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A short and telling story that I first read decades ago, in a community college English class. All that I recall now of the instructor's lesson was that the elephant was considered symbolic of the British Empire - which, in retrospect, was dying when Orwell wrote this. (Not too far from Wikipedia's current take - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_an_Elephant )

Now, with ~half a century more history behind us, things don't seem so simple. Independence started out so well...but after Burma's/Myanmar's coups, ethnic violence, atrocities...perhaps even British colonial rule was not quite so bad after all. );

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People like stability, ultimately. It's what lends political support from the populace towards these regimes in the first place. I found this quote in another article posted on HN today and it seemed tangentially related to this idea:

"Other fishermen in the area use high-voltage transmitters to electrocute fish, killing eggs, bottom feeders and anything else in the vicinity. It’s illegal but widespread and rarely punished. “There’s hardly any fish already, and these bastards kill the rest,” Abu Fayal says bitterly. “In Saddam’s time, he would have hung them.”"

https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-of-the-marsh-arabs/

I spent time in Paraguay back in 2003. There was a similar attitude towards Alfredo Stoessner amongst many Paraguayans who were old enough to remember his regime (ended in 1989). Here the driver I was most aware of was street crime: robbery was commonplace, and many of the criminals carried guns and weren't afraid to use them. Whereas in Stroessner's time you could walk the streets at night in safety because the criminals would all have been imprisoned or killed.

(18 years later I have no idea how the situation might have changed.)

Very similar situation in Ceausescu's Romania (which also ended in 1989), in broad terms.

Many people (unhappy with their current quality of life) are still nostalgic of the old days. Low criminality, low unemployment, high home ownership (still the highest in the world even now) were some of the upsides.

If you read interviews with Afghan women (outside a small urban elite), they mention similar upsides to the Taliban. At least they prevent crime. At least they have principles, however harsh. At least they're predictable. At least they forced out the thugs that the Americans had backed.

I'm from the UK rather than the US and, although I'm no fan of the way we pulled out of Afghanistan (it has a certain sense of washing our hands of the situation about it given how involved we were in creating that situation), in general I do think we might be better to stop meddling in the affairs of other countries that we ill-understand. The other most obvious canonical example here would be Iraq. Saddam was a complete scumbag but, honestly, WTF were we thinking? We basically had a very large hand in giving birth to IS and allowing them to spread, and look at all the trouble that's caused.

> I do think we might be better to stop meddling in the affairs of other countries that we ill-understand.

It’s been hundreds if not thousands of years at this point. Leaving it behind seems incredibly unlikely. Ditching empire and empire building by a few countries would be an amazing thing to observe. My fear would be the various groups and countries that would likely seek to fill the void.

Quite so. The old rule holds true: When quality of life is rising, no matter the regime, populace is happy. When quality of life is dropping, populace will revolt.

That is a strange interpretation as Orwell makes it clear the he represents the British Empire, and the elephant represents the subjugated people. His vivid description of his own situation certainly matches how most history books (of the time) describe the British colonial situation, always being thrown from one situation to the next, inevitably guided by circumstance and unable to change course.

Agreed. It is quite clear what the story is about, and projecting excessive meaning on the elephant (or even a completely wrong interpretation) is typical of literature classes being designed more to entertain the intellectual kick adolescents (and their professors) have for philosophizing. Rather than actually reading the words, this way of reading always devolves into projecting once own thoughts and wills and wants on an author's work.

Apart from what may have been the trigger to write the piece (disillusionment in empire building, his personal humiliations, being confronted with once own cowardice, ...) Orwell really recounts a real life event, the factual existence of the enraged elephant and it getting shot preceding any literary device. Even in this short text, Orwell is explicitly clear, dedicating many paragraphs to it, about his thoughts on colonization, and his personal role in it, and the current state of the British empire. The meaning of the peice is quite clear, it is in Orwells written thoughts, his actual words, and not coming from any metaphors.

The older I get, the more I believe that over-intellectualizing works of literature does an enormous disservice to an author. It robs their work of its inherit dignity and minimizes the writer's intents. Criticism instead then is a primarily self-centered exercise, putting the reader central, rather than the work itself.

Instead, I think, we should teach our youth to start with the words, teach them to be generous and empathetic, learn to take the words first at face value. What is being said, when was it said. Only then, when obvious meaning escapes, try and peel back.

It was an English "literature" class (or at least that bit was) - so suggesting & discussing various possible interpretations of the story was part of the objectives.

Consider instead Orwell as the tiny, educated, supposedly wise ruling elite. (Of the British Empire, in this case. But the point is more general.) He knows the "right" thing to do here...but under the perceived weight of at-the-moment public expectation, and with a convenient excuse at hand, he instead does the stupid, destructive thing instead. Incompetently.

