I was about to mention this as a counter to Bryan's suggestion here that empires would have endured. The two world wars exhausted Europe's capacity to maintain global empires, and to some degree its willingness too. My guess is that the break ups were inevitable, and even free trade zones unlikely.
Surely nationalism isn’t the only reason why a global empire might decentralize into friendly but independently governed countries.
If one considers Australia, Canada and New Zealand, it isn’t nationalism of the native populations that led to their gradual independence, and not really nationalism of the colonial populations. The clearest case of nationalism is probably Quebec, and that was really a colonial French identity at odds with the rest of Canada, not just the U.K.
Even the U.S.’s revolution was a rebellion of colonists rather than natives, and it’s a stretch to call it nationalism at the time of the revolution. At least in large part it was men who considered themselves Englishmen but were upset that they were deprived of the rights and fair treatment they considered their due.
So on what would have happened absent nationalism, I suspect that something broadly resembling the path of Australia and Canada would have been common, perhaps with some variants based on the level of economic development vs. the imperial center (without nationalism, economic development per se might matter more than the ratio of colonists to native populations).
It's a shame that we don't even have free trade and free immigration amongst CANZUK. I don't think most people would be against this. It's just a lack of political will, I guess. Not a priority.
You identify the exception case. The British Empire was made up of Dominions (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc) where mass migration has led to creole nationalisms, and true imperial possessions (Nigeria, Jamaica, India etc) where a non-white majority was ruled by colonial masters. The first group thought of themselves as daughters of the mother country while the others were more like colonial possessions. What would have united this extremely diverse group of nascent countries with varying degrees of self government? Perhaps a degree of self identification as somehow British amongst the educated elites in India, Africa etc. Perhaps an enlightened focus on equal rights and encouragement of local democracy from the masters in London. But it’s hard to see the jingoistic racist attitudes of the late Victorian era spontaneously reversing in the absence of anything else. Imagine a Churchill who decided that Gandhi and Mandela were capable of being his equal. Hard, isn’t it?
Well, the thought experiment was to consider what might happen in a hypothetical world without nationalism, so outlier cases in which nationalism appears not to have been a major factor are instructive.
If indeed dominions like Australia and Canada saw themselves as “daughters of the mother country” (i.e., nationalism was for them a centripetal force binding them to the empire), yet they gradually became independent anyway, that supports the idea that at least they, and very possibly others, would also have become independent in the absence of nationalism.
Also, even with nationalism you get regional trade blocs and loose quasi-federations like the EU, so without nationalism you'd expect that to be stronger. Without nationalism, Spain should want to let its people integrate supply chains and have free migration with France at least as much as with Argentina. Even with nationalism it does!
Also right. As a Canadian, I would much prefer open immigration with the US. If only for the simple fact that it's much closer. If Canadians could live and work in the US, it would be easier for them to come home for Canadian Thanksgiving, vs. living and working in a land down-under!
But, I would also be OK with labour mobility within CANZUK. Unfortunately, I think neither are likely to happen.
The alternative was just unworkable, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Millions of people, being governed by an administration half a world away. So local governments formed, and gradually got more authority. Canada became independent of the U.K. in a long series of gradual steps, from the 1840s to 1982. Doesn't require national identity, just subsidiarity at first, and a weak case for imperial oversight to drive the later steps.
Not quite. The right they thought was their due was to be represented in whatever legislature taxed them. Remember the theory was "no taxation without representation." Had the colonists been offered seats in Parliament, we Americans might still be subjects of the king.
Indeed, there were representatives who voted for war, but then against independence, because they thought they were just fighting for a better arrangement with Britain.
Another comparison point: China does not have freedom of movement between its provinces (instead having residence permits, which vary widely in desirability). Seems pretty likely that the British dominions end up similarly, where Indians need to apply to be able to move to England and only a handful get it, rather than true free movement.
I admit I am completely confused by your “most optimistic plausible scenario”. It seems to totally neglect the elephant in the room that the majority of the empires’ subjects are second class citizens and don’t have their interests represented in the government. So why would you expect their lives to improve, as opposed to their resources being continually plundered like they were in the pre-war period?
It seems obvious to me that unless you are just looking from Europe’s point of view, where having colonial subjects is great, a final vision of humanity involves the independent nations with full voting rights. And naturally these countries make some horrific mistakes when they are trying to get up for the first time and pick up the pieces. But India at least seems to have started to gets its act together after a few decades.
