Britain and Her Colonies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a many pronged question... Britain controls today the destinies of some 350,000,000 alien people, unable as yet to govern themselves, and easy victims of rapine and injustice, unless a strong arm guards them. She is giving them a rule that has its faults no doubt, but such, I would make bold to affirm, as no conquering state ever before gave to a dependant people. Professor George M. Wrong 1909. ...Colonialism has led to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and... Africans and people of African descent, and people of Asian descent and indigenous peoples were victims of colonialism and continue to be victims of its consequences. Durban Declaration of the World conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (I know, mouthful) 2001. Here's a quotation from the BBC website describing the British Empire apparently to children. To me this is hilarious: The Empire came to greatness by killing lots of people less sharply armed than themselves and stealing their countries, although their methods later changed: killing lots of people with machine guns came to prominence as the army's tactic of choice... [It]... fell to pieces because of various people like Mahatma Gandhi, heroic revolutionary protester, who was sensitive to the needs of his people. A sterling piece of writing there I'm sure you all agree. The empire ruled at its peak somewhere around 1 quarter of the global population. There will always be the debate over what is owed, what good was done, what are the true ramifications and so forth. There was in fact a claim for 777 trillion (a number I assume plucked from the heavens) in reparation funds, to be paid by the beneficiaries of colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade. I've recently read Burmese days and an essay by Orwell entitled "The Lion and the Unicorn." in both you can see the leftist attitude against imperialism which was actually always around almost since the empires conception. Not only was it inhumane and contrary to the British theory of liberty, to a lot of liberals, but also a "waste of money". Is England the greatest country in the world? (just gonna throw that out there, people among my dads generation often echo the sentiment "God is an Englishman.") Having afforded so many people things like Adam Smith's (Scottish) philosophy, Darwinian theory, law, railways, education and of course the church of England - was Anglicization a good thing? Maybe these questions are academic, I would like to hear if anybodys families were directly affected by the Empire and in what way? And as a side bar, Africa. I've started a book by Dambisa Moyo, who confronts the culture of post colonial aid which has been transferred into the continent and argues the point that it is precisely this which is holding Africa back in: "Dead Aid". A hard thing to comprehend right? But she's not the first to say it. One of the most (*)(*)(*)(*)ing statistics that I have read is that in the in the 70's ten percent of Africans lived on less than a dollar per day, today after at least 1 trillion $'s of aid has entered Africa around 70 percent of Africans live on less than a dollar per day. She says aid actually discourages governments from taking the lead, from being serious about creating jobs and reducing poverty, investing in development etc because of the carrot approach. Aid is also easy to steal, unfortunately, and it allows African governments to "abdicate" their responsibility to improve infrastructure, when things like education and healthcare are provided by the international community. The aid she refers to is the big government transfers rather than small charities and emergency aid, for the record. So I'd like to ask what your opinions on Africa are, are you involved in charity? Do you feel that the continent is simply a victim of colonialism? Do you believe that Africans are simply ungovernable? What do you think of China's hand in Africa? In the Western world coffee is generally sold for the equivalent of 2,000 Ethiopian birr a kilo (£121); the producers are paid one thousandth of that. Coffee amazingly accounts for 54% of Ethiopia's GDP. Could fairer trade be more important than aid?
