I only partially enjoyed the show... The sets, costumes, etc were all phenomenal. The story/dialogue at times was a bit boring at times, and overdone at times.
Either way, it's cool to see that the East India company was real, and about as terrible as the show makes them seem.
I just wanted to say that your post implies that the East India Company could be thought of as fictional and that shocked me. I mean, I've learned about it in school, so I also had no idea it existed before that (I'm not English), but it's concerning that it isn't taught.
It is actually amazing how little British folks today know about their own historical misdeeds, they may accept the issues towards USA and other countries but tend to downplay atrocities magnitudes higher in India and other countries
India is important because it was the crown jewel of the British empire and was completely destroyed of its soul by the colonialists with very clever mixture of politics, military and other methods
> It is actually amazing how little British folks today know about their own historical misdeeds, they may accept the issues towards USA and other countries but tend to downplay atrocities magnitudes higher in India and other countries
To add to this, it's not just the British. The Portuguese, French, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish (among others) colonized parts of India long before the British did, and the Portuguese and French also kept their colonies in India much longer. When people talk about India's independence in 1947, that's just referring to the independence of British India. The French stayed until 1962, and the Portuguese held their colonies until 1975.
Amusingly, most Portuguese and French people I've talked to under the age of forty[0] or so are genuinely shocked to learn this.
On the other hand, most British people are apparently proud of their colonial plundering[1], so I guess everyone has a long way to go still.
(P.S. If you're thinking of responding to this with a comment about how the British "improved" India by industrializing it, or all the "benefits" India got from being plundered for 450 years, please save us all the trouble and don't. These are typical revisionist talking points that are easily debunked as ahistorical with some basic research, and they're put forth to distract from the sheer volume of wealth that was stolen, the amount of infrastructure that was destroyed by colonial regimes, the genocides and other war crimes that were committed by the colonizing countries, and so on. For most of recorded history, India (Bengal in particular) was the world's largest economy - over 25% of the world's GDP[2] - and every discussion that attempts to rationalize that loss after colonization without recognizing the value that was destroyed, stolen, or outright murdered ultimately into revisionist white supremacist history, which is not what HN is for.)
I know I'll get eventually downvoted for this, because talking about the brutality and legacy of European colonialism is always unpopular on HN for obvious reasons, but it's important enough that it needs to be said.
[0] ie, young enough that this wasn't in their lifetimes
Imagine invading a country to essentially control it's natural resources. Thanks goodness we have moved on from that sort of behaviour and now we need some kind of moral reason (e.g war on terror) to do this to other countries (e.g. Iraq).
When things like the bengal famine happen because of just diverting India's supply chain to the WWII how the F* do you put up with something like that.
If you haven't seen it already read the wikipedia entry[1] and pause and think for a moment, they denied food shipments for almost 2 full years in a famine.
> If you're thinking of responding to this with a comment about how the British "improved" India by industrializing it, or all the "benefits" India got from being plundered for 450 years
I once overheard my white coworker say, that the British did India a huge favor, by bringing them English. It was in his belief that back then, the Indians were just killing each other for fun. So the British did them a huge favor by colonizing them.
And because of that, today, India is a major software player for outsourcing, all thanks to the British for colonizing them, and bringing them English.
I sat there thinking to myself, this is unbelievable. I didn't want to talk politics in a business setting, so I ignored it.
The British destroyed a civilization. Enslaved a generation. And enriched themselves in the process. But all that is swept under the rug, because they brought English to their colonies.
If westerners think that, I can understand. Unfortunately, lot of Indians think the same way, that the British invasion was good for India since they gave us the railways and some other stuff. I don't know much history, but seeing how they destroyed India and killed millions (through famines), I can't wonder how brainwashed these Indians are.
Its not brainwashing as much as lack of a good education or doing some basic individual research. Most of my Indian friends have little interest in history, and accept tidbits like this as fact and don't think much about it.
"For most of recorded history, India (Bengal in particular) was the world's largest economy - over 25% of the world's GDP[2]"
You mean in those parts of recorded history when everyone was dirt-poor, only Bengal had more people? I've read my Maddison, India was no better than anyone else at the time.
Sorry, what does %GDP have to do with per capita GDP in the context of the comment, beside the size of population?
EDIT: I'm trying to highlight the fact that preindustrial productivity is a function of population size and therefore per capita GDP is not really a good measure in that context.
No, but explains a part of the decrease of those 25% once productivity stopped being a function of population size in at least a part of the world. Of course one has to recognize the values destroyed by western influence, otherwise the story will be far from complete, but I found the mention of those 25% rather loaded. One can study the past development of societies without being "a revisionist". It is as much possible to push for cheap apologetic revisionism as it is to get allergic reactions and to dismiss perfectly valid opinions as apologetic revisionism needlessly. Most of the time, post scripta to the effect of "BTW, don't respond with things that I won't like" seem like warning lamps to me, regardless of the topic.
From a moral perspective the point still stands, cheap exploitation and subjugation resulted in the current divergence. If the two societies diverged as a result of merely the technological and scientific advances but nothing more the yes your criticism is warranted. Long story short, someone had a better beat stick, nobody's is denying that, but the atrocities and exploitation still remain.
I also used to think that anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism, until I learned more about it. There are plenty of anti-Zionist Jews, both inside and outside Israel. This short clip explains the difference pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7dJLP3L0Xw
> There are plenty of anti-Zionist Jews, both inside and outside Israel
Yes, Zionism was originally a minority nationalist movement within the Orthodox and Conservative Jewish communities. Only more recently did they become larger, empowered in part for political reasons by other political powers.
There are still large sects of Orthodox Judaism that believe that the existence of Israel actually prevents the Messiah from coming, because the true Israeli state will be founded by the Messiah.
In short: it's complicated. Not all Jews are Xionists, and not a Zionists are Jewish (anti-Semitic white nationalists are actually big supporters of Israel for reasons that aren't too surprising if you think about their motivations and the implications). And the reverse is true in both directions for people who oppose Zionism or the current Israeli state.
Speaking as an anti-zionist Jew, I'm generally extremely suspicious of gentiles who throw the word "zionist" around. Within the Jewish population there's a broad spectrum of opinion between AIPAC and Jewish Voice for Peace. In the mouths of the goyim, though, "zionists" doesn't often mean "supporters of Israeli nationalism". It means "the cabal of hebrews who manipulate world affairs to their own profit." Even though it's not the dictionary definition, that context is inextricable and often deliberate.
