ask, there has only been one civilization and everyone just copied from them. But cities... they propped up, sometimes in unexpected places. Should I mention that there were burgeoning cities in Russia and Kazakhstan around this time as well, Arkaim and cities like it were the birthplace of the wheeled chariot, and perhaps had the potential to be a cradle of civilization as well? But they never advanced beyond townships and most became nomadic instead after a couple thousand years. They never became one, and were more or less wiped out by the time of the Mongols until the Russians came. There were some walled cities in Niger, but civilization had to wait until it had a discussion with the Middle East and Puno-Roman society. I also do not intend this to mean that Africa never developed a civilization. Even if you claim Egypt for the Middle East or the Mediterranean, Africa undeniable developed a cradle of civilization along the Congo river valley - and developed a varied and diverse economy, complex governmental structures, and was spreading further at the time of contact with Portugal. Had Portugal not shown up, there's no reason to state that the Congo couldn't have become at least as developed as Mesoamerica and the Inca, though more may have required at least indirect contact with other civilizations.
I would say this is less civilization radiating outward and more a unique combination of technologies, techniques, societies and circumstances that find themselves interacting at a certain time.

For example, the peoples inhabiting the Mississippi domesticated sumpweed, sunflower, goosefoot, and squash among others and constructed monumental mounds as old as the pyramids in Egypt. They also developed an extensive trade network that stretched from the Great Lakes to Florida, covering a considerable portion of the continent. Mesoamerican agriculture would reach the region eventually yes, but a perceived radiation could be said to have happened from the Mississippi to surrounding areas that covers a similar distance to Maize's journey northward. The Mississippian culture of later times would build off of this pre existing trade network. Thus they (the Mississippian culture) are more the continued development of an independent urban, agricultural, and trading complex than a secondary transplant from Mesoamerica. The Mississippians weren't quickly consumed by the Mesoamerican cradle. These interaction networks linked up with agriculture from Mesoamerica rather than simply being subsumed into it.

Furthermore, West Africa could be said to have radiated outward and influenced surrounding regions if one counts the Bantu expansion, which brought iron working and other cultivatiors to central and southern Africa. The Bantu languages are nestled well within the Niger-Congo family with its homeland near Nigeria, so the linguistic links are at least as strong as the connection between Chadic and Egyptian you propose. This doesn't invalidate the uniqueness of the developing polities of the Congo. The societies surrounding the Niger, the Congo, and in Zimbabwe built their own interaction networks and urban settlements that only later linked up with the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean networks rather than completely folding into or originating from them.

I just don't feel that a decline in urbanization or even an abandonment of agriculture to be enough to relegate areas that underwent such independent development to be classified as wholly secondary in their entirety. Just because a region receives things from or is influenced by another region doesn't invalidate the existence of its own cradle before such things arrived. Likewise if a civilization is destroyed by another, it doesn't mean that it's cradle never existed. By this logic, Mesoamerica was never a cradle of civilization because it was dismantled by invasions from across the ocean.
 
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scholar

Banned
What year did the Fertile Crescent become a true civilization? You've dismissed farming, cities, metallurgy, and multi-city polities, as signs of true civilization, so what is the extra thing that made it truly civilized?
At what time did there develop multi-city polities?

You seem to be mistaking me. I did not say they were not a true civilization, I said they were not a cradle of civilization.
 
I would say this is less civilization radiating outward and more a unique combination of technologies, techniques, societies and circumstances that find themselves interacting at a certain time.

For example, the peoples inhabiting the Mississippi domesticated sumpweed, sunflower, goosefoot, and squash among others and constructed monumental mounds as old as the pyramids in Egypt. They also developed an extensive trade network that stretched from the Great Lakes to Florida, covering a considerable portion of the continent. Mesoamerican agriculture would reach the region eventually yes, but a perceived radiation could be said to have happened from the Mississippi to surrounding areas that covers a similar distance to Maize's journey northward. The Mississippian culture of later times would build off of this pre existing trade network. Thus they (the Mississippian culture) are more the continued development of an independent urban, agricultural, and trading complex than a secondary transplant from Mesoamerica. The Mississippians weren't quickly consumed by the Mesoamerican cradle. These interaction networks linked up with agriculture from Mesoamerica rather than simply being subsumed into it.

