Would Qing China done better as a colony by foreigners?

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Sorry I overlooked this thoughtful response earlier.

Africans served in colonial armies as well - obviously the position of the Irish was higher, but being a Catholic Irishman was an effective barrier to progress.

As for Malaysia, I don't think I would rate it as a mess today - it did suffer "birthing pains" after independence.

Malaysia wasnt a mess til recently. there were the only British Crown Colony that didnt require subsidies from Britain due to their exports. The Communist Insurgency was not nearly as bad as other countries and even before their recent growth in prosperity, i think they were still reasonably well off and stable compared to other countries.

As to Ireland, i suspect Leej is referring to fact that Ireland was part of the UK, not a colony during the age of imperialism- and Irish men formed a huge part of the British Army overseas, also Irish people went to Australia/Canada doing, treating the natives however others treated them, whether good or bad.

I'm Half Irish with immediate family members who are really into it, but i dont belive all this about British oppresing the Irish, there were atrocities commited during the conquest- but its history and everyone did it then to everyone else- also Abdul, you say the Ottomon Empire was formed in a different era and doesnt count- well the British conquest of Ireland was in a completly different era too.

an other thing to consider is being oppresed as become a part of Irish culture to the extent its encourgaed, my own family has a story of a priest hanged by the british for a crime he didnt commit, and a book on the famine i just read has at the end, a canadian Irish critizing historians for saying the Famine wasnt a deliberate attempt at genocide- she didnt say how- just implied 'she knew' it was. same with Cromwell at Drogheda- we were taught at a British school how he forced people into a church and burned them- i belive irish historians dispute that.

as to Norther Ireland, you can either blame the catholics for wanting people to join against their will or the Protestants for keeping Catholics down into the 70's.
or both as i do.

edit- i dont of course mean all Irish Catholics or Protestants.

 

[Tyr]

I overlooked you statement that the parts of India that the British took over was ruled by foreigners before they got there because it is so obviously false that it needed no response.

err...No. Its true. There was the odd case where we took over land directly from the former native kings but most of British ruled India was took from the mughals and other Eurpoeans.

I have also not said in the least that India was some kind of utopia before the British, just that 19th c imperialism was about sucking money and resources out of colonies, whereas empires like the Ottomans, Hapsburgs, Mughals, etc are the actual indigenous states of the regions they rule (even if at some point in the past they came from somewhere else [like the Normans, for instance], and thus are concerned with building them up and using their wealth internally rather than shipping it all off to Britain, France, etc.

You are assuming here that India is a modern forward, thinking democracy.
Yes a lot of the profits from India went to Britain (well British companies really) however had it stayed in India how much of it do you think would go to the people? Most just went straight to the coffers of the totalitarian monarchs who ran the place where it was wasted on wars and all the other trivial matters nobles like to waste money on.
Also you are forgetting how many in Britain were at the time saw the empire. They too bemoaned that we did nothing to help the people and were just there for the sake of profit hence we did end up helping the natives.
In the case of most other Europeans- yes it was all for profit. With democratic Britain though- many at the time thought the way you do and hence things were done to help.
And for the land based empire comparison...Bad, thats one of the big things in favour of Britain IMO. For Britain to put Indians in parliament et al...That would just make us even more the evil empire you desire!
The British philosophy was not about ruling India for all time and turning then Indians into dark skinned Englishmen. The dream of many Brits from very early on was that some day the various peoples of the world would all see that liberal democracy was the way and rule themselves.

You are also willfully missing my point that the British totally dismantled an ancient, well-functioning education system that had produced a very literate population, which resulted in dramatically LOWER literacy, and replaced it not with a functioning university (the University you referenced as the first in India was not a teaching school, it was a regulatory body that had sole right to grant degrees), and decided that all instruction was to be in ENGLISH. Also you refuse to even consider that India's... non-modern? indigenous system had great value - as if somehow labelling something "modern" makes it superior or more desirable. Genocidal nationalism are modern, so are massive pollution, nuclear weapons and global warming.

