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Comment by hristov | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree. There will always be debate, as there will always be some historian out protecting British Imperialism but I think and honest examination does not show that GB improved the lot of their imperial subjects except in some very specific and limited circumstances.

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"The authors also compare the experiences of separate Pacific islands with eight different colonizers: the United States, Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Japan, Germany, and France.* Their verdict is that the islands that are best off, in terms of income growth, are the ones that were colonized by the United States—as in Guam and Puerto Rico. Next best is time spent as a Dutch, British, or French colony. At the bottom are the countries colonized by the Spanish and especially the Portuguese." http://www.slate.com/id/2151852

In essence, it doesn't matter who colonized you. The states that were colonized the longest did the worst, in direct proportion to how long they were colonies.

any examples that prove this?

and doesn't all this depend on how what you consider a country? hasn't Wales been colonized by the English for a long time or does some geographic separation have to exist?

And is colonization of Korea during ww2 less destructive than the British colonization of Hong Kong? Or does the colonizer matter?

From the article you seem to be replying to: "Feyrer and Sacedote's key findings are that the longer one of the islands spent as a colony, the higher its present-day living standards and the lower its infant mortality rate. Each additional century of European colonization is associated with a 40 percent boost in income today and a reduction in infant mortality of 2.6 deaths per 1,000 births." and then goes on to discuss other alternate hypothesis and explain why they don't make sense.

Since you've simply flat-out contradicted a research paper with nothing more than assertion, I find it unlikely your upvotes represent anything more than a set of people who found their preconceptions tickled by your post. Do you have any sort of actual other study to back you point up, or are you just stating your own biases?

(I don't feel much like I have a horse in the "colonization is evil" fight, since I think anyone still personally offended by events from over, say, 150 years ago already has problems I can't solve. But the question of why cultures succeed and fail is one of the most pressing questions the human race faces and having it muddied up by stupid political games is costing lives.)

Not really arguing with you. But for a lot of countries, the colonial experience is a lot more recent than that. More to the order of 50-60 years than 150. This does mean that a generation of people who lived under colonial rule are still alive in these countries.

That is probably true, but I think saying one country is a better colonizer than another country is not saying that much, especially if that other country is spain.

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