Furthermore, West Africa could be said to have radiated outward and influenced surrounding regions if one counts the Bantu expansion, which brought iron working and other cultivatiors to central and southern Africa. The Bantu languages are nestled well within the Niger-Congo family with its homeland near Nigeria, so the linguistic links are at least as strong as the connection between Chadic and Egyptian you propose. This doesn't invalidate the uniqueness of the developing polities of the Congo. The societies surrounding the Niger, the Congo, and in Zimbabwe built their own interaction networks and urban settlements that only later linked up with the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean networks rather than completely folding into or originating from them.

I just don't feel that a decline in urbanization or even an abandonment of agriculture to be enough to relegate areas that underwent such independent development to be classified as wholly secondary in their entirety. Just because a region receives things from or is influenced by another region doesn't invalidate the existence of its own cradle before such things arrived. Likewise if a civilization is destroyed by another, it doesn't mean that it's cradle never existed. By this logic, Mesoamerica was never a cradle of civilization because it was dismantled by invasions from across the ocean.

I personally agree with you, there have been more than one or two cradles of civilization but probably a half dozen or more.
 
At what time did there develop multi-city polities?

You seem to be mistaking me. I did not say they were not a true civilization, I said they were not a cradle of civilization.

In the Indus valley, there were multi-city polities around 3000 BC. In Egypt, maybe 3500 BC.

I would include Nigeria as a cradle of civilization; because the domesticates developed there spread to the rest of Africa, as did the iron-working techniques, and because they lived in cities since around the time these were develop, and coalesced into multi-city polities around 0 AD, with the precursors to the Mali. They were among the first in Africa to adopt cattle, though most cattle certainly arrived through East African routes, rather than across the Sahara. And, as you have said, in East Africa there were stronger trade links, another source of outside knowledge, the Sahara was always a tougher trip, even when it was relatively green.

Maybe I don't need a long response. We're disagreeing over something fairly minor, and it's obvious what the disagreement is. I'd say Nigeria counts as a primary cradle, you say it counts as a secondary cradle, yes?
 

scholar

Banned
Maybe I don't need a long response. We're disagreeing over something fairly minor, and it's obvious what the disagreement is. I'd say Nigeria counts as a primary cradle, you say it counts as a secondary cradle, yes?
Yes, my major argument for that stems from the fact that even by your earliest date, trade with the Niger river valley was already ancient (and Carthage long dead) by the time the first multi-city polities emerged. I do not feel on shaky ground when I say that some of the pre-requisites necessary for it to make that final leap into being a civilization emerged only after contact with Egypt and North Africa was well established. Particularly since early credits to their economy seems based on the export of native goods to outside regions, and the use of the camel - a roman import. It may have came by way of Egypt, but Egypt was Roman at the time anyways.

My main point was with regards to your point that Africa was developing at the same rate as everyone else. I disagreed. Its not even a matter of being X many years ahead or behind when I say that. The Eurasian landmass was awash with the trade of ideas. Even when they were at their most isolated from one another, ideas migrated across the continents. Europe conquered the world using a number of Asian inventions, initially sparked by a disruption of their increasingly globalized economy. The Americas and many areas in Africa either lacked that interaction, or had it only in minimal doses. Following a simple x years or so advanced or behind model, it would not adequately explain the lack of the wheel in the Americas, nor their surprisingly advanced mathematics and urban environments.
 
Yes, my major argument for that stems from the fact that even by your earliest date, trade with the Niger river valley was already ancient (and Carthage long dead) by the time the first multi-city polities emerged. I do not feel on shaky ground when I say that some of the pre-requisites necessary for it to make that final leap into being a civilization emerged only after contact with Egypt and North Africa was well established. Particularly since early credits to their economy seems based on the export of native goods to outside regions, and the use of the camel - a roman import. It may have came by way of Egypt, but Egypt was Roman at the time anyways.

