Sometimes this is good advice. For some rather vivid counterexamples, read up on Genghis Khan.

Computer security is of course a whole different thing.

The wrath of the Khans was amazing.

Seemed like your odds of dying were pretty high either way. Give him all your stuff and starve. Or say no and get beheaded..

And let's not forget that 1 in 200 people around the world are his direct descendants

nice one!

How do you know that?

Its quoted in Wrath of the Kahns, not sure the original source.

"Give him all your stuff and starve. Or say no and get beheaded.."

I'm not sure about the starving part, would you have any references? If a city surrendered he did not sack it. If it did not - yeah, bad.

Yes, pros and cons, its quite possible that by paying one then has enough breathing space to set up better defences.

I guess Kipling's knowledge of this had a practical basis, since he was one of the chief apologists for the systematic extortion the British Empire used to enrich itself.

(Note - I am from one of the countries invaded and occupied by Britain)

I must come to Britain's defence here - it's behaviour was normal in those times but it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars. That was pretty amazing.

By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable, but a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits - rule of law, economic infrastructure, transport networks etc. Being invaded (not just plundered) by major cultures has generally had good benefits - in the long term - for the invaded nation as they get a lot of the characteristics of the stronger nation.

Again, keep in mind that this is not the modern way of looking at things, which is why we have the United Nations and other international organizations.

See also: The life of Brian, 'What have the Romans ever done for us'.

As for Britain giving up its ownership: To this date formally England lays claim to a whole bunch of places that they have colonized and in some cases it has gone to war to keep that situation as it is.

That the UK gave up India is a pretty complex affair but you can bet that the 'let's fight' option was only taken off the table when someone did some basic math.

Whether or not the invaded countries got 'enormous benefits' is immaterial, we do not live in the alternate universe where India was not a British colony, in which universe India may have been better off or it may have been worse, we simply can not know.

All we do know is that in this universe we (nowadays) take a dim view of such colonization, including those colonizations in our collective past. That some countries were 'not as bad' as others and that they left the places they invaded (and usually plundered) in some ways in better shape is imo immaterial to that.

I seriously doubt that the "let's fight" option was anywhere near the table when India gained independence. The records will all be public by now.

> As for Britain giving up its ownership: To this date formally England lays claim to a whole bunch of places that they have colonized and in some cases it has gone to war to keep that situation as it is.

Examples in post Suez history include?

He's probably talking about Malvinas (Falklands) among other places.

If the Falklands had actually had any native inhabitants at the time it was "colonised", and the UK's military involvement hadn't been at the behest of the Falklands' contemporary native inhabitants to repel an invading foreign military dictatorship, they might have had more of a point...

"Other places" do not exist unless you name them. Even the Chagos Islands, the UK's most questionable overseas possession, have only been fought over in the courts.

The Falklands are not a colonial story (unless you count the Argentinian desire to conquer them against the wishes of their citizens).

Any actual places?

Gibraltar

I had no idea the UK had fought a war to stop the people of Gibraltar obtaining independence and self determination. Can you point me towards some references on the subject?

Who overwhelmingly don't want to become Spanish.

But the grandparent was talking about systematic extortion. Which is a specific allegation that i understand to mean bleeding the colony dry under threat of force. The parent states that this specific allegation is not true and that many countries were better off than before or counterfactual without colony rule.

Colonialism typically siphons profits generated by capital from the colony to the colonial masters. This is an economic fact. It's not extortion but it does leech capital from the colony and is systematic.

> I must come to Britain's defence here - it's behaviour was normal in those times

Yes, all of Europe was engaging in the monster known as colonialism.

That doesn't make it any less morally repugnant.

> it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars

It gave up its ownership only after being devastated by two World Wars.

> By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable, but a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits - rule of law, economic infrastructure, transport networks etc.

None of these things couldn't have been achieved without the British. And all these things came with a cost.

This justification has been used for colonialism time and time again. We saw this last year in Ukraine. It doesn't make it right.

would you rather had the British empire or the Belgium or Germans as your colonial masters?

If you're genuinely interested in an answer, then like a sibling said, its "neither". Colonialism wasn't as inevitable as its made out to be, and the countries that were colonized weren't "uncivilized" or "barbaric": things that world history (amazingly) continues to propagate.

e.g. Colonialism in India was an incredible amount of good luck and some wily statesmanship, and not due to lack of technological progress. Once the country was colonized, the British had an ulterior interest in preventing industrial development and the concomitant economic progress.

True and India is a good example of why relying on foreign mercenary's to fight your wars has its downside.

