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Comment by bantunes | Hacker News Reader

This is hard to talk about, here's my take.

To say that British colonialism was better in Nigeria than in Kenya, or than Belgian colonialism doesn't _really_ seem to support the thesis that "there were good things about British colonialism", does it?

The fact is people showed up with guns one day and said "you work for me now" and "all these separate tribe lands are now one administrative unit so I can manage it better". No matter how nice they were by building roads (to ports), or schools (so the workers can understand basic math and thus follow orders, and how great their lives are under colonial rule) doesn't change the highly likely correct statement that an independent Nigeria free from influence stirring internal conflicts would have been much better off.

"Being colonized was better than living through our internal struggles" is kinda moot. Europe had plenty of war, disease and more war and still came out through it. A colonizer imposing stability by the sword/rifle wouldn't have been better in the long term.

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I don't think you can make some of the claims you are making without more evidence. State formation is often a violent process and often involves someone showing up with weapons demanding you pay them taxes. Does it matter if it is a European or a neighbor?

You often have what we would call colonialism in this process, just a more local version of it. Think about the Huns sweeping into central Europe, conquering those people's and adding them to their coalition. Or the Aztec demanding tribute from their neighboring cities. Or China conquering central Asian states and Korea. Or the Zulu building a confederation through conquest of Southern Africa. All of these were coercive relationships, built on a state or proto state dominating the "less advanced" people around them.

I'm not saying that this makes colonialism good, but the idea that there was some sort of peaceful prior existence for the people before colonization or without colonization there wouldn't be just as difficult violent struggles is not obvious from history.

And yet we don't call what the Huns, Aztec, Chinese or Zulu did "colonialism" - why do you think that is, and does it change your point?

We don't call what the Huns, Aztec, Chinese or Zulu did "colonialism" because it doesn't help the narrative. Notice how, in particular, there are plenty of people willing to call what happened to Ireland colonialism even though it involved solely neighbours and even though every single faction arrived there via England originally.

Ireland is probably better framed as (mostly) entrenched religious discrimination and subjugation on that basis (for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_Laws)

> even though every single faction arrived there via England originally

The vikings & other nordics who bled in to early irish bloodlines didn't arrive via england.

Also a large genetic component of the Irish population is shared with people in the Iberian peninsula.

Yes, but the Iberian migration was just an earlier example of a long history of migrations and colonizations going back millennia. There was a time when the British Isles weren't populated by Homo Sapiens, and migrating people's found the lands empty (except for the occasional band of Neanderthals), but it's deep in pre-history and since then migration has almost always involved some level of population replacement and/or subjugation by new elites.

I don't know why we don't call it colonialism considering we often call them empires and the process of empire is in some ways very linked to colonialism. All of these terms come from the Roman empire which created a multiethnic state dominated by two ethnic groups, the Romans and the Greek, with colonies of each around the Mediterranean.

Perhaps its baggage from the 18 and 19 centuries when only Europeans, Americans, and Japanese had territories spanning continents in a form we would call colonies. The only reason the Japanese had those territories was because they thought an empire would stop them from being colonized themselves. ( This does not excuse the terrible abuses of the Japanese government.)

Does "bloody conquest" sound better?

Colonialism is a specific institution, it distinct and separate. It does not mean that mongoles were better, but they dealt with subjugated countries differently. They did not redraw borders of countries, or forbid people from mining their own salt.

"After his morning bhajan, Gandhi waded in to the sea shore and picked up a handful of salt, proclaiming that with the handful of salt he was proclaiming the end of the British Empire. The police arrived and arrested thousands of national leaders including Gandhi. Gandhi's bold defiance of the salt law encouraged other Indians to break the law as well"

The Mongols most certainly changed the borders of the countries they occupied. If that is the only criteria, then every conqueror is also a colonial power.

There also were plenty of examples of conquerors applying specific economic laws to the conquered. For example, Muslim conquerors would impose a tax on Christians and Jews in their empires (the Jizya). Does that make them colonial powers? So how is colonialism a specific institution?

I am not sure what are you arguing for, are you actually claiming that colonialism was no different than any other conquests throughout history?

The entire country India was ruled by a private company, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India

The Mongoles have not redrawn borders along a line on a map the way British and French have, creating the mess we now have in the Middle East.

I can't make a complete list of criteria that defines colonialism, but to claim that it was no different than other conquests is to betray complete historical illiteracy.