I can't stand the whole luddite world view at all. I'm a commited progressive. Transition between development stages often has rough patches particularly with the earlier ones however they are nessesary (my guess- you now would like to mention the nazis or various communist regimes as somehow being progress. Well, they weren't, the nazis were a regression, the communists were trying to jump too far ahead in totally the wrong way.)

And FYI we did not destroy native education systems for what they were worth (mostly just Sunday school type institutions by the time Britain came onto the picture) we just didn't encourage them...but then neither did most of the ruling nobles. It simply declined due to the upheaval of the industrial revolution and the introduction of a modern system.

If rote learning and other methods were better then why is it that worldwide the education system today all falls close to the European way? No its not because we conquered the world, this even holds true in nations that were not under European rule.
Its because it is better. Far more efficient and far more inclusive.

20th c historians (actually only the last few decades) are not dominated by guilt trips, ....

And those are post-revisionists.

Almost all histories prior to the 60s treat the entire non-European world as something that just sat around declining or being barbaric until it had something done to it my Europeans. The definitive history of the Scramble for Africa is Packenham's book of that name. You will find no African or Arab sources in his bibliography. The role of the Ottomans or the Sufi orders in African resistance movements is not so much as mentioned despite their enormous impact. Histories accept without question that the British invaded Egypt because it was dissolving into anarchy (it was not in the slightest) and to save the canal (which was not threatened in the slightest), but do not question whether the crisis was manufactured an/or exploited by men with enormous investments in Egypt, including Gladstone who had half his wealth in Egyptian bonds.

Well whether you like it or not European sources of the time were far more valuable.
Yes others weren't without merit however Britain was a fully modern, industrialised country. Really...Just compare the records we have of the world today to those of 300 years ago and you're on the right lines.
You seem to be assuming here that British sources are overwhelmingly pro-empire though...I think you'd find that even in contemporary sources (let alone modern ones) many were pretty damn anti-empire.

All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India, contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are, moreover, so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them. It seems to be admitted on all sides, that the intellectual improvement of those classes of the people who have the means of pursuing higher studies can at present be effected only by means of some language not vernacular amongst them.

What then shall that language be? One-half of the Committee maintain that it should be the English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic and Sanscrit. The whole question seems to me to be, which language is the best worth knowing?

I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic.-But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who support the Oriental plan of education.

From that you can get a sense of where people's minds were in the period.

A bit blunt by todays standards but in a perfectly rational place for the most part.
The Indian languages were 'crude' in the way he means. They did not have the words for many modern concepts which would need to be taught.
I don't know what the situation with the Indians is today and whether they've took the French route and invented their own words for modern concepts or not but I do know in the case of the Japanese at least they just loosly translated foreign words into their pattern of speech for a good 90% of modern concepts.
The last paragraph...meh its oppinion. English certainly was far more worth knowing then Arabic or Sanscrit just as it is today in the sense that it would be far more useful in the world.

 

[Oddball]

Like Baldie I have (wisely ) stayed out of this, and just to state a little thing before I plunge out into it:

I actualy agree somewhat with both sides in this discussion...

But:

The dream of many Brits from very early on was that some day the various peoples of the world would all see that liberal democracy was the way and rule themselves.

Are you seriously voicing this as the driving factor in British imperialism?

Or even one of the most important parts?

 

[Faeelin]

Leej: A good way to assess a modern education system is the literacy rate. What was it in India in 1940?

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

your point appears to be that native governments have only the welfare of the people they rule at heart.

yet the Jannesaries looked out for only themselves. (after their first century of loyalty, at least)

and none of the Mughals ended the practices of widow-burning, thugee, or Untouchability.

Every social class defends its own interests. My point is that a native government can evolve into something better. An alien occupation will always be an alien occupation. And a native regime MUST pay attention to the welfare of its subjects or it won't last. A colonial regime imposes it's will though force and can only maintain itself for as long as it possesses superior force and the will to use it. France used to be an oppressive autocracy, for instance - and it started out as a thuggish Germanic state.

