[tim333]

I think British control worked more subtly than you imply. I'm not that up on India but I heard roughly how the takeover worked in Ireland. Pre British control Ireland was controlled by a number of local rulers of a warlord type who were endlessly fighting. The Brits basically contacted them and said ally yourself with the King and we'll protect you and make sure you have a good life, or oppose us and we'll team with your rivals to wipe you out. Thus most of them pledged allegiance to the British king with hardly a shot fired.

[rramadass]

The following book from 1872 by an enlightened Irish politician W.M.Torrens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McCullagh_Torrens) lays bare the machinations of Perfidous Albion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidious_Albion).

Empire in Asia, How we came by it : A Book of Confessions by W.M.Torrens - https://archive.org/details/empireinasiahoww00mccuuoft/mode/...

[xxs]

Ireland is a terrible example as it was starved to death (like literally), known as the Great Famine. To this day the population of Ireland is still lower than the pre-famine times (1845)

[tim333]

I was thinking of

>Henry VIII of England was made "King of Ireland" by the Crown of Ireland Act 1542. The conquest involved assimilating the Gaelic nobility by way of "surrender and regrant"...

a long while before the potato famine.

[onecommentman]

The Brits didn’t introduce the potato blight, they just mismanaged the resulting situation in their 19th Century trademark bumptious, oblivious, supercilious manner. But it is unclear whether home rule at that point would have come up with any better idea than emigration. Without the potato, Ireland couldn’t (and still can’t (?)) sustain its pre-1845 population, and an agronomic solution was a long time coming.

Eh, the Americas got a lot of great Irish immigrants out of the tragedy. And those immigrants and their descendants have had a better life than if they stayed in dear old Ireland IMHO.

You could say the Great Famine actually started with the introduction of the potato to Eurasia, an Americas/colonialism introduction that at that point had kept hunger from the door of countless Europeans, especially during times of conflict (since you can’t set a torch to something growing in the ground).

Nothing is simple. It’s an ill wind…