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Would pro-colonialists support this?

Porpoise of Life said:
Is that you, L. Ron?
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No, tis I John in disguise... shhh.

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MikeG said:
What does this mean? OK, it doesn't mean anything. Let me re-phrase: what did you try to say?

"Originally Posted by Jerrymander View Post
Okay, so there's a sentiment among certain people that European imperialism was ultimately good become before Europe, the native people were "savages" or "primitive".........."

If we assume that "become" is an error, and it should read "because", then it makes sense. That's my explanation.
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Jerrymander said:
I explained in my post. You know what I'm talking about. Do you have a point?
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The way I read your post, it's essentially a straw man, setting up a predetermined "gotcha" with no opportunity for defense or discussion from whomever it's directed against. Without any actual pro-colonialists present to talk about their ideas, what's the point of the OP?
 
Those closest things I seen to "pro-colonialist" that seem to have any modern influence would have been Kipling and Hopkirk.

Kipling seemed to think that Indian culture should impact British culture as much as British culture impacted Indian. He seemed to like the idea of blending the cultures.

Peter Hopkirk seemed to operate under the idea that India and much of the rest of Asia was going to get colonized or subjugated on way or the other. If not by Britain, then by Russia or someone else. He clearly felt it was better to be colonized by Great Britain than by Russia.

Kipling has been dead for quite some time, Hopkirk died only more recently but mostly only wrote of events that occurred a century before his time. Both of them remain fairly popular, though. Jules Verne in "Mysterious Island" came across as overtly pro-colonialist (in the end, when Captain Nemo admits to participating in the 1857 war), but that was never a primary focus of any of his writing.

I can't think of any contemporary writers who still support open colonization, unless one includes the efforts of the current great powers in the middle east and Afghanistan as colonization. Are we assuming that the U.S. has colonized Afghanistan and Iraq, and that Russia may be colonizing Syria? Is Israel a European colony, or a protectorate, much the way Nepal once was?
 
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Foolmewunz said:
Ooh! Oooh! Pick me! Pick me!


We have a couple of members who might actually argue White Man's Burden with you (a Mr. McPhee and a Mr. Tank come to mind), but it's largely a straw man. We've learned enough about the cultures that we bulldozed into oblivion to not believe that patent lie. This is not to say that all missionary groups were in support of conquest and exploitation. There are still missionary groups active today. As an atheist I kinda wish there weren't but that's based on my personal beliefs. None of them, to my knowledge, are the least involved in British East India Company type exploitation. They are peddling their religious posies.
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I agree that Britain could not have held on to India, or even Egypt, but there are people who think there was more equitable administration in countries like Ceylon and Zimbabwe at the time of the British Empire. Part of the trouble in my opinion was American orders to give British countries self-determination and in a way the Second World War finished off the British Empire. America still controls Puerto Rico, and Latin America, and Trump thinks Iraqi oil belongs to him. There is a unified Europe with Germany on top.

There is a bit about all this in a book published in 1947 by Lieutenant- General Sir Giffard Martel:

" The word "empire" is unfashionable these days. In fact imperial aims are often considered to savour of non -democratic and dictatorial ways. people prefer to use words such as Federation or Commonwealth. Such ideas show a strange lack of historical knowledge........

The idea is of course a very old one. In fact three great empires already exist. starting in the West we have the American Empire...

Yet our empire has done great good in the world. That great warrior Field- Marshal Smuts once said that the British Empire was the greatest institution for good that the world has ever known. He was undoubtedly right.
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I don't know if many people would agree with him after reading of Boer farms being destroyed and concentration camps and photos of Boer children starving to death by Kitchener in the Boer war. I'm a bit upset because the Polish waitress at my local café is going back to Warsaw, but I suppose the European Empire will continue after Brexit.
 
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Again, it seems like this is largely a slapfight you're having in your head, against people you've never actually talked to about their ideas, and the purpose of the thread is to invite other members here to take your side in this slapfight.

And somehow we're in the wrong for not already inhabiting the same headspace as you.
 
Foolmewunz said:
Prager (let's leave off the U because they ain't) is just a conservative site with a bunch of clickers working for them (their student body as they used to refer to them) to forward their nonsense.

As I said, we don't have a lot of people here willing to take the WMB side of the argument, I fear. Neither does Prager. Their job is to promote a conservative agenda. Notice the broad swaths of history they leave out? The British behavior in India was largely reprehensible and is largely indefensible. The crown and parliament of the time just let the EIC run amok as long as they delivered revenues to the country. Hell, I don't know a thinking person in England today that would allow a commercial entity to field its own police force and army.

Professor Whatisname III also does not try to justify the bad. He's just twisting a little history to only acknowledge the good.
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Yeah I write books set in British India during the HEIC period. I've read hundreds of books from that era, their newspapers and letters. No way to defend it other than to say that some of their influences were later useful to the locals, and they, the British, got a lot of useful influences from the natives. That appears to have been the affect of colonialism since ancient days. The cultures involved get altered. Sometimes one culture is absorbed something the two hybridise each other - for better or worse.
 
Crossbow said:
So what just what is it that you are wondering about?

Is it "pro-colonialists"?