My main point was with regards to your point that Africa was developing at the same rate as everyone else. I disagreed. Its not even a matter of being X many years ahead or behind when I say that. The Eurasian landmass was awash with the trade of ideas. Even when they were at their most isolated from one another, ideas migrated across the continents. Europe conquered the world using a number of Asian inventions, initially sparked by a disruption of their increasingly globalized economy. The Americas and many areas in Africa either lacked that interaction, or had it only in minimal doses. Following a simple x years or so advanced or behind model, it would not adequately explain the lack of the wheel in the Americas, nor their surprisingly advanced mathematics and urban environments.

Then a primary cradle must not have had outside influence? New Guinea, Mesoamerica, the Fertile Crescent or the Indus Valley, and the Yellow River are the only primary cradles? Most societies traded with each other, it's another driving force in development, for both sides if it's conducted without coercion.

When I say the same rate, I mean that after tens of thousands of years of mostly independent development, Africans were not far behind, two thousand years is a spitball figure, I didn't say it can't be measured accurately. We can just know that they farmed, used iron, made cities, and cities could be part of larger polities, by 0AD, and I would say this development is equivalent to the Fertile Crescent in 2000 BC, so I say two thousand years behind. The Americas, despite not having large scale metallurgy, did have other developments, I'd say they were closer to Europeans in development overall. And as any region connects to trade with other regions, they developed more rapidly, as we would expect if we consider population density and connectivity to be a driving factor in development. And like you say, they developed (slightly) more slowly because they were not as strongly connected to the larger populations of Eurasia.

Maybe we disagree on where their farming and metallurgy came from, I believe they arose in Nigeria, and this is what makes it a (primary) cradle of civilization. Some say they were imported from Egypt, or brought by Africa-rounding Phoenicians; this would make it a secondary cradle, since these developments did spread out from this region into the rest of Africa, brought by natives of the region.
 

Redbeard

Banned
The issue is not just that he recited the poem. It's that he did so favorably as part of a argument that the US should conquer other countries for "their own good". He believes in the White Mans Burden. He wants the US to be colonialist as the "successor" to the British Empire. If you don't see how believing in one of the most racist ideas to curse Earth is racist, then I don't think there's anything more to discuss.

I have no idea where your bizarre statement about 3rd world aid being racist comes from.

Well, I actually think my countrymen and I do a lot of things better than most people elsewhere in the world and if they were wise they would learn. If they won't I really don't care, stay in your misery for ever, but if Ferguson actually think we should do an effort to spread to good ideas I really can't see that as racism, but rather as idealism gone too far. Racism would be if he actually thought or said that some people do less well because of their RACE, but I have never heard him or many others accused of racism say or even indicate that.

I'm fully aware that "racism" by some has much wider meaning, often used against anything/anybody not immediately acknowledging the "original sin" of all western culture and especially if they are white. As you may have guessed by now I find that crap and if any racism is present it is found here. Worst perhaps when silly things like "cultural appropriation" are brought to bear. That way you only create more racists.

My remarks about 3rd world aid are founded on the widespread idea that we in the west have a special moral obligation to give aid to the 3rd world. If that isn't "white mans burden", but it is nevertheless mainstream political correctness! So if you don't like "White mans burden" you should also abolish 3rd world aid.

I have no problem with investment in the socalled 3rd world, on the contrary, but considdering how many years we have sent how much as aid I think it has been an utter failure. And then we are back to the British Empire. Said Empire actually invested a lot in its colonies, and where they did most they actually came out quite fit for a life as independent and strong nations. I can sure follow Ferguson in his main point that it probably would have been happier for Africa if the Empire had stayed there for some decades longer and built up the infrastructure etc. needed for becoming a true state.

Instead we had USA, not really giving a damn about internal matters as long as US strategic interests here and now were not interferred with and the EU, which focusssed on protecting itself against imports from the world outside.

So yes, the fall of the British Empire probably was a major blow to the welfare of billions of people. A global economical system containing both the former colonies and UK and other interested European countries would have been able to spread economic growth and stability much better than what we saw in OTL after WWII.

But it of course wouldn't have left much room for all the cleptocrats of OTL.
 
@ Redbeard: I'm too tired to deal with your claims in depth, but I'll just cite a few reputable articles and sources on the impact of British rule and industrialization on the Indian economy. I'm focusing only on the EIC period, but that's only because I don't know much about post-1850s India.