Example: By the late 19th c the Ottoman did not possess the power to hold the empire together by force, as dissatisfied parties could appeal to outside powers to intervene on their behalf. Thus the Ottoman Empire had to be held together by negotiating the relationship between center and locality to the sastisfaction of both sides. Thus the Ottomans provided education, justice, security, regulation of trade, etc. in exchange for a level of taxation found acceptable by locals. In areas where the Ottomans couldn't provide the same level of service, obligations for the locals were correspondingly lower. If the Ottomans pushed their luck, they got a revolt.

The position of the British empire was different, until Britain declined to the point where it no longer possessed the power to hold its empire - and then it had to withraw from it. The entire British Empire was designed purely for the economic benefit of the metropolis, and the areas of it that weren't profitable were held to protect the parts of it that were, like India or Egypt. As for the argument that much of the empire was a net drain, yes, in the sense that of requiring subsidies from Britain to run the colonial government, but that is counterbalanced by the increased revenues due to trade, and in any case, the empire as a whole was extremely profitable, until it wasn't, when Britain simply dumped it unceremoniously, and we are still dealing with the consquences.

And again with the listing of extreme examples. What percentage of the Indian population was burned as widows? Was it less than the number of people who died in Britain's conquest of India, supression of its revolts, and casualties amongst Indian troops sent everywhere to fight Britain's imperial wars? How about the number of people that died as a result of the partition of India? How many people were killed by thugees as a percentage of the total population than did in Britain at the same time due to the far, far, far, greater crime rate in Britain?

Listing extreme differences like widow burning and "honor killings" as proof that western cultures are superior while ignoring things like the incredibly common killing of women by jealous spouses in the West or the large number of people killed in duels in the 19th c in Europe (a duel being an honor killing, pretty much the definition of it) is just bigotry, isn't it?

 

[Keenir]

Every social class defends its own interests. My point is that a native government can evolve into something better. An alien occupation will always be an alien occupation.

hm, have to make sure the Norman invaders get that memo. don't want them evolving into something better.

And a native regime MUST pay attention to the welfare of its subjects or it won't last.

how long did the Mughals and other "native" rulers of India ignore the plight of the Untouchables?

If the Ottomans pushed their luck, they got a revolt.

if any foreign ruler -- British or Ottoman -- pushes their luck, they're going to get a revolt. it doesn't matter where they push their luck.

(as far as I know, no Ottoman Sultan was born to a Balkan mother, or had a Balkan aunt...which makes them effectively foreigners in that area)

And again with the listing of extreme examples. What percentage of the Indian population was burned as widows? Was it less than the number of people who died in Britain's conquest of India, supression of its revolts, and casualties amongst Indian troops sent everywhere to fight Britain's imperial wars?

and that justifies it? that justifies widow-burning, because it kills fewer people than the Maratha Wars did?

by that logic, the Armenian Genocide was justified because far more Ottomans died fighting Russians and French (backers of the Armenian sepratists) than Armenians who died in the march.

does that help to show the flaw in your logic, my friend?

Listing extreme differences like widow burning and "honor killings" as proof that western cultures are superior while ignoring things like the incredibly common killing of women by jealous spouses in the West or the large number of people killed in duels in the 19th c in Europe (a duel being an honor killing, pretty much the definition of it) is just bigotry, isn't it?

I never said Western Cultures are superior -- I was refuting your claim that Western Culture is Pure Evil, while Natives and Almost-Natives are Innocents frolicking in a Paradise free from any ills.

 

[Keenir]

just remembered two things...

hm, have to make sure the Norman invaders get that memo. don't want them evolving into something better.

my memory's faulty....is Australia still a penal colony?

And again with the listing of extreme examples. What percentage of the Indian population was burned as widows? Was it less than the number of people who died in Britain's conquest of India, supression of its revolts, and casualties amongst Indian troops sent everywhere to fight Britain's imperial wars?

and that justifies it? that justifies widow-burning, because it kills fewer people than the Maratha Wars did?

heck, let's bring back the Assassins....they barely killed anybody!