> coups, ethnic violence, atrocities

Also a feature of British rule, such as in Kenya. It is difficult to untangle how much this was directly the product of colonial policy, such as having preferred ethnic groups among the local power structure, how much was racist policing and over-responding with violence, and how much was pre-existing ethnic or religious conflict.

Yes not bad at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876%E2%80%931...

Um...I was talking about Burma, and threw in a few more references, trying to make that clear.

India is not Burma, and Wikipedia's entry on the famine barely mentions Burma in passing.

I imagine the great drought would have happened with or without the British empire.

Might as well read the link I posted. The drought's effects were enhanced because of exporting of grain to Europe and forced switch to cash crops like Cotton in the years before.

I've never quite understood the idea that a paternalistic colonial power is better simply because it is more stable. I would much rather take part in an civil war than live under the subjugation of some colonial oppressor.

There are people who aren’t really concerned with which oppressor is subjugating them. They just want to go about their lives as well as they can.

Presumably you were raised to think you have an impact on the world; many people don’t feel that way at all.

The British empire was extractive and exploitative in nature. They didn't just rule over these people, they ruled with the aim of extracting as much wealth and resources as possible.

Many people wouldn't mind living under an oppressor who only imposes their ideologies/religion/way of living on you. e.g. the Mughal empire in the subcontinent might have imposed their religion in many instances but they treated the country like their own home. It is the stunted growth and several famines under the British empire that made many regions more prone to extreme poverty and conflicts.

Is the current ruling class in these countries better from the point of view of the citizens? (Honest question, I don't know)

Often enough rulers are exploitative regardless whether they sit in London and fill their pockets or in the country's capital.

One thing to keep in mind is the balance of power between ruler and ruled. The British, representing a global empire, had always an enormous amount of power over their subjects. They could ignore, murder, torture, or starve their subjects in any one region, then draw upon the resources of all the other regions to suppress revolts. A dictator, no matter how unpleasant, usually doesn't have these resources to call upon, so they have to be much more careful, otherwise they lose enough legitimacy in the eyes of the ruled that the country becomes ungovernable - i.e. there are insufficient state resources to control the unrest.

This is why colonial states tended to be far more brutal than normal dictatorships: ultimately, they don't need to convince anybody that their rule was legitimate, because their core support is global, rather than domestic.

I’d argue that a local exploitative ruler is far preferable to a remote exploitative ruler. With the local ruler the wealth stays in the region. The plight of the inhabitants is more apparent to the ruler. With remote exploitation the wealth leaves the country and the country is sucked dry. The exploiter can ignore the results of the exploitation and just live large on the proceeds.

The British in India were a good example of this. The scale of the exploitation was truely incredible.

Reminds me of that line in The Patriot along the lines of "How is 3000 tyrants one mile away better than one tyrant 3000 miles away?"

Most people don't care what variety their oppressors comes in, just how high taxes are and if the roads are safe.

But it's a moot point anyway, empires fall cause they aren't sustainable not because they aren't fair. The choice wasn't "stable colonial empire vs unstable independence". The choice was "keeping the obviously dying empire alive for a few more years at increasingly high cost or independence". Neither choice offered stability.

I was about to strongly contend the opposite, but realized that I lack the insight into what either life is like for the typical native person.

I lean towards a paternalistic colonial power because the odds of me and my loved ones living is much higher. Living in a civil war (and I admit that intensities of civil wars vary) seems like a more dangerous gamble.

> I lean towards a paternalistic colonial power

Has this ever existed?

The US had about five minutes of mild instability in 2020 and people were calling for demonstrators to be shot in the street.

Genuine political instability is extremely inconvenient and makes the recent supply chain issues look simple; suddenly it matters which faction controls the port, the roads, the police, and so on.

There was instability in 2020? I didn't notice.

I’ve been living in the Middle East for a few years now. And many people that I’ve met from the region find my preoccupation with privacy and freedom quite amusing, and even quaint.

"War is hell." - U.S. General William T. Sherman

Most people don't want to live in hell. Most people (especially women, children, elderly, etc.) don't feel empowered by the prospect of a civil war, as you seem to. And looking at post-colonial histories...all too often, the civil wars, military coups, large-scale ethnic violence, etc...they never really end. Or only "end" as long as some ruthless dictator lasts.

Generally, ethnic minorities like imperial powers, and majorities dislike them. Eventually the majority rises up under a nationalist banner to kick out the outsiders and re-establish themselves at the top of the local food chain. This is bad for the people who end up back at the bottom.