On how British rule "knocked the stuffing out" of India's economy and turned artisans and merchants into peasants, see "Progress and Problems: South Asian Economic and Social History c.1720-1860," p. 79-80:
[E]specially between the 1820s and 1850s, British rule restructured South Asian society and economy in ways meant to serve its own interests and which had the consequence of all but permanently precluding the transformation to modern industrialization. It was in this era that many of the social and economic features, understood by later generations to be the products of changeless tradition and taken by them to constitute the barriers of 'backwardness' to development, can be seen to have crystallized. Recent research has given particular attention to the nature and implications of the long-term price depression which descended on the South Asian economy toward the ends of the 1820s [...] In South Asia, it was exacerbated by three factors which can be directly associated with colonial rule: the export of large quantities of specie to service the China trade; the dismantling of many indigenous court, military, and religious centres, which had provided the main foci of internal demand, and the impact of Lancashire on South Asia's previous overseas and luxury textile markets. The depression, and these particular causes of it, can be seen as having knocked the stuffing out of a large part of South Asia's 'ancien regime' mercantile capitalist economy. Moreover, much of what was left was now taken out of the hands of the indigenous capitalists and passed, via the monopoly powers of the state, to British ones. [...] The principal process of economic change during these years has been described as "peasantization." Displaced soldiers, courtisans, priests and artisans found their way onto the land, which was fast becoming the only available base of subsistence.​

On the impact of the British on South India's textile economy, "South India 1770-1840: The Colonial Transition", page 507-509:
While 'local' resistance may have kept Utilitarianism and Evangelicalism at arm's length, it could not do the same for the impact of Britain's Industrial Revolution. South India's overseas textile markets collapsed, staunching vital inflows of specie and precipitating a general price collapse which was to last for a generation. [...] Markets atrophied and a long depression sapped commercial vitality. By the time that the depression lifted, in the 1850s, what once had been one of the early modern world's great commercial economies had been turned into a 'backward' agricultural dependency.

[He then notes that the Industrial Revolution might have caused the same effect even without British rule, but then adds specifically colonialist factors that exacerbated the depression] But in two ways, perhaps, it was important for South India and the wider world that an archaic form of colonial/Company rule was already established before British industrial supremacy became manifest - and ways which re-open questions on the transition(s) of the eighteenth century. In the first place, it guaranteed that the depression would be deep and prolonged and that many of its possible outcomes would be foreclosed. The Company's 'victory' did not only eliminate forces of competition in the market but, as Christopher Bayly argued, also forces of internal consumption and demand. As princely armies were cut back and elite supply trimmed, domestic markets tended to contract - promoting de-urbanization and de-industrialization. Further problems were created by the tendency of the Company to export specie to China and deplete an already constricted money supply.

Added to this, both the mercantilist and the historicist bases of the Company state combined to create a situation in which 'profit' would be sought much more readily through the pursuit of 'rent' than through the expansion of production. With the revenue system dominating the economy, energies were turned away from productive investment (which might attract penal taxation).
On how the Industrial Revolution made India a "colonial economy" which the EIC did nothing to stop, A Concise History of Modern India, page 76-77
By 1815 Indian textiles and other artisanal commodities could no longer compete with Britain, or on the world market, with British machine-made goods. Within a few years British textiles began to penetrate the Indian market, initiating the development of a classically 'colonial' economy, importing manufactures and exporting raw materials, that was to last for a century, until the 1920s. [...] Although new opportunities for commercial agriculture brought advantage for some, the loss of overseas markets was devastating, especially for skilled weavers in the great weaving centres, such as Dacca and Murshidabad. In the countryside weavers managed to survive by taking advantage of cheap imported thread, but those who had relied on hand spinning for subsistence were often driven back into agriculture. At the same time the rapid decline in the number of Indian courts, lavish spenders on luxury goods and armaments, reduced demand for many commodities. The disbandment of these courts also forced on to the land large numbers of former militiamen and retainers, which in turn further adversely affected artisanal production.

