British Empire, better or for worse?

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I think the negative impacts of British colonial rule outweigh the positive ones. This applies to every colonial empire.
 
You talk as if this trade won’t lead to atrocities think of what happens when one tribe gets guns? Before the scramble there was about 10,000 different states in Africa you can’t just trade with them and not think there will be big bloodshed. There will be bloodshed maybe even more, how much worse would the Zulu wars have been if everyone had guns instead of just one side? If Europeans don’t take over other parts of the world and just trade with them doesn’t mean less people will Die you will just end up with four five Europe’s that will have wars and maybe genocides. To sum up the whole “just trade” thing wouldn’t work as OTL Europe just had trade with no outside powers trying to take it over yet the 20th century saw the worlds two most destructive wars. If Africa had been free in the 20th century and had OTL Europe tech there would be just as many dead as in OTL colonial Africa

I'm not as naive to think that there would be no bloodshed without imperialism in Africa, but nor do I think that Africans would merely just taken the Europeans up on an offer of guns and promptly start to have massacred each other. Even the question of a higher death toll I think is questionable, given the general military superiority of European colonial powers over African polities in our timeline. Just look at the Massacre of the Hereros by the German authorities in Namibia, the 'clearance' of Kenyan tribesmen by the British, the atrocities regularly committed by the Belgians deep into the Congo river basin in search of rubber.

Conflict would have occured in Africa without European colonialism, but with regards to death tolls and intensities I doubt they would have reached the level that occured in our timeline.
 
So the Logic here is "The natives would have been killing and oppressing each-other anyways, It's better if we were the ones who did it."


For some reason I am not following your reasoning.

I'm not saying that I'm saying that the world wouldn’t be a better place if colonialism didn’t happen both have there pro's and con's. IMO the world of no colonialism is not a nicer one than a world with it. I didnt say "It's better if we were the ones who did it."
 
Decolonization was a mess because people are naturally rebellious. So shocking - people reacting badly to long mass patronization and misrule.... NOT. :eek::eek:

Iraq and the Philippines were freed with a democracy, but both were happy to let it fall, of course. Decolonized seem to have been rebellious for half a centuryish of being as unlike and anti their ex-colonizers as possible.

After that, peoples seem to revert to less rebellious ways. Democracy's long back in the Philippines and Iraqis are happy now about its resumption.
 
Decolonization was a mess because people are naturally rebellious. So shocking - people reacting badly to long mass patronization and misrule.... NOT. :eek::eek:

Iraq and the Philippines were freed with a democracy, but both were happy to let it fall, of course. Decolonized seem to have been rebellious for half a centuryish of being as unlike and anti their ex-colonizers as possible.

After that, peoples seem to revert to less rebellious ways. Democracy's long back in the Philippines and Iraqis are happy now about its resumption.


you could argue that was due to new Imperialism
 
A great deal worse. Just look at India, before we ruled it there were fun practises like suttee/Satī, which Britain banned in the territory it directly controlled, and the cult of the Thuggees which we suppressed.
The British Empire also suppressed practised like female circumcision.

However if there was no British Empire it is probable that most of it would have been ruled by the French, Portuguese, or Dutch. IMVHO it is not a choice between European Imperialism and no European Imperialism but which European state founds the biggest Empire.

To eliminate it you'd need something like the scenario from 'The Peshwar Lancers' but much earlier.
 
My personal belief is that the British Empire was governed under the principle of 'we shall govern to the best of are abilities, to help the natives'', without actually stopping to consider what the natives even wanted.
 
For those supporting Britain.... The sugar and
plantation economy of the british carriabean....Black
treatment on Barbados was IMO disgusting and horrible. Let's not get into the aparthied discrimination in Africa. Or the fact that the British succeeded in wiping out the relegion people and culture of hundreds of African tribes. look at former british territories in Africa today. That was due to Britain. Hope that answers your question
About India the British treated Indians as second class citizens. Deprived them of human rights forced them into the worst jobs activly promoted mass westernization and forced Indians to give up on their culture and relegion. During the sepoy rebbelion the rebel leaders were strapped to cannons and blown to pieces. Mass segregation. Of course British rule benefited India not for Indians but for whites in India.
 

King Thomas

Banned
For Hong Kong, better, for certain French islands, better, but for most colonised countries, from worse to much worse.
 
For those supporting Britain.... The sugar and
plantation economy of the british carriabean....Black
treatment on Barbados was IMO disgusting and horrible. Let's not get into the aparthied discrimination in Africa. Or the fact that the British succeeded in wiping out the relegion people and culture of hundreds of African tribes. look at former british territories in Africa today. That was due to Britain. Hope that answers your question
About India the British treated Indians as second class citizens. Deprived them of human rights forced them into the worst jobs activly promoted mass westernization and forced Indians to give up on their culture and relegion. During the sepoy rebbelion the rebel leaders were strapped to cannons and blown to pieces. Mass segregation. Of course British rule benefited India not for Indians but for whites in India.


Indians did benefit because Britain needed them to. An Indian civil service was set up out of need, collage's where set up for Indians to make a recruiting pool for said civil service, Indians went to Oxford and Cambridge for the same civil service, Indian government as voted for by Indians to Govern India and Indians lawyers to stop India falling into chaos. Indians benefited to the point where they where Becoming the middle Class in africa (some of the things Ghandi wrote about Africans were shameful)

And "forced Indians to give up on their culture and religion." India is probably one of the worst examples of forced conversion in the British Empire

aslo a lot of the Troops used to put down the muntiny where other Indians.



