Comment by closewith | Hacker News Reader

Comment by closewith | Hacker News Reader

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> Though empires are out of fashion , British colonies universally benefited from the British empire.

That's not at all true. There are many examples, but no need to look farther afield than Ireland, which has not yet recovered from the deliberate genocide of the Irish famine.

The island of Ireland had not yet reached the population it held pre-famine, and if Ireland had grown at the rate of its neighbours, it would now being closing in on 25 million+ instead of the ~7 million across the island.

> The ones who are thriving today owe a huge debt of gratitude, and the languishing ones are that way because they decided not to continue the British tradition.

Britain owes a debt to its colonies. The colonies owe nothing to it, except contempt.

> The 20th century decline of the British empire is one of civilization's worst failures, on par with the decline of the Roman Empire.

In a comment brimming with ignorance, this becomes absurd. The dissolution of the British empire is the great victory of the 20th century. A victory of human rights, decency, and even off the British population, who are disposable to the empire as foreign "subjects" were.

Rather surprising then that we have the Commonwealth of 56 member states, most of which were former territories of the British Empire from which the Commonwealth developed. They are connected through their use of the English language and cultural and historical ties. Doubtless these countries have appalling memories of the evils perpetrated by the Brits. And yet they even accept Charles III as the head of the Commonwealth. Also amazing that in most colonies independence was achieved without a shot being fired.

Unbelievable eh? Maybe it's a case of Stockholm Syndrome.

On the other hand it could have been worse. We should remember that for almost every colonized people, the alternative to British Jurisdiction was not unmolested progress towards modernity but conquest by someone else, the French, the Germans,the Turks, the Russians,the Japanese and worst of all, the Belgians.

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

> Britain owes a debt to its colonies. The colonies owe nothing to it, except contempt.

There's pretty clearly a distinction between different individual colonies on this one. Something like the Falkland Islands which had no indigenous population is very very different from Jamaica which was a plantation colony full of slaves, which is yet again very different something like Aden (now part of Yemen) which had about 600 people living there at the time it was annexed and which has had a very very difficult post-independence story.

> The colonies owe nothing to it, except contempt.

Canada, Australia and New Zealand did alright, though.

United States too in a way (i.e. I doubt it would be what it is now if the same territory was colonized by the Spanish or even the French. Of course unless you were Native American…).

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