 

[Earling]

Frankly I don't really want to get drawn into a debate about morality but I struggle to see how you can objectively compare empires.

From 1895 untill 1910 (when they annex Korea) practically Japan's sole possession was Taiwan. It seems hardly suprising therefore that the Japanese invested a reasonable amount in that region since such is the nature of imperial preference.

Meanwhile the British have been in the empire game since what? Henry VIII? They have lost their first empire in America and they have exchanged a quasi-informal empire over much of the globe as the first industrialised nation for formal possession of a fifth or so of it. It seems hardly suprising that Britain has not invested the same volume into India when they have other significant global commitments.

There is also the obvious geographical differences. The British know full well that an educated Indian class is likely, as occured in OTL, to see some form of independence and that preventing such will prove far beyond the resources the British are willing or capable to use.

Taiwan, and to a lesser extent (but not much) Korea are almost completely powerless against Japan. The Japanese know that an educated work force is likely to be more profitable and given the relative strength of the Japanese armed forces any insurrection likely to be dealt with.

As for this belief that land based empires are somehow superior to naval empires it is to me incomprehensible. Did the Dutch prefer the French over the Spanish because there was a straight land connection? Did the Russians have the ideas of the Poles, Finns, Ukrainians and who knows how many other minority peoples in mind when determining policy? What of the fact that the only reason the British ever managed to aquire India is because the divided peoples who ruled that sub-continent couldn't stop fighting for the five minutes it would take to drive them into the sea?

I suppose it is a terrible thing that all those people throughout the European empires were "forced" to fight in their wars. They could have been fighting their own!

What about the other fact that the number of democratic governments throughout this period are very very few and so next to none have the views of the common people in mind.

That isn't to white-wash the British empire as a paragon of virtue however it could certainly have provided advantages to China if that state was to be in some manner intergrated into the Empire. After all, Japan managed to get the benefits of a high level of outside investment without the loss of sovereignty. You could however make the case for informal empire, especially with Anglo-Japanese treaty, up untill 1921, such could hypothetically be the case with China. A Raj (or similar) in China however will just not work.

 

[birdy]

Sorry I overlooked this thoughtful response earlier.

Africans served in colonial armies as well - obviously the position of the Irish was higher, but being a Catholic Irishman was an effective barrier to progress.

As for Malaysia, I don't think I would rate it as a mess today - it did suffer "birthing pains" after independence.

Thanks for calling it thoughtful .

first off, i'm not sure why i called Malaysia messed up, and i apoligise for doing so. i really dont remeber typing it, and was probably thinking of Sharia Law creeping into Malaysian life,

After 1829 in theory and to a degree in practise, there was no barrier to Irish Catholics bar taking the throne, i have heard of example of Catholic Irishmen achieving high status, although cant remember them and its too late to look it up now- if this thread is still going tommoro or sunday i'll have a look- course alot of the establishment disrusted Catholics so they'd find it much much harder.

I think its possible that when a lot of people look at the British Empire, they might see the one from the 20's and 30's which presumably was far gentler then that from mid 19th century, i may be wrong on that observation.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Your examples are non-sequitors. The Normans were permanent migrants to England, intermarried with the natives and became wholly integrated. That was part of my point. And there regime evolved into the center of the empire everyone is defending as the best thing since Jesus, so I'm not sure I get where you're going there.

The rest of your examples are more or less irrelevent nitpicks about the failings of regimes, and don't address the main point. Who cares about the assassins? What does that have to do with the difference between a continental empire and a colonial empire?

I'm really not interested rehashing the same thing over and over. If you have nothing with which to refute my point, I think we're done here.

just remembered two things...



my memory's faulty....is Australia still a penal colony?