I think it's false to believe lives don't improve merely because those lives are second-class. Lives improve as technology improves, the scope of the market enlarges, etc. Countries actually seem more developed the longer they were colonized:
I mean, you say "permanent subjugation," other's might call it "permanent competent government," which is really the source of the benefits under discussion here.
It's positing a counterfactual world where corrupt, dictatorial, and / or inherently unstable governments weren't allowed to run the various places, and where relatively clean and competent western governments were running them instead.
If that's what "subjugation" amounts to, it's probably better to keep it in place, because we live in that world's counterfactual, where all the colonies have done much worse without it.
Going left In response to white savage behavior -- Jim Crow segregation, lack of due process, 5,000 lynchings of men, women, and children, rape, etc. Fighting white supremacy is considered communistic in the eyes of the white supremacist oppressor. MLK was considered a communist. Speaking up for your rights?
I don't know if you consider the American revolution an example of nationalism, but our issue was that the British Parliament didn't sufficiently represent or appreciate our needs. Amartya Sen's observation that India no longer had famines after independence has the same resonance. Nationalism may be a messy proxy for common interests.
Mr George Washington also owned a lot of land that became a lot more valuable when the British could no longer enforce restrictions on further expansion of the colonies.
There was an econlog post about that.
(Mr Washington wasn't the only one of the traitors against the Crown with ulterior motives.)
In general, empires commonly want to extract wealth from their colonies. Nationalism isn't the only reason why the colonies might have a different preference.
Maybe part of the reason for decolonialization was free trade or at least increasing international trade. Countries realized they didn't have to "own" other countries to get their resources. They could convince the natives of those countries to extract their own resources and sell to them. And this was far cheaper than administering those countries.
I wonder if the driver is really nationalism per se rather than respect and a desire not to be treated as inferiors. People's revealed preferences show they are willing to forgo huge economic benefits to avoid being assigned an inferior social status. Notice that things did turn out differently for France which was structured as a true empire where the overseas colonies were treated as less inferior (if at all).
I think one could make a good case that it is democracy which made the optimistic scenario impossible. As long as everyone in an empire is a subject of a true monarch the colonies aren't being treated as inferiors. Once you have a democracy you either have to let Indians control the British empire or make it clear you designate them as an inferior class.
The only real way out of this is to weaken the level of interconnection -- basically form the commonwealth -- and that requires revolution if they aren't allowed to leave. And once you go that way why would the colony be more likely to agree to free trade with their former master than anyone else? Sure they should but they should probably do that everywhere.
The story of Anguilla is an interesting one. When the UK proposed granting them independence in the 70's, it was a part of a larger nation that included St. Kitts and Nevis. The Anguillans (rightly, I think) were concerned that as a very small island they would not get any priority or status in this newly-independent entity. They demanded to remain under British rule, and refused to consider independence on these terms. This led to a (tiny) armed rebellion against the British troops. I think it might be the only example where a colony fought to reject independence.
It is a fascinating example. The armed rebellion was against the St. Kitts-led federation authorities. The British troops who eventually arrived (storming ashore in combat gear) were met by Anguillans thrilled to see them. And the premier of the federation had threatened to destroy Anguilla (which had not voted for him) so their fear was quite justified.
As other commenters noted, you do have some natural experiments where nationalist sentiment was absent, or at least not hostile against the colonizing country. Canada (and the other British Dominions involved in WW1) remained very friendly with the UK, but still demanded the ability to run an independent foreign policy, leading to the Balfour declaration and the Statute of Westminster. Of course, that's 50+ years after the creation of Canada as a coherent entity, which was driven by nationalist sentiment (but largely focused on the risk of being swallowed up by the US, rather than a desire for independence from the British Empire).
France's remaining overseas territories are probably the best example of your optimistic scenario. They're fully integrated and have the same status as the regions of "metropolitan" France. This includes free movement, voting rights, etc. It also means all French laws automatically apply to those regions, which can be troublesome when the laws assume a base level of wealth is there to absorb compliance costs, which is not present in the poorer overseas territories.
Yes, came here to say that France is the closest to the optimistic scenario, and if they had moved in that direction earlier they plausibly could have kept a much larger part of their colonial possessions (Algeria was too little too late, but that very plausibly could have gone differently if the full French rights package had been offered immediately post WW2.)
A majority of Puerto Ricans want to be a US state, but the US rejects that and leaves them as the semi-independent status quo.
I think I am generally optimistic. I'd like to think that your optimistic scenario would have happened and, therefore, I think decolonization was a mistake. But, perhaps I am quite naïve.
I am reminded of a quote by Manuel Quezon: "I prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos than a government run like heaven by Americans." Well, they got it.
