The British Empire

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by Tolls
....We provided schooling in India to train the locals up to be civil servants...there was schooling in Africa as well, but it was always cut short. I mean, we were there for decades, and yet failed to build anything.

Well, the idea (as daft as it sounds now) was to train up civil servants in India and then send them to Africa!

I believe a certain Mohandas K Ghandi was involved as a participant, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. A lot of Indians were kicked out of Uganda during the Amin years.

[Tolls]

Cruddy:
Nigeria may have kept its borders, but not without bloodshed...Biafra.

I know about the Indian civil servants, but that just emphasises the problem. Put simply, racism played a massive part in it all. That whole area of southern africa was populated by some rather unpleasant people on our part, best summed up by Smith taking over in Rhodesia. There was no reason not to train up and use locals, but we didn't...

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Tolls
Cruddy:
Nigeria may have kept its borders, but not without bloodshed...Biafra.

I know about the Indian civil servants, but that just emphasises the problem. Put simply, racism played a massive part in it all. That whole area of southern africa was populated by some rather unpleasant people on our part, best summed up by Smith taking over in Rhodesia. There was no reason not to train up and use locals, but we didn't...

Was this racism or simply cultural incompatability?

[Tolls]

Oh...racism. You just need to read up on the activities of colonial administrators to see their attitude to the locals in africa. They were simply disregarded.

[PLATO]

That just seems strange to me. Being from the US South racism has always been a topic you hear a lot about. I was under the impression that the reason that UK didn't support the South in the US Civil War was due to the fact that the South maintained slaves. This led me to believe that racism was not a major problem among UK government. I can see that the African culture being so drastically different would cause problems for a colonizing power, but to learn that underdevelopment was based mainly on race is very disappointing. One can only imagine Africa now if this had not been the case.

[MikeH]

We didn't stop using slaves much before you. We were a big part of the slave transport triangle.

[Boris Godunov]

So, Serb denies that without British/American help, Russia would have been crushed by the Germans in WWI, but then says that the reason Germany was able to actually defeat Russia in WWI and seize so much land was due to an internal revolution in Russia which had been underway for 12 years?

And this makes sense how?

[MikeH]

The day people who post here have to start making sense is the day I leave!

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by PLATO1003
That just seems strange to me. Being from the US South racism has always been a topic you hear a lot about. I was under the impression that the reason that UK didn't support the South in the US Civil War was due to the fact that the South maintained slaves. This led me to believe that racism was not a major problem among UK government. I can see that the African culture being so drastically different would cause problems for a colonizing power, but to learn that underdevelopment was based mainly on race is very disappointing. One can only imagine Africa now if this had not been the case.

First, racism and slavery aren't the same thing. It's easy to make a definite look at slavery as an institution and say "Yep, that's wrong." Racism is a more slippery thing, as what is considered racist today wasn't back then.

Second, many among the British elite, especially the industrialists who wanted Southern goods, were eager to have the UK help the Confederacy. It was the opinion of the masses, however, that kept the British out, ultimately. Again, this was due to the obviousness of Southern racist institutions and the lingering memory among the British of indentured servitude.

In Africa and India, they "got away" with institutionalized racism because it was simply far less obvious to those in mainland Britain what was going on, and there was the continual notion that colonialism was for the good of such "savages."

[GePap]

I think the Brits though of supporting the South in the Civil War because, 1. It was Britiains main source of cotton at the time, 2. Southerners and the land-owners in parliment understood each other better, and 3., Breaking up the US would have been A OK. BUt the fact is that slave ownership was always a huge black mark against the South in British public opinion.And once Egyptian cotton came into the pipeline, the economic reasons were secondary.

As for Colonialism: at most, what it did was increase the speed by which modernity reached sub-saharan africa and India, plus the little outposts in Asia. But the same can be said of all European colonies. I don;t see how the Brtis did better in Africa than say the French or the Germans (Tanzania did fine being German, Cameroon, Senegal, so forth and so on), but certainly they did better than the Belgians and Portugese. But there is a difference between colonies which are just a small bunch of overlords sitting on top of a local system they manipulated and colonies in the old Roman sense, of shipping your own citizens there in large numbers. The big success stories of the British empire are the latter part colonies, not the former ones.

As for the WW2 notion. US help was critical, but the Soviets would have fought on otherwise (was the share of British output vs US aid any different by the end of the war?) and Serb is correct in pointing out that from june 1941 to at least late 1944 the Soviets were the ones actually fighting 70-80% of the Wehrmacht. It is imposible and rather foolish to try to belittle the soviet contribution.

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

First, racism and slavery aren't the same thing. It's easy to make a definite look at slavery as an institution and say "Yep, that's wrong." Racism is a more slippery thing, as what is considered racist today wasn't back then.

Yep. Slavery was abolished ON THE UK MAINLAND a long time before the ACW. HOWEVER, it flourished outside the UK because it was big business.

The backlash of this anti-slavery attitude was, strangely, more racism. "We don't keep slaves but we're damned if the savages are our equals".

Mind you, to much of the ruling class anyone with an income of less than £50 a year (that's 19 century pounds) was a savage and a non-human. Non-whites of course were below this level, "because they are non-white savages".

Racism wasn't questioned back then. It was seen as the truth, pure and evident. Today we have questions, debate, even on-line forums like Apolyton. Back then they had whips and guns to win the arguments.

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by GePap
I think the Brits though of supporting the South in the Civil War because, 1. It was Britiains main source of cotton at the time, 2. Southerners and the land-owners in parliment understood each other better, and 3., Breaking up the US would have been A OK. BUt the fact is that slave ownership was always a huge black mark against the South in British public opinion.And once Egyptian cotton came into the pipeline, the economic reasons were secondary.

Intercepting UK packet mail ship on the high seas didn't exactly go down too well either

[Japher]

Imperialism? Right/Wrong?

Clearly their is resentment towards Imperialistic ways due to cultural, spiritual, and political suppression... So, if the ends justify the means, than yes, perhaps it was wrong.

However, Imperial conquerers viewed themselves as those who gave to the "savages". "Enlightened" them of the more technological advanced (at least on an industrial level) ways of their worlds. They brought with them new sciences, technologies, medicines, and the like... So, in a way, no, it was right. For while the quality of cultural life may had taken a fall, the quantity of and within life increased.

Yet, to those who were conquered, they would rather have lived their peaceful lives as it was instead of the way it was brought on to them... Therefore, in order to judge right and wrong, I would have to say it was wrong mainly based on the ends justifing the means, and partially on the fact that the only real reason Britian was Imperialistic was to increase their power and attempted world domination.

Seems to me, that almost every place the Brits have touched with their Imperialistic rod became corrupt, or had huge problems because of which.

I also can see how one would say it just was, but in that light we will never learn from such actions. Actions which I fear my own country may be taking. I do not wish for the US to flex their muscle for Imperialistic ways. Yet, I want them to eliminate threats to American ways of life and to our national security. I don't think the Brits were threatened by most of the places they invaded. Same with Napolean, Hitler, the Huns, etc...

[Sprayber]

I think it's highly rude to talk about the US when the question concerned the British Empire. Serb owes everyone here an apology and three months of not mentioning Mother Russia.

[Boris Godunov]

At least we didn't threadjack it with a discussion of the horrendous things perpetrated by the imperialism of Russia.