And again with the listing of extreme examples. What percentage of the Indian population was burned as widows? Was it less than the number of people who died in Britain's conquest of India, supression of its revolts, and casualties amongst Indian troops sent everywhere to fight Britain's imperial wars?

heck, let's bring back the Assassins....they barely killed anybody!

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

You're missing the point. I agree with you completely that you can't really compare COLONIAL empires because they were different at different times and places.

I am mainly discussing the era of high imperialism, the later part of the 19th c. I'll take the German Empire to illustrate my point.

The German Empire was better for Germany than it was for Tanganyika. Why? Because the German Empire was the organic government of Germany, and one of its primary purposes was the well-being of its people, without the support of which it would be hard-pressed to continue to exist. The German Empire was not so good for Tanganyika, because Tanganyika existed soley for the benefit of Germany, as a source of raw materials and a protected market for German goods. All German development there was aimed at either the defense of the territory against other powers, or the extraction of wealth from the territory. And before anyone says that many colonies were net losers, that may be true of the STATE, but was most certainly NOT true for the people that CONTROLLED or INFLUENCED the state. Another obvious and recent example would be Iraq, which has been a colossal money-loser for the USA, but has made fortunes for American war-profiteers who had direct influence on the decision to attack - plus the original plan would have been good business for the US. Some of the colonial aquisitions were similar misfires or designed to protect valuable colonies like India.

The German Empire at home did not extract money from Bavaria to enrich Prussia, the Hapsburgs did not exploit Transylvania for the benefit of Austria, the Ottomans did not drain resources from Bosnia to enrich Anatolia, etc.

I'm saying there is a difference between an Imperialist empire and a plain ole' empire.

Frankly I don't really want to get drawn into a debate about morality but I struggle to see how you can objectively compare empires.

From 1895 untill 1910 (when they annex Korea) practically Japan's sole possession was Taiwan. It seems hardly suprising therefore that the Japanese invested a reasonable amount in that region since such is the nature of imperial preference.

Meanwhile the British have been in the empire game since what? Henry VIII? They have lost their first empire in America and they have exchanged a quasi-informal empire over much of the globe as the first industrialised nation for formal possession of a fifth or so of it. It seems hardly suprising that Britain has not invested the same volume into India when they have other significant global commitments.

There is also the obvious geographical differences. The British know full well that an educated Indian class is likely, as occured in OTL, to see some form of independence and that preventing such will prove far beyond the resources the British are willing or capable to use.

Taiwan, and to a lesser extent (but not much) Korea are almost completely powerless against Japan. The Japanese know that an educated work force is likely to be more profitable and given the relative strength of the Japanese armed forces any insurrection likely to be dealt with.

As for this belief that land based empires are somehow superior to naval empires it is to me incomprehensible. Did the Dutch prefer the French over the Spanish because there was a straight land connection? Did the Russians have the ideas of the Poles, Finns, Ukrainians and who knows how many other minority peoples in mind when determining policy? What of the fact that the only reason the British ever managed to aquire India is because the divided peoples who ruled that sub-continent couldn't stop fighting for the five minutes it would take to drive them into the sea?

I suppose it is a terrible thing that all those people throughout the European empires were "forced" to fight in their wars. They could have been fighting their own!

What about the other fact that the number of democratic governments throughout this period are very very few and so next to none have the views of the common people in mind.

That isn't to white-wash the British empire as a paragon of virtue however it could certainly have provided advantages to China if that state was to be in some manner intergrated into the Empire. After all, Japan managed to get the benefits of a high level of outside investment without the loss of sovereignty. You could however make the case for informal empire, especially with Anglo-Japanese treaty, up untill 1921, such could hypothetically be the case with China. A Raj (or similar) in China however will just not work.

 

[Keenir]

Your examples are non-sequitors. The Normans were permanent migrants to England, intermarried with the natives and became wholly integrated.

over time, yes.

they started out as alien invaders, like the British in India.

exactly how long did it take for the Normans to stop thinking of themselves as Normans, or as French? how long was it before they saw the locals as something worth integrating into?

