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Is it fair to blame the British? The country has 56 years of independent existence. At what point do you stop blaming the former colonial power, and take respon

Is it fair to blame the British? The country has 56 years of independent existence. At what point do you stop blaming the former colonial power, and take responsibility for your situation?

pjmlp 5y ago
From point of view of the Portuguese colonism, naturally the current goverments are to blame, yet those in power were the ones that in a way were part of the colonial power structure, and most colonial powers still have priviledge positions with their former colonies, so it is not easy to separate waters in such matter. It is quite eye opening to travel in Africa and realize that while the countries are now "independent", the industries are mostly the same ones as before the independence took place.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
_djo_ 5y ago
There's certainly a lot of blame that can be placed on the country's leadership over the past fifty years, but it's not as straightforward as that. For one, there's been huge economic, political, and commercial pressure applied to ensure that the colonial-era extractive industry relationships broadly remain the same and with similarly bad terms for the former colony. Investments are often directed at infrastructure that improves the efficiency of those extractive operations, rather than local beneficiation, intra-African trade, or other local development. France was even more blatant, applying the Françafrique restrictions to its former colonies, such as the requirement that they keep portions of their foreign reserves in the French Treasury, and keep the CFA Franc, in order to get French investment.
Guessnotgauss 5y ago
Supposedly someone took over your town, but they established a completely new system. No longer do we decide by council or by elders or by merit, we only listen to the despot. This happened because a large company moved in and started taking over and installed the despot. They then kept their authority by force. Things deteriorated and the company caused lots of grief, tears and blood spilled. All the generations of how to manage the town has left and now the model for organization in society has become corruption. How will you teach your kids that this is not a good way forward for our town when no one remembers the old way? Why not just bribe? You cant fix the situation, everyone does it. After about 50 years the company moves back out of town leaving a horribly broken system that has erased generations of culture on how to operate. But what people do know is the despot system, after some violence they settle back to ANYTHING that works cause no system is so much worse. But hey why blame the company that moved in? its been a while now tell them to just put things back they way they were. Its not like the company did this all over the world? Right?.... They did. Its the case that every other similar company from the area practiced the same pattern, all over the world.
- mc32 5y ago
  There are counter examples of ex colonies like Taiwan and South Korea and Singapore. But we also have the US vs Mexico, both are ex colonies. What’s important is the leadership and their vision. This is exemplified by the divergent results in N Korea vs S Korea. They both emerged from brutal colonization but took different paths. Same history, same ethnicity, etc., but different leadership.
  - x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
    There is a massive difference between the New World colonialism that largely ended in the 1800s and countries colonized during the Scramble for Africa. If you HAD to compare New World colonies with Scramble for Africa countries, you would probably compare the fate and status of the indigenous groups.
    - mc32 5y ago
      We can look at ex-Soviet republics. Some are utterly corrupt and barely functional and some are up and coming economies. The difference is governance and leadership. It’s fundamental and extremely important to not have self serving leadership. The condition you rise from isn’t key. It’s what you do afterwards. It’s not too different from two high school students. One decides they’re happy being a dropout because they had a broken home, the other decides because she came from a broken home is going to do her darnedest to do something with her life. One becomes a professional the other still handles the till at the 7-11.
      - x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
        ex-Soviet states were also protected from Cold-War meddling by the West, unlike many other countries. Meanwhile, people like Lumumba and Allende are assassinated.
        jhgb 5y ago
        In EX-Soviet states, there clearly was no Cold War meddling after the Cold War from anyone.
pastrybanking 5y ago
I think the situation is far more complex than just blanket blame of former colonial powers for present day problems. It is also disingenous to expect such countries to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps considering the legacy of colonialism.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  I don't think it's disingenuous whatsoever. I think at some point you should expect that. As an extreme example, what's now the United Kingdom was once an occupied colony of Rome, and they've done ok for themselves since. The United States was a colony of the United Kingdom just 250 years ago. Singapore was a colony of the UK just 58 years ago and they are incredibly rich now.