Wars motivated, to a large degree, by the imperial ambitions of European nations and the sometimes exclusionary practices of existing empires.

French/German motivation was mostly over a small piece of land in the middle of Europe. Something similar is true of A-H/Russian motivation, A-H Didn’t even have Colonies
 
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but nor do I think that Africans would merely just taken the Europeans up on an offer of guns and promptly start to have massacred each other. Even the question of a higher death toll I think is questionable, given the general military superiority Conflict would have occured in Africa without European colonialism, but with regards to death tolls and intensities I doubt they would have reached the level that occured in our timeline.

"Europeans up on an offer of guns and promptly start to have massacred each other" I don’t think that ether what I was trying to get at is it would be like giving every European power tanks and jet planes in the Seven years war it would have been horrific. two Tribes fighting each other being given canons and muskets is like that IMO. I didn't mean to impyle that Africans where any worse than us Europeans (I apologise if I did )

"Even the question of a higher death toll I think is questionable, given the general military superiority" surly this makes the death toll lower as if one side can win with ease then you won’t have a really long war, two use my about example if you had given only Britain and Prussia Tanks and planes in the Seven years war it would have been the six month war or less
 
Guys

Taking Africa as an example if you somehow prevent all foreign colonialism, including Egyptian/Ottoman then what are the likely effects?

a) Main imports are likely to be weapons as the elites who control power in the tribes will want them and once some starts getting them others will need them. You're unlikely to sell much consumer goods as there's generally not a large market. Similarly I doubt if many of the tribal rulers will have the resources to fund say a railway or other such large industrial projects.

b) Furthermore trade is likely to be restricted by a lack of rule of law and rights of individuals as many states are deeply autocratic.

c) Slavery is likely to continue and probably enlarge as some states get access to western technology. That will enable them to conquer neighbouring states and slavery is one way of exploiting this power, although it may not be the only one.

There was a lot of problems with western colonialism in Africa and elsewhere but there were also a lot of pluses.

037771 said "I hold no truck with the idea that our 'Western' civilisation is in any way superior to other ones". Actually it showed it was superior in both the ability to generate power and influence and in the way it appealed to so many people around the world. What he may have meant, which is a totally different point is in rejecting the idea that western people are in any way inherently superior? That I would agree with but in large part the view became popular in many parts of the west because of the demonstrated superiority of western culture.

After all the Arab spring for instance and earlier efforts to improve human rights and make rulers more responsible to the desires of the population are, with a few exceptions, generally based on western ideas in those fields. It should not be overlooked that the colonial empires ruled as much by their ideas as their military might.

Steve
 
037771 said "I hold no truck with the idea that our 'Western' civilisation is in any way superior to other ones". Actually it showed it was superior in both the ability to generate power and influence and in the way it appealed to so many people around the world. What he may have meant, which is a totally different point is in rejecting the idea that western people are in any way inherently superior? That I would agree with but in large part the view became popular in many parts of the west because of the demonstrated superiority of western culture.

I went for the moral, rather than the material outlook. The material view that Western 'civilisation' was superior in the 19th Century is entirely correct, given that it ended up dominating most of the world at the time. But the view that Western civilisation was (and is) superior for granting the world certain languages and codes of law is teleological, and thus irrelevent considering the potential for other paths.

After all the Arab spring for instance and earlier efforts to improve human rights and make rulers more responsible to the desires of the population are, with a few exceptions, generally based on western ideas in those fields. It should not be overlooked that the colonial empires ruled as much by their ideas as their military might.

It is not necesserily Western thought that propells such revolutions. It can be a universal principle that when a population feels oppressed upon by a narrow ruling clique that it replaces it with either a) another ruling clique or b) a more representative system. Revolutions have not just occured in Europe.

Moreover, it is all well and good to say European empires ruled (partly) through their ideas- they did, it provided them with principles for governance- but we must also remember that, in the view of the colonial subjects, these were top-down principles, and had comparable variants within the subject native population.
 
Colonialism helped by bringing civilisation to once barbaric countries and also the colonial country built industry in the colony so this helped to modernise and industrialise.

IN SHORT, For Better.

In regards to India, we should have given it more autonomy from the start. The reason for this is because of the rebellions like the 1857 Indian Mutiny. If it had been given autonomy and not been under the control of the EIC there might not have been one. Not having to deal with rebellions means we could have focused more on industrialising.

The focus was never on "industrialising", mate. It was about providing a source of cheap raw materials and a captive market for manufactured goods. Cotton came from India to Birmingham and cloth was exported back. Colonial rule strangled local development and restricted it to the cash crop/resource extraction level. It was always about wringing a profit for white people from Indians/Malays (the rest of the Empire ran at a loss but was essentially there to secure routes to India and later Malaya).

There are stronger words I'd like to use, seeing as I'm one of the barbarians you're referring to, but I choose not to use them.
 
Colonialism helped by bringing civilisation to once barbaric countries and also the colonial country built industry in the colony so this helped to modernise and industrialise.

IN SHORT, For Better.

Thanks for taking a contentious topic and dumping gasoline all over it. Referring to colonized countries as "barbaric" is extreme trolling by the most generous possible interpretation.

You're kicked for a week.
 
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