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Britain got adult male suffrage in 1918. India got independence in 1947 a mere generation later. The violence that engulfed India under self rule was far worse than under the British. Once you strip away the cultural Marxist drivel you realise that our Empire was something in which we can take great pride.
The British Empire probably did accomplish its objective to an extent, they brought new methods of organization and administration, as well as modern technology and infrastructure, to several regions that didn't have them yet, They also clamped down hard on a few regions of their empire, especially India and Africa, which if my memory of history lessons in school is to be believed were constantly bleeding themselves out in regional feuding before the Brits took over, and they put a stop to it. Not for any altruistic reasons of course, but because it messed with their efforts to run things.
On the whole I'd say that the British Empire did a lot of good, even if they also did do some evil along the way.
On the whole I'd say that the British Empire did a lot of good, even if they also did do some evil along the way.
Unfortunately a generation late! And probably no credits for the British either, but for the Indian independent movement. I heard the British promised independent for India in WW1 for their fights but not. So in WW2 they cannot use mass Indian manpower in critical battles.
Well, TBH, the "independence of India" turned out not be an easy task when it come to be real...
Of course they did. Their objective was looting the place as long and as hard as they could. Giving as little rights to the people who lived there as was practical. Occasionally you get some well-meaning reformer, but by and large the british were quite clear about what their priorities were: Money first, anything else only insofar as it doesen't inconvenience the looting.
Notably most of the "improvements" the british did... Were actually paid for with indian taxpayer's money. Unlike many other colonies India actually ran a profit. (and more than that, they provided a sizeable portion of the costs for the World Wars, for instance)
The Indians were incapable of self-reform in any meaningful timeframe. The British injected 1000 years of European civilisation into what was, essentially, a backwater where women were cremated alive along with their husband's dead bodies and getting your head stamped on by an elephant was a legitimate means of execution.
The material and technological gains invested into India were undoubtedly great, but the gains in morality are the greatest legacy Britain has left behind and it's cost is incalculable.
I do think that the one thing the british did was (albeit unintentionally and often despite their attempts to divide-and-conquer) was create a sense of "unified India". But Indian states could easily have reformed on their own: After all other states did reasonably well doing so.
Remember, in the 18th century India was economically vital, it was deliberate british policy that created indian poverty. (which is not to say they wouldn't have faced challenges from industrialization, etc. Obviously China did as well, but the fact that the british deliberately set out to prevent these efforts under their rule kind of shows how bad things were)
When Britain started their conquest of India in earnest they were still a slaveholding society, they made homosexuality illegal, had the death penalty for things like "spending one month in the company of Gypsies", they were hardly any more enlightened.
That is not true, even the princely states were incapable of civilised self-government. Those states were where some of the worst atrocities were committed.
What policy was there to prevent industrialiation of India?
Britain was a Christian country, and as such they followed by Christian morals. Of course their views on homosexuality are not acceptable to modern standards but you have to remember it was the norm in every country in the world.
Britain has done more than any other country to eradicate slavery - often at great personal and material cost.
Britain was the morally superior country and, as such, had a duty to pass those morals onto the natives.
They were numerous, tariffs, monopolies, and in the case of the Bengali textile industry, sometimes outright violence (cutting the thumbs of weavers, etc.) They taxed them massively, forbade selling to other entities than the East India Company, and so forth. What had been a competitive industry was strangled, not by the industrial revolution (that was only beginning) but by british military force.. Indians were banned from many technical professions or had to have european supervisors. Indian companies in (at the time) "high tech" fields like railways were banned. Indian goods (especially manufactured goods) were under heavy tariffs while british goods were not. And so on and so forth. The exact policies varied over time, but the goal was always clear: More money for the british elite.
Either you're a moral relativist or you're not. You don't get to pick and choose liek this.
Indeed, one of the few redeeming features of the entire thing. Though it should be noted they were also fairly instrumental in expanding it.
That depends on who you were, which is rather the point.
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It is still moral relativism. You cannot hold Britain to a higher standard the rest of the world. It is an absolutist argument to say that X is inherently a bad action.
Well Britain won, surely that gives some credentials to the notion that British thoughts were superior?
When trying to name any major advancements to humanity during the period that came from India I strike a blank, I can name dozens from Britain.
How did Britain "win"? It ultimately lost control of India, and today it is losing control of its own home territory. Scotland will separate in the near future, while British police can't even enforce the laws of the state in places like Rotherham. Thankfully for British women, they will soon have strong, masculine Asians as husbands rather than impotent Anglo-Saxon liberals, so all may not yet be lost.
But you are first saying that Britain eradicated "bad" practices and then say that everything that was bad about British culture was okay because it was part of british culture. Also, "might makes right"? Really? Britain "won" because of superior technology and divide and conquer practices, not because they were morally superior.