For myself, I'm perfectly comfortable with a non-Jew calling themselves anti-Israel. That's just politics. But anti-zionist? Now I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.
AFAICT, the British Empire gets much more criticism for its various evils than other historical empires do. Very few people in the West, for example, even know about the ethnic cleansing of the Greeks under the Ottoman Empire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide), and that was less than a century ago. Probably the worst European colonialists were the Belgians, of all people, under King Leopold II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S...). And I've virtually never heard anyone talk about all the wars and conquests in India before the British came. The Mughal Empire was not conquered with sunshine and rainbows, etc.
The claim seemed to be that historical British crimes were disproportionately ignored, compared to historical crimes committed by other countries. I am arguing against this by pointing to other crimes that (I'm guessing) most Westerners don't even know about.
The legacy of the UK is certainly not generally looked at in the same light as similarly evil 20th century regimes. (Nor is the US)
The reason has more to do with the fact that victors write history, and the Empire co-opted and exploited local institutions. So while Britain’s Empire was lost, its language and cultural impact reigns supreme in many ways to this day.
The Mughal's did bad things too, but some of their kings like Akbar at least tried to integrate society and not cause religious strife. The Mughal Empire did a lot of bad things in India, especially nutcases like Aurangzeb, and Indian people recognize those bad things.
The problem, as I understand, is that a lot of British people don't know all the bad things the Empire did, or don't learn about it the way German people learn about the Holocaust and the Nazi's. Same thing might apply to Belgium - I was appalled to visit Brussels and see a park called "Leopold Park" [1] in the center of the city.
Edit: Turns out this park is named after King Leopold I, the first king of Belgium, and before the Congo atrocities. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15314232 for the person who educated me :)
On a more personal level, as an Indian person who grew up in the US, I always thought Churchill was a badass dude and a good wartime leader. It wasn't until Middle School that I learned about the WW2 famines and all the stuff he said about Indian people. He hated Indians and was extremely racist. His decisions directly lead to the death of millions of people in India. He's no better than Hitler or any of those dictators in my view, and it's mind boggling that people idolize him as the Lion.
Tangent aside, a lot of people did bad things (globally), but saying the Ottomans are bad or the Belgians are bad doesn't absolve the British Empire of its crimes. I don't think we need reparations or blame anybody today, since we all understand bad things happened, but more people should be educated about what happened and how to make sure it never happens again.
> Churchill's decisions directly lead to the death of millions of people in India. He's no better than Hitler
It gets even more ironic than that. During the 1940s Bengal famine, things were so bad that the Axis powers offered to step in and send humanitarian aid. Churchill not only refused, but he tried to prevent the newspapers from printing news of the offer, so that people wouldn't know how truly unnecessary their starvation was.
Lest I be mistaken, this is not to say that the Axis powers were somehow anything other than evil themselves. But it does highlight the level of hypocrisy of the British to claim the moral high ground when their own leader was intentionally starving millions to death out of spite. (And yes, it was spite - read what Churchill himself said on the topic).
Churchill was merely following proud English tradition: when the Great Famine decimated Ireland as a result of British policies (and during which Irish food exports to England continued unabated), Queen Victoria prevented the Ottoman Sultan from donating more aid and food than she had herself.
Why is this Winston asshole a hero again? Stabbed so many people in the back. One can understand if not condone the pre WW2 packs that compromised with Hitler. This is inexcusable.
The park was called after Leopold I, the first king of Belgium, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Belgium. This was in 1877, a decade before the Congo atrocities. (Source: https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldpark_(Brussel) in Dutch)
But I think your remark was valid though. Leopold II's atrocities get very little attention in Belgium compared to Nazism.
There are still quiet a lot of statues of him. Which indeed sounds weird in relation to Hitler statues. It might be an idea to give them the same treatment as the Nazi party grounds in Nuremberg. Proper context next to them.
It only talks about Akbar's early reign (remember he was crowned at the age of 13) and was under the influence of Bairam Khan. Later years he removed the jaziya tax on Hindus, gave them high postions in his court and would not be recognized as Muslim (see Din i Ilahi). He is also supposed to have made a lot of effort to understand other religions. There is a reason why he and Asoka are considered Great Emperors of India.
Yeah - great point with amazing sources. This is really helpful.
Now we will wait for you to give 1 of those links which will confirm your point while you ignore 1000s which contradict it. If Akbar was bad and made to look good by creative history writing, why didn't the same apply for other Mughal rulers such as Aurangzeb (who was just evil) or Shah Jehan (who was a weak ruler)?
Of course that Wikipedia page redirects to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Ottoman_Muslims which kinda proves the point that for some reason we can't use the term "Turkish Genocide" and must use quotes and softer language like "Persecution".
I've never claimed to be a historian, and it's impossible to not leave lots of things out in a Hacker News comment, especially if the scope is as broad as "all historical atrocities". I didn't write these Wikipedia pages, I'm just linking to them out of convenience since I can't link to copyrighted history books.
I think on balance a better response to sordid histories is acknowledgement and solemn remembrance. It is important to recognize, as enlightened folks, just how terrible our ancestors misdeeds often were. That many groups often perpetrated such atrocities ought not be a reason to say "well we were just as bad as everyone else". Each person should draw a line from their own group's history to themselves and feel empathy towards the oppressed and yes, a bit of shame, that such things had been done by their ancestors. I'm not suggesting that means we walk around with our heads hung all the time, but rather that we challenge ourselves: how will we be different than them and what parts of our world are not yet just. Where do we have a part in making them more so?
I think that everyone should learn from crimes committed by all nations, not just those that they have some weak genetic link to, as if genocide was a potentially heritable trait like eye color. My own ancestors were Irish, for example. Obviously, the Irish people suffered greatly at British hands. Does that mean I should learn less about British crimes, or take them less seriously, than a classmate whose great-great-great-great-grandparents happened to be British instead? I would say no, and that everyone should learn about British successes and failures (and why they happened, what motivated them, etc.) equally.
It’s worth also mentioning the the Armenian genocide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide ) which happened around the same time by the Ottoman Empire, and is just as unknown. That resulted in the death of over 1.5 million people, and tensions between Armenia and Turkey are still rather tense today. Many Western countries still refuse to accept it took place, most likely due to their favourable political position with Turkey.
