7 ms·

British colonialism killed 100M Indians in 40 years

57 points by notlukesky 4y ago

Blackstrat 4y ago
India’s population in 1880 was about 250m and by 1920 about 319m. Sorry the 100m killed is infeasible on its face. But, then consider the source.
- rmk 4y ago
  Why? If 169m were born during that period and 100m lost their lives because of British policy, then it still means that 100m lives were lost unnecessarily.
  - notart666 4y ago
    Ehhh that's a lot more complicated than that. But sure. How many would die naturally in the same given period due to things such as disease and natural outcomes, I prefer facts to biased and somewhat radical sources. We already know the constant population during certain periods so why not extrapolate how many died to famine rather than claim it as a glob that it is not? It worsens the claims that these people are trying to portray and actually makes the Indian government look much worse. As if demanding the money and reparations rather than a conversation. It's not hard to see why nobody is taking it seriously.
  - Blackstrat 4y ago
    So you’re positing that roughly 60% of the incremental population growth was lost to British rule? Didn’t happen. Just as shark migration patterns were not changed by slavery. Nor any of the other absurdities promulgated by the media and politicians today.
    - kira123123 4y ago
      Yes, I don't think you quite understand the horrors of Britain ruining india during their 100 year invasion. Similar to the destruction of the native american population of Canada and America. As well as the treatment of Kenyans during their rule. This is not " Just as shark migration patterns were not changed by slavery. " This is a European country travelling halfway across the world and murdering a indepdant nation. Stealing their exports, and reselling it on the global market. Using their land to produce opium where they later used to invade china and kill their local population. https://www.britannica.com/topic/opium-trade https://www.britannica.com/topic/opium-trade You can deny it all you want, but the history will remain. There's the 3 million that have died due to the bengal famine. https://newint.org/features/2021/12/07/feature-how-british-colonizers-caused-bengal-famine#:~:text=The%20Bengal%20famine%20stands%20as,more%20fell%20into%20crushing%20poverty https://newint.org/features/2021/12/07/feature-how-british-c.... The destruction of India's economy under british colonization, causing massive poverty. http://www.srimatham.com/uploads/5/5/4/9/5549439/how_the_british_ruined_india_.pdf http://www.srimatham.com/uploads/5/5/4/9/5549439/how_the_bri... Various Massacres (That we have heard about, from british soldiers when the local population tried to rise up) https://www.britannica.com/event/Jallianwala-Bagh-Massacre https://www.britannica.com/event/Jallianwala-Bagh-Massacre
    - rmk 4y ago
      No, this is just one scenario. There could be other scenarios, for example, 300m being born but 100m losing their lives because of British policy, and the rest dying because of high infant mortality, epidemics, and so on. The point is, 100m over 100 years because of an inhumane and callous colonial master is just not as unthinkable as the parent commenter makes it out to be. Edit: 11 million minorities, including 6 million Jews, were killed in 4 years during the holocaust. In many countries, the Jewish population did not recover at all. In 2020, Covid-19 slashed the average American life expectancy by 1.8 years. This is for a population of 320 - 350 million. The article contends that Indian life expectancy dropped by a whopping 5 years at the height of British colonial power. For a large and populous country to lose 5 years of life expectancy is a pretty big deal no matter what way you slice it.
- kira123123 4y ago
  Really poor argument, "oh biased source". Invading a country and colonizing their people. Can really destroy a local population. Ask Native Americans. Ask Kenyans. Ask the Phillipines. Britiain truly commited some upseakable horrors to the countries they invaded, and really push their idea of caucasian supremacy. Deny the truth all you want, the unmarked graves of native american children remain. The evil of the british empire is something we should condemn, but we conveniently ignore.
  - MauroIksem 4y ago
    Ask the Algerians.
  - Blackstrat 4y ago
    Do we exempt the Portuguese, the Egyptians, the Mongols, the Japanese, and so forth? The belief that colonialism is a manifestation of white supremacy is historically uninformed. Did Native Americans suffer at the hands of the European expansion. Certainly, but recognize that the Spanish and the Portuguese both preceded the British. Were the Native Americans peaceful, pastoral peoples prior to the Europeans? Not a chance. History is replete with all nationalities and races subjugating and enslaving others. It is not a British thing or a white thing. That’s simply a modern argument to promote a political agenda.
BMc2020 4y ago
For one, Britain effectively destroyed India’s manufacturing sector. British colonisers established a system of legal plunder, known to contemporaries as the “drain of wealth.” Britain taxed the Indian population (that seems to be all)
- kira123123 4y ago