  - pastrybanking 5y ago
    As you have mentioned these are extreme examples. I think Singapore is the most interesting since it is the example politicians in my home country use to gaslight the electorate. This doesn't actually address why an Asian Tiger like Singapore was able to rapidly industrialise or the difficulties of implementing good governance and economic policies.
    - InitialLastName 5y ago
      I'm sure being a politically stable, western-friendly port in the middle of a shipping superhighway during a globalization boom didn't hurt.
  - DFHippie 5y ago
    Some points: 1) It's about 1600 years since Britain was a Roman colony. A lot has happened since then, such as the Dark Ages. When Rome was in charge the local population was in effect the Welsh (and Cornish and Bretons). How's Wales doing now relative to England? 2) Yes, the US was a British colony, but the dominant group in the US is still the descendants of the colonizers. I don't the history of Singapore, but I would be curious to know who was in charge when England took over versus who is in charge now. In all these cases there is a complex history which can't be glossed over by saying "they were all colonies". Important issues are the support they were given to create or rebuild institutions, population replacement, the extent to which they achieved control of their own resources, the institutions they were left with, or whether they were saddled with debt. Haiti was a colony that achieved its freedom, but was left with a crippling debt to its occupiers which it only finished paying off in the 20th century.
kingkawn 5y ago
Yes, it is fair.
saiya-jin 5y ago
In simple version of the reality it isn't fair. Why many western people prefer to accept this simpler version of reality is rather obvious (not my fault, I heard enough, they rule for themselves for decades so who gives a fuck variants. In more realistic version, evil leaves marks across generations and centuries. I don't need to theoretize - my country came out of soviet iron embrace 32 years ago, one could say a generation and a half. General laziness, corruption, fuck-it-all that were pervasive and brought by our russian 'friends' and 'liberators' are still there, in fact in much worse shape. There is no easy guaranteed trick to get out, its more a spiral and not every nation has its internal strength to change the course. I blame former colonial powers for most of evil that is currently in this world, former Soviet union/Russia for most of the rest. Does it mean I blame you/anybody else specifically? Nope, but your countries definitely yes. And you can see some of them, ie UK didn't even fully reconciled with their own doings till now, not even making up for the vast damage to whole world. Ie artifacts stolen remain in museums, just empty words and gestures flying around.
quadrifoliate 5y ago
The Civil Rights Act was passed in the US in 1964, so it's been about the same amount of time since then. Do you think that your comments would equivalently apply to the societal tensions in the US, and be considered reasonable? Why, or why not?
pessimizer 5y ago
> The country has 56 years of independent existence. Independence isn't binary. Despots in these countries are often directly chosen by colonial powers, but even when chosen by local processes, they enter into a relationship with those well-resourced colonial powers that maintains their dictatorship. These countries end up run by local elites with western education and relationships (and multi-million dollar London/New York apartments), with help from those nations to put down any local resistance, up to and including intelligence agencies giving the despots lists of names to help solve their political or labor problems. The US, UK, French, and Chinese sell weapons to them to put down their own populations, and US, UK, French, and Chinese companies are allowed to build infrastructure for resource extraction for export. This makes it in their interest for friendly despot #294 to maintain his position. The populations of these countries can't compete with that. The usual process is that the colonial power helps the despot (or the series of despots if a few show a little defiance or get a little greedy) exterminate all of the country's secular resistance as "communists," leaving the religious opposition as the only uncorrupted institution left. Support for it grows to a majority of the population, you have a revolution, and now you have a theocracy. Then the colonial powers try their best to immiserate the population through sanctions and annoyance attacks against civilians to turn that theocracy back into a dictatorship. Vaguely related prediction: the US will soon be, if we are not already, paying and arming "ISIS" to attack the Taliban. There will be fawning profiles of "The Warlord Who Turned Away From ISIS - Afghan Women's Only Hope?" about somebody who supports decapitating women for adultery but also has kids at US and UK grad schools.

