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British Imperialism was the best thing that ever happened to India. In fact, British Imperialism was actually pretty good all around, and certainly better for the locals than the predatory trading that replaced it. A wealthy, powerful nation assuming the cost of defense and proper infrastructure, in addition to insuring competent administration is far better than leaving an impoverished and uneducated nation to provide for itself, and just letting the private interests exploitatively trade with them (it's also much less profitable, which is why imperialism has been replaced with predatory trade).

Of course, India demanding the Koh-i noor from the British is farcical for a number of other reasons too, most notable being it wasn't taken from India, it was taken from an independent kingdom around what is now the border of India and Pakistan (I'm not familiar enough with the modern geography to say which side it was located) which was attacking India at the time, only for the British to bar their advance and rout them, in two separate wars (ironically, said kingdom in later years provided some of the most reliable local auxiliaries).

 Albatross wrote:
I wrote a a paper on the Blair propaganda machine. I am convinced the man is a psychopath.

He's a politician, if he wasn't a sociopath it would beat very long odds. Not sure about psychopathy though.

 whembly wrote:
Right... before you know it, the Native Indians would try to take back their land... oh... wait. <looks sheepishly around>

Yeah, and we did the same thing over here.

At the start of a lot of function it's become common for people say 'and we thank the traditional owners for the use of their land' and everytime I hear it I think "but we're not fething giving it back".


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Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
British Imperialism was the best thing that ever happened to India. In fact, British Imperialism was actually pretty good all around, and certainly better for the locals than the predatory trading that replaced it. A wealthy, powerful nation assuming the cost of defense and proper infrastructure, in addition to insuring competent administration is far better than leaving an impoverished and uneducated nation to provide for itself, and just letting the private interests exploitatively trade with them (it's also much less profitable, which is why imperialism has been replaced with predatory trade).

Seriously, just fething no. Absolutely, 100% no.

That's an argument that continues to flourish in non-academic circles "oh they were lucky to have us" but among the people who study this stuff for a living the reality couldn't be further from the truth. Britain de-industralised India, forced it to focus on trade goods that were profitable for the English, not for the Indians. Over the course of British rule GDP in India declined.

 Albatross wrote:
I wrote a a paper on the Blair propaganda machine. I am convinced the man is a psychopath.

His wife is a psychopath, Blair is an opportunist with his moral compass sufficiently detached to make policy purely for his own good irregardless of the cost to the nation state.

 sebster wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
British Imperialism was the best thing that ever happened to India. In fact, British Imperialism was actually pretty good all around, and certainly better for the locals than the predatory trading that replaced it. A wealthy, powerful nation assuming the cost of defense and proper infrastructure, in addition to insuring competent administration is far better than leaving an impoverished and uneducated nation to provide for itself, and just letting the private interests exploitatively trade with them (it's also much less profitable, which is why imperialism has been replaced with predatory trade).

Seriously, just fething no. Absolutely, 100% no.

That's an argument that continues to flourish in non-academic circles "oh they were lucky to have us" but among the people who study this stuff for a living the reality couldn't be further from the truth. Britain de-industralised India, forced it to focus on trade goods that were profitable for the English, not for the Indians. Over the course of British rule GDP in India declined.

Can we see some citations for that, please? I'd be interested to have a read. And incidentally, there are some academics who maintain that British rule was a positive thing, on balance.

I'm betting that India would rather have had British rule than Russian.

Also, the British Museum in London is kick ass. "Come look at all of these awesome sculptures and other works of art our colonies had laying about!"

 Albatross wrote:
Can we see some citations for that, please? I'd be interested to have a read. And incidentally, there are some academics who maintain that British rule was a positive thing, on balance.

How many citations do you want?

The Scandal of Empire is a terrific place to start.


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 kronk wrote:
I'm betting that India would rather have had British rule than Russian.

Russia? Why mention Russia? They were the European power that was such a feth up they never managed colonisation in any meaningful form.

Belgium, sure. What King Leopold did was so remarkably cruel that, well, anything short of Hitler can be justified as an alternative, but Russia?