  There is a lot more to it than that. If we can stop caucasian-washing history for a second, britain did not simply arrive in india, and leave peacefully either. They lied about their motive as a trade company (the east india company). They used religion (Christianity) To scout the local population and worked with priests/nuns to see if the land as able to be invaded. And when they left they split the country into two, not really considering the implications of dividing a country in half based on their whims. (spoiler alert it caused a massive civil war and had a major historical figure killed). Trusting Britain, and not inventing the machine gun was the biggest mistake India could have done. Britain literally employed slave labour on the local population, implemented a class based system which destroyed the local population, and murdered anyone who tried to rise up against their tyranny. Sad our history books conveniently ignore the evils of the empire's and the destructive effects of colonization we feel to this day. During Britain's colonization period of india other channels of foreign trade with India like the French, the Dutch, the Portuguese and the Americans were driven out by vicissitudes of war. Solely the British now controlled the Indian trade with rest of the world. You can imagine what happens when a foreign invader like Britain can do when they control a soil-rich country such as India. Britain changed local laws and allowed the new Capital holders’ to own land in India. The British bought lands for plantations, which were manned by Indian slave labour. Thus even the agricultural export profits benefited only the British plantation owners, and not the starving labourers. Britain resold Indian produced goods onto the global market for massive profits. Indians were put into debt by the British during their rule and while they had the engineers to build their own cheaper alternative railways, they were forced to import British railroads and had to pay for it, as their exports were funneled from their home country to various parts of britain to be exported. There is a lot more i could go into on this topic, but this isn't some sort of "woke police", this is pretty established history. Britain did invade India, this was a thing that happened, it was pretty horrible, sad we don't teach our children about the horrors of colonization. http://www.srimatham.com/uploads/5/5/4/9/5549439/how_the_british_ruined_india_.pdf http://www.srimatham.com/uploads/5/5/4/9/5549439/how_the_bri... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_jGPf764d0&ab_channel=VICE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_jGPf764d0&ab_channel=VICE https://qz.com/india/290497/the-forgotten-story-of-indias-colonial-slave-workers-who-began-leaving-home-180-years-ago https://qz.com/india/290497/the-forgotten-story-of-indias-co... https://www.jstor.org/stable/2756302 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2756302
fullark 4y ago
eye for eye
- notacop31337 4y ago
  That sounds awfully like a call to violence.
  - kira123123 4y ago
    i thought of it as a reference to "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." attributed to Gandhi but is disputed.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lamp987 4y ago
  are you calling for an anglo genocide?
mncharity 4y ago
Years ago I library-surfed a fun finance tome of papers on the financing of WWII. What struck me most, was the massive wealth transfer from GB to the US. With GB disgorging her wealth of empire, and going unrepayably into debt. The "debt", because US politics required framing further goods transfer, despite no hope of repayment, as "loans", which were then creatively discounted away. I've never seen US industrialization stories which quantify Empire funding, so I've wondered since how large a role it played. Or in the context of TFA, to what extent was US mid-century industrialization built on wealth extracted from India?
- rramadass 4y ago
  Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33979856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33979856 See the talks/works of economist Utsa Patnaik in particular.
anonreeeeplor 4y ago
This article is suspicious because it is very opinionated. It feels like a study that would benefit China in attempting to create a gap between India and western powers. They would need a left wing Marxist type social justice argument about why India should feel like a victim. This study seems to provide exactly this type of wedge. Down the language used. India did not have an industrial base before Britain arrived there. England was the first to industrialize so any industrialization in India could only have come from Britain. This study feels deeply biased and strongly suspect it is a Chinese influence operation. I would like to know who funded this.
rramadass 4y ago
Perfidious Albion - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidious_Albion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidious_Albion People interested in knowing The Truth about what the British did to India should watch/read the following to get started; 1) Looking back at the British Raj in India - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB5ykS-_-CI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB5ykS-_-CI 2) British Raj siphoned out $45 trillion from India: Utsa Patnaik - https://www.livemint.com/Companies/HNZA71LNVNNVXQ1eaIKu6M/British-Raj-siphoned-out-45-trillion-from-India-Utsa-Patna.html https://www.livemint.com/Companies/HNZA71LNVNNVXQ1eaIKu6M/Br... 3) Why Capitalism Needs Imperialism To Drain Wealth From the Global South, w/ Economist Utsa Patnaik - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RF5vx1W_kk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RF5vx1W_kk 4) Empire in Asia, How we came by it : A Book of Confessions by W. M. Torrens - https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.01877/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.01877/page/n5/mode/...
heywherelogingo 4y ago