Nobody should be anyone's colonial master, and other empires being 'worse' doesn't make colonialism better.

> a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits

Those "benefits" stopped innovation and progress of their own cultures. And it led to the present day of conflict between traditionalists and progressives, slowing harmonious progress indefinitely. The traditionalists would have eventually progressed to a more "civil" society in a different way. And then we would have a far richer diversity than today's system.

Indeed, it could have been worse, such as being colonised by the Belgians, who were (by some estimates) more genocidal than the Nazis.

The French were pretty awful too. To this day they're dealing with the consequences of bad decisions made a century ago.

http://www.amazon.com/French-Intifada-Between-France-Arabs/d...

I'm not sure what you are saying here. That by past standards they were not totally horrible, or that becoming colonized was a fair trade due to all of the "benefits"?

As an example, Japan nor China was never colonized, they were totally ass-backwardian to late 19th century and appear at least to foreign eyes quite modern nowadays.

Would those countries have the same benefits without British rule? I think they would.

And as for Britain "giving up" their claims, they simply couldn't afford to keep India after the Indian military rebelled, and without India, they simply had not enough colonies to make profitable quickly after the devastation of WWII.

Nice to someone with a balanced perspective. Usually you talk to an ex-colonist and it's all doom and gloom regarding the Empire.

Was he really? The White Man's Burden isn't that ambiguous. Not now, and not even when it was written.

It was about the Philippine-American war. 2 days after publication in America, it was read in the Senate to argue for the US to end the war.

One of his more famous stories, The Man Who Would Be King is about two white men who manage to convince an Afghani tribe they're gods. It becomes undone, when one tries to marry one of the women, she attacks him drawing blood, and the tribe's priest declares he is "Neither god nor devil but a man!" (at which point one is brutally killed, and the other manages to flee). It could almost be read as an analogy for colonialism - the white men might have had a technological edge, and used shock and awe to take over, but as the natives catch on to what's happening, the risk of backlash and revolution grows.

Kipling wasn't firmly against colonialism, but he was a savvy (sometimes cynical) realist. Most colonials were pretty cynical about it.

"One of his more famous stories..."

Ever see the John Huston film adaption?

Wouldn't this apply the other way around as well? If you become known as a blackmailer who's true to their word, wouldn't your payment rate go up?

(Off-topic)

That story is absurd, considering that a lot of modern diplomacy is essentially deciding how much Dane-geld you should pay to appease America, Russia, or (insert your regional power here), and how much you could expect in return for promising that you will not pay the Dane-geld to the other side.

If you don't play, you end up like North Korea, ever so proud for their fierce independence, cut off from everyone else.

I find this cute tale, from a subject of the British Empire, doubly insulting. If you are powerful and you can extract Dane-geld from others, fine, but stop insinuating that other people pay Dane-geld because they're stupid.

Poems by the man who romanticized the colonization of my grandparents' country are always cool, but the logic doesn't hold up. If you're not as well-armed as the British Empire, and you very much do not have the resources to defeat the Dane, it's nice that the end of the game is oppression and shame, but you're going to lose well before you even get to endgame.

You do realize why the British called it the "dane geld" and not tribute right? Because the Dane used to plounder the English and demand gold to go away, and the English learned to their sorrow what happens when you pay the dane geld.

And I say that as a Dane.

This is told to me by a Danish classmate (while intoxicated at a party).

He asked me: do you know why we say "Skull" when we drink? I said: No I don't.

He Said: Well, back then during the Viking times. The Danes would fight all the way to the kingdom and cut the off the Skulls of the English princes; Dump out their brains and use the skull as cup for drinks. Hence the word "Skull".

I said: Huh? Interesting!

"And then we also took all their good looking women. And that's why all the Danish girls are soo good looking" Add him.

You got love the Danish people!

There is a lot of debate about the origins of the word, and the skull story is a nice (but brutal) party story. Let me give you another version.

Back in the days people were drinking off bowls, instead of cups as we do today. And guess what the danish word for bowl is? "Skål".

A "skål" is a flat version of "trebolle". You can see one if you Google Image search for "trebolle" to get an idea of how it looks.

That is all bullshit. The word is not “Skull”, it is “Skål”, and it is a normal noun, meaning “Bowl”.

The fact that colonialism had some beneficial side-effects does not make it right and does not oblige anybody to be thankful.

That's a false dichotomy if there ever was one. The alternative to being colonized by the British was not to be colonized by Belgium but not to be colonized at all.