> The Mongoles have not redrawn borders along a line on a map the way British and French have, creating the mess we now have in the Middle East.

Back then there was not really the same concept of boarders. But you can be 100% sure that the Mongols picked sides in many local conflicts and simply layed down the law on things like grazing rights and many others things.

> I can't make a complete list of criteria that defines colonialism, but to claim that it was no different than other conquests is to betray complete historical illiteracy.

It really isn't. Sure colonialism from 1800 is not the same as 1200 century mongol conquest. But to draw a line between colonialism and all other types of conquest in human history is actually historically questionable.

Comparing colonialism to other conquests at the same time is very apt. Empires impose institutions and take sides in local conflicts, enforcing new laws making deals with neighbours not to the advantage of locals and so on.

Unless you can lay out a set of clear differences between colonialism and all other froms of one society taking over another, I see no reason to treat collonialism as seperate.

> The entire country India was ruled by a private company

And in other cases, for exmaple the mongol one specific branch of the family was put in command of a region and those families often engadged in trade of the resources from their part of the empire. There are lots and lots of ways empires manage their 'colonies', a quasi private 'company' is certaintly not typical but its also not ahistorical as far as I can see.

I don't see the point of this discussion if can't even accept that the East India situation is unique, something that's unanimously agreed upon amongst historians and economists.

Either you posses some unique knowledge that historians do not, or you are dead set on 'proving' colonialism was 'no different than what came before' regardless of any arguments brought forward.

> something that's unanimously agreed upon amongst historians and economists

Can you actually show this to be true?

Lots of things in history is are pretty unique. At the time East India company was clearly not special, other institutions of that type that existed. And we can find clear precedents in history.

Any attempted to really define colonialism will either be incredibly convoluted or equally aligns many other historical situations.

Lots of what we call colonization is also not threw quasi-private space sponsored monopolies.

We also don't call, say, the Spanish conquest of the Netherlands "colonialism", yet we still celebrate our independence from Spain (indeed, our entire royal house is based on this).

I think it's mostly just a bit of a bikeshed over terminology to be honest; we could also call it "European conquest of Africa", or whatnot, but that's just the same as "colonialism" with a different name.

There is certainly a huge difference between setting up extractive institutions designed for the benefit of people living half a world away, compared to extractive institutions set up for the benefit of people living a few hundred kilometers away. In the latter case, you have a much greater chance of seeing some of that wealth again, and of being able to influence the decisions of your rulers.

Do you have any evidence of this? I doubt the poles would agree with you.

Do you have evidence to the contrary?

Logic dictates that any wealth or resource that staysin the community is more likely to benefit that community as opposed to if it is shipped to a different continent and never seen again.

Yes, the Germans invaded Poland, Russia, and most of Europe and extracted lots of resources at a significant disadvantage to the Poles. Japan invaded Korea, China, and much of Southeast Asia and killed hundreds of thousands of people for the sake of colonialism. I don't think the locals were happy about that. The United States relationship to the Native Americans. Mongol conquest of central Asia. The Zulu conquest of their empire. The Italian and French occupation of North Africa. The Ottoman relationship with the Armenians. The relationship between South Sudan and Sudan. Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria and the Kurds. Israel and the Palestines. All of Europe and the Jews. I can name historical examples of neighbors exploiting neighbors all day.

You can't just say "logic dictates" when logic dictates no such thing. I'm not saying your wrong, or there is not correlation, but there is no clear pattern between how far off an occupier is and the treatment of the occupied from what I can see.

I'm not sure that this is a "huge" difference, especially when compared to the clear difference between extractive and inclusive institutions.

> The fact is people showed up with guns one day and said "you work for me now"

Seems a reach to suggest this was a novel scenario introduced by recent European colonialism, rather than a human phenomenon going back millennia

I didn't mean to imply it was an European innovation.

European colonialism was certainly novel in its sheer scale, and its effects are felt to this day in pretty much every non European country barring a small handful.

Nope, because only the brits surpassed the previous biggest empire, the mongols. And mongols did come with some advancements in tech as well, but also plenty of destruction.

The Mongolian Empire was very different in operation from the British or other colonial empires. It was not set up with the aim of wealth extraction and economic dominance of subjugated territories back to the parent country. You could not call it "colonial" by any widely accepted definition of the word.

