The only reason why we know anything about the smaller culturs is because their wares were sitting in a Western museum.
Not one of us would be willing to travel to any of these places to see those same trinkets in their homeland.
Anytime I get an Indian trying to scam me on the phone, I tell the Indian they were better-off under the British Empire.
I’m quite sure Egypt feels the same way India does.
This is ignorant, reductive nonsense. Far from looting India like the earlier Muslims, the British actually discovered the great cultural artifacts of India’s ancient civilization, and preserved them in the Royal Asiatic Library, and then proceeded to bequeath the legacy of enlightened, modern education to an India mired in illiteracy and credulity.
I enjoyed the tv show “It Ain’t Half Hot Mum” .
If it wasn’t for British imperialism the show would never have been made, so I think it was worth it.
Now remember when you're 'acking round a gilded Burma god
That 'is eyes is very often precious stones;
An' if you treat a nigger to a dose o' cleanin'-rod
'E's like to show you everything 'e owns.
When 'e won't prodooce no more, pour some water on the floor
Where you 'ear it answer 'ollow to the boot
(Cornet: Toot! toot!) —
When the ground begins to sink, shove your baynick down the chink,
An' you're sure to touch the —
(Chorus) Loo! loo! Lulu! Loot! loot! loot!
Ow the loot! . . .
All armies looted and lived off of loot, at least until the middle 1800's.
There were unusual exceptions.
The American Revolutionary war and the war of 1812 were among them.
And the British ushered in an era of peace and prosperity such as India had never known before.
The British uncovered and destroyed the religion of Thugee, which had existed for hundreds and years and murdered upward of two million innocents.
Related:
Archbishop of Canterbury apologizes for massacre in India
The archbishop of Canterbury has said he regrets a massacre by British colonial forces of hundreds of Indians participating in a peaceful demonstration for independence 100 years ago.
By The Associated Press
September 10, 2019, 11:02 AM ET
If that Brit had not come along building a railway (something the locals hadn’t quite gotten around to yet) and rescued the statue from a spot where it was destined to lay forgotten, and found a place for it at a museum, it would have literally never seen the light of day.
That’s not loot. That’s conservation.
They complain about the “Insert Name Of Empire Here” and all problems they caused while conveniently forgetting the worse things they did.
If it weren’t for British imperialism, none of those Indian doctors and engineers would be coming over here to work and there wouldn’t be any call centers in India.
If it weren’t for British imperialism, none of those Indian doctors and engineers would be coming over here to work and there wouldn’t be any call centers in India.
People who practice the caste system (with a group of people known as “untouchables”) and widow burning don’t exactly hold the moral high ground. And how much did the marharajahs steal from and oppress Indian people?
What they really mean is that the East India Company and later Britain directly put an end to the even more widespread looting, rapine and pillaging of local elites, unified the whole country, gave it a semblance of a central administration and democratic governance.
If you want to look at a really murderous invasion of India, look at the Muslim invasions. They are, as one British archaeologist noted, easy to find in the archaeological record by the thick layer of ash and the unburied remains of humans and animals.
This, of course, is Marxist mythology.
Just about anywhere in the pre-modern world was a Third World s---hole.
It was industrialization that pushed the West above the rest.
And the West was no more rapacious than anyone else.
“What have the Romans ever done for us?”
You could write a similar story about every race and people in the entire world covering all of human history when one people defeat another in war.
If ever America were to fall to a foreign invader, the same would happen to us. The greatest rape and pillage in history would ensue.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, I knew an Indian social worker lady born in Kerala. When India got its independence, she figured there would be no place for a professional woman of her caste and complexion in independent India and asked the British for a job in British Malaya where she was working when I knew her.
Turned out about 80% never even knew that British rule had existed.