Do you actually know why the Raj was divided into Pakistan and India?
Hint: It wasn't the British who campaigned for it.
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Hint: It wasn't the British who campaigned for it.
The British Famine Codes began to be developed after the 1877-78 Deccan Famine, but they did not reach its final (and more or less effective form until 1900. In between, there were several more famines (and millions of deaths more) while the Brtiish Indian administration tinkered with the code.
The main obstacle they encountered was not a lack of resources, but an ideological block.. It was the same ideological isssue they had with the 1846-47 Irish famine: to give food or money subsidies "for nothing" was an ideological taboo, as it would only engender laziness and corruption, and interfering with free trade (well, the British notion of "free trade", as non-British goods imported into India were subject to heavy custom taxes) was also an ideological anathema.
As for Lytton's insanity. He was a cocaine addict, and quite an eccentric character. He was appointed to the post of viceroy at Queen Victoria's insistence; Disraeli's cabinet was quite indifferent to him, and everybody knew from the beginning in Whitehall what he was like. In Lord Salisbury's correspondence with his cabinet colleagues he makes quite a few references to Lytton's "eccentricities", but he never interfered with his decisions (which he could very well have done, because as Secretary of State for India he was Lytton's superior).
He was removed from the post on charges of "insanity" because he wrote a rambling letter to the London cabinet complaining about how British policy against Russia was being conducted in Afghanistan and the Balkans (in the middle of the 1878 Russo-British crisis). And this was not tolerated by Disraeli and Salisbury.
Not all the members of the British administration in India were as callous as Lytton; for example the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, governor of the Madras Presidency (where the brunt of the famine fell) was horrified by it, but Lytton forbid him from acting beyond what he allowed, and in fact most of the British high offiicials fell into line behind Lytton, well aware that their careers in the Indian administration were finished if they didn't do so.
Lytton was not an isolated example; in the great famines of the latter half of the 1890s, the viceroy Lord Curzon acted again in the same vein. But at least he can be credited with installing the first modern lift in India in his private Calcutta residence, I guess.
The British were responsible for what they did and what they should have done but didn't too!
That were their decision, there were others that want an united India and freedom of religion. India is NOT a country of Hinduism, no state religion.
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- Unity of India: British achievement, more or less.
- Modern legal and governance systems: greatest British achievements, no discussion here.
- Large railway system: I stand by my previous post.
- Factories: Uh? In 1947, after 200 years of British rule India was an industrial wasteland.
- Cricket: Sure, and I guess afternoon tea too
. - End of famines: British rule in India began and ended with famines. Since 1947, there've been 0 famines in India.
- Creation of modern Indian armed forces: I hope nobody will dispute that the creation of the British Indian army was not made for the Indians' sake, but in order to ensure British domination. In his private correspondence with his cabinet colleagues Lord Salisbury was brutally honest in this respect ("we rule India by naked force alone").
- Election of Indian MPs: please, this was a trick engineered by some Labour MPs who ceded their posts in Westminster to these Indian politicians in order to allow the colonized Indians to have some voice in Westminster. It was NOT something sought or wanted by the British authoties, or even by the British public at large.
- Architecture: yes, they did build some impressive buildings (choosing Lutyens for the building of New Delhi was an inspired decision). But Indians had little to learn from the British in this respect; I hope that examples are not needed.
Railways - Still a British achievement, though you are wrong to suggest that this was done entirely for the benefit of the British. Indeed, many non-profitable lines were built at state expense for the purposes of famine relief.
Factories - The British did set up a few, a lot of them to do with arms production (i.e., at Ishapore), and there was a shift towards more industrialization later on as British policy became increasingly set on trying to develop India. Part of the problem however was that there wasn't much will to put the resources in, nor much room in the Raj's tiny budget.
Famines - Regular famine in India was a thing of the past by 1900, from there until the end of British rule you have only one major famine, the anomalous Bengal Famine of 1942-43. This was complicated by a number of factors (wartime, destruction of local infrastructure, natural causes), and indeed there was not a monolithic British response (some like Churchill were callous, others like Wavell were genuinely concerned), with the local authorities criticised for their failures in the local report.
Armed Forces - Certainly, these were instruments of rule, they were not just some cheery club for people to join and have a jolly in. And yet, this was still an organisation which went out of its way to respect and accommodate its Indian personnel, which was a genuine career choice for many Indians (and still is for some), and which lays the groundwork for the Indian forces of today.