Personally, I would rather a government run like heaven by Filipinos than a government run by ... Justin Trudeau.
The referendums and polling all hover around 50% in PR so it's wrong to suggest there is a clear preference there. Statehood offers some pride and voting benefits but they lose some advantageous tax and other legal benefits and as they already enjoy citizenship its a less big deal.
Heck, if I had the option to take my state to the status of territory where I remain a citizen but gain some beneficial tax/legals advantages I might consider voting for that.
I remember a conversation on David Friedman's page about a keyhole solution to immigration: The guy was suggesting that maybe immigrants could come and work in the US but would be ineligible for benefits but also, to be fair, exempt from the taxes that pay for said benefits. I said: Man, if that were an option, you'd have a long line of naturally-born US Citizens renouncing their citizenship! haha
How much does your “least optimistic plausible scenario” differ from actual history, in practice? As you mentioned, native nationalism started with local elites, influenced by (among others) the Soviets. If your least optimistic scenario occurred, wouldn’t world events look kind of like that in practice?
Once colonial leaders decided they didn’t want their colonies any more, wouldn’t the most politically expedient move be to at least Let Local Nationalism Happen On Purpose, to borrow a phrase from conspiracy theory? Sure the Soviets (or whoever) fomented the actual nationalistic behavior, but because colonial leaders no longer wanted the colonies anyway (perhaps because of their own nationalism), benign neglect allows the fuse to be lit with history as we know it continuing apace.
I wonder if India had stayed part of the British Empire if economic conditions might have improved so much there that there would be little migration out. The big flux of Indian emigrants seems to have followed the years of hard socialism after independence. Dodging that, India might well have had 2-3 generations of solid economic growth and been a hell of a strong economy today.
There was a speculative piece written a long time ago about what would have happened if the US has stayed as a British possession, peaceably. No Civil War, or not much of one, over slavery. No WWI, no WWII and probably no communism. The British empire would have been to vast for any single nation or alliances to go against. Decolonization would have probably happened but slower and more peaceably in most cases. Maintaining a huge empire is expensive and a lot of work.
I don´t know where are you from, but it's weird to me that you include the US as an Empire and defend this stance, since the US was actually a colony. Not only that, the american revolutionary Patrick Henry said "I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" Why do you think this feeling wasn't shared by other colonized peoples? Besides, you seem to think that the colonial period was peaceful. It was not. Just two exemples: First, Under King Leopold's II rule in Congo there were atrocities including forced labour, torture, murder, kidnapping, and the amputation of the hands of men, women, and children. Second, the Great Famine of 1876-1878 in India, was in part because the plundering of Britain of indian grains caused several million fatalities in the subcontinent. Now, something you said at the begining of your text is that the Third World Rulers are very corrupt, and that is right, but a very important reason is because the former empires continue to meddle in the affairs of their ex-colonies, promoting coup d'etats, political assasinations, instability and insane amounts of debt. So, not only these governments are to blame.
Malta voted to join the UK but was rejected and given independence against their will, for a second example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Maltese_United_Kingdom_integration_referendum
I was about to mention this as a counter to Bryan's suggestion here that empires would have endured. The two world wars exhausted Europe's capacity to maintain global empires, and to some degree its willingness too. My guess is that the break ups were inevitable, and even free trade zones unlikely.
Why didn't the rosy picture you paint happen during the 200 years of colonialism?
Surely nationalism isn’t the only reason why a global empire might decentralize into friendly but independently governed countries.
If one considers Australia, Canada and New Zealand, it isn’t nationalism of the native populations that led to their gradual independence, and not really nationalism of the colonial populations. The clearest case of nationalism is probably Quebec, and that was really a colonial French identity at odds with the rest of Canada, not just the U.K.
Even the U.S.’s revolution was a rebellion of colonists rather than natives, and it’s a stretch to call it nationalism at the time of the revolution. At least in large part it was men who considered themselves Englishmen but were upset that they were deprived of the rights and fair treatment they considered their due.
So on what would have happened absent nationalism, I suspect that something broadly resembling the path of Australia and Canada would have been common, perhaps with some variants based on the level of economic development vs. the imperial center (without nationalism, economic development per se might matter more than the ratio of colonists to native populations).
It's a shame that we don't even have free trade and free immigration amongst CANZUK. I don't think most people would be against this. It's just a lack of political will, I guess. Not a priority.
I think you're right, man. India would have probably gone the way of Canada. Still sharing the King but otherwise being pretty much independent.