Is it fair to blame the British? The country has 56 years of independent existence. At what point do you stop blaming the former colonial power, and take responsibility for your situation?

pjmlp 5y ago

From point of view of the Portuguese colonism, naturally the current goverments are to blame, yet those in power were the ones that in a way were part of the colonial power structure, and most colonial powers still have priviledge positions with their former colonies, so it is not easy to separate waters in such matter. It is quite eye opening to travel in Africa and realize that while the countries are now "independent", the industries are mostly the same ones as before the independence took place.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

_djo_ 5y ago

There's certainly a lot of blame that can be placed on the country's leadership over the past fifty years, but it's not as straightforward as that. For one, there's been huge economic, political, and commercial pressure applied to ensure that the colonial-era extractive industry relationships broadly remain the same and with similarly bad terms for the former colony. Investments are often directed at infrastructure that improves the efficiency of those extractive operations, rather than local beneficiation, intra-African trade, or other local development. France was even more blatant, applying the Françafrique restrictions to its former colonies, such as the requirement that they keep portions of their foreign reserves in the French Treasury, and keep the CFA Franc, in order to get French investment.

Guessnotgauss 5y ago

Supposedly someone took over your town, but they established a completely new system. No longer do we decide by council or by elders or by merit, we only listen to the despot. This happened because a large company moved in and started taking over and installed the despot. They then kept their authority by force. Things deteriorated and the company caused lots of grief, tears and blood spilled. All the generations of how to manage the town has left and now the model for organization in society has become corruption. How will you teach your kids that this is not a good way forward for our town when no one remembers the old way? Why not just bribe? You cant fix the situation, everyone does it. After about 50 years the company moves back out of town leaving a horribly broken system that has erased generations of culture on how to operate. But what people do know is the despot system, after some violence they settle back to ANYTHING that works cause no system is so much worse. But hey why blame the company that moved in? its been a while now tell them to just put things back they way they were. Its not like the company did this all over the world? Right?.... They did. Its the case that every other similar company from the area practiced the same pattern, all over the world.

mc32 5y ago
There are counter examples of ex colonies like Taiwan and South Korea and Singapore. But we also have the US vs Mexico, both are ex colonies. What’s important is the leadership and their vision. This is exemplified by the divergent results in N Korea vs S Korea. They both emerged from brutal colonization but took different paths. Same history, same ethnicity, etc., but different leadership.
- x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
  There is a massive difference between the New World colonialism that largely ended in the 1800s and countries colonized during the Scramble for Africa. If you HAD to compare New World colonies with Scramble for Africa countries, you would probably compare the fate and status of the indigenous groups.
  - mc32 5y ago
    We can look at ex-Soviet republics. Some are utterly corrupt and barely functional and some are up and coming economies. The difference is governance and leadership. It’s fundamental and extremely important to not have self serving leadership. The condition you rise from isn’t key. It’s what you do afterwards. It’s not too different from two high school students. One decides they’re happy being a dropout because they had a broken home, the other decides because she came from a broken home is going to do her darnedest to do something with her life. One becomes a professional the other still handles the till at the 7-11.
    - x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
      ex-Soviet states were also protected from Cold-War meddling by the West, unlike many other countries. Meanwhile, people like Lumumba and Allende are assassinated.
      - jhgb 5y ago
        In EX-Soviet states, there clearly was no Cold War meddling after the Cold War from anyone.

pastrybanking 5y ago

I think the situation is far more complex than just blanket blame of former colonial powers for present day problems. It is also disingenous to expect such countries to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps considering the legacy of colonialism.