The rest of your examples are more or less irrelevent nitpicks about the failings of regimes,

Australia being founded as a penal colony is a failing of the British Empire? heck, if ever there was a source of cheap labor, there it was.

and don't address the main point. Who cares about the assassins?

the impression I'm getting from your recent posts is twofold:
a. native rulers are better than foreign ones.
b. its okay for native rulers to kill people, as long as they don't kill as many as foreigners do.

that describes the Assassins perfectly.

What does that have to do with the difference between a continental empire and a colonial empire?

there is no difference between the two.

I'm really not interested rehashing the same thing over and over. If you have nothing with which to refute my point, I think we're done here.

your "point" was the failing of an empire.

yes, the British put down rebellions....so did the Ottomans. so did the Mughals.

I'd bet dollars to donuts (or lira) that the British cared more about the Untouchables than the Mughals did.

and if you think Untouchability is an extreme case, then its an exceedingly big extreme case, given just how many millions of people fall into that range of castes.

 

[Keenir]

the Ottomans did not drain resources from Bosnia to enrich Anatolia, etc.

given how few (if any) Ottoman buildings are in Anatolia, I'd say the reverse is true.

{and I'm not defining "Ottoman buildings" as "the cottage built by a mayor during the Ottoman era"}

 

[Michael Canaris]

given how few (if any) Ottoman buildings are in Anatolia, I'd say the reverse is true.

{and I'm not defining "Ottoman buildings" as "the cottage built by a mayor during the Ottoman era"}

Wasn't the Seraglio in Bursa?

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Wasn't the Seraglio in Bursa?

Bursa was originally the capital, so there was A seraglio there - but the harem would have moved to Edirne and then Istanbul as the capital shifted.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

The Normans immediately began intermarrying. The British never would have; their ruling class in India were professional administrators that lived in Britain and served tours of duty in India.

Australia is a settler colony which is totally different as I mentioned initially.

I'm not sure how I can express my point any more clearly. I have spent hours repeating the same thing over and over and over. My point is NOT that native rulers are better than foreign rulers. That would be a silly thing to say. Catherine the Great was a better ruler than her husband, despite being a foreigner. I am saying a native REGIME is better than a colonial one. A colonial regime is designed to extract wealth for the metropolis. A native regime is created over time and is rooted in the culture and institutions of the lands it governs, and develops organically through a process of negotiation with local powers over a long period of time. A colonial regime is imposed suddenly by an alien power with overwhelming military force without any care whatsoever for existing conditions and replaced with an alien model that is not suitable for the existing culture, like the national model imposed on Africa, which can only be generously called disastrous in every possible way.

You will now, of course bring up minor and exceptional examples like Thuggees to try to argue against my point without giving a comprehensive response to my argument. Yes, there were native regimes that ate people. Native regimes can develop into better things, like say, France. Or Japan. Colonial regimes suck wealth out of a land until the metropolis is too weak to continue to dominate it, at which point terrible bloodshed occurs, the Imperial power runs away, leaving a vacuum that causes a collapse into anarchy and genocide because the imperial power had dismantled all the native powers leaving only artifical boundary lines and intense ethnic hatred fueled by the typical imperial "divide and rule" mentality. A colonial regime will never, ever be the long-term ruler of any place. Inevitably, the colonized will acquire enough of the colonizer's technology and methods to overthrow him. You can see this process occurring RIGHT NOW in Iraq. Was Saddam Hussein horrible? Yes. Is the Occupation also horrible? Yes. What's the difference? Iraq is now hopelessly shattered and doomed to perhaps decades of civil war, foreign-sponsored terrorism, economic disintigration, famine, etc. Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, would have eventually died or been assassinated and replaced. That the US Occupation was a worse outcome for Iraq than the continuance of Saddam Hussein's rule is despite the fact that by almost any measure, the United States is more advanced and "better" than Iraq.

over time, yes.

they started out as alien invaders, like the British in India.

exactly how long did it take for the Normans to stop thinking of themselves as Normans, or as French? how long was it before they saw the locals as something worth integrating into?