"This is a straightforward case for reparations" - and there you have it. This whole idea of reparations for things done by previous generations is absurd. Where do you draw the line - 1900? 1800? 1700? Ridiculous. It's the same with conversations about slavery - apparently the only relevant slavery is post 1700 African slavery which also ignores that Africans were participating slave traders - enough arbitrary constraints? How about domestic bloodbaths - English vs Scots, chattel slavery in middle ages Britain, ... what an absurd can of worms.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  > This whole idea of reparations for things done by previous generations is absurd. What about confiscated land, taken in the last 100-200 years? New Zealand is grappling with it and it’s not without friction. However leaving it unaddressed seems completely unrealistic, you just allow the theft and profit at the expense of one race and profit for another? Here is a recent story on a small part of the grim saga. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ldr/477765/ngati-maru-apology-highlights-ongoing-devastation-of-land-theft https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ldr/477765/ngati-maru-apology-hig...
- rramadass 4y ago
  This juvenile argument is always brought up when it comes to the subject of Reparations owed by The British, but unfortunately for its proponents, holds no water. This is simply an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for gutting the Colonized Countries in all dimensions viz. Economically, Socially and Culturally. Here is Jason Hickel (one of the authors of the posted article) on The Case for Reparations - https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/10/13/the-case-for-reparations https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/10/13/the-case-for-rep... In particular; read his rebuttal to the five commonly used arguments (including yours) in the latter half of the above article. Some more articles for your edification; 1) https://qz.com/1911783/what-the-uk-owes-in-reparations https://qz.com/1911783/what-the-uk-owes-in-reparations 2) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/what-to-know-about-calls-for-reparations-for-britains-legacy-of-slavery-in-the-caribbean https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/what-to-know-about-calls-... 3) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/world/americas/colonial-reparations.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/world/americas/colonial-r... Some excerpts from all of the above links: 1) W. Arthur Lewis, a Nobel Prize-winning economist from St. Lucia, had argued since the 1930s that colonialism had gutted the economies of colonized societies for generations to come, making the debt one of not just repayment but also of reconstitution. 2) India wasn’t “developed” under British rule – it was de-developed. And not just in terms of social welfare. British policy was designed to destroy India’s domestic industries by imposing asymmetrical tariffs, by dismantling the institutions that trained up producers, and in some cases even by maiming skilled artisans – all to create captive markets for British goods. During the course of British rule, India’s share of the global economy shrank from 27% to 3%. 3) Frantz Fanon had it right when he wrote, in Wretched of the Earth, that “Colonialism and imperialism have not settled their debt to us once they have withdrawn from our territories. The wealth of the imperialist nations is also our wealth. Europe is literally the creation of the Third World.” 4) “The sequel to that history of repression and disavowal has been poverty and uneven progress. So calls for reparations consider this wide story and its micro-level consequences in their activism,” Smith said. 5) “There’s no real ownership of responsibility. So there is recognition that what happened in the past was bad, but we’re not responsible now,” said Moffet. “It’s a way of sort of separating the monarchy or British government from the past.” 6) And then it strikes you…. Then it strikes you that there is not enough money in all of Britain to compensate for these injustices. And you realize, that if Britain paid reparations – real, honest, courageous reparations – there would be nothing left. Britain would not exist. And that is exactly what people find so terrifying about the question of reparations. It’s not that they fear the actual prospect of paying. It is that even just thinking about what is owed reveals the hard truth: that what is owed, is everything.
crocwrestler 4y ago
How were a couple of thousand British administrators able to subjugate millions of Indians so completely?
- rramadass 4y ago
  In their own words; Empire in Asia, How we came by it : A Book of Confessions by W. M. Torrens - https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.01877/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.01877/page/n5/mode/... More at - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33979856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33979856
- randomcarbloke 4y ago
  they didn't, the above is hindunat propaganda and it is worryingly becoming accepted.
thisrod 4y ago
Has anyone read Late Victorian Holocausts, a full exposition of this argument? It's important if true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Victorian_Holocausts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Victorian_Holocausts
- rramadass 4y ago
  Thanks for the pointer; another one for my "to read" list. However i have read about the Economist Utsa Patnaik's works on the same subject where she makes the argument that Colonialism/Imperialism gave rise to and sustained today's Capitalism. There is a direct correlation which is well supported by available facts. Whether we want to face it or nor is another matter. Some of her works can be accessed from my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33979856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33979856
kwere 4y ago
>Between 1880 to 1920, British colonial policies in India claimed more lives than all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China and North Korea combined. This subtitle tells all the value this opinion piece has.
known 4y ago
known 4y ago

