>routinely the purpose of colonisation was to establish such thing as a functioning state -- for the sake of enabling trade and commerce to be conducted reliabl

>routinely the purpose of colonisation was to establish such thing as a functioning state -- for the sake of enabling trade and commerce to be conducted reliably. That's just a polite way to describe looting a colony. Consider the situation here, where the British got together with... a British colony... to claim near-exclusive water rights to the Nile. This is important enough almost 100 years later that Egypt is threatening war over it.