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> Railways were a powerful institution of British colonialism that facilitated the economic exploitation of colonies and a smooth control over its people. A lo
by vinni2 6y ago
> Railways were a powerful institution of British colonialism that facilitated the economic exploitation of colonies and a smooth control over its people.
A lot of people praise British for developing India. They don’t realize that everything they did was to maximize their imperial control and economic gain.
- sn41 6y agoI recommend Shashi Tharoor's "An Era of Darkness". The reason why the railways became so developed during the British Era is because the Crown promised up to 10 percent returns in many cases. So it was a speculative boom, with the cost underwritten by the miserably poor citizens of British India. The mathematician Andrew Odlyzko has a lot of material on the railways boom, which occurred in England and in India during the 1840-1860s. Many of the rail lines were also quite absurd. The first rail line in Kerala for example. Even 170 years later, there are no major population centres around. Why was this route chosen? To transport teak most economically. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nilambur%E2%80%93Shoranur_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nilambur%E2%80%93Shoranur_line https://www.google.co.in/maps/dir/Nilambur,+Kerala/Shoranur,+Kerala/@11.0271926,75.9681033,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x3ba63b7644696f47:0x855ba2b7d1add177!2m2!1d76.2385793!2d11.2855356!1m5!1m1!1s0x3ba7c35467b938e5:0xaca6399c23caae7e!2m2!1d76.276381!2d10.7677457!3e0 https://www.google.co.in/maps/dir/Nilambur,+Kerala/Shoranur,...
- contingencies 6y agoLovely area of Kerala though, and they produce the best chocolate I think I have ever had!
- sn41 6y agoI also have a lot of connections there, but it's just a very questionable choice. If they really cared about serving a large population, they would have connected Calicut to Palakkad (both of which were part of British Malabar).
- twic 6y agoIs that absurd? The first railway in the UK was built to transport coal most economically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_and_Darlington_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_and_Darlington_Railwa... The need to move masses of freight predates the need to move masses of commuters.
- sn41 6y agoIt's not absurd, but there is a lot of hypocrisy surrounding the British Raj especially with regards to how concerned they were with the welfare of the Indian subjects. There were a lot of good British administrators who were benevolent, and fond of India. And the legal system is a boon. But there were large patches of plain greed couched in philanthropic terms. A favorite quote of mine is George Orwell quoting E. M. Forster "Again, he [Gandhi] seems to have been quite free from that maniacal suspiciousness which, as E. M. Forster rightly says in A Passage to India, is the besetting Indian vice, as hypocrisy is the British vice." [1] [1] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/reflections-on-gandhi/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
- twic 6y agoIndeed. I certainly don't mean to defend the British empire. The way i would frame this, though, is that the difference between the UK and India is only in how much the railway-builders and so on could get away with. They would have done the same to British people if they had had the chance.
- sn41 6y agoCouldn't agree more. There's nothing special about this country versus that country when it comes to inhuman behavior. I somehow am very disappointed at humanity. People who argue for peace, forgiveness and solidarity are often victimised - vide Socrates, Jesus, Gandhi and so on - and venomous populists are venerated as heroes.
- vixen99 6y ago'Don't realize'? Which of the huge number of colonizers in the history of humanity ever set about colonization with the intent of minimizing control and minimizing economic gain?
- thrweo234324 6y agoTell that to the academics whose full time job is to whitewash India's colonizers (Hoover institution comes to mind).
- noneeeed 6y agoI've been reading William DAlhrymple's "The Anarchy", which is a history of the East India Company and how it was pretty much responsible for the initial colonization of India. The simple fact that the colonization started with a commercial organization progressing from trade to flat-out military takeover really should put the lie to claims that the imperial project was somehow done to spread "civilisation". Unfortunately, far too many of my compatriots have a ridiculously rose tinted view of the imperial project. From what I've encountered, it's something shared across most of the old imperial european countries, a view of their imperial periods as some kind of "greatness", rather than just greed and violence. Fun fact: Along with all the wealth the pirates of the EIC bought back with the from India they alo bought the word "loot" which originates in Hindi apprantly.
