Saturday, October 6, 2018

How the British Managed to Rule India

Absolutely fascinating. Well done.

Beware of government grandeur.



-RW  

3 comments:

  1. Excellent! Timely too, since I just recently finished another Flashman novel ("Flashman in the Great Game") by George Fraser McDonald, which had as its historical-fiction setting, India during the rebellion of 1857. This film complimented some of the imagery nicely.
    --D. Afton

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  2. 1. The brutality with which democratic Britain ruled its empire belies the idea that democracy is the highest form of political evolution. Democracy is simply a means to install people in power; it says nothing about what those people will do once they have power.

    2. It's interesting how imperialism has changed over the centuries. In contrast to British imperialism, the American version is not about having Americans physically ruling foreign lands; rather, it involves bribing locals to act as American proxies (and regime change if they don't). However, this seems more tenuous, since the local proxies are, after all, locals, and thus the population is less apt to be in awe of them. Perhaps this is a cause for optimism: with the rise of populism, more foreign countries might come to reject American support and local proxies, and it will be more costly for the US to intervene.

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