57 points by notlukesky 4y ago

India’s population in 1880 was about 250m and by 1920 about 319m. Sorry the 100m killed is infeasible on its face. But, then consider the source.

rmk 4y ago
Why? If 169m were born during that period and 100m lost their lives because of British policy, then it still means that 100m lives were lost unnecessarily.
- notart666 4y ago
  Ehhh that's a lot more complicated than that. But sure. How many would die naturally in the same given period due to things such as disease and natural outcomes, I prefer facts to biased and somewhat radical sources. We already know the constant population during certain periods so why not extrapolate how many died to famine rather than claim it as a glob that it is not? It worsens the claims that these people are trying to portray and actually makes the Indian government look much worse. As if demanding the money and reparations rather than a conversation. It's not hard to see why nobody is taking it seriously.
- Blackstrat 4y ago
  So you’re positing that roughly 60% of the incremental population growth was lost to British rule? Didn’t happen. Just as shark migration patterns were not changed by slavery. Nor any of the other absurdities promulgated by the media and politicians today.
  - kira123123 4y ago
    Yes, I don't think you quite understand the horrors of Britain ruining india during their 100 year invasion. Similar to the destruction of the native american population of Canada and America. As well as the treatment of Kenyans during their rule. This is not " Just as shark migration patterns were not changed by slavery. " This is a European country travelling halfway across the world and murdering a indepdant nation. Stealing their exports, and reselling it on the global market. Using their land to produce opium where they later used to invade china and kill their local population. https://www.britannica.com/topic/opium-trade https://www.britannica.com/topic/opium-trade You can deny it all you want, but the history will remain. There's the 3 million that have died due to the bengal famine. https://newint.org/features/2021/12/07/feature-how-british-colonizers-caused-bengal-famine#:~:text=The%20Bengal%20famine%20stands%20as,more%20fell%20into%20crushing%20poverty https://newint.org/features/2021/12/07/feature-how-british-c.... The destruction of India's economy under british colonization, causing massive poverty. http://www.srimatham.com/uploads/5/5/4/9/5549439/how_the_british_ruined_india_.pdf http://www.srimatham.com/uploads/5/5/4/9/5549439/how_the_bri... Various Massacres (That we have heard about, from british soldiers when the local population tried to rise up) https://www.britannica.com/event/Jallianwala-Bagh-Massacre https://www.britannica.com/event/Jallianwala-Bagh-Massacre
  - rmk 4y ago
    No, this is just one scenario. There could be other scenarios, for example, 300m being born but 100m losing their lives because of British policy, and the rest dying because of high infant mortality, epidemics, and so on. The point is, 100m over 100 years because of an inhumane and callous colonial master is just not as unthinkable as the parent commenter makes it out to be. Edit: 11 million minorities, including 6 million Jews, were killed in 4 years during the holocaust. In many countries, the Jewish population did not recover at all. In 2020, Covid-19 slashed the average American life expectancy by 1.8 years. This is for a population of 320 - 350 million. The article contends that Indian life expectancy dropped by a whopping 5 years at the height of British colonial power. For a large and populous country to lose 5 years of life expectancy is a pretty big deal no matter what way you slice it.
kira123123 4y ago
Really poor argument, "oh biased source". Invading a country and colonizing their people. Can really destroy a local population. Ask Native Americans. Ask Kenyans. Ask the Phillipines. Britiain truly commited some upseakable horrors to the countries they invaded, and really push their idea of caucasian supremacy. Deny the truth all you want, the unmarked graves of native american children remain. The evil of the british empire is something we should condemn, but we conveniently ignore.