The Soviet Union was a great example of an empire, also the Russians did have an Empire pre Russian Revolution. The thought that Russians seem to be inordinately proud of how cruel and terrible their leaders have been comes to mind as well.

Also Afghanistan if you didn't catch the meaning of the not so nice colonialism of the USSR.

 sebster wrote:
Russia? Why mention Russia? They were the European power that was such a feth up they never managed colonisation in any meaningful form.

They were practically landlocked, with their only ports going out onto the baltic or black seas, and the only states that managed colonization were either adjacent to the atlantic, or basically adjacent to it. Russia, however, was geographically adjacent if not to the Indian subcontinent itself, then to the regions immediately bordering it, and actively interested in taking the region, though due to the British presence it wasn't militarily possible for them to do so.


Considering the time period, the only "industry" that would have been present in India was just cottage craft rubbish, there was barely anything more in Europe by that point. The economic growth from the creation of infrastructure, the large standing forces of local auxiliaries, and the attendant service industries providing for the above, as well as unification under a generally competent central government and the eradication of the most loathsome local customs far outweighs whatever may have been lost by replacing the most basic industry with more valuable trade goods.

Anthropologists in general aren't exactly unbiased parties when it comes to the dispute between global powers and natives, presumably because no one who isn't thusly biased would become an anthropologist in the first place. Trying to paint imperialism as some great travesty is intellectually dishonest in the extreme. Was it all rainbows and sunshine? Obviously not, but it's not like the local powers it replaced were any better (and in fact were frequently quite a bit worse), so the issue comes down to general contrariness and an inexplicable willful disbelief in the instinctive brutality of humans on the part of the relevant academics.

 Ratbarf wrote:
The Soviet Union was a great example of an empire, also the Russians did have an Empire pre Russian Revolution. The thought that Russians seem to be inordinately proud of how cruel and terrible their leaders have been comes to mind as well.

Also Afghanistan if you didn't catch the meaning of the not so nice colonialism of the USSR.

Why pick out Russian efforts at occupations that are kind of vaguely comparable to colonisation, either post war or in the 80s, when there's the examples of all the other colonising powers. Why not pick France or Belgium?

 sebster wrote:

 Ratbarf wrote:
The Soviet Union was a great example of an empire, also the Russians did have an Empire pre Russian Revolution. The thought that Russians seem to be inordinately proud of how cruel and terrible their leaders have been comes to mind as well.

Also Afghanistan if you didn't catch the meaning of the not so nice colonialism of the USSR.

Why pick out Russian efforts at occupations that are kind of vaguely comparable to colonisation, either post war or in the 80s, when there's the examples of all the other colonising powers. Why not pick France or Belgium?

Because it's culturally more acceptable to bash Russians then French. Which says a lot.

All this ''they profited under us'' nonsense should immediatly stop. Americans fethed the native americans. Spaniards fethed the natives south americans, French fethed Indochine and Algeria (badly). British fethed the Indians. Russians fethed about everyone they could (see, I'm doing it right now!). The Dutch (of all people) fethed South Africa.

Colonization was never about anything else then setting up trade routes to the advantage of the mother nations. Any benefits they subsequently got where accidents.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
They were practically landlocked, with their only ports going out onto the baltic or black seas, and the only states that managed colonization were either adjacent to the atlantic, or basically adjacent to it.

Russian colonisation lurched eastward over Siberia, and then to the Pacific Coast. The whole Alaska thing.

Point being that it wasn't the existance or absence of ports that proved the problem, but Russia woeful economic progress, which made their colonies cash losing white elephants.

Russia, however, was geographically adjacent if not to the Indian subcontinent itself, then to the regions immediately bordering it, and actively interested in taking the region, though due to the British presence it wasn't militarily possible for them to do so.

If the point was to pick a rival for control of India then pick the French. They were an active rival for control of India (and probably should have won) and their record of colonisation is more that horrid enough to work for compare (Algeria, Vietnam). Picking Russia is screwball.

