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Some good points, but the parts about the British Empire are off. I'd strongly recommend "Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress" by Jan Morris for a piece that

Some good points, but the parts about the British Empire are off. I'd strongly recommend "Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress" by Jan Morris for a piece that looks at all the good and bad that the British Empire did under Victoria. To make a long story really short, the British did ridiculous amounts of good in their colonies. For instance, eliminating the Thugee strangling cult: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee#The_practice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee#The_practice They also ended a lot of cannibalism, human sacrifices, completely ended the worldwide slave trade, eliminated piracy, brought rule of law, built infrastructure, brought science and the scientific method, eliminated cults, ended rituals of widows burning themselves on their husband's funeral pyre, eliminated kidnap/rape/murder cycles in many of their possessions, brought sanitation and education, and... just tons of good. Overwhelming amounts of good. The Empire was lost largely out of a sense of guilt and an unwillingness to take the actions that would have preserved it - pretty much any individual uprising could have been crushed if they'd decided to (including the American Revolution - see Ron Chernow's "Washington - A Life" for just how easy it would been for the British to end the whole thing at Boston, New York, or Valley Forge at various times).

scythe 15y ago
>To make a long story really short, the British did ridiculous amounts of good in their colonies. Uh, okay, so... I'm bad at explaining things, because that is the point of what I wrote about the British. The British were successful not by being cutthroat but by being fair. The author characterizes such 'cooperative' strategies as ineffective, and says that they don't tend to succeed: >The essence of how culture uses men depends on a basic social insecurity. This insecurity is in fact social, existential, and biological. Built into the male role is the danger of not being good enough to be accepted and respected and even the danger of not being able to do well enough to create offspring. >The basic social insecurity of manhood is stressful for the men, and it is hardly surprising that so many men crack up or do evil or heroic things or die younger than women. But that insecurity is useful and productive for the culture, the system. >Again, I’m not saying it’s right, or fair, or proper. But it has worked. The cultures that have succeeded have used this formula, and that is one reason that they have succeeded instead of their rivals. The Empire had lots of 'morality' and 'fairness' provisions that the societies it conquered did not. It could be said that this sense of fairness led to the loss of the Empire -- but Britain is arguably better off now than 80 years ago, whereas Mongolia is... not rich.
- ohashi 15y ago
  But may be soon with all those natural resources!
  - bergie 15y ago
    Generally it seems natural resources only stunt the state of a country and benefit very few. Norway appears to be one of the only places with rich natural resources and a working society.
    - ohashi 15y ago
      Australia? USA? Canada? There are many different resources besides simply oil (I am making an assumption that's what is in your mind because of the Norway example). Mongolia doesn't simply have oil (and they rank #92 in the world for oil production - so they don't even have much of it), they have richer mineral deposits.
      - westicle 15y ago
        Those examples don't necessarily refute grandparent's point. See link below regarding "two speed economies" in which resource booms can actually have a negative structural impact on production. http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/1421/HTML/docshell.asp?URL=02%20The%20resources%20boom%20and%20the%20two%20speed%20economy.htm http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/1421/HTML/docshell.asp?...
        ohashi 15y ago
        I am aware that natural resources have caused trouble for a lot of countries. Just stating that it isn't an automatic death sentence to have them.
        bergie 15y ago
        Australia, Canada and USA had reasonably well functioning economies to start with. And many of the resources were discovered outside the scope of globalization or colonialism, allowing much of it to feed back into the local ecosystem.
bh42222 15y ago
This wikipedia entry only very briefly touches on some of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boer_Wars#Controversy_and_significance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boer_Wars#Controversy_and_signi... But saying only that To make a long story really short, the British did ridiculous amounts of good in their colonies. is VERY simplistic. No sentence describing the British empire should start with "To make a long story short".
- lionhearted 15y ago
  > To make a long story really short, the British did ridiculous amounts of good in their colonies. is VERY simplistic. No, it's not. By pretty much any reasonable metric, the British Empire has contributed more net good to humanity than any other nation in history. Plenty of bad, too. But overwhelmingly more good than bad. Much of the good is taken for granted until you realize all the mess they cleaned up that isn't talked about. In a number of their African wars, they were destroying cities that had altars of human sacrifice where the blood was made to keep wet - constant non-stop human sacrifice. I forget the chief's name and Wikipedia isn't helping me, but he claimed credit for over 180,000 sacrifices before losing to the Empire. The Boers are interesting. I kind of sympathize with them a little philosophically as rough individualists, but they were nasty motherfuckers as well. Brutal slavedrivers and merciless during ambushes in wartime. Again, I've actually got quite a bit of admiration of their good points and they were tough as nails, but they could really be sick bastards sometimes. (I think most of their modern descendants would say that's a fair description, and might even smile at it.) This is before even getting into all the science, culture, law, engineering, infrastructure, and technology that British culture fostered. Yes, they did more net good than anywhere else in history. That's not even a particularly bold statement to make.