Maybe it's just me, but the Armenian genocide is much more well known than the greek one. There are pulitzer winning authors who discuss the Armenian genocide, and at least for me it was taught on when I learned about world war 1 (abet this isn't as touched on as much as ww2). And in more recent years, you have seen countries of serious prominence such as Germany recognize the arminian genocide as a genocide rather than just a war. I learned about the greek aspect from this post.
I'm curious if this is because the arminian genocide killed 90% of the ethnic groups population, being one of the most horrific and close to complete acts of ethnic cleansing ever to happen.
All the rest of your points have been addressed, but re: the Mughal Empire
It is important to note that while the foundations of the Mughal Empire were forged with plunder and loot, the Empire itself became native to the Indian subcontinent not soon after and also subsequently for a couple of centuries brought about great cultural boom in the general area. The Mughals eventually came to see themselves as "Indians"(sic) and built their homes here.
This is a far cry from an Empire which was founded on loot and extortion & also evolved into siphoning off the wealth (both cultural and scientific) to a motherland completely disinterested in the welfare of its subjects.
> The Mughals eventually came to see themselves as "Indians"(sic) and built their homes here.
That is the key difference. The British were never interested in anything but looting India. The Mughals were more like the Normans in British history -- they started off as conquerors but eventually completely assimilated into the local population.
For those who read Hindi/Urdu, this ghazal, which eventually became his ephitaph, by the last mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar is quite touching (https://rekhta.org/ghazals/lagtaa-nahiin-hai-dil-miraa-ujde-...). The whole ghazal is well worth reading, but it ends with:
कितना है बद-नसीब 'ज़फ़र' दफ़्न के लिए
kitna hai badnaseeb 'zafar' dafn ke liye
दो गज़ ज़मीन भी न मिली कू-ए-यार में
do gaz zameen bhi na milee koo-e-yaar mein
Rough translation: How unlucky is Zafar; he couldn't even/be buried in the streets of his friends.
(The British exiled Bahadur Shah Zafar to Rangoon and he was eventually buried there.)
> The Mughals were more like the Normans in British history -- they started off as conquerors but eventually completely assimilated into the local population.
So much for "assimilation" of the conquerors! I feel like it really works the same everywhere, every time. They won't really let you in even after centuries. Don't get deceived.
1. The British Raj is still in living memory. All 3 of my surviving grandparents were born before independence and were adults and married by 1947 (when India gained independence). They remember British rule. Comparing the criticism that an evil empire from living memory receives with empires that came before it is pretty disingenuous.
2. As an Indian, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth when tyrants like Winston Churchill are celebrated in modern Britain. His thoughts on the Bengal famine of 1943 and his inaction during that time which caused the death of an estimated 2 million people due to starvation is a matter of public record.
I think a willingness to look critically at your own past is a virtue, and it makes sense that people in a given country would be more concerned about their own misdeeds.
Also, the scale of the British empire was much vaster than the ottomans or the Belgians, and we’re still dealing with the repercussions of it the empire and it’s collapse all over the world.
Uhmmmm, does the Ottoman Empire or Mughal Empire still exist? The British Government is still run in the name for the Monarch who was the monarch of the Britsh empire while it still existed. The government is still run by the descendants of the British political elite (eg. House of lords) who carried out those atrocities. No common people should be blamed for sins of a regime but the elite who perpetuated and benefitted from those atrocities and passed on the benefits to their offsprings are fair game.
These are individual people. If the British government was to complain, then that could be considered hypocritical. But an individual person can't be held to account for actions taken, by others and (quite probably) before they were born.
Not the point. Whoever you are, if you have ill-gotten gains (more than average at least), even as a gift, you have a moral obligation to use them to counter the ill.
There's a scene in the first episode of Sherlock where it's pointed out that Dr. Watson is a "British doctor injured in the war in Afghanistan" - I laughed. Apparently I was the only one in my circle of friends who got that that was the original character's biography, written in 1887!
Common folk everywhere have more in common with each other than they have with people in power. The problem is that they are constantly fooled into believing otherwise. This is why our grandparents shouldn't be left out of this. All too often children are taught blind devotion to one's country, when in reality this means blind devotion to the leaders.
Things have gotten better though. We have elections and the internet. We can more openly sympathize and empathize and learn and hopefully this will make us all better together.
It's covered in school history classes, sufficiently anti-colonially for a certain slice of conservative talking heads to decry Britain 'talking down its glorious past'.
My class covered the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre in some depth at age 15; a lovely example of late Empire brutality where one of our army officers ordered machine guns turned on a non-violent crowd who were demonstrating in breach of government order.
So it's not covered in any depth, but the empire certainly isn't celebrated uncritically in school or in other official contexts.
Actually they weren't even demonstrating. It was a gathering of people from inside and outside Amritsar, who came there for a festival. The order against gatherings of more than 4 people weren't distributed well, and so most of those people weren't aware of the order. Dyer then went and ordered the massacre.
The Indian subcontinent had already experienced the Mauryan and the Mughal empires (both bringing immense prosperity to the region) before the British showed up and looted the place clean.
It's fascinating how one can read claims such as "Mauryan and the Mughal empires bringing immense prosperity to the region" with no substantiation here and then read a scholarly work on the topic of history of world's economy that in connection with India talks about "wasteful use of resources and negligible levels of productive investment" or "little motive to improve landed property" or "[raising] so much in tax revenue ... [because] the rural population [was] very docile" or "long term stagnation and negligible levels of productive investment" or "no agricultural handbooks or governmental attempts to bolster agricultural productivity" or "crop yields ... stagnant over the long run" or ...
"Bullshit?" Do you offer a better overview material for world's economic history? Your "very detailed rebuttal" appears neither particularly detailed nor does it touch my response to the particular claim of "pre-British Indian empires bringing immense prosperity to the region" which (not the claim, the response to it) you can find for yourself in Maddison.
But now that you mention it, in your "very detailed rebuttal", you find claims about destroying infrastructure. Setting aside the counterintuitive nature of even an exploitative regime destroying productive capital (to rob itself of profits?), Maddison outright claims that the colonial government increased irrigated area in India by a factor of eight. I'm not sure what else counts as infrastructure in a predominantly agricultural society but irrigation infrastructure has to rank pretty high on the list. So that sole claim of destruction can't possibly be the whole truth.
I'd rather prefer a more reasonable response that your visceral knee-jerk reaction. "Absolutely, completely bullshit" is hardly a valuable feedback. I'm going to stick with Maddison for now until he gets surpassed.