- jariel 6y agoI don't think the nuance is lost on anyone. From an economic perspective, it's not zero sum game. Canada and the US are colonies as well remember.
- mellosouls 6y agoJust as Britain was colonised historically. And the imperial power of the US since at least WW2 also demonstrates it's a human condition which continues through history.
- jariel 6y agoThe US is not an Imperial power. After reluctantly being drawn into WW2, the US overran opposing forces, and then, unlike any other nation in history, actually invested to help rebuild those entities to be the most free and prosperous places on planet earth. Democratic, liberal institutions, high standards of living. General MacArthur literally gave women in Japan the right to vote (or rather, facilitated it) and restored a better democracy in Japan than had ever existed. This is not the action of an Imperial power. The USSR was an Imperial Power, the US is a Superpower. The USSR's relationship with Belarus, Latvia, Poland etc. are examples of real Imperial power one that happened to be based on a supposed ideology more than anything else. The US's relationship with Japan, South Korea and Germany for example, is obviously not Imperialist. The US keeps the high seas open, the Suez/Panama Canal open for everyone, even military adversaries, let alone economic competitors. An Imperial power would control those assets and extract wealth out of them directly. Now - to be fair, this is somewhat self-serving, as the US benefits quite a lot from stability and trade. They make a lot more money selling iPhones and coffee from Starbuck's. Even the UK Empire was only borderline Imperial. They were big on trade, the colonies enjoyed quite a bit of autonomy. It rose on the basis of the Industrial Revolution - which was fundamentally driven by an underlying economic system, not a political one. True Imperialism would be for example the Roman Empire. It's obviously not all roses, I wouldn't imply that, but the US is not a good example Imperialism.
- jcranmer 6y ago> The US is not an Imperial power. What about (checks notes), Hawaii, Samoa, Marianas Islands, Puerto Rico, Panama, Cuba, the Virgin Islands, the Philippines, and all the Native Americans we deprived of their land? The US is far from the worst imperial offender, and our period of "let's take your land and screw your sovereignty to it" was for a comparatively short amount of time (unless you were Native American). But we are still just as guilty of those crimes as others are.
- RobertoG 6y agoFor people interested in the subject, I recommend "Empire of cotton" by Sven Beckert. One thing that I learnt was how actively the British undermine the local industries on their colonies. They wanted the colonies to be only raw material exporters. The effects of that policy can be felt even nowadays. Another thing that I had not realized before, but it's obvious in retrospective, is how important was the British manufacturing demand in consolidating slavery in the USA.
- QuesnayJr 6y agoEconomic historians have been fairly critical of Beckert's book. Here's one analysis: https://cpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.uci.edu/dist/8/3876/files/2019/10/Cotton-slavery-and-the-new-history-of-capitalism.pdf https://cpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.uci.edu/dist/8/3876/file... I have heard the claim that Britain destroyed the local Indian textile industry, so it would be interesting to know a different source for it. (The review doesn't touch on that specific claim.)
- RobertoG 6y ago>>"I have heard the claim that Britain destroyed the local Indian textile industry, [..]" If I remember correctly, not only Indian, but also, for instance, Egyptian. I have not sources at hand unfortunately.
- aceflux 6y agoSomething I learned after reading a primer on the American Civil war: Britain had no issues with the South's stronghold on slavery, as long as the cotton and sugar kept flowing.
- DylanSp 6y agoDepends what slice of Britain you're talking about. The upper classes weren't opposed, as you say, but public opinion tended to pretty strongly anti-slavery. Lincoln actively encouraged this; see his public letter to the Manchester workers quoted on Wikipedia. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_and_the_American_Civil_War#Possibility_of_recognizing_Confederacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_and_the_America...
- s_dev 6y ago>A lot of people praise British for developing India. A lot of British people praise Britain for developing India. Indians themselves and other ex-colonies (much of the world that was Victorian pink) aren't so convinced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4 British railways were basically Roman roads. They served to move the army -- the fact the citzens could use them for trade was a massive incidental benefit.