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Comment by jariel | Hacker News Reader

This is interesting because Max Roser makes his case that he's implicitly not supporting colonialism because most economic expansion happened after colonialism.

Except that the established colonies of Canada, Australia, NZ did exceedingly well, as did the long standing colony Hong Kong.

Japan and South Korea (to some extent Taiwan), rebuilt after the war(s) under Anglo-American protection and reformation, also did very well, far better than most.

Singapore? Continued it's colonial style operations.

Vietnam? No so good.

The more colonialism there 'was' the better they've done in recent years, unconditionally. Colonialism for the most part, was an early form of economic globalization, however unfair it was is a different issue.

It's only be controversial to ideologues.

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These points look cherry-picked to support your argument.

To cherry-pick a few more points: Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, Pakistan. All of these were British colonies prior to Hong Kong (which was a British territory from 1841 to 1997). All of these have populations >150M (significantly greater than the UK itself!). All of these are in the bottom third of countries in terms of GDP per capita (and in fact worse off than Vietnam).

(Well, okay, India hovers right around that 33%ile depending on your choice of measure.)

Next on the list of Commonwealth of Nations by population are UK itself (wealthy, but wasn't a colony...), Tanzania (poor), South Africa (wealthy!), Kenya (poor), Uganda (very poor).

They are not cherry picked, they are have a modern relation to colonialism.

If the UK were to have been more deeply involved in India up until 1997 (i.e. a soft political distancing instead of sharp uprising) then India would be wealthier today than otherwise.

Talking about "colonialism" in general terms obscures the very real variation in outcomes. Colonies that were mainly influenced by English-like institutions did better than average because they tended to be more trade-oriented and inclusive, whilst other colonies were more extractive and those countries ended up with bad institutional arrangements that affect them to this day.

I think that's exactly right. Colonialism/imperialism do not imply a one-size-fits-all economic model.

Empires are networks of interconnected components with different roles to play. Some places are integrated as sources of raw materials (in which case, all you need is a cheap workforce to extract the materials). Other places are trade routes, whose purpose is to host a garrison (eg. suez canal zone) so they need some level of infrastructure (ports, railways, air-strips, whatever). Other places are sources of markets required to stimulate industrial production, so there needs to be some level of disposable income to create demand for imports.

Well,as a Kiwi, it's... complicated.

We did well when the "mother country" treated us and our exports as special. We pioneered frozen meat shipments as part of that. [1]

When the UK started treating us less favourably as it moved towards the EEC, (And because we were outcompeting the UK's own farmers), our economy was hit hard.

We had to pivot the entire structure of our economy, away from a government subsidised agricultural model (like the EU, UK, and US are still running) to a free market one in a manner rarely seen in so called free market countries - no tariffs, no subsidies.

It caused a lot of pain, bankruptcies, and suicides.

And once we no longer had preferential access to the UK market, we had to go out and find our own markets.

So while we initially succeeded because of colonialism, once the apron strings were cut to suit the needs of the colonial master, we succeeded in spite of colonialism.

[1]: https://teara.govt.nz/en/sheep-farming/page-5

It's difficult to pull apart Correlation vs causation. For example, European colonizers choose to colonize countries that they saw as economically valuable. India was very rich in gold and farm land pre-colonization, and the Europeans knew it. That's why it was the jewel of the British Empire. Ethiopia was ignored by Britain and France because it was perceived to be dryer and poorer. Some of the post-colonial success is tied to intrinsic value of the land itself.

Japan was never a colony, and Vietnam was a french colony for several generations. You are not getting your examples right.

Vietnam was addressed as less successful. And Japan was treated like a colony after WW2, like Germany. Both lost most autonomy.

West Germany remained occupied for about 4 years and then quickly transitioned to a high degree of independence (because of Cold War strategy reasons).

Additionally it had been fully developed for hundreds of years so there can be no comparison.

It still has American military bases. The war ended in 1945.

It didn't get a choice in receiving them, unlike other countries.

It absolutely has that choice now. There are various benefits to having them, mostly economic.

Yeah, 80 years of occupation and stabilization later they sure could. That's why we did it, to prepare them to support themselves again but from a more stable base.

But what's your point? That colonization doesn't always work? Sure.

>It's only be controversial to ideologues.

It is widely understood that a you can be a slave or subject and be better off financially than a free man. A slave in the US South probably had better nutrition, food, technology, etc than many tribesmen in Africa, for example.

Is that an accurate description of your major point?

Doesn't mean it's also preferable, or that everything is about having more money...

What do you base good nutrition of slave in south from?

In that, first, they weren't subject to famines from natural causes, like tribesmen were (and still are).

Second, there weren't just field slaves, but also house slaves, eating quite well.

Third, their cooking is were a lot of "southern food" recipies originate from.

But all this is neither here, nor there. You're focusing on the wrong detail. The point I'm making is illustrative, it's not about whether all/most slaves where better fed.

It's about the opposite, that better fed/more wealth doesn't automatically equate to freedom/dignity etc.

They were still slaves.

In the same vein, "colonies were better off" is not the be-all end-all criterion.

Have you ever eaten chitterlings?

> Second, there weren't just field slaves, but also house slaves, eating quite well.

Where do you get house slaves eating well from? One of owner female duties was to guard keys from food storage - due to a lot of stealing.