[...] The East India Company during the early decades of the nineteenth century did little to set India on a path of economic growth [...] This 'drain' of wealth was complemented by the Company's withdrawal of funds to cover what it called the 'Home Charges,' including pensions, debt service, and the cost of maintaining the Company's offices. [...] The situation was exacerbated by the Company's forces of deflationary finance, as it sought to trim its budget deficits. Throughout, the heaviest burden India had to bear was that of the land revenue demand. Essential to the support of the army and the administration, these payments, rigorously collected in cash, lay at the heart of the British impact upon the Indian countryside.
From India: A History, which also supports the theory that British rule drained India's economy, page 390-391:
Yet such was this superstructure of agents and rentiers, and such the extractive culture of the revenue system, that profits rarely found their way back into production other than as advances on the next crop. The actual cultivator thus became, if anything, even more indebted. Commercialisation only "led to differentiation without genuine growth." In effect India’s rural economy was already experiencing the down-side of plantation economics, in terms of labour exploitation, without the usual up-side of capital investment. "The point is not that so many peasants suffered (they would have suffered under capitalist modernisation, too) but that they suffered for nothing."

The British preferred to emphasise their investment in infrastructure, especially railways and irrigation works ("trains and drains"). They also pointed to the country’s generally favourable balance of payments. Critics, though, were less impressed by India’s theoretical prosperity and more exercised by Indians' actual poverty. As early as 1866 Dadabhai Naoroji, the future "Grand Old Man of Congress," had begun to wonder whom the trains actually benefited and whither the drains actually led. In fact he developed a "drain theory" which, with ramifications provided by his successors, would run like an undercurrent throughout the nationalist debate.

This ‘drain theory’ maintained that India’s surplus, instead of being invested so as to create the modernised and industrialised economy needed to support a growing population, was being drained away by the ruling power. The main drain emptied in London with a flood of what the government called "home charges." These included salaries and pensions for government and army officers, military purchases, India Office overheads, debt servicing, and the guaranteed interest payable to private investors in India’s railways. Calculated in sterling at an increasingly unfavourable rate of exchange, they came to something like a quarter of the government of India’s total revenue. With much of what remained being squandered on administrative extravagances and military adventures in Burma and Afghanistan, it was not surprising that Indians lived in such abject poverty or that famines were so frequent.

The theory also included an analysis of how the drain actually worked. The Secretary of State for India in London obtained sterling to meet his ‘home charges’ by selling bills of exchange to British importers. Presented in India, these bills could be converted into rupees out of government revenues and so used for the purchase of Indian produce. The private sector therefore played an important part in the drain since its exports from India constituted the drain’s flow. By the same token the export surplus was of little economic benefit to Indians; and worse still, since they consisted mostly of raw materials, exports gave no encouragement to India’s industrialisation. The classic case was cotton. In the days of the Company, British purchases had been mainly of finished piece-goods. Latterly, with Lancashire’s mills underselling India’s handloom weavers, British purchases switched to raw cotton and yarn. Now, when new and often Indian-owned mills in Bombay were at last in a position to compete, they were repeatedly frustrated by tariff policies which favoured British imports and by regulations which handicapped Indian production.

India’s embryonic industries – principally jute, cotton, coir and coal – needed protection; the British insisted on free trade. Their laissez faire attitudes extended even to the land revenue, where rising prices meant that fixed revenue assessments actually became somewhat less onerous during the latter half of the nineteenth century. But rather than adjust such assessments the government now preferred to explore other sources of revenue, like introducing an income tax.​

From The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India, 1720-1800, again on the impact of South India by peasantization, page 145 and emphasis mine:
The emergence of the village community as the characteristic form of social and spatial organization further suggests the settled nature of life in British-ruled South India. With the elimination of the option to move, there was a sharp decline in the bargaining power of producers. This is apparent from the evolution of wages in nineteenth-century agriculture, which suggests a steady downward spiral. This is confirmed by direct evidence regarding wage payments and by physical measures of body size which strongly indicate a deterioration in nutritional standards.
 
Still can't see the racism. That poem was written and quite well illustrate how colonialists saw the world. That might be distant and even disgusting today, but if it is racist then the obligation for 3rd world aid from the west is also racist.

Well, the racism is part and parcel with the "uplifting the poor benighted heathen natives".