Or is it "modern apologists for imperialism"?

Or something else?
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Is there a difference? I already stated what I meant with the "pro-colonialist" label. Should I have used a different label instead.
 
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Jerrymander said:
Is there a difference? I already stated what I meant with the "pro-colonialist" label. Should I have used a different label instead.
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I do not know if there is difference between a "pro-colonialists" or a "modern apologists for imperialism". That is why I asked you for clarification on the issue.

In any case, since you claim to know what these terms mean, then I suggest that you ask some "pro-colonialists" and/or "modern apologists for imperialism" your question.
 
lobosrul5 said:
Or man-animals?
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Or kz'zeerkti?

To the OP: Some pro-colonialists probably wouldn't support an alien occupation - they're usually Chauvinists and belong to the upper classes - but the people at the bottom of society who are sick and tired of being treated like **** by their so-called own kind might ask the new over-lords what exactly they intend to do. Maybe there's something in it for us ...

It all began when tens of thousands of Dalits, who rank at the bottom of India's ancient Hindu caste hierarchy, gathered in the village of Bhima Koregaon, 170 kilometers (105 miles) outside of Mumbai, on New Year's day to celebrate the 200th anniversary of a battle in which British colonial forces staffed with local Dalit fighters defeated a numerically superior army belonging to upper caste rulers of the region.
In the years since, many Dalits have come to regard the battle as an important historical moment when their community stood up against oppressive higher caste Hindus.
Caste violence erupts in India over 200-year-old faultline (CNN, Jan. 5, 2018)
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And a lot of the old pro-colonialists would probably just switch allegiance, much like many anti-Trump Republicans when they found out that the new guy at the White House wasn't the one that they had bargained with and supported.
 
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MikeG said:
What does this mean? OK, it doesn't mean anything. Let me re-phrase: what did you try to say?

As to the red, bold.......this includes people who were the subject of colonialism. In Africa and India there are plenty of people who wish for the return of the British as rulers. It is trivially easy to find locals who see empire as a good thing, and with the corruption and poor governance of large parts of the world, they have a point. Of course, this is also true of people in former Soviet states, and people who wanted Saddam Hussein or Colonel Ghaddafi back in power.
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Perhaps the introduction of the Principles of Peelian Policing in the 19th Century would have helped in that land between Canada and Mexico
 
I remember years ago somebody saying that the reason the French disbanded their empire was because there was a law at the time that the inhabitants of the French colonies were French citizens. He seemed to think that when the European Political Union was founded that this would be impracticable and a decision was taken behind closed doors to prevent any invasion of African people into Europe.

People in Algeria now want visas to settle in France. I notice Israel is now trying to force many African illegal immigrants to leave, many from Eritrea. The same kind of thinking could have applied to the British Empire. Internet fraud has flourished in Nigeria and India since independence
 
Henri McPhee said:
---Snip---
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This from the person who has consistently failed to demonstrate any knowledge of history? Time after time you make bold claims full of errors and then proceed to neither provide any relevant evidence nor acknowledge your mistakes.

If many of the former colonial nations have floundered in the years since the British left that is in no small part because there was no clear strategy for leaving and no solid grounding in democracy to prevent the rise of the Kleptocrats. The British withdrawal from Africa has a lot in common with Post-Tito Yugoslavia in that the British simply suppressed rivalries and/or united groups with little in common but their hatred of British rule. Not vastly surprising those nations, often with artificially drawn borders that ignored the wishes of the native peoples, struggled once the crushing weight of British control was removed.
 
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Garrison said:
This from the person who has consistently failed to demonstrate any knowledge of history? Time after time you make bold claims full of errors and then proceed to neither provide any relevant evidence nor acknowledge your mistakes.

If many of the former colonial nations have floundered in the years since the British left that is in no small part because there was no clear strategy for leaving and no solid grounding in democracy to prevent the rise of the Kleptocrats. The British withdrawal from Africa has a lot in common with Post-Tito Yugoslavia in that the British simply suppressed rivalries and/or united groups with little in common but their hatred of British rule. Not vastly surprising those nations, often with artificially drawn borders that ignored the wishes of the native peoples, struggled once the crushing weight of British control was removed.
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Or that many of the independent movements were sponsored by the eastern bloc. To take Zimbabwe as as example, the only plausible successors to white Rhodesian rule were Joshua Nkomo (backed by the USSR ) and Mugabe (backed by communist China). Not the best recipe for a fledgling democracy.
 
Henri McPhee said:
I remember years ago somebody saying that the reason the French disbanded their empire was because there was a law at the time that the inhabitants of the French colonies were French citizens. He seemed to think that when the European Political Union was founded that this would be impracticable and a decision was taken behind closed doors to prevent any invasion of African people into Europe.
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That is utter BS.

At the time of founding of the EEC, 1957, only Algeria was an integral part of France and its inhabitants full French citizens. Bit of trivia: therefore, between 1957-1962 the EEC had its most landmass in Africa. Inhabitants of other colonies didn't have this. And in 1957, the Algerian Independence War was already in full swing, and Indochina had already been lost at Diem Bien Phu.

That is all long before the EEC/EC/EU instituted freedom of movement for its citizens.
 
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