Considering the time period, the only "industry" that would have been present in India was just cottage craft rubbish, there was barely anything more in Europe by that point. The economic growth from the creation of infrastructure, the large standing forces of local auxiliaries, and the attendant service industries providing for the above, as well as unification under a generally competent central government and the eradication of the most loathsome local customs far outweighs whatever may have been lost by replacing the most basic industry with more valuable trade goods.

The refining of cotton and silk were important trade industries to India, and with other crafts represented a foundation for industrialisation at least as strong as that in England and the rest of Europe.

But India became a colony, and under British rule not only failed to develop its industry, but actually saw its industry come apart. While part of this decline is due to political and economic instability, much of it is due to the basic relationship between coloniser and colony. The colony is a source for raw goods, the merchants and political class administering the colony look only at how to expand the flow of raw materials from the colony. The oft mentioned railways aren't built to expand local trade and industry, but to best facilitate the transfer of raw materials to port.

As a result, the Mughal Empire produced around a quarter of world GDP. At the end of British rule, India represented under 4% of GDP.

Anthropologists in general aren't exactly unbiased parties when it comes to the dispute between global powers and natives, presumably because no one who isn't thusly biased would become an anthropologist in the first place. Trying to paint imperialism as some great travesty is intellectually dishonest in the extreme. Was it all rainbows and sunshine? Obviously not, but it's not like the local powers it replaced were any better (and in fact were frequently quite a bit worse), so the issue comes down to general contrariness and an inexplicable willful disbelief in the instinctive brutality of humans on the part of the relevant academics.

It isn't about picking out specific people and saying 'he was very mean' and picking out someone else and saying 'he was very good'. That's all just silliness. Nor is brutality alone useful, very few regimes have killed as much as poverty.

The point is to look at the systems in place, and consider whether those systems brought India out of poverty, or kept it stagnant, or possibly even made poverty worse. And the answer there is very clear.

 fire4effekt wrote:

 Albatross wrote:

 fire4effekt wrote:
Sorry bout not doing enough to prevent the famines (which have been a fact of life in India for hundreds of years) mate, enjoy the lifeblood of your economy

Fixed.

Did you?
https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/indian-holocaust

Well, that's just ranked up GB's kill tally

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Trying to paint imperialism as some great travesty is intellectually dishonest in the extreme. Was it all rainbows and sunshine? Obviously not, but it's not like the local powers it replaced were any better (and in fact were frequently quite a bit worse), so the issue comes down to general contrariness and an inexplicable willful disbelief in the instinctive brutality of humans on the part of the relevant academics.

You started off well, and then descended in to dismissive territory.

 sebster wrote:

 Ratbarf wrote:
The Soviet Union was a great example of an empire, also the Russians did have an Empire pre Russian Revolution. The thought that Russians seem to be inordinately proud of how cruel and terrible their leaders have been comes to mind as well.

Also Afghanistan if you didn't catch the meaning of the not so nice colonialism of the USSR.

Why pick out Russian efforts at occupations that are kind of vaguely comparable to colonisation, either post war or in the 80s, when there's the examples of all the other colonising powers. Why not pick France or Belgium?

Simply because Russian Colonisation was not the worst thing since the Dutch doesn't mean that they should not be talked about in addition to other colonial powers. He may simply not be aware of the level of destruction visited upon the local populace under the various other European powers. I don't know why he picked them, I was simply explaining why they are a viable choice, if not exactly optimal, to pick in the first place.

 Ratbarf wrote:
Simply because Russian Colonisation was not the worst thing since the Dutch doesn't mean that they should not be talked about in addition to other colonial powers.

Sure, not saying they can't be mentioned. But when you're picking just one other power to mention, it's a strange one to mention, and I thought that was worth a question.

I don't know why he picked them, I was simply explaining why they are a viable choice, if not exactly optimal, to pick in the first place.

Sure, not saying they didn't colonise, just wondering why they were picked. It's an odd choice to pick out, is all.

 sebster wrote:
Russian colonisation lurched eastward over Siberia, and then to the Pacific Coast. The whole Alaska thing.

Point being that it wasn't the existance or absence of ports that proved the problem, but Russia woeful economic progress, which made their colonies cash losing white elephants.