- MauroIksem 4y ago
  Ask the Algerians.
- Blackstrat 4y ago
  Do we exempt the Portuguese, the Egyptians, the Mongols, the Japanese, and so forth? The belief that colonialism is a manifestation of white supremacy is historically uninformed. Did Native Americans suffer at the hands of the European expansion. Certainly, but recognize that the Spanish and the Portuguese both preceded the British. Were the Native Americans peaceful, pastoral peoples prior to the Europeans? Not a chance. History is replete with all nationalities and races subjugating and enslaving others. It is not a British thing or a white thing. That’s simply a modern argument to promote a political agenda.

BMc2020 4y ago

For one, Britain effectively destroyed India’s manufacturing sector. British colonisers established a system of legal plunder, known to contemporaries as the “drain of wealth.” Britain taxed the Indian population (that seems to be all)

kira123123 4y ago
There is a lot more to it than that. If we can stop caucasian-washing history for a second, britain did not simply arrive in india, and leave peacefully either. They lied about their motive as a trade company (the east india company). They used religion (Christianity) To scout the local population and worked with priests/nuns to see if the land as able to be invaded. And when they left they split the country into two, not really considering the implications of dividing a country in half based on their whims. (spoiler alert it caused a massive civil war and had a major historical figure killed). Trusting Britain, and not inventing the machine gun was the biggest mistake India could have done. Britain literally employed slave labour on the local population, implemented a class based system which destroyed the local population, and murdered anyone who tried to rise up against their tyranny. Sad our history books conveniently ignore the evils of the empire's and the destructive effects of colonization we feel to this day. During Britain's colonization period of india other channels of foreign trade with India like the French, the Dutch, the Portuguese and the Americans were driven out by vicissitudes of war. Solely the British now controlled the Indian trade with rest of the world. You can imagine what happens when a foreign invader like Britain can do when they control a soil-rich country such as India. Britain changed local laws and allowed the new Capital holders’ to own land in India. The British bought lands for plantations, which were manned by Indian slave labour. Thus even the agricultural export profits benefited only the British plantation owners, and not the starving labourers. Britain resold Indian produced goods onto the global market for massive profits. Indians were put into debt by the British during their rule and while they had the engineers to build their own cheaper alternative railways, they were forced to import British railroads and had to pay for it, as their exports were funneled from their home country to various parts of britain to be exported. There is a lot more i could go into on this topic, but this isn't some sort of "woke police", this is pretty established history. Britain did invade India, this was a thing that happened, it was pretty horrible, sad we don't teach our children about the horrors of colonization. http://www.srimatham.com/uploads/5/5/4/9/5549439/how_the_british_ruined_india_.pdf http://www.srimatham.com/uploads/5/5/4/9/5549439/how_the_bri... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_jGPf764d0&ab_channel=VICE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_jGPf764d0&ab_channel=VICE https://qz.com/india/290497/the-forgotten-story-of-indias-colonial-slave-workers-who-began-leaving-home-180-years-ago https://qz.com/india/290497/the-forgotten-story-of-indias-co... https://www.jstor.org/stable/2756302 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2756302