Indian MPs - We're clearly referring to different incidents, as neither seat I was referring had (in the 1890s at least) a Labour member. Both MPs stood as members of the major parties (Liberal and Conservative respectively). Really the point here was not to suggest that this was a fair representation (two MPs is hardly proportionate to a land of 300+ million people), rather to point out that things weren't all one way as is often perceived.
The British are responsible for following the wishes of the Indian National Congress?
I suppose if they'd followed a more jackbooted, paternalistic, racist decolonisation policy, that's what they might've done.
Do you also think Polish troops attacked the German Frontier, triggering a German reaction that resulted in the invasion of Poland? You don't see Heydrich's hand in this?
Adolph Hitler stacked the deck before he invaded Austria, pre-empting a vote on the matter, and not everyone in Austria was happy about being invaded. Some were, but I seem to remember something about a naval commander and his band of merry children singing their way across the Alps to escape the Black Spider; they were far from the only ones to flee the coming terror.
A dozen celebrities said they would Sound of Music their way up to Canada if Trump won. Even democratic elections can have results where some people are furious about the outcome.
There is a big difference between Nazi occupations of Austria (bullied democratic), Sudetenland (peaceful foreign dictation), Czechoslovakia (relatively peaceful military invasion), and Poland (violent military invasion). Likewise there is a big difference between what recently happened in Crimea versus what happened in the 1780s or 1850s.
Come on.
It was your example, not mine.
And you are not describing four separate events; they are four links in a chain of events, one leading to the next, with rather disastrous results.
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in other words, chinese aid is exactly same as EU is giving donations for projects to thier member states.
oh, and i thought that talk was about living standards of peoples under colonialism, not about policy of colonialits or that colonialism is good/bad idea.
and yet, none of these celebrities moved to canada after trump won, making them first class hypocrities, unlike persons which did realy fleed austria in 38 when germans settled there.
yes, in democracy you can have results which you dont like, b ut main difference is in next elections you have chance to fix it, unlike in dicktatorship.
The topics all sort of combine. The policies of colonial nations cause improvements or declines in the living standards of the people who were colonized to a great degree. Opinions matter too. To the extent that the people in the colonies and the colonial powers think that it was a good or bad idea, is certainly a part of the 'experience'. A colonized people who had an excellent living standard but who hated the process of being colonized are going to have very very negative thoughts and feelings about the process of colonialism regardless of what the material outcome was.
Wait, what?
I love the leap in logic. Because I don't agree with you that one action was imperialism, therefore, I believe that Poland attacked Germany.
No, I said Crimea was more akin to Ansculuss than just normal imperialism. Crimea is arguably better than Ansluss, because Putin never actually formally annexed the Crimea until after the referendum was complete.
Of course there were people who disliked the Nazis taking over Austria. They were, evidently, the minority.
This, here, is the tyranny of the majority in play. It matters little if 10% of the population of Austria was violently opposed to the Nazis, if 60% of them welcomed it.
The difference is that the Nazis were far worse than anything Trump might do.
Realistically, most of them knew, deep down, Trump wasn't worth leaving, once they actually started to contemplate actually leaving.
only that Austria was its own country. Crimea was sovereign territory of Ukraine. the invasion part was similar, though the Austrians could have resisted the germans, unlike the situation with Ukraine and Russia.
One can perhaps criticize the British for not giving a damn. Really at the end of the Raj British policy was to blow the damned thing out the airlock and forget about it.
At the same time however, that was what the Indians wanted. This was very much a policy born of the inability to do anything else without seeming (as you say) jackbooted.
Hence one of the major problems of decolonization; the locals demanded independence now, but in many cases such a rapid transition to independence raised new problems.
well, austria is special case, it is truth that majority loved hitler at time when he did anschluss, but some time before it, they didnt loved much him, and during war too.they actualy did have resistance group working, in number hich mattered, which is reason why austria was after WWII terated as victim of nacism, and not as as agresor with others.
and do you know two biggest successes of austrian diplomacy ? they maked mozart as austrian, and hitler as german.
i fully agree, that hitler was waaaay worse than any posible trump, but that dont change history, people fleed from hitler, as they told. which make them honest. celebrities didnt fled from trump, as they told, which make them first class hipocrytes, as i told.
well, anexaction is anexaction, it is not that much different if it happen to whole country, or only part of it. difference is only on scale, not on principe. and yes, austri should chalenge third reich, but decided not to, same way as ukraine should chalenge russia over crimea teritory in only that teritory or acros whole borders, but they decided not to. they simply lacked fighting spirit of finns.
and you can realy blame brits for that ? when they constantly yell at you "leave as fats as you can, and dont let doors slap you" instead of "we want indepence, but we will welcome any teachning and advices how to avoid future troubles".