Militarily they could have taken India, without the core of British troops supported by local auxiliaries, and geographically they had fairly easy access over land. That they couldn't have made a profit off the resulting colony would only make such an occupation worse.

If the point was to pick a rival for control of India then pick the French. They were an active rival for control of India (and probably should have won) and their record of colonisation is more that horrid enough to work for compare (Algeria, Vietnam). Picking Russia is screwball.

My guess is the specific choice comes from kronk having, perhaps, read the Flashman novels that involve Russian plots to invade India or to subvert the British and so pave the way for an invasion (it has Russian politicals being responsible for the mutiny, for instance)?

The refining of cotton and silk were important trade industries to India, and with other crafts represented a foundation for industrialisation at least as strong as that in England and the rest of Europe.

But India became a colony, and under British rule not only failed to develop its industry, but actually saw its industry come apart. While part of this decline is due to political and economic instability, much of it is due to the basic relationship between coloniser and colony. The colony is a source for raw goods, the merchants and political class administering the colony look only at how to expand the flow of raw materials from the colony. The oft mentioned railways aren't built to expand local trade and industry, but to best facilitate the transfer of raw materials to port.

As a result, the Mughal Empire produced around a quarter of world GDP. At the end of British rule, India represented under 4% of GDP.

When, exactly, did the Mughals produce quite so much, and what's the estimate based on? By the time the British arrived on the scene, the Mughal Empire was already waning pretty heavily, having lost the south to local warlords.

If it wasn't profitable for India to be industrialized to the same extent that Europe experienced, or as profitable as trade in raw resources, why would it have been any different were it a local government running the show? They'd be subject to the same economic pressures as India under the British had, and they'd lack the military security, infrastructure developments, and complete unification that the British handled for them.

Considering that in the general region, those states best off today were all long-term British holdings (India, Singapore, Hong-Kong) (or have played host to a large American garrison for better than half a century, if you want to expand the scope eastwards a bit), I really can't see Britain's actions having been anything but positive in the long term.

It isn't about picking out specific people and saying 'he was very mean' and picking out someone else and saying 'he was very good'. That's all just silliness. Nor is brutality alone useful, very few regimes have killed as much as poverty.

The point is to look at the systems in place, and consider whether those systems brought India out of poverty, or kept it stagnant, or possibly even made poverty worse. And the answer there is very clear.

There is a very marked trend in the relevant academia towards treating local cultures as not just being excused for any transgressions, but utterly incapable of being worse than European civilization, with Europeans obviously being the root source of all bad things in the world . Rarely in such clear language, of course; eloquence is something of a prerequisite for the job, after all. We get the same sort of nonsense decrying the replacement of traditional cultures by a more unified and originless culture created by mass-communication removing the barriers that produced localized cultures to begin with. The world marches forward, and this is a good thing.



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 dogma wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Trying to paint imperialism as some great travesty is intellectually dishonest in the extreme. Was it all rainbows and sunshine? Obviously not, but it's not like the local powers it replaced were any better (and in fact were frequently quite a bit worse), so the issue comes down to general contrariness and an inexplicable willful disbelief in the instinctive brutality of humans on the part of the relevant academics.

You started off well, and then descended in to dismissive territory.

Perhaps I'm a bit harsh with my words, but I think a lot of the problem does come down to an inexplicable refusal to acknowledge the darker aspects of human nature as something that's inherent to us, and found in all peoples on Earth. So we can look at the Imperial British and say "they were more brutal and callous in their actions than we are today," but it's rather dishonest to single them out, when the peoples on the receiving end weren't any better than them, and were often worse, and extremely so to paint the other parties as saints*.


*exaggeration for rhetorical emphasis.

 sebster wrote:


Why pick out Russian efforts at occupations that are kind of vaguely comparable to colonisation, either post war or in the 80s, when there's the examples of all the other colonising powers. Why not pick France or Belgium?