> Third, their cooking is were a lot of "southern food" recipies originate from.

Slaves cooking also required a lot of supervision and instruction. Due to them not being allowed to eat that, due to them not being assumed competent. They did a lot of work there, but that does not imply them eating all that great stuff.

> It's about the opposite, that better fed/more wealth doesn't automatically equate to freedom/dignity etc.

Yes. But material conditions really were not all that great. And also beyond abstract freedom, there were things like child being sold away from parents young, your loved one, brother, etc being sold to never been seen again.

> Canada, Australia, NZ

Had much less focus on resource extraction than typical colonies. They were used more as a place for their own population to go and live.

> Japan and South Korea

Those weren't colonies. Those were more of puppet states used as buffers against nearby powers. The focus wasn't on extracting wealth it was focused on having a strong ally in the region.

The relation between colonialism and outside interference and the economic development of the east asian region is an interesting and complex one.

South Korea, along with Manchuria, was a Japanese colony. The region had been developed, along Stalinist economic lines, by Shinzo Abe's grandfather "the devil of showa" making heavy use of forced labour (more so than Stalin himself, perhaps).

Korea (like much of Asia) faced the prospect of "decolonisation" after the atomic bombs were dropped, but instead the country fell in to an extremely destructive civil war. But their redevelopment did not happen until decades after the war. North Korea redeveloped rapidly due to Soviet assistance, by the 80's South Korea had caught up and by the 90's the soviet union had collapsed, terminating and even sharply reversing North Korea's growth, while the south had managed to work their own development plan with only the IMF crisis as a setback (which also served to totally discredit the Washington consensus in the political culture and has cemented the mixed model with effective state interventions as the South Korean model).

The explanation for the differences in outcomes across Asia probably has a lot more to do with what role each nation played in the British/French/Japanese/etc. systems. Colonisation looked a lot different in Hong Kong than it did in India. Hong Kong was a city-state trading hub peopled with privileged elites whose role was to oversee the Imperial trade network in the region. India was a vast source of indentured agricultural labour and raw materials.

Likewise in Korea, the north (and parts of Manchuria) were a manufacturing base in the Japanese system, linked in with nearby raw materials by railroads. South Korea was more a source of enslaved agricultural labour (concentrated in Jeolla province), with some exceptions like the strategically important port in Busan.

I think Hickel’s point looks something like “Roser claims colonialism was good because it supports his argument that poverty declined, but poverty was low before colonialism, therefore it was bad” (surely I’m missing something here?) I think Roser’s response is basically that “colonialism was bad and probably led to more poverty than there otherwise would have been. Also poverty was still high before colonialism compared to today, so I don’t need to rely on any heightened colonialism-induced poverty level to say that poverty has gone down”

You seem to be replying to this with “well actually colonialism was good because blah blah blah blah blah blah.” This seems to be irrelevant to everything in scope but I guess you just wanted to get it out of your system. FWIW, I think the earlier inhabitants of the former colonies you claim as successful might not have such a rosy view of the consequences of colonialism, and while eg white farmers in Zimbabwe might have preferred colonial Rhodesia sticking around, the majority of the population are probably happier that the colony didn’t become more “established,” as you put it. Hong Kong is a pretty unique case as it was tiny, important, already somewhat developed when taken, and able to avoid taking part in the suffering of the communist revolution in China.

Why aren't non-colonised countries like Ethiopia, Nepal or Bhutan thriving then? I get it's easy to put things into a binary good/bad box and certainly easier to sing "colonialism is bad" in front of a crowd, but the world is a complex place.

Hypothetically would India be in a better or worse position now if they never had the English language foisted upon them?

The British colonialists tried to end centuries of rampant violent slavery on the Malayan peninsular, this made them incredibly unpopular with the Sultans and resulted in the assassination of an administrator, a war and resulting cessation of the practice.

In certain cities like Melaka, slaves made up 30% of the population, were the British not to have intervened the use of slaves would have likely continued well into the 20th century.

The world is rarely black and white.

Vietnam and Thailand seem to be doing OK these days

They are doing considerably worse than those in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea.

If the US had stayed in South Vietnam, they'd likely be living at the same standard of living as South Koreans, instead, they continue to live in a fairly oppressive system without rule of law, basic freedom of expression, high levels of corruption etc.

Thailand would have likely benefited as well.

Thailand is often cited as a 'special case' due to it's lack of direct colonization relative to the rest of the area.

> Japan and South Korea (to some extent Taiwan), rebuilt after the war under Anglo-American protection and reformation, also did exceedingly well, far better than most.

Japan and South Korea were never American colonies, unless you're going to twist the term until it makes no sense. They're definitely not independent from the US (as they can't really ask the US to remove its military bases) but they're not "colonies" either.

> Canada, Australia, NZ

These were sparsely inhabited lands populated by un-industrialized societies that were mostly wiped out. Compare that to India or SE Asia, regions with well developed societies and economies, which were brutally subjugated, prevented from industrializing and whose economies were reduced to relying on primary and extractive sectors.

Colonialism absolutely hampered economic expansion in these societies.

> and whose economies were reduced to relying on primary and extractive sectors.

Huh? India under the East India Company was the source of most of the world's manufactured cloth.

> prevented from industrializing

They're clearly talking about after the EIC under the British Raj. East India Company ended around the start of the industrial revolution.

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