Rei Murasame wrote:The way that your argument goes though, it seems that you are not really saying that colonialism was bad in all instances. You are saying that it was productive and progressive thing, but that the conjuncture where liberalism could've been pulled under the combine and shredded was unfortunately missed.
My argument is that colonialism helped to bring about development in Europe and put Europe at the center of the global trade system and international finance. The result of this was prosperity for the last four hundred years or so. However this has come at a tremendous price. In the long run no country can profit from colonialism. In the short term there will be economic benefits, no one can deny it but in the greater scheme of things the colonial record will come to haunt the coloniser. It will serve to morally undermine the country in question in a number of ways. Even Japan has to answer for its colonial history in Asia and still gets a very hard time over this.
I know that you would propose something along the lines of the Japanese Empire with corporatism instead of liberal capitalism but this does not solve anything.
At the end of the day you will still have people claiming the right to "punish" Britain. You will still have concepts like 'white male privilege' and others which do not exist outside non-colonial contexts. For example in Ukraine and Poland there is none of this, these countries had no empires. Russia chose the colonial path and it also generated anti-Russian feeling because of this.
Rei Murasame wrote:The British Empire is the perfect example of this, because British Empire could have become a federation bloc of partially socialised economies focussed on local development and infrastructure and education in the various places it controlled, but unfortunately the liberal imperialist faction (their own term for themselves, I am not sticking that label on them) defeated the social imperialist faction at the conjuncture in London when the time came, and so the uninterrupted muddled and 'suicidally' rapacious history of the British Empire after the 1890s is a result of that fateful outcome.
It changes nothing. There would still be nationalist feelings and at the end of the day you would find there would be international resentment towards the UK just as there is today. People do not like being ruled by outsiders if they have the ability to rule themselves. If anything development would only further increase a desire for independence as colonies would feel the self-confidence to rule themselves with their developed economies.
Travesty wrote:Colonialism was great for the West. So Spain should have sat at home 15th Century and Venice should still have the monopoly of trade from the East? America should still be undiscovered? Where is the logical conclusion to "Colonialism is bad" ?
Yes Spain should have stayed where it was and focused on its geographic region like the majority of world states at this time. Instead of creating trans-continental sea empires the countries of Europe should have aimed towards land empires. Also America was already discovered and it was discovered by the Native Americans already living there. There was no need to colonise this country. In many ways Europe would be better off without ever having colonised the Americas. The logical conclusion is that Europe could have developed at a slower pace and traded international power for a maintenance of their own identities.
Travesty wrote:No it was mercantilism. Liberalism came about's towards the end of the Napoleonic wars.
The result is the same.
Rei Murasame wrote:I assume that he's only talking about what happened after that period though. PI is living in Britain, so usually this narrative coming from Britons is about everything that happened after the Battle of Waterloo, so I assume he's picked that up along the way.
Yes, this is my point of view. It is after speaking alot to British nationalists who say ridiculous things like "We need to recolonise Africa for the glory of Britannia!" or "India should be encouraged to rejoin the empire". Such people are living in the 19th century and fail to see that British history exists before the 1600s.
Rei Murasame wrote:I don't think anyone would seriously question whether Britain ought to have invested in exploration and shipbuilding after it had amassed cotton-wealth in the 14th century.
It would have been possible to build ships and trade without going to Africa, America and Asia and colonising those lands or creating the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. These things will for centuries be a moral poisoner in the narrative of British history. On such a basis people can say that the British people have no right to exist.
Travesty wrote:Well there are too many assumptions being made here. Why did Cosmopolitanism and Liberalism in conjunction with Colonialism supposedly lead to the downfall of the West? And by the way colonial Europe WAS NOT cosmopolitan, Indians certainly did not hold the same status in the Raj or in Britain as Anglo Saxons same goes for other natives. America had and arguably has colonies and it's fine. Japan was a colonial power nothing cosmopolitan about it today.. this is a post ww2 European guilt thing.
Because cosmopolitanism and liberalism led to social changes which are today rapidly destroying European society. For example, the materialism, individualism, trash culture and other elements of the contemporary West are the result of this, financed by empire. Both of these things led to a lack of cohesion.
The British Empire was cosmopolitan because while Indians may not have had the same status as the English the notion in propaganda was that it was an empire of many peoples not confined to one geographic area. It was the idea that everyone was one large happy family under the British flag.
The case of Japan is not a useful comparison because Japan colonised only Asian countries. Spain, Britain and France did not colonise other parts of Europe but instead went Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Americas. Also the Japanese colonial project was limited compared to that of the European ones.
Fasces wrote:I agree entirely. The disastrous results of colonialisation can be seen most acutely in those societies which attempted to blur the gap between colony and nation - France and Algeria, or Britain and the Raj. These social groups [migrants from aforementioned colonial territories] formed the spearhead of the multiculturalist movement in Europe which threatens European identity. It also encouraged a modern consumer society by removing the connection between man and soil, and promoting an attitude of "there is always more land", undermining attitudes toward ecological stewardship.
And you will also not find any of this in African or Asian countries either.
Social_Critic wrote:Colonialism worked for the Dutch, I think. It worked really well for the Roman Empire. And I think it worked ok for the USA.
Both the Dutch Empire and the Roman Empire are gone, the American Empire is collapsing.