The view that you expound upon involve hardly any original thinking, just repeating things you heard somewhere. If you want a detailed rebuttal, provide sources and links, as the commenter I linked to has.
But I will humor your delusion. The colonial govt. did increase area under irrigation: to force farmers to grow cotton and Indigo, bought from them at exploitative prices, shipped to England and then exported back to India. Does Maddison talk about that?
> predominantly agricultural society
Again, bullshit. Yes, agriculture was an important sector, but it was so in every economy at that time. In addition, there was a substantial middle class of weavers, craftsmen,a rtisans etc. which made the Bengal region alone responsible for 25% of the worlds GDP.
Along with the textile weavers, there were also sophisticated financial system. In fact, Omichund financed Clive's expedition against the Nawab of Bengal.
All these systems, destroyed, ruined by Colonial policies.
"The view that you expound upon involve hardly any original thinking, just repeating things you heard somewhere. If you want a detailed rebuttal, provide sources and links, as the commenter I linked to has."
That sounds awfully like "don't repeat things you heard elsewhere, show things you heard elsewhere instead"! I'm sourcing from Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD, FYI. It hooked me to the notion of quantitatively studying pre-modern economies.
"The colonial govt. did increase area under irrigation: to force farmers to grow cotton and Indigo, bought from them at exploitative prices, shipped to England and then exported back to India. Does Maddison talk about that?"
Of course he does! But he also doesn't pine for Mughals with claims of them "bringing immense prosperity to the region", which is why he actually enumerates the deleterious impacts of pre-colonial policies as well as of the colonial ones. Of course, the deleterious effects of colonial policies I didn't dispute, but you've already known that since you've read my comment you were responding to.
"All these systems, destroyed, ruined by Colonial policies."
Yes. And also by shifting demand, partly by emulating foreigners by the middle/upper classes who were formerly serviced by those craftsmen. And by quality improvements of novel goods. And probably for another number of reasons. There's usually a number of causes for things in complex systems.
"Yes, agriculture was an important sector, but it was so in every economy at that time. In addition, there was a substantial middle class of weavers, craftsmen,a rtisans etc. which made the Bengal region alone responsible for 25% of the worlds GDP."
In other words, India was no different from anyone else. Lots of people = lots of GDP in the pre-modern period. And even the Ancient Rome had a concentration of +60% GDP per capita in the region of Italy so it's entirely plausible that some parts (such as Bengal in India) were better off than others, no surprise there. But reconciling the claim of 25% of world's GDP coming from India with the claim of 25% of world's GDP coming from Bengal necessitates the productivity of India\Bengal being zero. That claim seems problematic. You can't have both unless the non-Bengal India was devoid of population.
You are showing incredibly obvious signs of not being interested in an honest debate but in a dick swinging contest. So I will not be engaging in any more comment. But I will address what you have said in the previous one.
> Of course he does! But he also doesn't pine for Mughals with claims of them "bringing immense prosperity to the region", which is why he actually enumerates the deleterious impacts of pre-colonial policies as well as of the colonial ones. Of course, the deleterious effects of colonial policies I didn't dispute, but you've already known that since you've read my comment you were responding to.
Absolutely, unequivocally disagree with this statement, and this view is exactly what defines an apologist for colonialism btw. I haven't read the book that you mention, there is a treatise which details the specifics of how Mughal administration was responsible for making Bengal the prosperous region that it became [0]. Those are objective facts. Mughal administration resulted in the preponderance of better administrative practices leading to a period of great prosperity. Without colonialism, the trajectory of prosperity would have continued into modern times, just as it did for Japan, Germany etc.
> Yes. And also by shifting demand, partly by emulating foreigners by the middle/upper classes who were formerly serviced by those craftsmen. And by quality improvements of novel goods. And probably for another number of reasons. There's usually a number of causes for things in complex systems.
Please don't throw these handwavy arguments. We have historical records detailing exactly the kinds of brutal policies carried out by the East India company (and later the British Raj) with the sole intention of maximizing their profits at the expense of local institutions and peoples. Again, this is an objective fact. I am telling you exactly what caused the demise of those institutions and you are saying, hmm, you know what its probably something else. Stop being so fucking dishonest.
> In other words, India was no different from anyone else. Lots of people = lots of GDP in the pre-modern period. And even the Ancient Rome had a concentration of +60% GDP per capita in the region of Italy so it's entirely plausible that some parts (such as Bengal in India) were better off than others, no surprise there. But reconciling the claim of 25% of world's GDP coming from India with the claim of 25% of world's GDP coming from Bengal necessitates the productivity of India\Bengal being zero. That claim seems problematic. You can't have both unless the non-Bengal India was devoid of population.
What is your fucking point? Yes more people == more wealth. Left alone, all those people would have used their wealth for progress. For education, for investment. Once that capital left India, so did its productive capacity.
Like I said, you don't seem to be interested in an honest debate. You read one fucking book and are convinced, absolutely firm, that pre-colonial India was oh such a wretched place. I'm sorry to inform you that it was probably a little more prosperous than the west. And were it not for certain very narrow instances of extremely good timing, the subcontinent would have had a very different history, and likely a much better one.
"You are showing incredibly obvious signs of not being interested in an honest debate ..."
And you inferred that from...?
"Absolutely, unequivocally disagree with this statement, and this view is exactly what defines an apologist for colonialism btw. I haven't read the book that you mention, there is a treatise which details the specifics of how Mughal administration was responsible for making Bengal the prosperous region that it became [0]. Those are objective facts. Mughal administration resulted in the preponderance of better administrative practices leading to a period of great prosperity."
I don't get it. Disagree with what statement that "defines an apologist of colonialism"? With the statement that Madison enumerates various wrongs, both colonial or non-colonial, or with the statement that I didn't dispute colonial wrongs? You haven't read my book and I haven't read yours. I will gladly read yours once I get the chance. Perhaps you could read mine and inform the heirs of Maddison where they went wrong. Especially in regards to claims of Mughal's bad or good administrative practices, which he clearly wasn't quantitatively impressed with - unlike you, apparently
"Without colonialism, the trajectory of prosperity would have continued into modern times, just as it did for Japan, Germany etc."
That is a pure speculation that can't be verified in any way. Historians have no way of conducting experiments on populations, nor of predicting the unpredictable outside events. (That is a different issue from me rejecting colonialism for isolationist reasons, though.)