Because it collapse still in the part of expanse. Other empires like roman was just like the british. In fact the definition of empire is the dominion of "second class" territories in virtue of the "first class".

I thought Mongolians were more on wealth extraction and less on economic dominance - essentially demanding tribute and after setting up an administrative class after a wholesale purge of the previous military elite the only demand being to keep the tribute flowing.

Less economic dominance because they were nomadic raiders not traders or industrialists.

Their complete cultural apathy is largely what makes them "not colonalism" technically. In the same way that samuari aren't technically feudalism because they aren't landowners but servants of a lord. Although they work by analogy pretty well.

Europeans were the first to gain the ability to project power on a global scale and thus became the colonisers. There is a borderline racist trend in some parts of academia to frame colonialism as being a consequence of the inherent value system of white Europeans - but while it is true that racist and chauvinistic attitudes were used to defend colonialism, I think it is fairly certain that had Africans been the first to develop the ability to administrate a state across oceans then we could be living in a world now where England, Italy, and Denmark are struggling to reclaim their respective identities and sovereignty after only recently gaining freedom from their Yoruba and Kongo oppressors.

Africans had European colonies before Europeans had African colonies.

Carthage predates Rome, and Carthage had colonies all over Hiberia, which Rome later conquered.

Well the Carthaginians were semitic people from modern-day Lebanon IIRC, so it's a bit of a stretch to call them African.

Carthage was in what is now called "Tunisia".

It was founded by people from Tyre which is indeed in Lebanon.

After gaining independence in the seventh century BC, Carthage gradually expanded its economic and political hegemony across northwest Africa, Iberia, and the major islands of the western Mediterranean.

In 146 BC, after the third and final Punic War, the Romans destroyed Carthage and established a new city in its place. All remaining Carthaginian dependencies, as well as other Phoenician city-states, came under Roman rule by the first century AD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Carthage

There are many angles to this story, but some should not remain ignored: the story of centuries long slave trade -- note, the slave trade was fully established much before the Western nations used "the fruits" of it:

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/fall-kano

and the changes in Britain helped changing that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807

From a book by Gene W Heck "Charlemagne, Muhammad, and the Arab Roots of Capitalism":

"For the medieval Muslim world was, to a large extent, a civilization powered by involuntary servitude. Its manual labor force and, even at times, significant parts of its military, consisted predominantly of slaves.

Nonetheless, there were, by doctrinal definition, no slaves indigenous within the Dar al-Islam ~ as after the initial Arab conquests, its empire became comprised of Muslims and tax-paying non-Muslims (dhimmis), classes of citizens who could not legally be reduced to slavery. ‘Therefore, an vibrant external slave traffic was vital to provide the energy required for the successful functioning of Islamic industry.”"

(Gene W Heck PhD: residing in Middle East, a senior business development economist operating in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Middle East and adjunct professor of government and history with the University of Maryland.)

https://medinapublishing.com/book-author/gene-w-heck-phd/

Also note the size of one specific market:

https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teaching-res...

"Over the period of the Atlantic Slave Trade, from approximately 1526 to 1867, some 12.5 million slaves had been shipped from Africa, and 10.7 million had arrived in the Americas."

Many people who try to "explain" what happened before bend over backwards to avoid considering some of such facts which were some of the main drivers of what was happening in the world for centuries (and I include there the author of the original article -- the "censored" history is simply not something worth analyzing).

You're right, but I'd be interested in seeing a comparison of scale once the Portuguese, Spanish, English, French and Dutch joined the practice.

They didn't really "join" as much as they went from being victims to being perpetrators, from being countries where Barbary Pirates (Ottoman Empire) would regularly go on slave raids to conquering the attacker's homelands and then expanding like crazy.

> doesn't change the fact that an independent Nigeria free from influence stirring internal conflicts would have been much better off

Maybe we have different definitions of the word fact but I'd suggest what you are saying is actually a hypothetical and not a fact at all.

Ethiopia was never colonised and look how they turned out compared to the rest of Africa. It's very tempting to try simplify these highly complex realities, the relative comparison you've made doesn't hold water though.

I did explicitly say "free from influence stirring internal conflicts", and in that regard Ethiopia has some history with Italy and communist regimes.

I stand by my statement: they'd be better off left to their own fate. But maybe you're right, it's not factual.

If you are convinced they would have been better off, in what ways would Nigeria be different now?

Well, for one, their infrastructure wouldn't be extraction-oriented. Right?

