The East India Company, the original corporate raiders • Hacker News Board

Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders

#111

Post by wsxcde » Fri, Sep 22, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

pkd wrote: post #70

apsec112 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:/…

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"(si…

> 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.)

Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders

#112

Post by pm90 » Fri, Sep 22, 2017, 9:16 PM UTC

jhgb wrote: post #109

pm90 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, completely bullshit. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15313608 for a very detailed rebuttal.

"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"…

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.

Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders

#113

Post by vikiomega9 » Fri, Sep 22, 2017, 9:20 PM UTC

jhgb wrote: post #94

chimeracoder wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 an…

"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.

Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders

#114

Post by jvanloov » Fri, Sep 22, 2017, 9:28 PM UTC

smhg wrote: post #71

BlackJack wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for educating me. I updated my post.

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.

> Leopold II's atrocities get very little attention in Belgium compared to Nazism.

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.

Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders

#115

Post by otp124 » Fri, Sep 22, 2017, 9:29 PM UTC

smhg wrote: post #71

BlackJack wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for educating me. I updated my post.

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 might be an idea to give them the same treatment as the Nazi party grounds in Nuremberg.

What treatment? Wikipedia says that it became a memorial, but doesn't say what it became a memorial to.

Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders

#116

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 22, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

tacomonstrous wrote: post #96

briane80 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you hate our culture so much why do you want citizenship?

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.

[deleted]

Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders

#117

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 22, 2017, 9:35 PM UTC

arrayjumper wrote: post #99

briane80 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you hate our culture so much why do you want citizenship?

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.

[deleted]

Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders

#118

Post by jhgb » Fri, Sep 22, 2017, 9:37 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #112

jhgb wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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"…

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…

"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.

Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders

#119

Post by btilly » Fri, Sep 22, 2017, 9:51 PM UTC

jorams wrote: post #32

chimeracoder wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even though they mention it, I came across this chart a while back that shows just by how much bigger it was than the recent largest corporation 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 .

> 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…

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.

Re: The East India Company, the original corporate raiders

#120

Post by jhgb » Fri, Sep 22, 2017, 9:57 PM UTC

vikiomega9 wrote: post #113

jhgb wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.