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Comment by zeemonkee | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately the British Empire collapsed for a reason.

Recent imperialist ventures - Iraq comes to mind - where the US and its allies overthrew the local dictator - have led to a worse mess.

Let's not forget the long-term effects of British rule in places as far-flung as Ireland, Cyprus and - of course - Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. A policy of divide-and-rule led to pretty awful consequences.

British government during the 18th and 19th centuries was spectacularly corrupt - the rotten boroughs and the Opium Wars being two examples.

Where decentralized British rule "worked" was where the Brits deliberately or accidentally wiped out or effectively displaced the native populations - Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

(Disclaimer - I'm British, and have reasons to be proud of my country, but our Imperial past is not one of them).

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> Let's not forget the long-term effects of British rule in places as far-flung as Ireland, Cyprus and - of course - Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. A policy of divide-and-rule led to pretty awful consequences.

If you're citing divide-and-rule don't quote Iraq. It has 5 races in it, 2 very dominant religions and several suppressed ones (it did once have a history of Christianity and Buddhism). The recent problem of Iraq is that it wasn't divided and the only thing keeping it from all-out civil war was one of the most fascist dictators in recent history who had a policy of if you get out of line you, your family and your friends die or disappear.

Cyprus is another bad example of 'dividing' it was a country that was held together by geographical location not by national identity. When the problems occurred, Turkey tried to intervene, but had to pull out because they were under threat of Soviet invasion (who had interest in Cyprus) and the US clearly stated they wouldn't help in a military invasion of the Turkish homeland.

Where decentralized British rule worked was where it was used. India and Hong Kong are the two countries you purposely failed to mention who have been doing fantastically after British rule. To mention that HSBC was the only bank operating in the UK that survived the global recession was in no way due to the rules the British established in Hong Kong where HSBC started.

> If you're citing divide-and-rule don't quote Iraq. It has 5 races in it, 2 very dominant religions and several suppressed ones.

This is precisely the legacy of divide-and-conquer British policy!

The way the borders where set during the expansion of the British Empire was to put 2 or 3 different neighboring nations under the rule of a single governor. More over, if a nation was specially strong, it would be split into 2 different neighboring states.

This way, it was possible for the Empire to play the natives against each other. Favoring one of such groups above the rest provided the rank and file for the local law enforcement, public service, business administration and all other institutions needed to keep Empire dominion over the territory. England is simply too small a country to provide enough soldiers to populate garrisons around the world.

When the Empire imploded, the infrastructure for dictatorships was already set in place, but the checks and balances dissappeared overnight.

India is doing better now, but let's not forget the human cost of the partition of the subcontinent, and the decades of poverty that followed. Much of which could be attributed to failures of India, but recent success can hardly be attributed to British rule.

> Recent imperialist ventures - Iraq comes to mind - where the US and its allies overthrew the local dictator - have led to a worse mess.

Too soon to tell. If you told people that Japan would be the second largest economy in the world thirty-five years after WWII, people would've thought you were crazy. I wouldn't be surprised if Baghdad is a top international city in, say, 2045.

Well, Iraq and the Middle East is actually a good example in the other direction - it was ruled by the Ottoman Empire fairly decently for quite a while (it did get corrupt and ugly at the end). Anyways, I don't say it's a perfect governance or all roses all the time, just that it's outperformed most other models on most key metrics.

Maybe we shouldn't focus only on the British Empire as the ultimate example, I'd say that the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of the second half of the 19th century is a better example, maybe also one that better fits what lionhearted had in mind. I know that you can blame a lot of things on this particular political entity (the War in Yugoslavia 100 years later being just one example), but it also did a lot of things very well. Actually, come to think of it, large swaths of the European Union are modeled on the Austro-Hungarian example, but those in Brussels are just too scared to admit it.

Ah, so the Dual Monarchy ~ the Franco-German axis ? Makes a lot more sense.

>Actually, come to think of it, large swaths of the European Union are modeled on the Austro-Hungarian example, but those in Brussels are just too scared to admit it.

How exactly are "large swaths" of the EU modelled on the Austro-Hungarian empire?

Reading Misha Glenny's "The Balkans" will make it pretty clear that you can't simply blame the Yugoslavian wars on the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Wars rarely have simple causes, and the Yugoslavian wars are even worse than most in that regard.

(For example, it's impossible to discuss the Kosovo War without also including the importance of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo in Serbian identity. That battle occurred long before the Austro-Hungarian empire came into existence.)

Recent imperialist ventures - Iraq comes to mind - where the US and its allies overthrew the local dictator - have led to a worse mess.

Apples and oranges. We overthrew the dictator, but we didn't conquer the country--at least, not overtly, the way an empire would. A full-on conquest, made by a federalized empire with experience of conquest, would be entirely different.

(Not necessarily better, but different enough that you can't easily extrapolate.)

> at least, not overtly, the way an empire would

Not overtly ? Must have slept through shock and awe.

EDIT: if I were to compare the invasion of Iraq to anything it would be the Spanish-American War and the subsequent invasion and occupation of the Philippines (Kipling's "White Man's Burden" was written as a warning to the Americans). A spurious "cause" whipped up by media frenzy, followed by a long guerilla war much criticised at home and abroad.

>Not overtly ? Must have slept through shock and awe.

Invasion != conquest. The US has not taken Iraq as its territory, or claimed the right to control its government. An empire would.

I said "not overtly" because there probably is a case to be made that we have actually taken control, at least to some degree, while pretending not to. Not the same thing, though--not least because, if we had conquered them, we'd be responsible for them.

There was a TED talk that touched on this. There would have been a different set of expectations if the invasion plan originally called for 4 or 5 decades of occupation. The armed forces for invasion consisting of trigger happy 18 year olds would be separate from the occupying force full of lifers, 40 year old beat cops from NYC who planned to live in Iraq for a decade.

Conquest as a purely military endeavour is not the best way to think about it - after all the people being conquered are going to be doing most of the dying.

Being part of the Roman Empire probably offered many advantages - certainly being a Citizen had numerous advantages, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_citizenship. Similarly being part of the British Empire presumably also had advantages. So the real work of establishing decentralized imperial republics is going to be in the social and adminstrative functions applied after the dust of conquest has settled.

This approach seems to the one followed in Iraq and Afghanistan but the Western powers do not seem to be quite so competent as the Romans.

Unfortunately the British Empire collapsed for a reason

Except the British Empire DIDN'T collapse. Rather the British decided that running an empire was actually more trouble that it was worth, and it was converted to what is now the Commonwealth in an orderly and deliberate fashion, and Britain enjoys good relations with the vast majority of its former colonies.

> orderly and deliberate fashion

See Kenya, Cyprus, Palestine, partition of India, etc.

Yeah, but the Commonwealth Games was just on in India, how do you explain that if there aren't good relations?

Relations with many former colonies are good now. That doesn't mean they always were.

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