Was colonialism a totally bad construct?

[Sean O'Brian]

Technically Ireland was never a colony.

James Anthony Froude once said that if Ireland could be made a Crown Colony, it would outshine England itself. He thought that colonial government was the highest-quality form of government in history, in solely utilitarian terms, and far superior to democracy.

Many things are a complicated mixture of good and bad. I don't believe colonialism is justified though much of European colonialism was obviously very efficient and well-run - like Portugese Africa and Romer's administration of Egypt.

It's pretty hard to say whether the Irish were more 'colonizers' or 'colonized'.

Extracting ourselves from complicity in the whole enterprise of the British Empire was one of the great benefits of Irish independence. The fact that we opted out in 1922 when Britain was still far and above the most powerful country in the world shows the sincerity of this. The crumbling of the British Empire a few decades after that was hardly inevitable or predictable.

[Sean O'Brian]

just wondering though, how was getting rid of the thugee cult of benefit to "all humanity"?

Well, if it hadn't been nipped in the bud back then you could have them operating all along the South Circular Road.

Considering our immigration policy we probably really would have thugees operating all along the South Circular Road. An episode of Prime Time revealed that an associate of Musab al-Zarqawi (formerly leader of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia) had been living near the South Circular Road.

[SlabMurphy]

In fact the GDP of a lot of the colonial master countries went up after they off-loaded their colonies, while the GDP of the colonies fell.

Because of neo Colonialism whereby puppet regeimes where put in place in order that the native resources of oil, minerals etc continued to be exploited by companys belonging to the former occupying country. It sometimes made it cheaper to exploit the colony and give it a face of respectability while the ordinary people continued suffer hunger and oppresion.

[SlabMurphy]

Technically Ireland was never a colony. We were a kingdom in our own right, ruled under a dual monarchy with Great Britain - our economy and governance was largely serparate and different from the UK until the act of union in 1801. Interestingly the Vatican sanctioned the usurping of our throne to Henry II as the catholic church in ireland was autonomous and refused to pay tithes to them

Which is like saying that technically Latvia was never a colony of the Soviet Union

[Cruimh]

James Anthony Froude once said that if Ireland could be made a Crown Colony, it would outshine England itself. He thought that colonial government was the highest-quality form of government in history, in solely utilitarian terms, and far superior to democracy.

Terry Eagleton quoted Froude in "Heathcliffe and the Great Hunger"

For the historian J.A. Froude, a nation meant a people capable of defending itself; and since Ireland had been conquered, it was by definition not a nation. In an ingenious neo-scholastic sleight of hand, no act of colonization can violate another's nationhood, since the fact that it can occur at all means that there was no nationhood there to be violated. 86

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86. James Anthony Froude, The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, vol. I (London 1872), Preliminary.
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[Cato]

Terry Eagleton quoted Froude in "Heathcliffe and the Great Hunger"

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Do you really buy into all of that?

[Sean O'Brian]

For the historian J.A. Froude, a nation meant a people capable of defending itself; and since Ireland had been conquered, it was by definition not a nation. In an ingenious neo-scholastic sleight of hand, no act of colonization can violate another's nationhood, since the fact that it can occur at all means that there was no nationhood there to be violated.

That's a pretty standard defense of colonialism though: your sovereignity only exists if you can hold onto it. Under Froude's definition Ireland became a nation in 1922. It so happens that Winston Churchill argued to Harold Laski in 1921 that Britain had utterly broken Irish rebellion in the 16th century, so "why not now with our vastly greater power?"

However war can be won by non-military means (See: Sun Tzu and Machivelli) and the fact is that Ireland won the propaganda war in England itself - due in no small part to all that guff about the "freedom of small nations" such as Belgium or Serbia, which I doubt the English ruling classes ever really believed in the first place.

I don't see how Froude would have been able to argue with Irish independence. He was a great writer I have to say, though anti-Irish, but that's standard for Victorians.

[cry freedom]

Did it ever occur to you that the people of India would have eliminated the Thugee cult sooner or later ?

Lots of things occur to me from time to time!
They may well have managed to break the Thugee, who's to know?
I am reasonably sure that Sutee would have lingered on up to the present day given the way they have managed their dreadful caste system and "honour" killings.

[Cruimh]

Do you really buy into all of that?

I think nation and nationalism is bollix

The strong eat the weak. T'is the way of life - After all parts of what are now England, Scotland and Wales were colonised by people from our Island. There has been military and religious domination in the past, These days it's cultural and financial.

[Schomberg]

I think nation and nationalism is bollix

The strong eat the weak. T'is the way of life - After all parts of what are now England, Scotland and Wales were colonised by people from our Island. There has been military and religious domination in the past, These days it's cultural and financial.

+1

"Might is Right" and all that law of the jungle stuff. added to that Irish nationalists constant attempts to align themselves with the enemies of their nearest neighbor didn't exactly do much to help the Irish people either...