What other kinds do you have?
Not that it makes it any better, but isn't that what all empires are built on? A more ethical empire wouldn't be an empire at all. It'd be something more akin to the USA, the EU, or on a smaller scale the UK itself.
And yes they're totally second class. That's why they have their own parliaments whereas England doesn't.
Yes, the fact they have their own parliaments, while "England does not", does indeed demonstrate that they are second class. Because the reason England "doesn't have a parliament" is that when Scotland "joined", the English parliament was simply renamed into "The Parliament of Great Britain", without changing anything else. They even kept the same MPs - didn't even hold an election! It was all for show, a minimal mask of fairness for dissolving the Scottish parliament. It resulted in riots and martial law.
This, by the way, was the closest England ever came to "consensually" adding a member. Wales at this point in time was a straight-up English territory. It didn't even get a parliament until 1999, at the same time Scotland was allowed to reform theirs. And would you like to talk about Northern Ireland?
Why did so many countries want to join the commonwealth?
Unfortunately the woke oppression crusaders really need to admit Britain and the US might be slightly oppressive but it’s nothing compared to almost any other country or empire on earth.
I’m from the Soviet empire. Trust me. From my family’s stories they’d much rather have been in the British empire than where they were. I’m pretty sure a lot of Rwandans and Haitians would agree too. The British were relatively good to their empire.
This was my entire point in the initial post, it's both hilarious and a bit sad how people are so unaware what the british empire did in India.
That’s my point. And that’s my family’s experience.
There are grades of evil.
Let's turn it around. "I'm fed up of all the Soviet bashing. It was heaven compared to the Congo under King Leopold." See? Not a nice reply is it?
I've also noticed that there's always an (annoying) triumphal 'gotcha' when they link to some short-form essay mentioning basic facts, denied by nobody, of the famines and loss of relative share of GDP suffered by India etc.
Again, _everyone knows this_. It comes across as naive and arrogant to assume otherwise.
The effect British rule had in India (and everywhere) was extremely nuanced, and there is a huge amount of interesting history to be debated. After all, we're talking about a subcontinent over a 350 year time period.
The British, for instance, banned the practices of Sati (burning widows alive) and of infanticide, and explicitly allowed Indians to compete on equal terms with the British in examinations to enter the Indian Civil Service.
There's very little consensus amongst historians whether or not they were responsible for the famines India suffered at the time, or if they even made any net money from India whatsoever, given their constant fear of raising taxes.
I'm not necessarily trying to take a position either way, by the way, just begging people who are nodding along to some of these bumper-sticker anti-colonialism comments to read more deeply into what is an unimaginably huge subject.
As to the famines: cyclical famines were common in India: https://www.orissapost.com/this-is-why-indian-kings-used-to-.... The British didn’t cause famine in India, though it’s fair to say they mismanaged the response.
Also, please don't use multiple accounts to do this and especially not in the same threads.
There's something I'd like to clarify. I came back to this thread to find that my own comment was flagged, and I'd also collected a surprising number of downvotes in a short span of time (unless flagging resets vote count - I'm not sure). Is the flag from you, as a slap on the wrist for fueling the fire? I didn't think flags were used that way, but once again I'm not sure. If it's not from you, then I suspect some brigading may have occurred. (It's possible someone else felt my comment warranted admin attention, but 1) the timing is odd and 2) you've clearly already seen this thread).
Sorry as well for the meta - I'd have made this a PM, but, well...
Yes, I flagged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34596819 and downvoted the comment but there were flags and downvotes from other users as well.
I'm not arguing against your view on the topic (nor the GP's, for that matter) but you definitely fed the flames in this thread, and not just in one place. I flagged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34596819 because it seemed the most egregious.
> A more ethical empire wouldn't be an empire at all. It'd be something more akin to the USA
Are you suggesting that the US behaves ethically? Snowden, Assange, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, BLM, Guantanamo, ...
Or the way the native population was treated. (theft and oppression)
It's the policy of the Tory party to reduce immigration, has been for years, and is popular policy that wins them votes. The Tories don't actually do it and among the politicians you're right: there is no serious rejection, for the reasons you've outlined.
But among the population, you seem to have an opinion based on TV, Twitter, urban areas, or maybe the youth. But to most of the country multiculturalism and mass immigration is controversial at best, and often very unpopular. In fact you can (and I do) often find critics of mass immigration among immigrants themselves, and their descendants.
Always nice to see proof it's not just white people who can be supremacists.
But to be fair, you are right in a way, I personally believe the UK is the most welcoming non racist nation on earth. I'm saying that as someone who's experienced it firsthand.
That being said, where would India be if the British Empire had never happened? Probably still doing subsistence agriculture. No slight to India, but industrial civilization is an aberrational step forward and there’s no reason to think it would arise at the same time in isolated cultures spontaneously.
The British themselves are the product of being colonized as much as the Indians. They were colonized by Rome, they were colonized by the Normans, etc. They assimilated and grew better from those influences.
Respectfully, Are other countries whom UK did not colonise still doing subsistence agriculture?
When Europe was having Industrial revolution, India was ruled by people who were busy subjugating the natives.
I don't want to gloat about an alternative timeline, But colonialism is a huge negative for India.
I Was born in India, and my grandfather lived through this oppression, and told me about the things the brits did; it's kind of ironic and funny how not a lot of people talk about it.