The poem was eventually addressed to the actions of America upon my own nation, which had already been under the yoke of Spain for centuries beforehand and had developed its own national consciousness when it was slapped back down into the dirt.

Colonialism happened. It brought its benefits, like new crops and animals, and contact with strange new worlds. It came at a deep cost, the enslavement and scarring of native cultures to the profit of the colonialist powers, and the gearing of the economy towards serving them. The vast amounts of paternalist hypocrisy did not help with that.

And that's just my country's own experience of colonialism, which was lighter than most, thanks to the great distances between the metropole and these islands before 1823. That's not even counting the outright genocides in the Americas and in Africa.

In any case, the aim of this thread is to see how colonialism could have benefited the native peoples more. And it indeed could have.
 
Why was so much manufacturing done in the UK?

Wouldn't it be more economical to build the factories where the resources are produced?

For why manufacturing happened in the UK, even with transport costs, look up Joel Mokyr or Deirdre McCloskey.

Basically, the factors of production, and cottage industrialists, favored England (northern England specifically), and not the colonies. There are various forms of reform and practice that made manufacturing in England more competitive.

One of the least controversial is that sales are catering to a British market (where the consumers have higher wages and so will buy more goods and for more money) and manufacturers in England have that local knowledge of what the demand is for.

(More controversially, but I think truthfully and evidenced, there were broad spectrum advantages in England in productivity per hour, technology, skills, health, education, lending and investment structures, attitudes to production and business; just about most things that could've helped production.)

It's important to note this was bottom up. The British government were not going out and building the base for manufacturing in England. There was no public industrial strategy or anything like that. It's not The State. It had worked out that there just were these cottage industrialists in northern England who wanted to get richer and improve their lives, were ready and able to pool resources and labour in their communities to purchase and finish raw materials, and they did so in a wide spectrum of goods, including ones which did not need raw materials from colonies (finished iron goods, for example).

Add to this the companies who colonized the tropics were trading companies, who traded in finished goods and raw materials, not manufacturing companies, so were not particularly well placed to invest in manufacturing there anyway.

Though, when we talk about trading companies, remember, perhaps more saliently than all the above, the main raw material for British industry that actually mattered was cotton, from the southern USA (produced first, by slaves, then after the civil war, by free men). The planter aristocracy there wasn't particularly well suited to setting up manufacturing, and the northern USA did not have the factors of production of Britain (being generally more of a rural self sufficient settler society at the time), so it went to Britain for finishing. So we're really mainly talking much more about divergence in manufacturing economy between the colonial southern USA, an agriculturalist slave society, and England, than between, say, England and India (which may have been narrower).

Most other raw materials from the tropics than cotton were not actually industrially and financially very important or didn't need a lot of complex finishing (sugar, tobacco) or flowed direct to China (indigo, opium) to trade for Chinese goods (porcelain, silk, tea) first to offset costs of trading silver to China, then later to get silver out China. Europeans colonized mainly for trading posts (Asia) and earlier for precious metals (the Americas). IRC using raw materials from the tropics as a feeder for industry is more of a later thing, and more peripheral than is often thought. This got going quite late into industrialisation as European manufacturing ramped up more in scale and became able to heavily outcompete cottage industries in the non-European world, in volume and price, and so they die off from the competition.

Maybe get the idea of a more agricultural and pastoral Britain popular, factories and things belong in the colonies.

I think that could've offset production and manufacturing advantages in Britain, if the culture is strongly inclined against it. But then that makes it harder to see how they could gain an empire of colonies anyway, since its industrial advantages in the home country and with trade in mind that allows that to happen.

Part of that is I think you'd have to find some way to step on northern England specializing into cottage industry production while southern England specialises into agricultural production. That then linked into the colonial production. Having that specialisation that happened in the north happen in a colony would be harder, because its a longer distance to trade food.

But I think even that wouldn't stop it. Once you have trade of cotton finished goods from India-> Britain, then production of raw cotton in the southern US, some British folk will step in and get involved in manufacturing from the raw materials (where India has no advantages and probably some disadvantages for producing for the British market), and the advantages to production will lead to industrialisation, and once that happens manufacturing will start to shift to Europe even for some goods where there is a local resource advantage elsewhere.
 
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