It is arguable that India benefitted from being under British rule compared to be in under the rule of mad Moghal emperors though. I'd say gp was not a false dichotomy. Of the options available, British rule was not the worst possible outcome in hindsight.

To my Indian friends, please be wary of ultranationalism and the far right. It never does anyone any good. Just look at us and learn from US' shortcomings.

> was not to be colonized by Belgium but not to be colonized at all.

There was no such alternative if you were a weak, divided nation in the first place. Please look at what happened in other places with a similar situation (even China during a long time). Once the European nations stopped fighting each other they looked for other territories to conquer at the time - and this, by the way, not limited the the recent world history at all. Territorial conquest is something that started that was documented even in Antiquity, although we did not call it colonization then.

Most countries have been colonized many times and there's almost no connection nowadays between the actual "natives" and whoever is currently ruling.

If it were my country, I'd have picked British rule over self-rule. A robust system of laws is nothing to sneeze at.

Look all over the former British Empire, and you'll see robust, healthy democracies peacefully trading with their former rulers. Countries that were never colonized got left out of the huge technological race that modernized the rest of the world after WW2.

The Anglosphere nations are among the most powerful on Earth.

Most of the colonised countries were left out of the technological race too.

Napier is one of my favorite historical figures, but wasn't sati banned based on the requests of (native) Hindu reformers, and Napier merely spoke in favor of the ban when other Hindu priests complained? It seems like a stretch to argue that it was Napier who worked to put an end to sati.

None of the other sensible men like Napier gave such a pithy and powerful quote on the topic.

Ah, yes, pithy and powerful quotes! I should be thankful for colonialism for providing pithy and powerful quotes. Take up the white man's burden of speechwriting.

Seriously, there are much better arguments for the position you're espousing. I can come up with half a dozen without trying. If you're really interested in contributing to discourse, try making them.

The topic was the banning of Sati. It was just one example of the benefits of British rule. That it is such a salutary example is why I mentioned it. You are welcome to keep crying on Twitter that people said things you don't like but I have nothing further to say to you.

It's not even close to salutary. You can't defend your point, that's why you have nothing further to say to me. You are wrong on the facts, and you don't even know how to lose an argument graciously.

What argument is there to be had with someone who will not even admit the elimination of the ritual immolation of widows as a salutary benefit of colonial rule? There's clearly no reason involved in such a stance but simply reflexive chauvinism.

What you say is true to your name. Take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4

What utter nonsense. Do the Romans likewise owe reparations to the Turks, French, Spanish, and English?

If you are talking about India, it wasn't a "country" before the British. It was a mixture of disparate kingdoms and sultanates. Not to mention that before the British, most of India was under Muslim colonizers i.e. the Mughals.

The Indians have always been a conquered people, it is only in the last 70 years that they have had freedom; you should thank the British for it.

The Mughals were not colonizers. The definition of a colony is: "country or area under the full or partial political control of another country". The Mughals were ousted from Central Asia; India was the only country they ruled. So, by definition, they were not colonizers.

India had been ruled by kings who were not originally from India. But, nothing in the history compared to the "loot" of the British (see http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-comp...)

Your comment may be factual, but you could have skipped the "you should be thankful" bit. It's quite a rude thing to say to someone you don't know.

That's not the context the OP used... It was: "you should thank", not "you should be thankful". A very subtle difference, but in this case (to you), it's the difference between offending and not.

I think both wordings are rude, particularly because of the word "you". OP doesn't know anything about his family's history. It's different from making a general argument that talks about the benefit to the whole country.

Yes. I am thankful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre

Define "country". To make your statement above to be true you will need a pretty narrow and tautological definition.

I presume you are not the brightest bulb as far as Indian history is concerned so it will help a bit if you read up a bit on Indian history, even Wikipedia would be a good start.

I really hate to think that some of the btc I donated is now with some criminal.

never deal with terrorists

They are not terrorists though. Their goal isn't to harm their target - their goal is to enrich them selves through ransom.

Bomb their families instead?

If victims need to be consistent. When terrorists are shown that they'll either get a bomb through the roof or nothing, but never payment, then they'll change their business plan.

The goal of most contemporary terrorist is not personal enrichment.

It is hanging out with their buddies.

See http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20about%20Terror#t... and http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20Effective

This strategy has worked so well in Israel/Palestine /s.

That's because the situation between Israel and Palestine is a bit more complex than the proponents of that particular strategy in that particular case would like to have you believe.

Questionable solution but I bet it would help for hackers! Impunity is what fuels this type of criminal behavior.