"Please don't throw these handwavy arguments. We have historical records detailing exactly the kinds of brutal policies carried out by the East India company (and later the British Raj) with the sole intention of maximizing their profits at the expense of local institutions and peoples. Again, this is an objective fact. I am telling you exactly what caused the demise of those institutions and you are saying, hmm, you know what its probably something else. Stop being so fucking dishonest."
Of course we have. Again, I haven't disputed that and I feel like westerners could have done much better, although I'm not exactly sure that this isn't an anachronistic argument to morals of our own era of the kind that is often shunned by historians (which I admit I am not). Not many leaders had qualms whenever they had power back then. But any of those events are very far from the topic of claims of a shiny Mughal empire preceding it, and by virtue of succeeding it, they're causally incapable of impacting the former.
"What is your fucking point?"
My point was that 25% of world's GDP share for Bengal is a claim hard to reconcile with the documented data of roughly 25% of world's GDP share for the whole of India. One of those claims has to be wrong. Wikipedia asserts Bengal supporting up to one half of India's GDP share at one time and a 12% of world's share, so it would seem that the former rather than the latter is wrong.
"Yes more people == more wealth. Left alone, all those people would have used their wealth for progress. For education, for investment. Once that capital left India, so did its productive capacity."
That is exactly the thing I answered in my very first response. See "negligible levels of productive investment". See the book for more arguments if you're interested in it. It doesn't specifically focus on any particular place in India though, mentioning summary figures, so it may very well not apply to some local developments. That is a caveat I will happily admit.
"Like I said, you don't seem to be interested in an honest debate. You read one fucking book and are convinced, absolutely firm, that pre-colonial India was oh such a wretched place. I'm sorry to inform you that it was probably a little more prosperous than the west. And were...
Indeed, or at least the dissolution of imperial legacy culture through domination by the populations and cultures of ex-colonies. Independence was a mistake. It only cemented global apartheid. There is still time to demand democracy instead, starting with imperial states granting the residents of former colonies the full rights of citizens unconditionally.
Who's the 'our' that's taking ownership of culture here?
Also, just logically speaking, the parent wasn't talking about assimilation into a culture they despise, but rather about subordination. I don't agree with their perspective, but I'm more sympathetic to it than I am to yours.
The number of apologists for colonialism on this thread is depressing.
A case can be made that since the British looted foreign countries to create their infrastructure it is only fair that the citizens of those countries be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their ancestors' labours.
This is a personal attack and those will get you banned here. So will nationalistic or political flamewar, which you've crossed into several times. So please read the rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and don't do these things on HN.
So basically, you'd like to just destroy any productivity the UK has by flooding it with low skilled ag-workers who would need to live off of government subsidies?
> The British East India Company was actually much larger.
Do you have any sources for that? Most things I can find mention the opposite. For example, from Wikipedia[1]:
> Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, and netted for their efforts more than 2.5 million tons of Asian trade goods. By contrast, the rest of Europe combined sent only 882,412 people from 1500 to 1795, and the fleet of the British East India Company (EIC), the VOC's nearest competitor, was a distant second to its total traffic with 2,690 ships and a mere one-fifth the tonnage of goods carried by the VOC.
Hm, not offhand, but one reason for the discrepancy may be the way Indian trade is counted versus trade with other parts of Asia (both companies did trade outside the Indian subcontinent as well). Furthermore, the Dutch company was much more organized in its earliest days, being the first publicly traded company, so it's possible that the British company reports are underestimated, depending on the timeframe we're talking about
.
I'd have to go back and check, though; I'm not certain.
The reason for the disagreement is that they were big at different times. During the lifetime of the Dutch company, it was far the bigger. But the British company conquered India, held it for decades, and then supplied Britain during the Industrial Revolution.
The British company had the bigger long-term impact. And probably did a lot more business in the end. But not while the Dutch company existed.
While it is never mentioned explicitly, this article is about the British East India Company. While that appears to be the most generally accepted interpretation of the name without further specification, making it explicit would've been great. There were a few different East India Companies.[1]
I trust that you'll have similar gratitude for any doctor who kills you on their way to surgery, or any web developer who does the same on their way to build a revolutionary new Uber for Widgets
William Dalrymple gives a good outside in perspective, but lacks to give the perspective of the people in India, and how they feel about their own history.
Democracy is meaningless if lobbyists are allowed to run rampant. You elect representatives once very 4-5 years and these guys are working 24/7 everyday to get their way with billions of dollars at play.
What's the point then of elections if its continuous lobbying with periodic interruptions that merely change the player?
Add revolving doors, favours to family and friends, media propaganda and modern democracy ceases to be meaningful and looks like lip service.
There's a theory that modern democracy is equivalent to bread & circuses. An efficient way to keep the hoi palloi occupied while they're being looted.
I mean, we have more oversight on casinos than voting machines, and more interest in who's first-round in the sports drafts than who's standing in elections.
It takes a carefully crafted culture to keep a democracy defanged enough to not get in the way of the wealthy and powerful yet legitimate enough to defray mass revolts.
Corporate militarization is doing pretty good in the modern age. Academi, formerly Xe Services formerly Blackwater is a pretty good example of such an entity but there are many other companies that had their own military section or that managed to co-opt the military of the country where they were operating (Shell Oil for instance).
129 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 191 ms ] threadEither way, it's cool to see that the East India company was real, and about as terrible as the show makes them seem.
India is important because it was the crown jewel of the British empire and was completely destroyed of its soul by the colonialists with very clever mixture of politics, military and other methods
To add to this, it's not just the British. The Portuguese, French, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish (among others) colonized parts of India long before the British did, and the Portuguese and French also kept their colonies in India much longer. When people talk about India's independence in 1947, that's just referring to the independence of British India. The French stayed until 1962, and the Portuguese held their colonies until 1975.
Amusingly, most Portuguese and French people I've talked to under the age of forty[0] or so are genuinely shocked to learn this.
On the other hand, most British people are apparently proud of their colonial plundering[1], so I guess everyone has a long way to go still.
(P.S. If you're thinking of responding to this with a comment about how the British "improved" India by industrializing it, or all the "benefits" India got from being plundered for 450 years, please save us all the trouble and don't. These are typical revisionist talking points that are easily debunked as ahistorical with some basic research, and they're put forth to distract from the sheer volume of wealth that was stolen, the amount of infrastructure that was destroyed by colonial regimes, the genocides and other war crimes that were committed by the colonizing countries, and so on. For most of recorded history, India (Bengal in particular) was the world's largest economy - over 25% of the world's GDP[2] - and every discussion that attempts to rationalize that loss after colonization without recognizing the value that was destroyed, stolen, or outright murdered ultimately into revisionist white supremacist history, which is not what HN is for.)