I can name several from periods when they *weren't* ruled by the british.... Which might possibly tell you something
"Soon after the British conquest of Bengal the East India Company stopped paying for their textile purchases using cash brought in from Britain. Instead they switched to utilising from elements of the revenues they got from Bengal taxes to purchase Bengal textiles. They also made life difficult and near impossible for other countries to trade with Bengal. In effect they cut off or reduced Bengal’s independent trading links with traditional trading partners and monopolised the buying of textiles, imposed conditions and forcibly lowered prices that they paid to weavers for textiles purchased."
https://alochonaa.com/2014/03/02/fr...he-rise-and-fall-of-bengals-textile-empire-3/
http://www.historydiscussion.net/br...india-during-british-rule-indian-history/6326
Or just read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32618967-an-era-of-darkness, though that one's a bit polemical, but it really just gathers what historians have known for a long time.
The British (or more specifically, the British East India Company rather than the Government of Great Britain) conquered India due to the active cooperation of many Indian elites themselves. They had no great technological superiority over Indian armies, and many of the Directors of the EIC were in fact strongly opposed to territorial conquest.
That is what I meant with divide and conquer parctices. And "opposed" or not they certainly went out of their way to subjugate every last spot of India.
“[Before a British Parliamentary Committee in 1840] Montgomery Martin stated that he . . . was convinced that an outrage had been committed ‘by reason of the outcry for free trade on the part of England without permitting India a free trade herself.’ After supplying statistical data of Indian textile exports to Great Britain, he pointed out that between 1815–1832 prohibitive duties ranging from 10 to 20, 30, 50, 100 and 1,000 per cent were levied on articles from India. ... ‘Had this not been the case,’ wrote Horace Wilson in his 1826 History of British India, ‘the mills of Paisley and Manchester would have been stopped in their outset, and could scarcely have been again set in motion, even by the power of steam. They were created by the sacrifice of Indian manufacture. Had India been independent, she could have retaliated, would have imposed prohibitive duties on British goods and thus have preserved her own productive industry from annihilation. This act of self-defence was not permitted her’” (Clairmonte 1960: 86-87).
Try Kant.
Insofar as the British Raj goes one needs to consider it both against contemporary morality and modern morality, and realise that what was moraly acceptable changed over the 200 or so years the British were invoved in India.
Based on contemporary morality the British Raj was fairly bad, although perhase better than most other colonial ventures. The things they contributed to the sub-continent were not worth the price in blood and freedom. The reasons for British involvement are also morally dubious at best - few people in modern time consider the protection of trade to be a legitiamte reason for war and conquest.
However, based on the morality of the time (even excluding such self serving ideas as bringing 'civilisation') the British Raj was far more morally sustainable. It certainly provided a measure of stability and law to an area that was notably missing in both prior to their arrival. Whilst massacre and atrocity certainly occured neither could be considered as official policy, unlike in many of the states prior to British conquest. The only case I know of where massacre was a deliberate policy used to terrorise a population was in response to the Sepoy Mutiny, which was in response to atrocity and massacre. IF you consider British authority to be legitimate and IF you consider the restoration of law and order to be a priority then the British actions in that case are defensible.
The contemporary moral case for empire gradually eroded throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries and led to the British leaving India semi-voluntarily, which is to their credit, along with a gradual shift in British attitudes to opposition to their rule, over that time period.
As far as the Bengali Famine of 1942, the only one I have done significant reading on, it was not caused by deliberate policy, but rather through poor governence and incompetence as well as a deeply callous attitude to the lives of Indians. The famine was a direct result of poor harvests in Bengal and was compounded by the loss of Burma, which was the region the British usually turned to for reliable food surpluses to alleviate Indian famines (something they usually did do). Whilst the British Empire did have significant food surpluses that could be moved to Bengal to mitigate the famine (and which did indeed eventually occur) the administrators made the descision that the war effort was more important than the lives of the people of Bengal. This brutal descision is to the enternal shame of the empire, but it was not a deliberate attempt to inflict a famine (contrast with Hunger Plan Ost) and needs to be understood in this light. I would, however, say that it does illigitamise British rule - if you occuply a place for the (supposed) benefit of the inhabitants then allow them to starve enmass you have clearly failed to meet your own stated requirements.
You obviously don't know much about early Mao then, because you've just cited later periods of his life. Also English is my first language so I think you need to stop coming to so many assumptions. To quote early Mao "No investigation no right to speak". The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution are later Mao when he got intoxicated with power after winning all of China.
it was caused by deliberate policy to the same extent Stalin's famines were, which was my point.
The problem is, and this is actually shown by the quote up there, they didn't even protect trade: They deliberately inflicted a set of unequal tariffs and then used military force to prevent the indians from retaliating.
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