  - eliasmacpherson 15y ago
    As Assistant Secretary to the Treasury he was placed in charge of the administration of Government relief to the victims of the Irish Famine in the 1840s. In the middle of that crisis Trevelyan published his views on the matter. He saw the Famine as a "mechanism for reducing surplus population". He described the famine as "The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated. …The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Charles_Trevelyan,_1st_Baronet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Charles_Trevelyan,_1st_Baro... In Ireland this man was responsible for administering famine relief, and I respectfully disagree with your contention. Perhaps he felt he was doing net good. What he then felt he was doing and what he actually did are different things. He changed his mind later on, but his policies are believed to have lead to the death of over one million three hundred and eighty five thousand Irish.
thisuser 15y ago
Thanks for jumping in to pointlessly defend some giant institution. "they did good things too!" is so simplistic it makes me want to tear my hair out. Why spend time defending the Empire as some unquestionable whole? The point is to analyze institutional structure so you can tease out the rules that have positive consequences from the ones that have negative consequences. Having a desire to spread sanitation and education: good. Binding the possibility of sanitation and education to an economic mode of production that leaves the newly sanitized and educated with underdeveloped infrastructure and in debt cycles: bad. I'm not interested in the illusion that they are inherently paired operations. Oh, and we still have slave trade and the cult of england today, so your starry eyed tone is quite unearned.
- lionhearted 15y ago
  > Thanks for jumping in to pointlessly defend some giant institution. ... your starry eyed tone is quite unearned. First, up your civility a bit there. The snark is unnecessary and counterproductive to good discussion. Second, my argument wasn't, "They did some good things too." It was, "They were overwhelmingly the largest force for good in all of history." Seriously, check out Heaven's Command. It's pretty balanced and covers every significant battle, controversy, and hypocrisy. And factoring all of that in, the Empire still comes out as the nation that's done more for humanity than anyone else.
  - thisuser 15y ago
    I'm not asking you to continue to defend the Empire. I'm asking you to analyze the multitude of institutional forces that contributed to the structure Empire in a way that lets you causally analyze which forces produced which outcomes. This is a discussion of what the structure of our institutions ought to be. To answer that we need to be a little more subtle than evaluating the Empire as a singular, whole unit.
wooolf 15y ago
The British are given too much credit for things they never did. As for doing good in India, even under the Mughal empire, India is estimated to have a share of 30% of world GDP until the 18th century. When the British left in 1947, that share was less than 1%. The Brits de-industrialized India, used Indian raw materials and taxes to fuel their own industrial revolution and used India as a captive market to hawk their finished goods under an absolute monopoly. I know, I know. You might point to the railways, English education, civil service etc. as the 'good ' they did. The railways were first added in the mid 19th century, and the Brits expanded them only when rail saved their arses in the first war of independence of 1857. The Education they imparted was a colonial project to wipe out and subjugate the local natives, and give them enough English to serve as clerks in running the Empire. Educational institutes of any lasting value were started by local Hindu & Muslim reformers and intellectuals. So please save this orientalist reading of history for yourself. We Indians don't have anything to be thankful to the British. Good riddance to them. Hope we never see their sorry faces again.
- scythe 15y ago
  >As for doing good in India, even under the Mughal empire, India is estimated to have a share of 30% of world GDP until the 18th century. Wiki doesn't agree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj#Technological_and_economic_changes:_1858-1905 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj#Technological_and_e... >India's per capita GDP decreased from $550 in 1700 to $520 by 1857, although it had increased to $618 by 1947 I'm not sure whose dollars those are... but it certainly doesn't sound like the Mughal empire ever controlled anything remotely approaching 30% of world GDP. Here's how the British won India, for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey 750 European soldiers and 2100 sepoys defeating 53000 Indians speaks volumes about the latter's ability to organize.
  - bitwize 15y ago
    Ability to organize isn't really an indicator of the good or harm you do. Do you know what another regime is that had a legendary ability to organize? NAZI GERMANY.