You identify the exception case. The British Empire was made up of Dominions (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc) where mass migration has led to creole nationalisms, and true imperial possessions (Nigeria, Jamaica, India etc) where a non-white majority was ruled by colonial masters. The first group thought of themselves as daughters of the mother country while the others were more like colonial possessions. What would have united this extremely diverse group of nascent countries with varying degrees of self government? Perhaps a degree of self identification as somehow British amongst the educated elites in India, Africa etc. Perhaps an enlightened focus on equal rights and encouragement of local democracy from the masters in London. But it’s hard to see the jingoistic racist attitudes of the late Victorian era spontaneously reversing in the absence of anything else. Imagine a Churchill who decided that Gandhi and Mandela were capable of being his equal. Hard, isn’t it?
Well, the thought experiment was to consider what might happen in a hypothetical world without nationalism, so outlier cases in which nationalism appears not to have been a major factor are instructive.
If indeed dominions like Australia and Canada saw themselves as “daughters of the mother country” (i.e., nationalism was for them a centripetal force binding them to the empire), yet they gradually became independent anyway, that supports the idea that at least they, and very possibly others, would also have become independent in the absence of nationalism.
Also, even with nationalism you get regional trade blocs and loose quasi-federations like the EU, so without nationalism you'd expect that to be stronger. Without nationalism, Spain should want to let its people integrate supply chains and have free migration with France at least as much as with Argentina. Even with nationalism it does!
Also right. As a Canadian, I would much prefer open immigration with the US. If only for the simple fact that it's much closer. If Canadians could live and work in the US, it would be easier for them to come home for Canadian Thanksgiving, vs. living and working in a land down-under!
But, I would also be OK with labour mobility within CANZUK. Unfortunately, I think neither are likely to happen.
what’s your story for why Canada, etc. became independent?
The alternative was just unworkable, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Millions of people, being governed by an administration half a world away. So local governments formed, and gradually got more authority. Canada became independent of the U.K. in a long series of gradual steps, from the 1840s to 1982. Doesn't require national identity, just subsidiarity at first, and a weak case for imperial oversight to drive the later steps.
Eh, I think the American revolution is the archetypal national revolution.
Like, the right they thought was their due was 'self-government', which is the ask of national revolutions everywhere else.
Not quite. The right they thought was their due was to be represented in whatever legislature taxed them. Remember the theory was "no taxation without representation." Had the colonists been offered seats in Parliament, we Americans might still be subjects of the king.
Indeed, there were representatives who voted for war, but then against independence, because they thought they were just fighting for a better arrangement with Britain.
Another comparison point: China does not have freedom of movement between its provinces (instead having residence permits, which vary widely in desirability). Seems pretty likely that the British dominions end up similarly, where Indians need to apply to be able to move to England and only a handful get it, rather than true free movement.
I admit I am completely confused by your “most optimistic plausible scenario”. It seems to totally neglect the elephant in the room that the majority of the empires’ subjects are second class citizens and don’t have their interests represented in the government. So why would you expect their lives to improve, as opposed to their resources being continually plundered like they were in the pre-war period?
It seems obvious to me that unless you are just looking from Europe’s point of view, where having colonial subjects is great, a final vision of humanity involves the independent nations with full voting rights. And naturally these countries make some horrific mistakes when they are trying to get up for the first time and pick up the pieces. But India at least seems to have started to gets its act together after a few decades.
I think it's false to believe lives don't improve merely because those lives are second-class. Lives improve as technology improves, the scope of the market enlarges, etc. Countries actually seem more developed the longer they were colonized:
https://cpsi.media/p/colonialism-and-progress-fb9
Jamaica improved a lot near the end of British colonization. It hasn't seen much improvement since:
https://cpsi.media/p/jamaica-is-not-doing-ok
I didn’t say second-class citizens’ lives will never improve. But there is a strong lack of incentive for the government to improve them.
And my deeper point is that unless you believe that permanent subjugation is the way to go, decolonization has to happen at some point.
I mean, you say "permanent subjugation," other's might call it "permanent competent government," which is really the source of the benefits under discussion here.
It's positing a counterfactual world where corrupt, dictatorial, and / or inherently unstable governments weren't allowed to run the various places, and where relatively clean and competent western governments were running them instead.
If that's what "subjugation" amounts to, it's probably better to keep it in place, because we live in that world's counterfactual, where all the colonies have done much worse without it.
Socialism or something close or it was very popular in Europe at the time, too.
So I don't think it's obvious that avoiding decolonisation would have also avoided socialist tendencies.
IRL immigrants from the colonies vote socialist and move politics leftward. Why would anything change?
In America wherever black people moved en masse during the great migration politics moved to the left.