I actually don't know, maybe you are right. Do you have any ideas on what it would be instead?

Why wouldn't it? Assuming that Nigera was never colonized, there is no reason to assume they wouldn't extract the resources on their soil for their own economical development.

That much is obvious, every country extracts their resources. In this context "extraction-oriented" means extraction to a foreign power, ie building roads to ports and disregarding all other infrastructure needs that do not further the exportation of raw materials and goods to imperial ports.

So in other words the problem with "extraction oriented" is by definition it stops with the extraction as opposed to bootstrapping to other infastructure both humanitarian and foundational for more advanced economy?

Precisely. Since colonies are seen as money makers, there's little point in having expenditures that don't further your bottom line back home.

That doesn't seem obvious to me at all.

Most resource-oriented economies (oil states, Brazil, Australia, Norway etc) are extraction-oriented and this doesn't seem related to colonialism. "Dutch disease" is named after the over reliance the Dutch developed on their extraction-oriented economic sector - it's a very hard thing to avoid.

In Brazil's case, it was a colony for sugar extraction(and other farm products) and later gold extraction.

Sure, when oil extraction started, Brazil has not been a colony for a century but the extraction culture was there.

Still, without colonialism, Brazil wouldn't be a thing, there was pretty much no commerce there, unlike with some african areas

In this context "extraction-oriented" means extraction to a foreign power, ie building roads to ports and disregarding all other infrastructure needs that do not further the exportation of raw materials and goods to imperial ports.

Of course Brazil, Australia and Norway export their goods, but they also build other infra needed by their citizens. Colonizers, not so much.

Doesn't by definition doesn't an extraction oriented economy need a foreign customer to use the end input? If they used it themselves it wouldn't be extraction oriented.

And for it to be sustainable the end user needs to be able to get a gain from it (even if given some fantastic hypothetical world like being robots who depend upon crude oil to survive instead of food).

Essentially the combination of the two may be technically peripheral in that competive advantage results in a dutch diseased country and corruption leads to lack of investment in infastructure beyond what is needed. Thus colonial extractive economy is one cause but it may occur without any colonalism per se - just as a result of internal actions. Lets call this manifestation "pseudocolonial". The only involvement of the foreign in the pseudocolonial is a willingness to trade. One may assign guilt or morality in another nation for choosing to accept trade or boycott or embargo but either is just as much intervention.

To be pedantic I suspect the framework may be conflating aspects - this isn't apologetics towards actual horrific extractive colonies which short sightedly squander human potential and cause needless suffering.

I agree with the concept that you argue for, but don't see Ethiopia in particular being the clear cut case you indicate it is.

I think there a definitely places in Africa doing better than it but also plenty of places doing worse.

What's your view on Ethiopia

Could you perhaps elaborate on how Ethiopia apparently turned out compared to the rest of Africa?

Not much better, not much worse I guess

http://www.hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/ETH

Ethiopia was very successful - especially compared to other African countries - until the Marxist revolution in the 1970s - well after the colonial period.

The famine in the 1980s was disastrous, and then there were periods of civil war and war with Eritrea which lasted until the early 2000s. Ethiopia is landlocked, and the wars as well as civil wars in both Somalia and Sudan made trade very difficult.

But the economy has been growing well since then, and it is far from a failed state like neighbouring Somalia or Sudan.

I'm not really sure a single example like that can be projected to a pattern.

But a lot of countries were doing economically well under colonialism. Rhodesia was the 'breadbasket of Africa', a very rich state. When the British left they arranged elections, the first and the last. Mugabe took control and look at Zimbabwe today. A different kind of basket case.

The state of Ethiopia isn't so far different to other places, but that's mostly because after colonialism ended too many countries slipped backwards into the sort of tribal warfare, Marxism, corruption, economic mismanagement etc that typified the non-colonialist states. Do you think the British would have tolerated a Marxist insurrection in a colony, if they'd still been in charge?

The article alludes to this when it talks about how the illiterate man would prefer being ruled by a white man, because he thinks he'd be treated more fairly. Colonialism created many problems, but the state of these countries after it ended puts it in perspective.

...Ethiopia was conquered by Fascist Italy.

This was just for 5 years (1936-1941); although you could perhaps also add on 3 years of British rule to that. I wouldn't really describe that as "colonialism" in the same way that e.g. Nigeria was ruled by the British for 160 years.

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