Just another point I think I should mention, a very large reason why the European powers get picked on when it comes condemning their colonial actions is they are seen as among the worst simply because they were the most successful at it. One doesn't really see people expressing indignant outrage or disdain or any other kind of looking down upon a people's/nations history in a negative manner so strong as to inhibit its celebration when it comes to peoples/nations that did not fair well in the game of Empire, or at least weren't European. The two best examples of this that I know of is the Mongol Empire, quite possibly the most brutal people to have ever arisen on earth, who during their reign brought both stunning cultural and societal improvements hand in hand with wide spread large scale death. And the Maori, who when they conquered and colonised the Moriori preceded hunt down and kill/ritually sacrifice/eat 10% of the native population, enslaved the rest, outlawed the language, and forbid the marrying of Moriori to other Moriori so the people would cease to exist within several generations. So in comparison to either of those examples, I think the Indians were damned lucky.

 Albatross wrote:
It's my sincere belief that Cameron would be wildly popular as President of the USA. He's a libertarian, stands up for his country on the world stage and is committed to fiscal responsibility. By the same token, Obama would probably be very popular as Prime Minister over here.

Adding 5% of GDP to our debt every year is a "fiscal conservative"? Yikes I'd hate to meet a fiscal liberal

 BryllCream wrote:

 Albatross wrote:
It's my sincere belief that Cameron would be wildly popular as President of the USA. He's a libertarian, stands up for his country on the world stage and is committed to fiscal responsibility. By the same token, Obama would probably be very popular as Prime Minister over here.

Adding 5% of GDP to our debt every year is a "fiscal conservative"? Yikes I'd hate to meet a fiscal liberal

Have you seen our government across the pond? Only 5%? Hell the conservatives would canonize him!

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Militarily they could have taken India, without the core of British troops supported by local auxiliaries, and geographically they had fairly easy access over land. That they couldn't have made a profit off the resulting colony would only make such an occupation worse.

I can't see it being very plausible for Russia to sustain such an operation. Given the limited forces they could bring to the Crimea, I've got a really hard time believing they could bring adequate forces to India. Most likely they'd bring a core of officers and a chequebook, and rely on local troops. At which point I'm not sure there's any reason they'd succeed any better than the French trying the same thing.

My guess is the specific choice comes from kronk having, perhaps, read the Flashman novels that involve Russian plots to invade India or to subvert the British and so pave the way for an invasion (it has Russian politicals being responsible for the mutiny, for instance)?

Ah, I thought it might be soemthing like that. Thankyou.

When, exactly, did the Mughals produce quite so much, and what's the estimate based on?

Historic GDP figures are an important field in economic history. Angus Maddison produced what is, more or less, the definitive figures giving Indian GDP at about 24%, but you won't find another work that differs too much from that. If you're interested you can start with his The World Economy: Historical Statistics.

By the time the British arrived on the scene, the Mughal Empire was already waning pretty heavily, having lost the south to local warlords.

Yes, which is a large part of the reason the British were able to take control. But the point here isn't the Mughal Empire, but the economy of the region (though the decline of the Empire was certainly a factor in the economic decline).

If it wasn't profitable for India to be industrialized to the same extent that Europe experienced, or as profitable as trade in raw resources, why would it have been any different were it a local government running the show? They'd be subject to the same economic pressures as India under the British had, and they'd lack the military security, infrastructure developments, and complete unification that the British handled for them.

The economic incentives for a locally based landowner or noble is very different to a colonial authority. The latter derives its wealth from the production of trade goods, and for political reasons will priorities home industrial expansion over colonial expansion. Once again, India had a significant local industry dedicated to the processing of raw materials into trade goods. This industry was dismantled (in some places deliberately) in order for the raw materials to instead be shipped to English factories.

Considering that in the general region, those states best off today were all long-term British holdings (India, Singapore, Hong-Kong) (or have played host to a large American garrison for better than half a century, if you want to expand the scope eastwards a bit), I really can't see Britain's actions having been anything but positive in the long term.

Japan? Before the war they'd modernised in a way the rest of Asia didn't. In a way the rest of Asia managed only after the war... once they were no longer colonies.