Everyone on earth is subjugated.

Wait you’re married too?

I kid.

I have many Burmese friends, and stayed there a number of times. Note how I call it Burma, not Myanmar, which was the name chosen for it by the Junta. The Junta were also responsible for moving the capital from Yangon (the natural and historical capital) to Naypyidaw (back of beyond boondocks). They did this on the advice of a fortune teller. When I was there one of the daughters of a local general was being married. She was famous for liking diamonds, the local supply of which ran out as a result of people trying to curry favor with her father. Burma was a name chosen by the British, but from my experience the Burmese feel more (or at least as much) ownership of that word as Myanmar.

Now the power brokers in Burma are the Chinese. There has always been a strong connection between Burma and China, and when Burma opened up, they jumped right in. In many ways they were better prepared than the westerners. Most of them already spoke Burmese, and were far better acquainted with their history. However, the locals are no fans... a popular complaint is that fill the roads with their huge cars yet live in gated compounds and general flaunt it.

One you get to know them, the people are warm and open, but also (if I may generalize) just a bit crazy. In the community I moved in, I would say about five percent were substance abusers, and at least as many had spent some time in state prison. But given the opportunity, I would return in a heart beat.

>but after Burma's/Myanmar's coups, ethnic violence, atrocities...perhaps even British colonial rule was not quite so bad after all.

Please never ever spout this nonsense again, we are all done with that part of History;

Here is a relevant excerpt from G. K. Chesterton's article on Indian Independence movement;

When all is said, there is a national distinction between a people asking for its own ancient life and a people asking for things that have been wholly invented by somebody else. There is a difference between a conquered people demanding its own institutions and the same people demanding the institutions of the conqueror. Suppose an Indian said: "I heartily wish India had always been free from white men and all their works. Every system has its sins: and we prefer our own. There would have been dynastic wars; but I prefer dying in battle to dying in hospital. There would have been despotism; but I prefer one king whom I hardly ever see to a hundred kings regulating my diet and my children. There would have been pestilence; but I would sooner die of the plague than die of toil and vexation in order to avoid the plague. There would have been religious differences dangerous to public peace; but I think religion more important than peace. Life is very short; a man must live somehow and die somewhere; the amount of bodily comfort a peasant gets under your best Republic is not so much more than mine. If you do not like our sort of spiritual comfort, we never asked you to. Go, and leave us with it." Suppose an Indian said that, I should call him an Indian Nationalist, or, at least, an authentic Indian, and I think it would be very hard to answer him.

I don't understand this quote. This is a conversation with an imaginary person who never existed. The Indian Nationalist Movement was founded and pushed forward by Western trained and educated elite Indians who wanted self government and Western institutions. They most certainly did not want a return to the caste system or to the system of Islamic slavery that the British abolished. They most certainly preferred "dying in hospital" to dying in pointless battles between warlords.

That quote and the passage it is from (https://americanchestertonsociety.blogspot.com/2009/01/gandh...) was directed at very "concrete" Indian Nationalists who were arguing to basically transplant British Empire values into Indian Independence Movement and by extension into a newly formed Indian State.

They had gone so far as to accept Herbert Spencer's "Social Darwinism" (among others) with its inherent justification of Colonialism and "rights" of the Colonizer over the Colonized in all Social/Cultural dimensions and Chesterton was having none of that.

Chesterton is arguing for Indians (and by extension all other colonized people) for changing themselves using their own social norms/culture/paradigms and needs. While they maybe influenced by other cultures, it is their decision to make in the context of their history and culture. He is deriding the attempts of the so called "intellectuals" in the then Indian Nationalist movement to transplant wholesale the ideas of the British Culture.

Chesterton's quote is a nice one, but that doesn't mean that the GP is "spouting nonsense". They may be focused more on outcomes rather than Chesterton's focus on maintaining national traditions and sovereignty. Both are valid views and both can be debated with nuance.

>Both are valid views and both can be debated with nuance

No.

When it comes to Colonialism (and ideas of Superior/Inferior races) there is no two ways about it; it is untenable and unacceptable.

I can appreciate your passion and ideas, but continued rule under a modern western democracy would not be equivalent to the race based colonialism of the past. I think there is nuance to this, and I don't think any of us can speak for all residents of all former colonies. It doesn't seem unreasonable that a situation could get so bad that an individual would prefer continued colony status (which is nothing like it would have been in 1936) under a liberal western democracy over some of the alternatives. For instance, my understanding is that there are some people in Hong Kong, who would prefer British rule to Chinese.

From a WSJ article (https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-hong-kongers-want-to-be-br...):

"On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered outside the British consulate in Hong Kong for a rally urging London to take immediate action to protect British nationals in the city and grant them full citizenship.