Australia being founded as a penal colony is a failing of the British Empire? heck, if ever there was a source of cheap labor, there it was.



the impression I'm getting from your recent posts is twofold:
a. native rulers are better than foreign ones.
b. its okay for native rulers to kill people, as long as they don't kill as many as foreigners do.

that describes the Assassins perfectly.



there is no difference between the two.



your "point" was the failing of an empire.

yes, the British put down rebellions....so did the Ottomans. so did the Mughals.

I'd bet dollars to donuts (or lira) that the British cared more about the Untouchables than the Mughals did.

and if you think Untouchability is an extreme case, then its an exceedingly big extreme case, given just how many millions of people fall into that range of castes.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

given how few (if any) Ottoman buildings are in Anatolia, I'd say the reverse is true.

{and I'm not defining "Ottoman buildings" as "the cottage built by a mayor during the Ottoman era"}

This is one of the arguments Kemalists use against the Ottoman Empire - "it did nothing for Anatolia". That is not actually entirely true - while it is the case that there are no Suleymaniye mosques in Erzurum, it's not unusual for monumental architecture to be concentrated in capitals, and the Ottomans DID spend a lot of money on railroads for Anatolia. But there is the adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and it's only natural to invest more effort in areas where you have problems or competition.

 

[MrP]

I'm somewhat perplexed by the Iraq reference. I'm aware that Iraq is an ethnically diverse state, and that this is in large part down to the European types responsible for setting it up. But the chap who maintained the divide and rule principle in Iraq was . . . the local Tikriti fella who zealously slew other ethnicities. Granted, the current state is a mess, but aside from the Kurds being separated (a legacy of Saddam's actions and the international response to them), I'm not sure I see evidence of a Coalition-sponsored attempt to segregate the various constituents of the state.

Tanganyika, IIRC, was a total loss-maker for the Germans, both in terms of government and private spending. It had pretty much no resources except for locals with cattle. The colonial government certainly, as you say, attempted to impose an illogical European method atop the existing one. Specifically, they assigned land in plots to settlers, whereas the locals held land to be common for grazing cattle. This was definitely responsible for the subsequent uprising in the north (I forget about the southern insurrection) and the German military over-reaction and near genocide.

Er, I've wandered off at a tangent, haven't I?

My point is that such colonies weren't necessarily financially beneficial to the dominant power. Granted, Germany's a pretty special case, of course . . .

 

[Keenir]

The Normans immediately began intermarrying. The British never would have; their ruling class in India were professional administrators that lived in Britain and served tours of duty in India.

no Briton took a local wife? there were no kids of mixed descent?

I am saying a native REGIME is better than a colonial one. A colonial regime is designed to extract wealth for the metropolis. A native regime is created over time and is rooted in the culture and institutions of the lands it governs, and develops organically through a process of negotiation with local powers over a long period of time.

Then why have European Jews suffered so much under native European regimes? and why have Untouchables suffered so much under native Indian regimes?

when the Jannesarries started feeling full of themselves, why was there no negotiation to reduce their abuses? it took at least 200 years for them to be brought under control.


Maoist China was a native regime, as is Castro's Cuba and Stalin's Russia.....and didn't Huey Long have a native regime within the US?

 

[Ran Exilis]

no Briton took a local wife? there were no kids of mixed descent?

There indeed was some degree of intermarriage between Indians and Europeans (and not just British; French, Dutch, Portugese and others as well), and today there is still a community of the so-called Anglo-Indians, as well as the mestiços, who are of mixed Indian-Portugese descent, and are often called Anglo-Indians as well.

...although I admit that if there was intermarriage, it always involved a European man marrying a local woman (who was in many cases a convert to Christianity), and intermarriage wasn't exactly considered all that "appropriate" (Indians were still second-class citizens after all...), especially for the upper-class citizens (the average soldier propably had somewhat different standards than a British governor...), since most Europeans were supposed to, or at least tended to marry European women.