Point being, it sucks to be a colony. Pointing out that some other colony did worse out of the arrangement doesn't mean that colony didn't suffer as well. I agree that it is better to be a British colony than a French or Dutch colony, but no matter who's colony you are economic stagnation and likely decline will happen.

There is a very marked trend in the relevant academia towards treating local cultures as not just being excused for any transgressions, but utterly incapable of being worse than European civilization, with Europeans obviously being the root source of all bad things in the world . Rarely in such clear language, of course; eloquence is something of a prerequisite for the job, after all. We get the same sort of nonsense decrying the replacement of traditional cultures by a more unified and originless culture created by mass-communication removing the barriers that produced localized cultures to begin with. The world marches forward, and this is a good thing.

Complaints about black armband history are as old as studies of history. And there's no doubting there exists some faction that for whatever reason attempts to dump everything on those mean old Europeans. But the opposite is just as common, there is just as much of an effort to pretend the world outside of Europe was a wild land needing European civilisation, morals and government. Both sides are so general that they're annoying distractions from learning about what really happened.

Perhaps I'm a bit harsh with my words, but I think a lot of the problem does come down to an inexplicable refusal to acknowledge the darker aspects of human nature as something that's inherent to us, and found in all peoples on Earth. So we can look at the Imperial British and say "they were more brutal and callous in their actions than we are today," but it's rather dishonest to single them out, when the peoples on the receiving end weren't any better than them, and were often worse, and extremely so to paint the other parties as saints*.

Actually, I'm of the opinion that the person doesn't matter, certainly not in aggregate. Across the whole we all act largely in the same ways, what motivates us are the economic systems in place.

And studies of the economics of colonialism, and the incentives they put in place for the various actors, tell a very clear story, and that is colonised country sees very little economic benefit from the arrangement, and likely a great deal of harm.

Now, given that anyone in that position will likely act in the same way, the point isn't to wag a finger at the coloniser, and make the current generation feel bad about having distant ancestors who exploited some other country. The point is to properly understand how it worked, why it worked like that, and how we can build less exploitative economic systems today.


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 Ratbarf wrote:
Just another point I think I should mention, a very large reason why the European powers get picked on when it comes condemning their colonial actions is they are seen as among the worst simply because they were the most successful at it.

Sure. But the thing is I think you're confusing two different things. The first is the idea that people moralise about colonisation, and they shouldn't because history is cruel etc... I agree with you entirely.

My point is that we shouldn't then just pretend that colonisation was anything other than what it was. There is a belief that colonisation was good for Indian economic development, and that view is simply wrong.

I agree with the thinking that it was bad for Indian economic development, but I also think that it was good for Indian social development, as well as instigating a certain amount of stability and predictability into the nations government, in addition to mitigating some of the more distasteful local practices. As was mentioned above. For instance, they outlawed the burning of wives upon their husbands funeral pyres, among other things. A policy of colonization with social goals in line is somewhat more palatable then for pure economic exploitation.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:

 Albatross wrote:
It's my sincere belief that Cameron would be wildly popular as President of the USA. He's a libertarian, stands up for his country on the world stage and is committed to fiscal responsibility. By the same token, Obama would probably be very popular as Prime Minister over here.

Adding 5% of GDP to our debt every year is a "fiscal conservative"? Yikes I'd hate to meet a fiscal liberal

Have you seen our government across the pond? Only 5%? Hell the conservatives would canonize him!

g
Can't really compare a federal republic of 300 million souls that spans an entire continent to a tiny rock off Northern Europe. Not only does America refuse to tax its citizens properly, it also has an ernourmous defence budget. There's nothing wrong with either of those, but they're incompatable. If the US wants to keep its position as the only military super-power then it needs to pay for it.

 BryllCream wrote:

 Albatross wrote:
It's my sincere belief that Cameron would be wildly popular as President of the USA. He's a libertarian, stands up for his country on the world stage and is committed to fiscal responsibility. By the same token, Obama would probably be very popular as Prime Minister over here.

Adding 5% of GDP to our debt every year is a "fiscal conservative"? Yikes I'd hate to meet a fiscal liberal

That's the interest repayments your hero Gordon Brown left us.