I know I'll get eventually downvoted for this, because talking about the brutality and legacy of European colonialism is always unpopular on HN for obvious reasons, but it's important enough that it needs to be said.
[0] ie, young enough that this wasn't in their lifetimes
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-people...
[2] https://www.coursera.org/learn/passport-to-india/lecture/uYU...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
I once overheard my white coworker say, that the British did India a huge favor, by bringing them English. It was in his belief that back then, the Indians were just killing each other for fun. So the British did them a huge favor by colonizing them.
And because of that, today, India is a major software player for outsourcing, all thanks to the British for colonizing them, and bringing them English.
I sat there thinking to myself, this is unbelievable. I didn't want to talk politics in a business setting, so I ignored it.
The British destroyed a civilization. Enslaved a generation. And enriched themselves in the process. But all that is swept under the rug, because they brought English to their colonies.
The attitude is empirically far less prevalent in India than it is in modern-day England, so it's not as simple as a matter of education.
You mean in those parts of recorded history when everyone was dirt-poor, only Bengal had more people? I've read my Maddison, India was no better than anyone else at the time.
EDIT: I'm trying to highlight the fact that preindustrial productivity is a function of population size and therefore per capita GDP is not really a good measure in that context.
Yes, Zionism was originally a minority nationalist movement within the Orthodox and Conservative Jewish communities. Only more recently did they become larger, empowered in part for political reasons by other political powers.
There are still large sects of Orthodox Judaism that believe that the existence of Israel actually prevents the Messiah from coming, because the true Israeli state will be founded by the Messiah.
In short: it's complicated. Not all Jews are Xionists, and not a Zionists are Jewish (anti-Semitic white nationalists are actually big supporters of Israel for reasons that aren't too surprising if you think about their motivations and the implications). And the reverse is true in both directions for people who oppose Zionism or the current Israeli state.
For myself, I'm perfectly comfortable with a non-Jew calling themselves anti-Israel. That's just politics. But anti-zionist? Now I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Not knowing about Mughal is ignorance, while not learning about the bad sides of our own history is (often: culturally imposed) revisionism.
The reason has more to do with the fact that victors write history, and the Empire co-opted and exploited local institutions. So while Britain’s Empire was lost, its language and cultural impact reigns supreme in many ways to this day.
The problem, as I understand, is that a lot of British people don't know all the bad things the Empire did, or don't learn about it the way German people learn about the Holocaust and the Nazi's. Same thing might apply to Belgium - I was appalled to visit Brussels and see a park called "Leopold Park" [1] in the center of the city.
Edit: Turns out this park is named after King Leopold I, the first king of Belgium, and before the Congo atrocities. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15314232 for the person who educated me :)
On a more personal level, as an Indian person who grew up in the US, I always thought Churchill was a badass dude and a good wartime leader. It wasn't until Middle School that I learned about the WW2 famines and all the stuff he said about Indian people. He hated Indians and was extremely racist. His decisions directly lead to the death of millions of people in India. He's no better than Hitler or any of those dictators in my view, and it's mind boggling that people idolize him as the Lion.
Tangent aside, a lot of people did bad things (globally), but saying the Ottomans are bad or the Belgians are bad doesn't absolve the British Empire of its crimes. I don't think we need reparations or blame anybody today, since we all understand bad things happened, but more people should be educated about what happened and how to make sure it never happens again.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Park
It gets even more ironic than that. During the 1940s Bengal famine, things were so bad that the Axis powers offered to step in and send humanitarian aid. Churchill not only refused, but he tried to prevent the newspapers from printing news of the offer, so that people wouldn't know how truly unnecessary their starvation was.
Lest I be mistaken, this is not to say that the Axis powers were somehow anything other than evil themselves. But it does highlight the level of hypocrisy of the British to claim the moral high ground when their own leader was intentionally starving millions to death out of spite. (And yes, it was spite - read what Churchill himself said on the topic).
"Offering aid to your enemy, to highlight their weakness" is a standard propaganda technique, not to be taken at face value.
> hypocrisy of the British to claim the moral high ground when their own leader was intentionally starving millions to death
no disagreement here.
There are still quiet a lot of statues of him. Which indeed sounds weird in relation to Hitler statues. It might be an idea to give them the same treatment as the Nazi party grounds in Nuremberg. Proper context next to them.
That I find kind of odd. His treatment of the locals in the Belgian Congo is sort of the gold standard for imperial oppression.
That is true. I'm Belgian; I can't remember having heard about this e.g. in history classes; it's something I came across later on.
What treatment? Wikipedia says that it became a memorial, but doesn't say what it became a memorial to.
It is in a rather unmaintained state (minimal reinforcement), with relevant information displayed next to and on it and is freely accessible to all.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. A lot of Akbar's praises can be attributed to 'creative' history writing after the 1950s.
Scroll down to Akbar and you'll find some interesting things. Also of interest is Allauddin Khilji.
Now we will wait for you to give 1 of those links which will confirm your point while you ignore 1000s which contradict it. If Akbar was bad and made to look good by creative history writing, why didn't the same apply for other Mughal rulers such as Aurangzeb (who was just evil) or Shah Jehan (who was a weak ruler)?
Fewer still know about the "Turkish Genocide" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_genocide) but that's more to do with cherry-picking "historians" such as yourself.
Of course that Wikipedia page redirects to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Ottoman_Muslims which kinda proves the point that for some reason we can't use the term "Turkish Genocide" and must use quotes and softer language like "Persecution".
I've never claimed to be a historian, and it's impossible to not leave lots of things out in a Hacker News comment, especially if the scope is as broad as "all historical atrocities". I didn't write these Wikipedia pages, I'm just linking to them out of convenience since I can't link to copyrighted history books.
That's why they put it in quotes.
I'm curious if this is because the arminian genocide killed 90% of the ethnic groups population, being one of the most horrific and close to complete acts of ethnic cleansing ever to happen.
It is important to note that while the foundations of the Mughal Empire were forged with plunder and loot, the Empire itself became native to the Indian subcontinent not soon after and also subsequently for a couple of centuries brought about great cultural boom in the general area. The Mughals eventually came to see themselves as "Indians"(sic) and built their homes here.