missedthecue 5y ago
I don't think it's disingenuous whatsoever. I think at some point you should expect that. As an extreme example, what's now the United Kingdom was once an occupied colony of Rome, and they've done ok for themselves since. The United States was a colony of the United Kingdom just 250 years ago. Singapore was a colony of the UK just 58 years ago and they are incredibly rich now.
- pastrybanking 5y ago
  As you have mentioned these are extreme examples. I think Singapore is the most interesting since it is the example politicians in my home country use to gaslight the electorate. This doesn't actually address why an Asian Tiger like Singapore was able to rapidly industrialise or the difficulties of implementing good governance and economic policies.
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    I'm sure being a politically stable, western-friendly port in the middle of a shipping superhighway during a globalization boom didn't hurt.
- DFHippie 5y ago
  Some points: 1) It's about 1600 years since Britain was a Roman colony. A lot has happened since then, such as the Dark Ages. When Rome was in charge the local population was in effect the Welsh (and Cornish and Bretons). How's Wales doing now relative to England? 2) Yes, the US was a British colony, but the dominant group in the US is still the descendants of the colonizers. I don't the history of Singapore, but I would be curious to know who was in charge when England took over versus who is in charge now. In all these cases there is a complex history which can't be glossed over by saying "they were all colonies". Important issues are the support they were given to create or rebuild institutions, population replacement, the extent to which they achieved control of their own resources, the institutions they were left with, or whether they were saddled with debt. Haiti was a colony that achieved its freedom, but was left with a crippling debt to its occupiers which it only finished paying off in the 20th century.

kingkawn 5y ago

Yes, it is fair.

saiya-jin 5y ago

In simple version of the reality it isn't fair. Why many western people prefer to accept this simpler version of reality is rather obvious (not my fault, I heard enough, they rule for themselves for decades so who gives a fuck variants. In more realistic version, evil leaves marks across generations and centuries. I don't need to theoretize - my country came out of soviet iron embrace 32 years ago, one could say a generation and a half. General laziness, corruption, fuck-it-all that were pervasive and brought by our russian 'friends' and 'liberators' are still there, in fact in much worse shape. There is no easy guaranteed trick to get out, its more a spiral and not every nation has its internal strength to change the course. I blame former colonial powers for most of evil that is currently in this world, former Soviet union/Russia for most of the rest. Does it mean I blame you/anybody else specifically? Nope, but your countries definitely yes. And you can see some of them, ie UK didn't even fully reconciled with their own doings till now, not even making up for the vast damage to whole world. Ie artifacts stolen remain in museums, just empty words and gestures flying around.

quadrifoliate 5y ago

The Civil Rights Act was passed in the US in 1964, so it's been about the same amount of time since then. Do you think that your comments would equivalently apply to the societal tensions in the US, and be considered reasonable? Why, or why not?

pessimizer 5y ago

> The country has 56 years of independent existence. Independence isn't binary. Despots in these countries are often directly chosen by colonial powers, but even when chosen by local processes, they enter into a relationship with those well-resourced colonial powers that maintains their dictatorship. These countries end up run by local elites with western education and relationships (and multi-million dollar London/New York apartments), with help from those nations to put down any local resistance, up to and including intelligence agencies giving the despots lists of names to help solve their political or labor problems. The US, UK, French, and Chinese sell weapons to them to put down their own populations, and US, UK, French, and Chinese companies are allowed to build infrastructure for resource extraction for export. This makes it in their interest for friendly despot #294 to maintain his position. The populations of these countries can't compete with that. The usual process is that the colonial power helps the despot (or the series of despots if a few show a little defiance or get a little greedy) exterminate all of the country's secular resistance as "communists," leaving the religious opposition as the only uncorrupted institution left. Support for it grows to a majority of the population, you have a revolution, and now you have a theocracy. Then the colonial powers try their best to immiserate the population through sanctions and annoyance attacks against civilians to turn that theocracy back into a dictatorship. Vaguely related prediction: the US will soon be, if we are not already, paying and arming "ISIS" to attack the Taliban. There will be fawning profiles of "The Warlord Who Turned Away From ISIS - Afghan Women's Only Hope?" about somebody who supports decapitating women for adultery but also has kids at US and UK grad schools.