If I run up a huge debt as a company director and you take over the company, you are responsible for paying that debt, but it's not your fault you are in that mess. Sometime you might wake up and realise that is our economic reality.

 BryllCream wrote:

Can't really compare a federal republic of 300 million souls that spans an entire continent to a tiny rock off Northern Europe. Not only does America refuse to tax its citizens properly, it also has an ernourmous defence budget. There's nothing wrong with either of those, but they're incompatable. If the US wants to keep its position as the only military super-power then it needs to pay for it.

Actually one can compare. The UK is still one of the worlds largest economies, and the 'tiny rock' is one of the worlds largest islands, (for what thats worth). If you want tiny rocvk try Gibraltar. I dont know how many UK's you could fit into the USA, but you could easily fit five into one state and the resultant nation would have an economy and populations matching the whole of the USA, Think about that for a moment, the UK might be having severe economic problems (thanks to New Labour) but it, and the other major players of Europe, are no minnows.
One of the reason federalists want a Federal Europe is that it would almost immediately have three to four times the economic weight of the US economy and would be the de facto global power.

Also the US is not the only superpower, China is also a superpower, the US liked to think its the only superpower and China was happy with that, though that is the politics of the last decade, Washington is finally awake to that now, even the broader American populace are realising this as of the last few years.

Also what? And the British Isles have roughly a 5th or a 6th of the population of America, excluding southern ireland.

Mmm, I don't think China is quite yet a super power in the conventional use of the word. They don't have anywhere near the military projection to be thought of as one, though their economy is reaching the point where it could start being seen as one. That said, a lot of the reason why it has this ability is because it has such stringent government control over the economy. If Germany or France had the same kind of control and access to resources they could likely replicate the results.

 Orlanth wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:

 Albatross wrote:
It's my sincere belief that Cameron would be wildly popular as President of the USA. He's a libertarian, stands up for his country on the world stage and is committed to fiscal responsibility. By the same token, Obama would probably be very popular as Prime Minister over here.

Adding 5% of GDP to our debt every year is a "fiscal conservative"? Yikes I'd hate to meet a fiscal liberal

That's the interest repayments your hero Gordon Brown left us.

If I run up a huge debt as a company director and you take over the company, you are responsible for paying that debt, but it's not your fault you are in that mess. Sometime you might wake up and realise that is our economic reality.

Interest rates is about 3% GDP, which is slightly lower than inflation. Put it another way even if we never "paid off" the debt, inflation would destroy it within decades. Governments don't have to balance the books they simply have to ensure that future interest payments do not exceed their capacity to pay.

The reason that we have such a large deficit now is because previous spending was build on an unstable economic base, namely an over-dependance on financial services. This has now collapsed, and spending needs to be reajusted to this in the long-term. You can knock the labour government for being complacent about economic growth outside of the south-east, and simply subsidising the rest of the country using London's taxes, but that's not what you're doing. Don't pretend that Labour simply grossly over-spent, since they didn't. At no point during the "boom years" did the Conservative party, or to my mind anyone who wasn't a right-wing loon, claim that government spending as a % of GDP needed to be lower, at least not that I can recall.

 Orlanth wrote:


Actually one can compare. The UK is still one of the worlds largest economies, and the 'tiny rock' is one of the worlds largest islands, (for what thats worth). If you want tiny rocvk try Gibraltar. I dont know how many UK's you could fit into the USA, but you could easily fit five into one state and the resultant nation would have an economy and populations matching the whole of the USA, Think about that for a moment, the UK might be having severe economic problems (thanks to New Labour) but it, and the other major players of Europe, are no minnows.
One of the reason federalists want a Federal Europe is that it would almost immediately have three to four times the economic weight of the US economy and would be the de facto global power.

Also the US is not the only superpower, China is also a superpower, the US liked to think its the only superpower and China was happy with that, though that is the politics of the last decade, Washington is finally awake to that now, even the broader American populace are realising this as of the last few years.

