[chakde]

A few points

1. There is a much bigger correlation with India than you suppose.

You can a. build universities and schools to train people b. create favorable tax and corporate structures to foster industry c. capture markets to make a and b and c into a positive feedback loop that makes rapid advancement possible.

Guess which of these is the hardest. It is c - having a captive market. The british captured the Indian market through money and cunning and proceded to systematically weaken then denude native industry then force export their own goods under the pretext of governance. The ratio of manufactures turned from something like 4:1 in India's favor in 1800 to 1:4 by 1900. This entire period was the one of greatest growth for the industrial revolution and it was in fact financed by India. As a french guy wrote, even if the french lost the war to the brits, it was beneficial for europe as this arrangement reduced the cost of development for all of europe. There was no capitalism or industrialism in the west before the Brits came to India.

2. There is no simply comparison between famines under the British, where supplies were not sent out even though they had control of them, and instead levies on starving peasants were increased 10% year over year and famines before and after. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1770

3. It has become standard practice in the west to use the caste system to whitewash British exploitation. Fact is British rule made the situation for the poorest in India much worse than it had ever historically been economically. Poor people could'nt even buy salt which was monopolized by the British for almost 200 years. This salt tax which Gandhi nonviolently protested against was not repealed until the British were kicked out of the country.

4.There was a popular election in 1939 which Jinnah lost even in muslim majority provinces in India. When Nehru tried to pressure the British to leave, Jinnah took the opportunity to get the Queen's support to launch a party which never got even the Muslim popular vote for a new country in the name of Islam. Hindu-muslim is kind of a false label for what actually happened.

Nothing against the British really - they took advantage of history when it was in their favor. It's just the false propaganda that they were somehow hugely beneficial for India that needs to be called out, something which has become truth by sheer repetition.

[nagrom]

I'm not for a second claiming that Britain didn't exploit India - I'm merely refuting the idea that all of the British acts were purely negative.

1. Well, I don't necessarily agree that your point c. is the most difficult and I would guess (without knowing) that in many countries the proportion of British-made goods increased dramatically during the 19th century. Is it possible to explain any of the growth in manufactured goods in terms of increased quality, reduced price, improved shipping and transportation and a large immigrant population with massive comparative economic power?

I also disagree with the implication that industrialism and capitalism in the west are purely due to GB's exploitation of India. I'm certain that the influx of money and goods from India to GB helped. I find it beyond reasonable to claim it the sole cause. Britain was already a strong (the strongest?) world power before it became dominant in India.

2. Yes, I agree. The British did the same thing in Ireland. However, as with slavery, the empire seemed to learn from its mistakes and had reversed this inhumane policy towards the end of its life. British rule did unite an historically divided country and thus set the course for a country that looks to ascertain status as an economic superpower today.

3. The fact is that all around the world, being a peasant during the 18th and 19th centuries was awful and that it is only in the last 20-30 years that we have come to understand and abhor racism - in fact, in most countries, that statement is still not true. Blaming the British Empire for racism is misleading - racism wasn't a particular trait of the empire. You'd as well blame the empire for female subjugation. It was specifically bad in India because India was in a unique situation as having a mix of ruling whites and a large population of native peoples, but it could have been worse. See, e.g., America of the same time period.

4. My point was that the division between India and Pakistan was not something that could be laid solely at the feet of the Brits as the OP seemed to do. I accept that it is simplistic to label the divide simply as Muslim-Hindu.

I wouldn't claim that the Brits were hugely beneficial for India. I would claim that they were not entirely negative and that there was some good to the empire as a whole. I'm not regularly exposed to points of view that see the empire as a positive anywhere - quite the opposite, actually. In my part of the world, the empire is viewed as a terribly shameful, hateful thing (something the OP seemed to claim) and I disagree with that.

[chakde]

1. yes it's not the sole cause. the bigger cause perhaps was the discovery of the americas - an entire continent almost the size of asia lying undiscovered right next to the europeans for 15000 years since the last ice age, until Islam's kick led the europeans to search for new routes to India, ultimately leading to the discovery of the Americas. with a discovery like that anyone can become powerful if they put their minds to it. it's amazing that despite such a discovery the British still had to resort to colonialism for centuries to build their way to modernity.

the other cause which you I'm sure you're thinking of is better systems of writing, publishing and central system of goveranance - I'd agree with you there that european systems were better at the time. having said that europe as a whole was'nt that far ahead of india/china before colonialism began.

2. India was politically united in 300BC, about a 1000 years before the UK was in 700A.D. Hugo Grotius in discussing international law around 1600 talked of India as a single entity. the muslim empire around 1600s still had India politically united. culturally and even linguistically India has always had great inherent unity - contrary to the image sometimes portrayed in the west. India was not united by the British - they divided into innumerable princely states and sundry other divisions. It was Sardar Patel who united India after its independance despite all the efforts of the British for the opposite effect and hopes of getting India again once they were out of bankruptcy dues to WW2. You cannot grasp this until you read history of that period very carefully. America helped a bit - basically out of its own selfish motive so that the markets that were captive by the British would open up for itself.

Anyways thanks to Nehru and Gandhi most Indians (at least middle/upper classes) don't have much sting left of the British period of history. Different parts of the world that used to be apart were joining together and there was upheavel that accompanied it which could be expected. But the continuing pain in the peasants and less fortunate classes is very real. Nehru in his biography penned the feeling of loss that Indians feel when they visit America and see how rich it is- and wondered if India would not today have had a sunnier disposition if the British had not turned things so much upside down once they gained political control. He also thought that the loss of American colonies made the British even more vengeful in India, which I think is true.

All that does make it hard to hear the narrative of how Indian success owes itself to British - I mean wow, that really takes the cake does'nt it.