“We’re too British to be Chinese,” said Eric Cheung, a 25-year-old Hong Kong resident at the rally who is a British National (Overseas), or BNO. “We share the same ideology with the U.K. We support democracy, we support freedom, we support the rule of law and of course we support the U.K. government,” he said.

“ Boris Johnson, fight for us,” he added, appealing to the British prime minister.

This argument is somewhat disingenuous with cherry-picked examples which are highly dependent on Time and Context.

Colonialism ruined whole countries leaving them poor, rewrote cultural narratives, uprooted entire social structures and in a word, destroyed peoples histories and a sense of their own independent identity. In the bloody aftermath some flourished and some did not; but this cannot be used as an example of the "superiority" of certain forms of government when the existing forms had been destroyed.

A good starting point on further research is the book; Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Acemoglu and Robinson (be sure to read the Critical Reviews section) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail

The following two videos though dealing specifically with India under British Colonialism are equally valid as to what had happened to other countries under the British Empire;

1) W.r.t. what British Colonialism did to India, see Dr. Shashi Tharoor's longer speech Looking Back at the British Raj in India - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB5ykS-_-CI

2) Shorter version of above at Britain Does Owe Reparations[to India] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4

Eh, its also ancient. Several countries before the western three had large colonies and exploited them. The western ones stands out mostly due to industrialization amplifying it.

Not viewing other colonialism before (like the one of the roman empire) or the chinese/osmanic empire is western centrism in disguise.

It's also continuing even today in "India" (itself a false British invention), for example with the imperialists in Delhi forcing themselves on Tamil Nadu, and banning important traditions like Jallikattu.

(Upvotes notwithstanding, I was basically trolling here.)

One can believe that some people are better at ruling a country than other people without believing that this is due to genetic differences between these people.

>One can believe that some people are better at ruling a country than other people

That is a "belief" without any basis in facts and therefore untenable.

I'm pretty sure that I'm a worse at ruling countries than Angela Merkel and a better than the heroin addict that lives at my local underground station.

And yet all three have one vote each under a Democratic system i.e. you are equivalent in that context.

The point is that when it comes to sovereignty, there can only be self-determination based on whatever accepted criteria by the people themselves.

Relevant: The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de La Boétie - https://mises.org/library/politics-obedience-discourse-volun...

.. so you let that be decided by election, right?

I think it is very hard for us to estate these days how good/bad it was living under colonial rule, without experiencing it or even having contemporary reporting about it. We do know it was apparently bad enough for people to rise up against it, and were willing to sacrifice their lives, in many places over an extended period of time. That suggests to me that it wasn't all that great either. It's impossible to know what the counterfactual would have been of course, but I have no trouble imagining even worse outcomes under colonial rule.

>I think it is very hard for us to estate these days how good/bad it was living under colonial rule, without experiencing it or even having contemporary reporting about it.

What? Colonialism is recent History, there is enough documented evidence of all its downsides and with still living Survivors from that era.

And of course its after effects which we are all living through.

No need to "Whitewash" it.

> I think it is very hard for us to estate these days how good/bad it was living under colonial rule

Can it be inferred that you’re not living somewhere that it working though it’s colonial scars?

There are a lot of civil wars and low level conflicts right now that are directly related to a colonial past. We also have plenty of records of atrocities, so “it could have been worse” is a strange argument. The Belgian Congo comes to mind immediately, but there are unlimited terrible examples.

I think you misunderstood my comment, I'm saying things could have easily been worse if colonialism had continued, in response to the parents claim that bad things happened after the end of colonialism. The opening line was just my attempt to read the parent as charitably as possible, as is the custom on HN.

Edit: I can't edit the original post any more, but if I could I would change the last line to "but I have no trouble imagining even worse outcomes had colonial rule continued." For clarity.

I completely misunderstood your comment. Thanks for the correcting me.

Nations deserve to have self determination but they also need to bear the consequences themselves.

>but they also need to bear the consequences themselves.

Not if you have ruined them completely politically, financially, culturally and socially and moreover stacked the deck against them in the "new world order".

You bear the responsibility and owe them reparations.

Relevant: In the context of this thread dealing with Orwell's writings, i highly recommend his essay Notes on Nationalism. - https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

Excerpt: All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.

> perhaps even British colonial rule was not quite so bad after all.

Blair/Orwell seemed to have this view too.

“I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it.”

Their empire may have been better than some rulers, but that’s setting one very low bar.

There's a quote from Orwell that I can't find right now, to the effect that running the machinery of empire was so soul-crushing that even a very competent administration couldn't justify it.

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