scythe 15y ago

>To make a long story really short, the British did ridiculous amounts of good in their colonies. Uh, okay, so... I'm bad at explaining things, because that is the point of what I wrote about the British. The British were successful not by being cutthroat but by being fair. The author characterizes such 'cooperative' strategies as ineffective, and says that they don't tend to succeed: >The essence of how culture uses men depends on a basic social insecurity. This insecurity is in fact social, existential, and biological. Built into the male role is the danger of not being good enough to be accepted and respected and even the danger of not being able to do well enough to create offspring. >The basic social insecurity of manhood is stressful for the men, and it is hardly surprising that so many men crack up or do evil or heroic things or die younger than women. But that insecurity is useful and productive for the culture, the system. >Again, I’m not saying it’s right, or fair, or proper. But it has worked. The cultures that have succeeded have used this formula, and that is one reason that they have succeeded instead of their rivals. The Empire had lots of 'morality' and 'fairness' provisions that the societies it conquered did not. It could be said that this sense of fairness led to the loss of the Empire -- but Britain is arguably better off now than 80 years ago, whereas Mongolia is... not rich.

ohashi 15y ago
But may be soon with all those natural resources!
- bergie 15y ago
  Generally it seems natural resources only stunt the state of a country and benefit very few. Norway appears to be one of the only places with rich natural resources and a working society.
  - ohashi 15y ago
    Australia? USA? Canada? There are many different resources besides simply oil (I am making an assumption that's what is in your mind because of the Norway example). Mongolia doesn't simply have oil (and they rank #92 in the world for oil production - so they don't even have much of it), they have richer mineral deposits.
    - westicle 15y ago
      Those examples don't necessarily refute grandparent's point. See link below regarding "two speed economies" in which resource booms can actually have a negative structural impact on production. http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/1421/HTML/docshell.asp?URL=02%20The%20resources%20boom%20and%20the%20two%20speed%20economy.htm http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/1421/HTML/docshell.asp?...
      - ohashi 15y ago
        I am aware that natural resources have caused trouble for a lot of countries. Just stating that it isn't an automatic death sentence to have them.
        bergie 15y ago
        Australia, Canada and USA had reasonably well functioning economies to start with. And many of the resources were discovered outside the scope of globalization or colonialism, allowing much of it to feed back into the local ecosystem.

bh42222 15y ago

This wikipedia entry only very briefly touches on some of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boer_Wars#Controversy_and_significance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boer_Wars#Controversy_and_signi... But saying only that To make a long story really short, the British did ridiculous amounts of good in their colonies. is VERY simplistic. No sentence describing the British empire should start with "To make a long story short".

lionhearted 15y ago
> To make a long story really short, the British did ridiculous amounts of good in their colonies. is VERY simplistic. No, it's not. By pretty much any reasonable metric, the British Empire has contributed more net good to humanity than any other nation in history. Plenty of bad, too. But overwhelmingly more good than bad. Much of the good is taken for granted until you realize all the mess they cleaned up that isn't talked about. In a number of their African wars, they were destroying cities that had altars of human sacrifice where the blood was made to keep wet - constant non-stop human sacrifice. I forget the chief's name and Wikipedia isn't helping me, but he claimed credit for over 180,000 sacrifices before losing to the Empire. The Boers are interesting. I kind of sympathize with them a little philosophically as rough individualists, but they were nasty motherfuckers as well. Brutal slavedrivers and merciless during ambushes in wartime. Again, I've actually got quite a bit of admiration of their good points and they were tough as nails, but they could really be sick bastards sometimes. (I think most of their modern descendants would say that's a fair description, and might even smile at it.) This is before even getting into all the science, culture, law, engineering, infrastructure, and technology that British culture fostered. Yes, they did more net good than anywhere else in history. That's not even a particularly bold statement to make.
- eliasmacpherson 15y ago
  As Assistant Secretary to the Treasury he was placed in charge of the administration of Government relief to the victims of the Irish Famine in the 1840s. In the middle of that crisis Trevelyan published his views on the matter. He saw the Famine as a "mechanism for reducing surplus population". He described the famine as "The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated. …The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Charles_Trevelyan,_1st_Baronet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Charles_Trevelyan,_1st_Baro... In Ireland this man was responsible for administering famine relief, and I respectfully disagree with your contention. Perhaps he felt he was doing net good. What he then felt he was doing and what he actually did are different things. He changed his mind later on, but his policies are believed to have lead to the death of over one million three hundred and eighty five thousand Irish.

