Comment by JetSetWilly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JetSetWilly | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The snark would be more believable if you hadn't initiated a conversation with a huge straw man, and then proceed to repeat it.

Once again, I'm not claiming that British colonialism was great for India or that Britain didn't subjugate India or that British capitalists didn't treat India as a captured market or any other number of doubtless terribly evil things that I am sure you can tell me about all day.

I'm merely taking issue with the curious notion that India would have inevitably kept up with the West despite that none of the features that were giving the West and Britain in particular such advantages were to be found in India, which then supports the idea that it is utterly asinine to claim that if only it wasn't for Britain India would be a superpower with 25% of world trade.

India had fallen behind long before Britain colonised it, and there's no reason at all therefore to believe that it being behind now can be 100% blamed on Britain.

If you are really claiming that India was on the verge of the industrial revolution and Britain thwarted it, then I don't think I have the time to argue with you, because your belief flies in the face of near any widely accepted understanding of history.

Talk about straw men and a lack of facts. Nobody said India would have "kept up" with the West or was on the verge of an industrial revolution. I am merely saying that the British miracle was less because they were so smart and more because they had an entire subcontinent, and later vast empire, at gunpoint. Without which they would have had to trade on equal terms in a global market.

Point is Britain would done worse (along with the rest of the west), and India would have been much better off. How much? Who knows. Note that Germany with its industrial prowess only caught up in the 2nd half of the 19th century. They coincidentally had little in the way of colonial assets. Coincidence?

I have provided lots of sources pointing at data. You just say "because your belief flies in the face of near any widely accepted understanding of history."

Widely accepted where? Britain? Because that's whose opinion matters, not economic historians who dedicate their lives to understanding these things right? Like I said, reddit with you. Hope you are a troll.

The initial commenter said just that, by comparing 18th century indian share of world trade etc with that after british rule - asserting that the difference is entirely because of British actions. That's what I was disputing.

We actually don't know if India would have been worse or better off without Britain's influence, and we can't possibly know.

Your data is not relevant to this discussion. I'm aware that Britain treated India as a vassal state and don't dispute it, I'm not sure what you think your data proves but it isn't anything I have argued.

I'd suggest that Germany didn't have colonies because it didn't industrialise and didn't unify itself politically until late in the game and therefore did not have the ability to project power, not that it didn't industrialise because it didn't have colonies - that's a pretty bizarre interpretation of history, once again.

"What can I make up on the hoof to support my notion that Britain is uniquely evil and all of India's ills are 100% the fault of Britain" is not a credible position.

Lol "We actually don't know if India would have been worse or better off without Britain's influence, and we can't possibly know"

See my other statement: Honestly I think this reflects a fairly common sentiment amongst westerners. Not the first time I've heard this; doubt it would be the last. I've even heard white south africans in the west say that south africa would have been better off under apartheid, to be greeted by a chorus of nodding heads. Scary people actually think subjugation is a good thing.

Proving my point. It's clear you're British and shamelessly defending oppression, for what reason I don't know. If I had to guess I'd say, unlike Germany, Britain never had a process of de-empirification akin to the germans realising they as a nation committed a crime and that it was unacceptable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com