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Imperial Delusions

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Re: Imperial Delusions

#91

Post by deertick1 »

coldtea wrote: post #86
rovek wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel this about anything I read about empire in the last few years. I enjoyed Paxman's book Empire for the very reason that he mocks the self-righteousness of the "heroes of Empire", their "divine mission", the way the country at home responded (or didn't care at all anymore) but doesn't shy away from giving the same critical eye to the colonised people.

> but doesn't shy away from giving the same critical eye to the colonised people. That's a common approach in certain academic and popular works about colonialism and Empires. And it's not much different to "giving the same critical eye" to the the rapist and the rape victim.

Did you have to take it there?

What a silly and flippant comparison. Chill out.

Re: Imperial Delusions

#93

Post by coldtea »

deertick1 wrote: post #91
coldtea wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but doesn't shy away from giving the same critical eye to the colonised people. That's a common approach in certain academic and popular works about colonialism and Empires. And it's not much different to "giving the same critical eye" to the the rapist and the rape victim.

Did you have to take it there? What a silly and flippant comparison. Chill out.

Sorry, not everybody believes in taboo comparisons or belongs to a culture that paralyzes them lest they say something off and hurt someone's feelings.

And if you feel like "something like rape is so much hurtful/important to just use in a comparison" well, be assured that colonization, our subject here, among other abuses, also resulted in an untold number of rapes and sex abuses of its subjects. So it's not just some "lighter" subject unfit to compare with it, but a superset of abuse.

Re: Imperial Delusions

#94

Post by coldtea »

rovek wrote: post #90
coldtea wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but doesn't shy away from giving the same critical eye to the colonised people. That's a common approach in certain academic and popular works about colonialism and Empires. And it's not much different to "giving the same critical eye" to the the rapist and the rape victim.

Analogies tend to remove any meaningful detail from a situation, as in this case

Actually they tend to highlight the meaningful details - and remove the unimportant ones.

That, like in the analogy mentioned, it's not the place of an author to cricially see both the abused and the perpetrator, and that colonization was an abuse.

More "subtlely" excuses this abuse, and there's no excuse, even if the subjects of colonization where "bad people", "uncultivated", "underdeveloped" or whatever, there's no excuse to invade their sovereignity, and it's not up to the colonizer to judge them or fix them.

Re: Imperial Delusions

#95

Post by mbrodersen »

KaiserPro wrote: post #31

how the british justified their empire, in the 1930s. that last bit is important. Like most things, the justification changed over time. In the 16th century, it was all about the king trying to finance his massive spending habit. Then it was about trade. Then it was about re-enforcing that trade. Then the east india company fucked up, and india because a colonial possession. Then the missions tried to convert the hea…

The book “Sapiens” does a good job of balancing the two views. In other words, like most things in this world, empires had good and bad consequences. You choose how much you value/dislike the good/bad.

Re: Imperial Delusions

#96

Post by pyuser583 »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #43
inglor_cz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now the question is: are you still a sovereign country if you pooled your currency with N other countries that exert a common decision power through a central bank over it? Having power over your own currency, in good or bad, is a typical attribute of being sovereign. There are minor exceptions (like Kosovo adopting euro unilaterally), but they are very untypical.

It's a very common practice for economies to peg their sovereign currency to a trading partner; there are on the order of 66 countries pegged to the US Dollar, and 20-odd pegged to the euro. If a country wanted to move off of the euro, it would be pretty easy to create a sovereign currency pegged to the euro 1:1 by the countries central bank. Then in the future they could simply unpeg (or change the rate) if that bec…

EU members aren’t fully sovereign. Some sovereignty is surrendered when joining the EU:

> "The EU law has primacy over national law and all decisions by the European Court of Justice, including orders for interim measures, are binding on member states’ authorities and national courts,” chief spokesperson Eric Mamer said.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/eu-court-pola...

Also, a Eurozone country can’t abandon with Euro without leaving the EU.

The context here is comparing the the EU with the British Empire.

Statements like “The EU law has primacy over national law” make it pretty clear what it means to be a member of the EU.

Re: Imperial Delusions

#97

Post by mbrodersen »

inglor_cz wrote: post #33
fulafel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sovereign countries can exit anything they decide to, unless overpowered by force.

Now the question is: are you still a sovereign country if you pooled your currency with N other countries that exert a common decision power through a central bank over it? Having power over your own currency, in good or bad, is a typical attribute of being sovereign. There are minor exceptions (like Kosovo adopting euro unilaterally), but they are very untypical.

Of course you are. Unless somebody threatens to physically invade your country, your country can do whatever it wants. However there might obviously be trade/export/import sanctions etc.

Re: Imperial Delusions

#98

Post by pyuser583 »

derriz wrote: post #17
inglor_cz wrote: post #2

"ideology of moral purpose and historical necessity" Incidentally, that sounds a lot like the ideology that sustains the existence of the EU now. Of course, the EU empire works in a different way; economic hostility towards outsiders (high tariffs and compliance cost when importing anything), access to a big common market and a lot of subventions for the insiders. It might be the first attempt to build an empire on m…

Well it's very incidental. The EU is a completely voluntary association. There are those that left freely and there are others who want to join and its powers and purpose is driven by treaties agreed by all members. Being a colony of the British empire was nothing like this and the quote explains a justification for expansionist military imperial behaviour which has no analogue that I can see in the way the EU was fo…

Leaving the EU was impossible between the Treaty of Maastricht (1991) and the Treaty of Lisbon (2009).

So for the majority of the EUs existence, leaving was impossible.

A country can leave the EU, if the EU decides to allow it.

That doesn’t sounds like a voluntary association. That sounds a lot more like an empire/country/protectorate.

Re: Imperial Delusions

#99

Post by KaiserPro »

hrh wrote: post #51
KaiserPro wrote: post #31

how the british justified their empire, in the 1930s. that last bit is important. Like most things, the justification changed over time. In the 16th century, it was all about the king trying to finance his massive spending habit. Then it was about trade. Then it was about re-enforcing that trade. Then the east india company fucked up, and india because a colonial possession. Then the missions tried to convert the hea…

https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Niall-Ferguson/dp/0465023282 Solid author, genuine attempt objective history, the causes, the justifications, the sins, the benefits.

I have issue with niall. He makes an engaging argument, but a good number of times they fail to hold water.

The big one for me was the assertion that Britain could have avoided WWI if they had not declared war on germany.

THis is a shame because he is an engaging author and presenter, its just I'm never sure if he's peddling dogshit, or something that is plausible.

Re: Imperial Delusions

#100

Post by fulafel »

pyuser583 wrote: post #96
Godel_unicode wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very common practice for economies to peg their sovereign currency to a trading partner; there are on the order of 66 countries pegged to the US Dollar, and 20-odd pegged to the euro. If a country wanted to move off of the euro, it would be pretty easy to create a sovereign currency pegged to the euro 1:1 by the countries central bank. Then in the future they could simply unpeg (or change the rate) if that bec…

EU members aren’t fully sovereign. Some sovereignty is surrendered when joining the EU: > "The EU law has primacy over national law and all decisions by the European Court of Justice, including orders for interim measures, are binding on member states’ authorities and national courts,” chief spokesperson Eric Mamer said. https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/eu-court-pola... Also, a Eurozone country can’t ab…

Since you can exit, it's different.

Generally countries enter various nominally binding arrangements all the time, like ratifying UN treaties that are considered by courts to be part of national legislation etc. So "full sovereignty" in this sense is not so common.

(Also, EU law is drafted via a representational democracy system, so this use of power has an important quality of legitimacy that law handed down from the empire would lack)

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