The Eurozone's GDP would be lower than the USA's actually. It would also have a lower population growth rate, and therefore would grow comparitively smaller in the short to long term. Only with the inclusion of the whole of the EU does a "federal Europe"s GDP exceed that of the USA's.

And no, China is not a military super-power. Calling it an economic super-power is pushing it, given that the state control of the economy means we don't actually know what's going on over there.

Some interesting figures from Niall Ferguson's Empire:

Niall Ferguson wrote:...The colonial burden as measured by the trade surplus of the colony... amounted to little more than 1 per cent of Indian net domestic product a year between 1868 and 1930. That was a lot less than the Dutch 'drained' from their East Indies empire, which amounted to between 7 and 10 per cent of Indonesian net domestic product in the same period.

...On the other side of the balance sheet were the immense British investments in Indian infrastructure, irrigation and industry. By the 1880s the British had invested £270 million in India, not much less than one-fifth of their entire investment overseas. By 1914 the figure had reached £400 million. The British increased irrigated land by a factor of eight, so that by the end of the Raj a quarter of all land was irrigated, compared with just 5 per cent of it under the Mughals. They created an Indian coal industry from scratch which by 1914 produced nearly 16 million tons a year... There were also marked improvements in public health, which increased Indian average life expectancy by 11 years. It was the British who introduced quinine as an ant-malarial prophylactic, carried out public programs of vaccination against smallpox - often in the face of public resistance - and laboured to improve the urban water supplies that were so often the bearers of cholera and other diseases.

Under British rule, the village economy's share of total after tax income rose from 45 per cent to 54 per cent. Since that sector represented around three-quarters of the entire population, there can therefore be little doubt that British rule reduced inequality in India.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

BryllCream wrote:Don't pretend that Labour simply grossly over-spent, since they didn't.

Yes they did. Their public spending sharply outpaced growth in the period 2000-2007.

Those 'Right-Wing Loons' the Institute for Fiscal Studies wrote:
The average real rate of increase in the Conservative years 1979-1997 was 1.5 per cent and under the Labour government from April 1997 to March 2009 it has been 3.2 per cent... Since 1999 the UK has experienced a sustained increase in public spending, greater than that experienced by the other (OECD) countries, who typically either maintained or saw falls in their levels of public spending as a share of national income.

Source: http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn43.pdf

I like Fergusson, but he does have a blatent pro-Imperial bias.

Having said that, modern India would clearly be impossible were it not for the UK. Britain built schools, hospitals, railroads, factories. They raised life expectancy by ten years and are solely responsable for the educated middle class in India. I can see why they'd be bummed that we have their diamond but meh. Rome can keep Britain's bluejohn, and we can keep the Indians' diamond

 BryllCream wrote:
I like Fergusson, but he does have a blatent pro-Imperial bias.

Which is a biased statement itself. In the very text I quoted, Ferguson enumerates the shortcomings of the British Empire in detail. The difference between him and many post-colonial historians is that he isn't afraid to point out that it wasn't all whips and exploitation. In fact, of all former european colonies, British colonies are by far and away the most successful in terms of things like life expectancy, GDP, literacy, average income, infrastructure, democracy, corruption and the rule of law - even in sub-saharan Africa.

 Albatross wrote:

Yes they did. Their public spending sharply outpaced growth in the period 2000-2007.

Those 'Right-Wing Loons' the Institute for Fiscal Studies wrote:
The average real rate of increase in the Conservative years 1979-1997 was 1.5 per cent and under the Labour government from April 1997 to March 2009 it has been 3.2 per cent... Since 1999 the UK has experienced a sustained increase in public spending, greater than that experienced by the other (OECD) countries, who typically either maintained or saw falls in their levels of public spending as a share of national income.

Source: http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn43.pdf

The economy grew a lot more from 97-08 than it did from 79-97, at annualised rates.

UK national debt history:



Notice the rising line of labour's public spending. Now notice that a) Labour actually reduced spending more than they increased it, and b) the huge spike caused by the recession. You can't say that an extra 1-2% on that graph would make any actual difference to our situation. If that were the case we could just print money to pay off 2% of our debt.