fullark 4y ago

eye for eye

notacop31337 4y ago
That sounds awfully like a call to violence.
- kira123123 4y ago
  i thought of it as a reference to "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." attributed to Gandhi but is disputed.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lamp987 4y ago
are you calling for an anglo genocide?

mncharity 4y ago

Years ago I library-surfed a fun finance tome of papers on the financing of WWII. What struck me most, was the massive wealth transfer from GB to the US. With GB disgorging her wealth of empire, and going unrepayably into debt. The "debt", because US politics required framing further goods transfer, despite no hope of repayment, as "loans", which were then creatively discounted away. I've never seen US industrialization stories which quantify Empire funding, so I've wondered since how large a role it played. Or in the context of TFA, to what extent was US mid-century industrialization built on wealth extracted from India?

rramadass 4y ago
Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33979856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33979856 See the talks/works of economist Utsa Patnaik in particular.

anonreeeeplor 4y ago

This article is suspicious because it is very opinionated. It feels like a study that would benefit China in attempting to create a gap between India and western powers. They would need a left wing Marxist type social justice argument about why India should feel like a victim. This study seems to provide exactly this type of wedge. Down the language used. India did not have an industrial base before Britain arrived there. England was the first to industrialize so any industrialization in India could only have come from Britain. This study feels deeply biased and strongly suspect it is a Chinese influence operation. I would like to know who funded this.

rramadass 4y ago

Perfidious Albion - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidious_Albion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidious_Albion People interested in knowing The Truth about what the British did to India should watch/read the following to get started; 1) Looking back at the British Raj in India - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB5ykS-_-CI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB5ykS-_-CI 2) British Raj siphoned out $45 trillion from India: Utsa Patnaik - https://www.livemint.com/Companies/HNZA71LNVNNVXQ1eaIKu6M/British-Raj-siphoned-out-45-trillion-from-India-Utsa-Patna.html https://www.livemint.com/Companies/HNZA71LNVNNVXQ1eaIKu6M/Br... 3) Why Capitalism Needs Imperialism To Drain Wealth From the Global South, w/ Economist Utsa Patnaik - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RF5vx1W_kk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RF5vx1W_kk 4) Empire in Asia, How we came by it : A Book of Confessions by W. M. Torrens - https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.01877/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.01877/page/n5/mode/...

heywherelogingo 4y ago

"This is a straightforward case for reparations" - and there you have it. This whole idea of reparations for things done by previous generations is absurd. Where do you draw the line - 1900? 1800? 1700? Ridiculous. It's the same with conversations about slavery - apparently the only relevant slavery is post 1700 African slavery which also ignores that Africans were participating slave traders - enough arbitrary constraints? How about domestic bloodbaths - English vs Scots, chattel slavery in middle ages Britain, ... what an absurd can of worms.