This is a far cry from an Empire which was founded on loot and extortion & also evolved into siphoning off the wealth (both cultural and scientific) to a motherland completely disinterested in the welfare of its subjects.
That is the key difference. The British were never interested in anything but looting India. The Mughals were more like the Normans in British history -- they started off as conquerors but eventually completely assimilated into the local population.
For those who read Hindi/Urdu, this ghazal, which eventually became his ephitaph, by the last mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar is quite touching (https://rekhta.org/ghazals/lagtaa-nahiin-hai-dil-miraa-ujde-...). The whole ghazal is well worth reading, but it ends with:
Rough translation: How unlucky is Zafar; he couldn't even/be buried in the streets of his friends.(The British exiled Bahadur Shah Zafar to Rangoon and he was eventually buried there.)
The interesting thing is that the Norman mark probably never wore off: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8424...
So much for "assimilation" of the conquerors! I feel like it really works the same everywhere, every time. They won't really let you in even after centuries. Don't get deceived.
1. The British Raj is still in living memory. All 3 of my surviving grandparents were born before independence and were adults and married by 1947 (when India gained independence). They remember British rule. Comparing the criticism that an evil empire from living memory receives with empires that came before it is pretty disingenuous.
2. As an Indian, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth when tyrants like Winston Churchill are celebrated in modern Britain. His thoughts on the Bengal famine of 1943 and his inaction during that time which caused the death of an estimated 2 million people due to starvation is a matter of public record.
Also, the scale of the British empire was much vaster than the ottomans or the Belgians, and we’re still dealing with the repercussions of it the empire and it’s collapse all over the world.
IF you ever meet a Englishman from nobility, know that he is culpable to blame for all of this.
Things have gotten better though. We have elections and the internet. We can more openly sympathize and empathize and learn and hopefully this will make us all better together.
The only way they could have protested the government back then was refusing to pay taxes. And that would have gotten them killed.
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/e/edmundburk377528...
So you believe in inherited guilt? I reject that idea. None of us is responsible for the actions of our ancestors.
"There are un-tragic peoples, whom history pearls off of like water from a well-polished boot." - Rolf Peter Sieferle
My class covered the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre in some depth at age 15; a lovely example of late Empire brutality where one of our army officers ordered machine guns turned on a non-violent crowd who were demonstrating in breach of government order.
So it's not covered in any depth, but the empire certainly isn't celebrated uncritically in school or in other official contexts.
But now that you mention it, in your "very detailed rebuttal", you find claims about destroying infrastructure. Setting aside the counterintuitive nature of even an exploitative regime destroying productive capital (to rob itself of profits?), Maddison outright claims that the colonial government increased irrigated area in India by a factor of eight. I'm not sure what else counts as infrastructure in a predominantly agricultural society but irrigation infrastructure has to rank pretty high on the list. So that sole claim of destruction can't possibly be the whole truth.
I'd rather prefer a more reasonable response that your visceral knee-jerk reaction. "Absolutely, completely bullshit" is hardly a valuable feedback. I'm going to stick with Maddison for now until he gets surpassed.
But I will humor your delusion. The colonial govt. did increase area under irrigation: to force farmers to grow cotton and Indigo, bought from them at exploitative prices, shipped to England and then exported back to India. Does Maddison talk about that?
> predominantly agricultural society
Again, bullshit. Yes, agriculture was an important sector, but it was so in every economy at that time. In addition, there was a substantial middle class of weavers, craftsmen,a rtisans etc. which made the Bengal region alone responsible for 25% of the worlds GDP.
Along with the textile weavers, there were also sophisticated financial system. In fact, Omichund financed Clive's expedition against the Nawab of Bengal.
All these systems, destroyed, ruined by Colonial policies.
That sounds awfully like "don't repeat things you heard elsewhere, show things you heard elsewhere instead"! I'm sourcing from Contours of the World Economy 1-2030 AD, FYI. It hooked me to the notion of quantitatively studying pre-modern economies.
"The colonial govt. did increase area under irrigation: to force farmers to grow cotton and Indigo, bought from them at exploitative prices, shipped to England and then exported back to India. Does Maddison talk about that?"
Of course he does! But he also doesn't pine for Mughals with claims of them "bringing immense prosperity to the region", which is why he actually enumerates the deleterious impacts of pre-colonial policies as well as of the colonial ones. Of course, the deleterious effects of colonial policies I didn't dispute, but you've already known that since you've read my comment you were responding to.
"All these systems, destroyed, ruined by Colonial policies."
Yes. And also by shifting demand, partly by emulating foreigners by the middle/upper classes who were formerly serviced by those craftsmen. And by quality improvements of novel goods. And probably for another number of reasons. There's usually a number of causes for things in complex systems.
"Yes, agriculture was an important sector, but it was so in every economy at that time. In addition, there was a substantial middle class of weavers, craftsmen,a rtisans etc. which made the Bengal region alone responsible for 25% of the worlds GDP."
In other words, India was no different from anyone else. Lots of people = lots of GDP in the pre-modern period. And even the Ancient Rome had a concentration of +60% GDP per capita in the region of Italy so it's entirely plausible that some parts (such as Bengal in India) were better off than others, no surprise there. But reconciling the claim of 25% of world's GDP coming from India with the claim of 25% of world's GDP coming from Bengal necessitates the productivity of India\Bengal being zero. That claim seems problematic. You can't have both unless the non-Bengal India was devoid of population.
> Of course he does! But he also doesn't pine for Mughals with claims of them "bringing immense prosperity to the region", which is why he actually enumerates the deleterious impacts of pre-colonial policies as well as of the colonial ones. Of course, the deleterious effects of colonial policies I didn't dispute, but you've already known that since you've read my comment you were responding to.
Absolutely, unequivocally disagree with this statement, and this view is exactly what defines an apologist for colonialism btw. I haven't read the book that you mention, there is a treatise which details the specifics of how Mughal administration was responsible for making Bengal the prosperous region that it became [0]. Those are objective facts. Mughal administration resulted in the preponderance of better administrative practices leading to a period of great prosperity. Without colonialism, the trajectory of prosperity would have continued into modern times, just as it did for Japan, Germany etc.
> Yes. And also by shifting demand, partly by emulating foreigners by the middle/upper classes who were formerly serviced by those craftsmen. And by quality improvements of novel goods. And probably for another number of reasons. There's usually a number of causes for things in complex systems.
