What driveling times are these! Georgian grumblings on an age of decline
laphamsquarterly.org
laphamsquarterly.org
> 1754. A letter in The Gazetteer in the same year concurred that luxury in
> clothing was blurring social distinctions, so that “by their dress, the
> clerk, apprentice, or shopman are not distinguishable from their master;
> nor the servant-maid, even the cook-wench, from her mistress.”
This is interesting - complaining about the breakdown of easily identifiable social class because the lower classes dressed too well.
This seems to have gone the other way in modern times - it's hard to tell rich from poor because everyone aspires, via the explosion of tattoos, to look like they just got released from prison.
However, they mostly were happy about the British pumping huge sums of money into modernizing the country and offering a western education to Indian children for the first time.
+1, you are right about this. Banning these was an undeniably good thing for the Indian society.
> British pumping huge sums of money into modernizing the country and offering a western education to Indian children for the first time
this is a load of BS though. You make it sound like they were there out of their infinite benevolence to do good for the Indians, when in fact they looted the country indiscriminately...