lostlogin 4y ago
> This whole idea of reparations for things done by previous generations is absurd. What about confiscated land, taken in the last 100-200 years? New Zealand is grappling with it and it’s not without friction. However leaving it unaddressed seems completely unrealistic, you just allow the theft and profit at the expense of one race and profit for another? Here is a recent story on a small part of the grim saga. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ldr/477765/ngati-maru-apology-highlights-ongoing-devastation-of-land-theft https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ldr/477765/ngati-maru-apology-hig...
rramadass 4y ago
This juvenile argument is always brought up when it comes to the subject of Reparations owed by The British, but unfortunately for its proponents, holds no water. This is simply an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for gutting the Colonized Countries in all dimensions viz. Economically, Socially and Culturally. Here is Jason Hickel (one of the authors of the posted article) on The Case for Reparations - https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/10/13/the-case-for-reparations https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/10/13/the-case-for-rep... In particular; read his rebuttal to the five commonly used arguments (including yours) in the latter half of the above article. Some more articles for your edification; 1) https://qz.com/1911783/what-the-uk-owes-in-reparations https://qz.com/1911783/what-the-uk-owes-in-reparations 2) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/what-to-know-about-calls-for-reparations-for-britains-legacy-of-slavery-in-the-caribbean https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/what-to-know-about-calls-... 3) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/world/americas/colonial-reparations.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/world/americas/colonial-r... Some excerpts from all of the above links: 1) W. Arthur Lewis, a Nobel Prize-winning economist from St. Lucia, had argued since the 1930s that colonialism had gutted the economies of colonized societies for generations to come, making the debt one of not just repayment but also of reconstitution. 2) India wasn’t “developed” under British rule – it was de-developed. And not just in terms of social welfare. British policy was designed to destroy India’s domestic industries by imposing asymmetrical tariffs, by dismantling the institutions that trained up producers, and in some cases even by maiming skilled artisans – all to create captive markets for British goods. During the course of British rule, India’s share of the global economy shrank from 27% to 3%. 3) Frantz Fanon had it right when he wrote, in Wretched of the Earth, that “Colonialism and imperialism have not settled their debt to us once they have withdrawn from our territories. The wealth of the imperialist nations is also our wealth. Europe is literally the creation of the Third World.” 4) “The sequel to that history of repression and disavowal has been poverty and uneven progress. So calls for reparations consider this wide story and its micro-level consequences in their activism,” Smith said. 5) “There’s no real ownership of responsibility. So there is recognition that what happened in the past was bad, but we’re not responsible now,” said Moffet. “It’s a way of sort of separating the monarchy or British government from the past.” 6) And then it strikes you…. Then it strikes you that there is not enough money in all of Britain to compensate for these injustices. And you realize, that if Britain paid reparations – real, honest, courageous reparations – there would be nothing left. Britain would not exist. And that is exactly what people find so terrifying about the question of reparations. It’s not that they fear the actual prospect of paying. It is that even just thinking about what is owed reveals the hard truth: that what is owed, is everything.

crocwrestler 4y ago

How were a couple of thousand British administrators able to subjugate millions of Indians so completely?

rramadass 4y ago
In their own words; Empire in Asia, How we came by it : A Book of Confessions by W. M. Torrens - https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.01877/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.01877/page/n5/mode/... More at - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33979856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33979856
randomcarbloke 4y ago
they didn't, the above is hindunat propaganda and it is worryingly becoming accepted.

thisrod 4y ago

Has anyone read Late Victorian Holocausts, a full exposition of this argument? It's important if true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Victorian_Holocausts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Victorian_Holocausts

rramadass 4y ago
Thanks for the pointer; another one for my "to read" list. However i have read about the Economist Utsa Patnaik's works on the same subject where she makes the argument that Colonialism/Imperialism gave rise to and sustained today's Capitalism. There is a direct correlation which is well supported by available facts. Whether we want to face it or nor is another matter. Some of her works can be accessed from my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33979856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33979856

kwere 4y ago

>Between 1880 to 1920, British colonial policies in India claimed more lives than all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China and North Korea combined. This subtitle tells all the value this opinion piece has.

known 4y ago