British Imperialism is good

King Leopold II loved nothing better than the exploit the **** out of his tiny African Empire (rubber and Congo ect). If we're looking at the Scamble for Africa and 'modern' era imperialism, the Spanish havent really had a look in. If you do want to go back to early modern times, the Dutch loved nothing better than a good exploitation party in Indonesia.

Reply 42

L i b

19

Consie

I wonder if there are any Portugese/French/Dutch/Belgian/Spanish/German students slagging off their empires in forums.

I think most of them just pretend their foreign histories never happened.

Reply 43

I just realised you're Lib North. What's gong on with all these name changes of late?

the Treaty of VerLOLZ.

That's a good one.

Whilst all imperial nations have engaged in exploitation, conciously or unconciously, maliciiously or otherwise, some empires have been less multifaceted than the British one and have had a greater enphasis on expolitation. They all deserve criticism, but only Britain's seems to really get it.

Reply 44

Profesh

20

Agent Smith

However, in the notoriously unreliable thesaurus of the public consciousness, nay Zeitgeist

, the historical link between the two has been transmogrified (what a word) into synonymity.

EDIT: Dear God, I'm turning into Profesh.

Are you sure you don't mean Ferrus?

Reply 45

Tory Dan

OP

Well the other European nations have a much darker colonial past, the French with their problems in Algeria and Indo-China. The Dutch weren't the nicest sort in South Africa, the British were far better than the Boers and people like Cecil Rhodes were very tolerant of the Dutch speaking whites in South Africa.

Lib North, your a traitor with your French name, I'm nearly cried when I saw you had changed it.

Reply 46

*waits for concentration camp comeback*

Reply 47

L i b

19

Consie

I just realised you're Lib North. What's gong on with all these name changes of late?

I was sipping some absinthe and felt a bit continental. I'd have done it in Latin a long time ago, but unfortunately there is no word for Libertine independent of the term for 'freed slave' in the aforesaid tongue.

Reply 48

L i b

19

dan_man

Lib North, your a traitor with your French name, I'm nearly cried when I saw you had changed it.

Think of it as a sort of 'Deus et mon droit' type thing - I'm affirming the dominion of our Sovereign Lady over these lands as the rightful Queen of France and Duke of Normandy. :biggrin:

Anyway... I was born when my parents were living in Quebec! As a Canadian passport holder, I reserve the right to be a bit multilingual at times.

Reply 49

given your a libetarian, the freed slave idea is quite apt - you advocate freedom from the slavery of an invasive government

Reply 50

Oswy

dan_man

Friendly person, oh and who's the coward who neg repped me for the first post, if you wish to prove a point instead of going,

"You clearly never lived under the British rule of South Africa"

Well Mr or Mrs Invisible neg repping person, I very much doubt you lived in British rule in South Africa. If you do wish to bring something of higher intellectual calibre to this table of debate then please do, I would be honoured.

wtf? You accuse me of saying something I didn't and then accuse me of 'neg repping' you when I didn't do any such thing. Stop being such a loser.

Reply 51

Tory Dan

OP

SuperhansFavouriteAlsatian

Oswy

wtf? You accuse me of saying something I didn't and then accuse me of 'neg repping' you when I didn't do any such thing. Stop being such a loser.

I didn't accuse you of neg repping me, but when you said "Check your ego." your ego I thought that was a rather immature and insulting comment.

Reply 52

Our empire lacked the public showings of bravery and animal cruelty, and vertiable ease of getting homosexual prostitutes of the classical empires. That's one lesson we could have learned better.

Reply 53

I think we mastered the prositutes much more subally, so to speak. Every Victorian 'gentleman' was banging everything in site. Whats more, there were plenty of surgeons who used to 're-virginise' young girls so fellas coz deflower them again later. Getting a slut then was probably 100000 times easier than it is now.

Reply 54

SolInvictus

The Empire was good:

Look up the battle of Magdala and the Amritsar massacre.

Reply 55

Yeah, these two battles define the entire nature of 400 years of imperialism...there's nothing more to it. It was all about massacres, the only thing better than massarcing one tribe was moving on to do the next one. In fact, thats all we did, just moved round and massacred various people...

:|

Reply 56

Tory Dan

OP

SolInvictus

The Empire was good:

Look up the battle of Magdala and the Amritsar massacre.

Comparing the incident at Amritsar to say perhaps one of the many massacres that was carried out when India and Pakistan were partioned where between 500,000 and 1,000,000 were killed. At that stage the British Empire was in the form of political imperialism, not my desired form of economic imperialism.

Reply 57

Bastiat

1

SolInvictus

The Empire was good:

Look up the battle of Magdala and the Amritsar massacre.

The Battle of Magdala - is that the best you can do for an example of British brutality? The Abyssinian Emperor, unhappy that Britain hadn't responded to his offer of alliance, kidnaps a British consul and his party. Queen Victoria sends an envoy to negotiate the release - and then he, and his sixty-strong party are also jailed! So British forces go to liberate the captives, kill (only) 700 Ethiopian enemy troops, loot some valuables and then exit Abyssinia, without conquering or colonising it. Hardly an unjustified campaign.

The Amritsar Massacre is a more fair example; the preceding protests were against the continuance of war time martial law and the actual massacre was purposeless butchery. So said Winston Churchill - that typical British imperialist - when he condemned the events as "an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation," before the House of Commons formally censured the perpetrator, Reginald Dyer.

Any specific example of this nature doesn't weaken the thrust of the argument, as dan_man pointed out - that economic imperialism ie beneficial to all parties involved.

Reply 58