Please don't throw these handwavy arguments. We have historical records detailing exactly the kinds of brutal policies carried out by the East India company (and later the British Raj) with the sole intention of maximizing their profits at the expense of local institutions and peoples. Again, this is an objective fact. I am telling you exactly what caused the demise of those institutions and you are saying, hmm, you know what its probably something else. Stop being so fucking dishonest.
> In other words, India was no different from anyone else. Lots of people = lots of GDP in the pre-modern period. And even the Ancient Rome had a concentration of +60% GDP per capita in the region of Italy so it's entirely plausible that some parts (such as Bengal in India) were better off than others, no surprise there. But reconciling the claim of 25% of world's GDP coming from India with the claim of 25% of world's GDP coming from Bengal necessitates the productivity of India\Bengal being zero. That claim seems problematic. You can't have both unless the non-Bengal India was devoid of population.
What is your fucking point? Yes more people == more wealth. Left alone, all those people would have used their wealth for progress. For education, for investment. Once that capital left India, so did its productive capacity.
Like I said, you don't seem to be interested in an honest debate. You read one fucking book and are convinced, absolutely firm, that pre-colonial India was oh such a wretched place. I'm sorry to inform you that it was probably a little more prosperous than the west. And were it not for certain very narrow instances of extremely good timing, the subcontinent would have had a very different history, and likely a much better one.
[0]: http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft067n9...
And you inferred that from...?
"Absolutely, unequivocally disagree with this statement, and this view is exactly what defines an apologist for colonialism btw. I haven't read the book that you mention, there is a treatise which details the specifics of how Mughal administration was responsible for making Bengal the prosperous region that it became [0]. Those are objective facts. Mughal administration resulted in the preponderance of better administrative practices leading to a period of great prosperity."
I don't get it. Disagree with what statement that "defines an apologist of colonialism"? With the statement that Madison enumerates various wrongs, both colonial or non-colonial, or with the statement that I didn't dispute colonial wrongs? You haven't read my book and I haven't read yours. I will gladly read yours once I get the chance. Perhaps you could read mine and inform the heirs of Maddison where they went wrong. Especially in regards to claims of Mughal's bad or good administrative practices, which he clearly wasn't quantitatively impressed with - unlike you, apparently
"Without colonialism, the trajectory of prosperity would have continued into modern times, just as it did for Japan, Germany etc."
That is a pure speculation that can't be verified in any way. Historians have no way of conducting experiments on populations, nor of predicting the unpredictable outside events. (That is a different issue from me rejecting colonialism for isolationist reasons, though.)
"Please don't throw these handwavy arguments. We have historical records detailing exactly the kinds of brutal policies carried out by the East India company (and later the British Raj) with the sole intention of maximizing their profits at the expense of local institutions and peoples. Again, this is an objective fact. I am telling you exactly what caused the demise of those institutions and you are saying, hmm, you know what its probably something else. Stop being so fucking dishonest."
Of course we have. Again, I haven't disputed that and I feel like westerners could have done much better, although I'm not exactly sure that this isn't an anachronistic argument to morals of our own era of the kind that is often shunned by historians (which I admit I am not). Not many leaders had qualms whenever they had power back then. But any of those events are very far from the topic of claims of a shiny Mughal empire preceding it, and by virtue of succeeding it, they're causally incapable of impacting the former.
"What is your fucking point?"
My point was that 25% of world's GDP share for Bengal is a claim hard to reconcile with the documented data of roughly 25% of world's GDP share for the whole of India. One of those claims has to be wrong. Wikipedia asserts Bengal supporting up to one half of India's GDP share at one time and a 12% of world's share, so it would seem that the former rather than the latter is wrong.
"Yes more people == more wealth. Left alone, all those people would have used their wealth for progress. For education, for investment. Once that capital left India, so did its productive capacity."
That is exactly the thing I answered in my very first response. See "negligible levels of productive investment". See the book for more arguments if you're interested in it. It doesn't specifically focus on any particular place in India though, mentioning summary figures, so it may very well not apply to some local developments. That is a caveat I will happily admit.
"Like I said, you don't seem to be interested in an honest debate. You read one fucking book and are convinced, absolutely firm, that pre-colonial India was oh such a wretched place. I'm sorry to inform you that it was probably a little more prosperous than the west. And were...
Also, just logically speaking, the parent wasn't talking about assimilation into a culture they despise, but rather about subordination. I don't agree with their perspective, but I'm more sympathetic to it than I am to yours.
The number of apologists for colonialism on this thread is depressing.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/14/4a/6c/144a6c7feb3823f5fd4baa562...
It seems to have originally come from here
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/14/4a/6c/144a6c7feb3823f5fd4baa562...
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5CwbTgovbJJ...
FYI, that's the Dutch East India Company, which was separate from the British East India Company, which this article is about.
The British East India Company was actually much larger.
Do you have any sources for that? Most things I can find mention the opposite. For example, from Wikipedia[1]:
> Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, and netted for their efforts more than 2.5 million tons of Asian trade goods. By contrast, the rest of Europe combined sent only 882,412 people from 1500 to 1795, and the fleet of the British East India Company (EIC), the VOC's nearest competitor, was a distant second to its total traffic with 2,690 ships and a mere one-fifth the tonnage of goods carried by the VOC.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company
I'd have to go back and check, though; I'm not certain.
The British company had the bigger long-term impact. And probably did a lot more business in the end. But not while the Dutch company existed.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company_(disambigua...
What are the units on that graph?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2qK0ISnnVE
The Guardian would love it if we all self flagellated for historical events and ignore any of the good we did it's part of their left wing doctrine.
That would be an overall good.
(despite the misdeed).
1. The White Mughals
2. The Last Mughal
3. Kohinoor
I began reading The Last Mughal just as I had left Delhi and Agra and I regretted not starting it before my visit.
Dalrymple knows his onions.
What's the point then of elections if its continuous lobbying with periodic interruptions that merely change the player?
Add revolving doors, favours to family and friends, media propaganda and modern democracy ceases to be meaningful and looks like lip service.
I mean, we have more oversight on casinos than voting machines, and more interest in who's first-round in the sports drafts than who's standing in elections.
It takes a carefully crafted culture to keep a democracy defanged enough to not get in the way of the wealthy and powerful yet legitimate enough to defray mass revolts.