This is the central theme of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
It is worth to add the Joseph Conrad was a Pole whose family fought against Russian colonialism.
Imperial Delusions
101–109 of 109 posts
Re: Imperial Delusions
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 n…
> 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.
I don't disagree, but it's kinda hard to talk like that on historical contexts. Might-makes-right has always been the truth until pretty recently, though you could make a case that it's true even now. I don't think judging the people living that way when everyone else around them did that too (albeit less successfully) is useful.
Do remember that most of misery in the colonies came from collaborators. Yes, they were paid by the colonial oppressors, but they just wanted to profit too, damning their fellow people.
Re: Imperial Delusions
#103>>While he was only a peasant, not a professor of history, the Mahatma responded coolly Is the author as ignorant as the target of his article ? Gandhi was a lawyer.
The author is Niall Ferguson, so I am guessing that the reason is not ignorance, but prejudice in support of the author's agenda, which in this case is an apologia for Britain's empire.
Ferguson writes good stories but will often bend the truth. For example, in 2009 he wrote in Newsweek about the US administration's economic policies. His facts were mostly made-up. See his takedown by economists, for example:
Krugman, Paul (2 May 2009). "Liquidity preference, loanable funds, and Niall Ferguson (wonkish)". The New York Times.
Re: Imperial Delusions
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 n…
> 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. I don't disagree, but it's kinda hard to talk like that on historical contexts. Might-makes-right has always been the truth until pretty recently, t…
>Might-makes-right has always been the truth until pretty recently,
Sure, it is the truth even now and will be forever. It's just that it's popular for might, after Christianity and Englightenment changed the public perception, to want to dress its actions in a moral disguise (from the Crusades to "bringing democracy to Iraq").
But the case being "might makes right" doesn't preclude people telling it for what it is - and even less so it should preclude historians and pundits. People knew what it is in Thucilides time, and they know it now.
So I don't take particularly well to historians etc being "equally critical" of the opressed too.
Re: Imperial Delusions
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s easy to put a ceiling on your country’s currency trading range. The Swiss did this. Whenever the franc got too high their central bank would sell however much was necessary to stabilize the price.
And they stopped doing that because it wasn't maintainable.
Of course it was maintainable.
They stopped doing it because the situation in the EZ more or less stabilized.
The Swiss central bank can always sell as many Francs as they want at any price that is below current bids and that’s always the case when defending an upside limit. They’re never going to run out of Francs to sell because they can issue without any technical limit.
Re: Imperial Delusions
#106Why Upper caste Hindus in India hate Churchill https://archive.is/XlOXf
Re: Imperial Delusions
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
The ability to leave doesn’t imply sovereignty.
There are non sovereign territories that have the right to become independent- but which are nonetheless non-sovereign.
Re: Imperial Delusions
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are we saying a country with 1.4bn people, 22 official languages, 5 major religions, over 100 ethnic groups isn’t an empire? Before the Raj, most of it was the Mughal Empire (1500-1800). Before that, the Delhi Sultanate, pretty definitely an empire (1200-1500). The only thing missing is the nomenclature.
There was no "India" before the British colonizers. So lets start from there.
"Some people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed" --Friedrich Nietzsche (b. 1844)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_princely_states_of_Bri...
Re: Imperial Delusions
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 so…
Dude you are so off in left field I can't even respond to this. Nothing to do with the taboo of rape you gotta try a lot harder than that to offend me.
Its more like you went from A to D without anything in between because D is a hip cultural reference ("victim blaming")