[nagrom]

1. The search for new routes to the Far East was as much due to political pressures in Europe as it was to any Islamic interference.

The British didn't 'resort to colonialism to build their way to modernity.' At that time, Britain defined modernity in a way to which no other country has come close since. Colonialism wasn't nice or good, but implying that the Brits alone relied on it to keep up with the rest of the world is nonsense.

Europe patently was pretty far ahead. Not necessarily in one particular area (although I would argue that, at the time, Europe was the world's hub of invention and innovation), but taken as a sum Europe was very far ahead of the rest of the contemporary world. Evidence for this can be seen in the influence Europe had over Africa, America, India and China at the time compared to the influence India and China had over it.

2. When the Brits found India, it was fragmented into several different princedoms and cities. To say that it was in any sense united is misleading - before the Brits got there and for a time while the Brits were there, wars between neighboring sultanates and empires were commonplace. When they left, they left a united India. Those are just cold hard facts that cannot be argued with - India may have been politically united in 300BC, but it sure as hell wasn't in 1700. At the bitter end, if the Brits had really, really wanted to leave India divided, it would not have been a difficult thing to accomplish. The will and attention simply was not there after Britain had bankrupted itself fighting the two largest wars the world had ever seen, right on its own doorstep.

Indians shouldn't feel any sense of loss when they visit America - those that do so are deluded, unless they believe that India (who had no united navy or army at that time) should have discovered it first (despite no history of exploration and settlement in the way of the Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch and Italians). If Indians should feel a sense of loss about any country, it should be Australia. It was on India's doorstep!

As for what-might-have-been-because-we-could-have-been-united: to say that Indians feel loss upon visiting America is similar to saying that Russians or Chinese should also.

If you want an objective viewpoint of history, you should refrain from choosing positions from an autobiography of one of the key players!

(Why is it that India's positives are due to certain men - Nehru and Ghandi are mentioned liberally throughout the arguments on this thread - but the downsides to British rule in India is due to 'the British', rather than Clive, Hastings or Mountbatten? Is that evidence of bias?)

I certainly haven't said that India owes its success to the British. I do think that some of modern India's plus points have their roots in the structures and technologies brought by the British - and conversely, a lot haven't. Both yourself and the OP seem very sensitive about that. The original point in the conversation to which I replied was that the British empire was an overwhelming force for evil.

Simply, it wasn't; as a matter of pure fact, it may have been the most benevolent imperial structure ever to have existed. It did bad things, but not all the things it did were bad and it can certainly be argued that, in balance and in net, it was a force for good.

[chakde]

It's not the discovery of america, it's the fact that India was actively deindustrialized by the British railways which had a negative feedback loop on Indian industry, whereas in America the railways had a positive feedback loop in manufacturing. It's not that America is ahead but that India was cut down. Also you can read up on internal tarrifs in India which were deliberate British policy to kill the market of goods produced in India, not the doing of one or two men like Clive or Hastings.

Let me close my argument by asking you to read a document that warned of British intentions to the Americans just before the American revolution - Common Sense by Thomas Paine. All the things he warned America about the British crown came true for India, whereas America which was also not united at the time - there were more loyalists than revolutionaries and many different colonies - got the warning in time and got its unity and independance early on. India was not so lucky and did not discern the threat or receive this kind of explicit warning and suffered for it.

There's no bias there, I am clearly stating facts from the Indian perspective not some utilitarian world good perspective. In case you believe in that perspective, the question to you is why America chose not to continue being a British colony.

As far as unity argument, like I said the history of the time has to be examined carefully and it turns out to be false as far as British intentions and actions went. Churchill said was no more a country than the equator for example. Also why UK been so opposed to EU and unification in its own backyard.

[naveens]

>2. When the Brits found India, it was fragmented into several different princedoms and cities. To say that it was in any sense united is misleading - before the Brits got there and for a time while the Brits were there, wars between neighboring sultanates and empires were commonplace.

What do you think happened between when they landed and when they left? They landed as traders; they took sides between the warring kingdoms and sultanates for access to markets. They just played on the differences for their own gains - divide and rule. Read about the Partition of Bengal. This was the modus operandi of the empire everywhere: hindu v muslims in India, catholics v protestants in Ireland, muslims v jews in Palestine.

>When they left, they left a united India. Those are just cold hard facts that cannot be argued with - India may have been politically united in 300BC, but it sure as hell wasn't in 1700. At the bitter end, if the Brits had really, really wanted to leave India divided, it would not have been a difficult thing to accomplish.

Well they did not try to leave it united. The British never had direct control over all of India. Many regions were under direct rule, many still under princes. It was the Indian political will, after independence (and after the India-Pakistan partition), which united India in to a whole. India did not become a Republic until 1950.

[chakde]

Re: most benevolent structure ever to have existed

here's a reference on internal tariffs from R.C.Dutt since it is very hard to locate online.

"The transit duties became more oppressive under the British Rule than they had been under the Nawabs. For the Company's power was more far- reaching, absolute, and undisputed, and each low- paid officer, at each Chowki or toll-house, had the means of exercising greater oppression. The evil grew without cessation for sixty years, and as late as 1825, Holt Mackenzie, then Territorial Secretary, condemned it in the strongest terms. " ..

"But Holt Mackenzie spoke to deaf ears. The East India Company would not willingly sacrifice even a re- venue of ;!{^2 2 0,000, or any portion of it, for the prosperity of the internal trade of India. Professing the utmost anxiety for the material welfare of the people of India, they were unwilling to sacrifice a shilling to promote that welfare. If the abolition of the Inland Duties had depended on the East India Company, the duties would never have been abolished under their administration. "