Comment by meany | Hacker News Reader

Comment by meany | Hacker News Reader

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I can appreciate your passion and ideas, but continued rule under a modern western democracy would not be equivalent to the race based colonialism of the past. I think there is nuance to this, and I don't think any of us can speak for all residents of all former colonies. It doesn't seem unreasonable that a situation could get so bad that an individual would prefer continued colony status (which is nothing like it would have been in 1936) under a liberal western democracy over some of the alternatives. For instance, my understanding is that there are some people in Hong Kong, who would prefer British rule to Chinese.

From a WSJ article (https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-hong-kongers-want-to-be-br...):

"On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered outside the British consulate in Hong Kong for a rally urging London to take immediate action to protect British nationals in the city and grant them full citizenship.

“We’re too British to be Chinese,” said Eric Cheung, a 25-year-old Hong Kong resident at the rally who is a British National (Overseas), or BNO. “We share the same ideology with the U.K. We support democracy, we support freedom, we support the rule of law and of course we support the U.K. government,” he said.

“ Boris Johnson, fight for us,” he added, appealing to the British prime minister.

This argument is somewhat disingenuous with cherry-picked examples which are highly dependent on Time and Context.

Colonialism ruined whole countries leaving them poor, rewrote cultural narratives, uprooted entire social structures and in a word, destroyed peoples histories and a sense of their own independent identity. In the bloody aftermath some flourished and some did not; but this cannot be used as an example of the "superiority" of certain forms of government when the existing forms had been destroyed.

A good starting point on further research is the book; Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Acemoglu and Robinson (be sure to read the Critical Reviews section) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail

The following two videos though dealing specifically with India under British Colonialism are equally valid as to what had happened to other countries under the British Empire;

1) W.r.t. what British Colonialism did to India, see Dr. Shashi Tharoor's longer speech Looking Back at the British Raj in India - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB5ykS-_-CI

2) Shorter version of above at Britain Does Owe Reparations[to India] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4

Eh, its also ancient. Several countries before the western three had large colonies and exploited them. The western ones stands out mostly due to industrialization amplifying it.

Not viewing other colonialism before (like the one of the roman empire) or the chinese/osmanic empire is western centrism in disguise.

It's also continuing even today in "India" (itself a false British invention), for example with the imperialists in Delhi forcing themselves on Tamil Nadu, and banning important traditions like Jallikattu.

(Upvotes notwithstanding, I was basically trolling here.)

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