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New research on the cost of colonization to India

aljazeera.com

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Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#51

Post by tezza »

dang wrote: post #23
tezza wrote: post #17

Hang on a minute... is this guy saying the country that * had the largest supply of slaves[1], * tried to levy taxes on American tea, * broke China and forced them to buy their own Opium * invented concentration camps to defeat the Dutch Boers[2] * used Gibraltar as a control point for the entire Mediterranean * erased most Tasmanian Aboriginals [3] did something dodgy in India ?? [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/li…

Please do not take HN threads into ideological and national flamewar. The tell-tale signs of this being a bad comment for HN are: (a) the snark, and (b) the list of talking points. Combined with the flammatory topic, it amounts to vandalism, so please don't.

who are you to police this ? ( i found out below ). seriously you are way off track here.

okay... looked. you seem to be someone who wants to and is entrusted with policing HN.

So I will say, that i did not intend as a snark at all, more light hearted banter.

if you check my posting history you will find a track record of formatting my posts similar to this.

i did not have a stick-it-to-the-english pamphlet lying around that i cut n pasted. its all stuff that ive actually come across.

and it did add to the article as far as i can tell

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#52

Post by iguy »

alienreborn wrote: post #50
pm90 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calcutta was a tiny village when the British arrived.

> In 1750, Calcutta had a population of 120,000 From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kolkata

That's a century years after they arrived -- read the link!

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#53

Post by dsfyu404ed »

yumraj wrote: post #8

To add to that: India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6% in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3% at that time, to as low as 3.8% in 1952.[1] And, India got partitioned into 3 countries, all of which have spend insane amounts of resources fighting each other when that same could have been spent on economic development and other hostile neighbors of the unified India would have been smaller in size t…

>To add to that: India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6% in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3% at that time, to as low as 3.8% in 1952.[1]

Industrialization happened in this time period. India did not industrialize as rapidly or to the same extent as Europe and the US.

Share of world income is a zero sum game. Some of that decline is made up for by increased income elsewhere. The absolute income in India certainly did not decrease from 1700 to 1952.

These numbers would be more useful with a comparison to China, Russia and Japan over the same time period (all of which industrialized later than Europe and the US).

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#54

Post by GreeniFi »

This is an interesting article. I do understand why pieces like this get flagged, but I also wonder whether we need to embrace these discussions rather than suppress them.

To my point, I’m not supporting Empire, but in the time of the Raj, the East India Company was tightly held by British aristocrats and was not Britain. In turn Britain as controlled by the state was not the British people. As well as using Indian profits to wreak havoc globally, it was used to maintain dominance in Britain by the state.

[Edited for clarity]

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#55

Post by newyankee »

iguy wrote: post #52
alienreborn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 1750, Calcutta had a population of 120,000 From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kolkata

That's a century years after they arrived -- read the link!

They became a strong force only after a few battles in 1757 and 1764 (plassey, buxar etc.) Earlier they came in the garb of traders.

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#56

Post by tezza »

dang wrote: post #35
maxxxxx wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the comment really that inflammatory? I think it's good to point that a lot of the "civilized" nations did a lot very bad things at the same time they were talking about freedom and humanity.

The topic is inflammatory, which means flamebait guarantees flamewars. The comment was flamebaity in the ways I described. It's possible to write about these things in a less flamebaity way—that's just not the style people reach for by default on the internet. I agree with your second sentence btw.

as i said it was more lighthearted.

i wrote it at a bus stop after work in London, nothing snarky intended.

ive used bullet points A LOT in many comments over the years.

it used to be “citation needed” back in the day, so i still supply them.

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#57

Post by kolbe »

pickdenis wrote: post #43
kolbe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most tax dollars in most countries are not spent on goods and services for the benefit of the people who paid them.

But there's at least a pretense that it (goods purchased with tax money) will be, right? Forget about what actually happens for a moment and consider that the tax-collecting colonists didn't even seem to bother with such a pretense. The way I understand it, they just bought the goods, turned around, and sold them again (which does not align with any notion of "providing government"). Of course, I know very little abo…

I disagree. The pretense makes it worse. I think there's something far more comforting about the honesty of a government just stealing my money and owning up to it. Don't waste time and distort my perception of the world with that bullshit.

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#58

Post by newyankee »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #53
yumraj wrote: post #8

To add to that: India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6% in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3% at that time, to as low as 3.8% in 1952.[1] And, India got partitioned into 3 countries, all of which have spend insane amounts of resources fighting each other when that same could have been spent on economic development and other hostile neighbors of the unified India would have been smaller in size t…

>To add to that: India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6% in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3% at that time, to as low as 3.8% in 1952.[1] Industrialization happened in this time period. India did not industrialize as rapidly or to the same extent as Europe and the US. Share of world income is a zero sum game. Some of that decline is made up for by increased income elsewhere. The absolute income…

Where did the British get a lot of raw materials for their industrialization. Where did they dump a lot of their products ?

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#59

Post by BeetleB »

yumraj wrote: post #8

To add to that: India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6% in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3% at that time, to as low as 3.8% in 1952.[1] And, India got partitioned into 3 countries, all of which have spend insane amounts of resources fighting each other when that same could have been spent on economic development and other hostile neighbors of the unified India would have been smaller in size t…

>And, India got partitioned into 3 countries

India consisted of more than 3 "countries" prior to the arrival of the British.

Re: New research on the cost of colonization to India

#60

Post by drieddust »

throwayasdf23 wrote: post #28

This is mostly nonsense. 1) The 5% return that produced the $45T figure is significantly higher than the expected return on capital for the vast majority of that period(which includes risk and is not comparable to modern returns). Furthermore, there would be no place to put that money to try to extract that return. The notion that the 18th century even had a safe positive return on capital for large periods of time f…

Hmm sound like British were their to teach civilization to the noble savages.

British went their for cheap raw material, cheap labour, and cannon fodder soldiers.

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