thisuser 15y ago

Thanks for jumping in to pointlessly defend some giant institution. "they did good things too!" is so simplistic it makes me want to tear my hair out. Why spend time defending the Empire as some unquestionable whole? The point is to analyze institutional structure so you can tease out the rules that have positive consequences from the ones that have negative consequences. Having a desire to spread sanitation and education: good. Binding the possibility of sanitation and education to an economic mode of production that leaves the newly sanitized and educated with underdeveloped infrastructure and in debt cycles: bad. I'm not interested in the illusion that they are inherently paired operations. Oh, and we still have slave trade and the cult of england today, so your starry eyed tone is quite unearned.

lionhearted 15y ago
> Thanks for jumping in to pointlessly defend some giant institution. ... your starry eyed tone is quite unearned. First, up your civility a bit there. The snark is unnecessary and counterproductive to good discussion. Second, my argument wasn't, "They did some good things too." It was, "They were overwhelmingly the largest force for good in all of history." Seriously, check out Heaven's Command. It's pretty balanced and covers every significant battle, controversy, and hypocrisy. And factoring all of that in, the Empire still comes out as the nation that's done more for humanity than anyone else.
- thisuser 15y ago
  I'm not asking you to continue to defend the Empire. I'm asking you to analyze the multitude of institutional forces that contributed to the structure Empire in a way that lets you causally analyze which forces produced which outcomes. This is a discussion of what the structure of our institutions ought to be. To answer that we need to be a little more subtle than evaluating the Empire as a singular, whole unit.

wooolf 15y ago

The British are given too much credit for things they never did. As for doing good in India, even under the Mughal empire, India is estimated to have a share of 30% of world GDP until the 18th century. When the British left in 1947, that share was less than 1%. The Brits de-industrialized India, used Indian raw materials and taxes to fuel their own industrial revolution and used India as a captive market to hawk their finished goods under an absolute monopoly. I know, I know. You might point to the railways, English education, civil service etc. as the 'good ' they did. The railways were first added in the mid 19th century, and the Brits expanded them only when rail saved their arses in the first war of independence of 1857. The Education they imparted was a colonial project to wipe out and subjugate the local natives, and give them enough English to serve as clerks in running the Empire. Educational institutes of any lasting value were started by local Hindu & Muslim reformers and intellectuals. So please save this orientalist reading of history for yourself. We Indians don't have anything to be thankful to the British. Good riddance to them. Hope we never see their sorry faces again.

scythe 15y ago
>As for doing good in India, even under the Mughal empire, India is estimated to have a share of 30% of world GDP until the 18th century. Wiki doesn't agree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj#Technological_and_economic_changes:_1858-1905 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj#Technological_and_e... >India's per capita GDP decreased from $550 in 1700 to $520 by 1857, although it had increased to $618 by 1947 I'm not sure whose dollars those are... but it certainly doesn't sound like the Mughal empire ever controlled anything remotely approaching 30% of world GDP. Here's how the British won India, for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey 750 European soldiers and 2100 sepoys defeating 53000 Indians speaks volumes about the latter's ability to organize.
- bitwize 15y ago
  Ability to organize isn't really an indicator of the good or harm you do. Do you know what another regime is that had a legendary ability to organize? NAZI GERMANY.