Posted on 05/03/2024 6:07:35 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
The British Empire and other major European powers did not significantly enrich themselves through slavery and colonialism but rather may have taken a net loss as a result, a report has asserted.
Contrary to narratives pushed by ‘anti-colonialism’ academics and promoted by leftist talking heads, Western capitalism was not built off the backs of colonialism and slavery, fresh research from Kristian Niemietz of the Institute of Economic Affairs claims.
The head of Political Economy at the IEA argues that while some select elite families within Britain and other colonial powers profited immensely during the time, such gains were not felt by the public at large, who rather than benefitting were instead steeply taxed to pay the exorbitant costs in extra military and administrative spending needed to maintain and protect far-away colonial outposts, a bill that citizens of non-colonial Western nations did not need to foot.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Obviously it was their fine cuisine...................
Agreed. To paraphrase the well known quote about the left is that at the heart of their outlook and behaviour is their need to emote as opposed to thinking and understanding.
It costs a lot of money to run an empire.
Many of the beneficiaries of the empire are the common people.
They benefit through trade, suppression of tribal wars, enforcement of laws against murder, theft, etc.
Essentially, enforcement of the rule of law benefits the large mass of people.
After feudalism waned in Europe, the obsession with owning land didn’t. Land is power. Today, money is the prime symbology for status and power, but you have to think how things used to be. I think “colonialism” was a manifestation of the powerful elite land owning classes wanting to expand their wealth.
Britain became wealthy because of the Jewel in the Crown, the East India Company, and then India as a Crown Colony. Slavery to sustain the colonies with ports needed to protect the SLOCs to India were part of that. It was a whole system. At the same time a lot of the people subsumed into the colonies were a whole lot better off because justice was administered using British Common law which was far superior to anything else in the world and geve the subjects, forced or unforced, much more personal security than the arbitrary and capricious arrangements elsewhere. It is noteworthy that one of the features of the modern US administrative state is the effort to uttelry undermine and discplace the common law to make government about the adminstrative state vs the people with the administrative state superior as opposed to just the King’s Justice in settling disputes between subjects equitably. Decriminalization of felonies against persons is antoher aspect of that abandonment of justice for the people.
British colonies in Africa have kept the British system of education for a reason.
India prospered under British rule.
They curried favor.........................
They curried favor.........................
By currying foods with flavour.
If it weren’t for the Indians and their delicious foods, Brits would have all left for France..............
Don’t forget The Hudson’s Bay Company.
Not sure about this one. Calculating the gains of trade can be difficult.
1900. Britain was at the top of the world when Jack London wrote People of the Abyss. Families of 13 lived in one room-East London. I think it’s fair to say Andrew Young was right when he said England invented racism.
Franz Fanon died at age 36 under CIA supervision.
You can argue the positive effects of colonialism. Example-are blacks better off coming here as slaves? ‘Only’ 400k of them came here. I don’t think a brutal truth such as that has a place in the discussion.
Kristian Niemietz is 100% correct. Good research that should be publicized widely.
“Britain became wealthy because of the Jewel in the Crown, the East India Company”
For a time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
The British spent lots on infrastructure and education for India. Probably more than they spent in their own country over that period.
Is commerce racist? Captain Cook said Hawaiians would have been better off ‘if we never came’. Commodore Perry threatened to blow Japan up if they didn’t open up. Coal powered shipping needed fuel. Weather it’s ivory tusks or oil in the Middle East commerce will never allow people to be left alone to sit on their resources.
Think Santa Barbara after the 1969 oil spill. It’s back to normal but the existing drilling has not been expanded. Still the oil is out there. Will it be harvested? We’ll see.
Western prosperity was due to free enterprise capitalism, education, and science, not slavery. Marxist historians want blacks to believe that, without slavery and colonialism, Europeans would be living like Africans lived before slavery and colonialism.
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