Going left In response to white savage behavior -- Jim Crow segregation, lack of due process, 5,000 lynchings of men, women, and children, rape, etc. Fighting white supremacy is considered communistic in the eyes of the white supremacist oppressor. MLK was considered a communist. Speaking up for your rights?
It’s a fact that MLK had leftist tendencies even when you disregard the civil rights issue. He was socialist adjacent.
He was more or less openly a democratic socialist. More correct to say he was Communist-adjacent, the main point of adjacency being Stanley Levison.
I don't know if you consider the American revolution an example of nationalism, but our issue was that the British Parliament didn't sufficiently represent or appreciate our needs. Amartya Sen's observation that India no longer had famines after independence has the same resonance. Nationalism may be a messy proxy for common interests.
Mr George Washington also owned a lot of land that became a lot more valuable when the British could no longer enforce restrictions on further expansion of the colonies.
There was an econlog post about that.
(Mr Washington wasn't the only one of the traitors against the Crown with ulterior motives.)
In general, empires commonly want to extract wealth from their colonies. Nationalism isn't the only reason why the colonies might have a different preference.
Maybe part of the reason for decolonialization was free trade or at least increasing international trade. Countries realized they didn't have to "own" other countries to get their resources. They could convince the natives of those countries to extract their own resources and sell to them. And this was far cheaper than administering those countries.
That is an example of my point. The British Parliament was solicitous of British landowners, not of American landowners.
I wonder if the driver is really nationalism per se rather than respect and a desire not to be treated as inferiors. People's revealed preferences show they are willing to forgo huge economic benefits to avoid being assigned an inferior social status. Notice that things did turn out differently for France which was structured as a true empire where the overseas colonies were treated as less inferior (if at all).
I think one could make a good case that it is democracy which made the optimistic scenario impossible. As long as everyone in an empire is a subject of a true monarch the colonies aren't being treated as inferiors. Once you have a democracy you either have to let Indians control the British empire or make it clear you designate them as an inferior class.
The only real way out of this is to weaken the level of interconnection -- basically form the commonwealth -- and that requires revolution if they aren't allowed to leave. And once you go that way why would the colony be more likely to agree to free trade with their former master than anyone else? Sure they should but they should probably do that everywhere.
The story of Anguilla is an interesting one. When the UK proposed granting them independence in the 70's, it was a part of a larger nation that included St. Kitts and Nevis. The Anguillans (rightly, I think) were concerned that as a very small island they would not get any priority or status in this newly-independent entity. They demanded to remain under British rule, and refused to consider independence on these terms. This led to a (tiny) armed rebellion against the British troops. I think it might be the only example where a colony fought to reject independence.
It is a fascinating example. The armed rebellion was against the St. Kitts-led federation authorities. The British troops who eventually arrived (storming ashore in combat gear) were met by Anguillans thrilled to see them. And the premier of the federation had threatened to destroy Anguilla (which had not voted for him) so their fear was quite justified.
As other commenters noted, you do have some natural experiments where nationalist sentiment was absent, or at least not hostile against the colonizing country. Canada (and the other British Dominions involved in WW1) remained very friendly with the UK, but still demanded the ability to run an independent foreign policy, leading to the Balfour declaration and the Statute of Westminster. Of course, that's 50+ years after the creation of Canada as a coherent entity, which was driven by nationalist sentiment (but largely focused on the risk of being swallowed up by the US, rather than a desire for independence from the British Empire).
France's remaining overseas territories are probably the best example of your optimistic scenario. They're fully integrated and have the same status as the regions of "metropolitan" France. This includes free movement, voting rights, etc. It also means all French laws automatically apply to those regions, which can be troublesome when the laws assume a base level of wealth is there to absorb compliance costs, which is not present in the poorer overseas territories.
Yes, came here to say that France is the closest to the optimistic scenario, and if they had moved in that direction earlier they plausibly could have kept a much larger part of their colonial possessions (Algeria was too little too late, but that very plausibly could have gone differently if the full French rights package had been offered immediately post WW2.)
A majority of Puerto Ricans want to be a US state, but the US rejects that and leaves them as the semi-independent status quo.
I think I am generally optimistic. I'd like to think that your optimistic scenario would have happened and, therefore, I think decolonization was a mistake. But, perhaps I am quite naïve.
I am reminded of a quote by Manuel Quezon: "I prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos than a government run like heaven by Americans." Well, they got it.
Personally, I would rather a government run like heaven by Filipinos than a government run by ... Justin Trudeau.
The referendums and polling all hover around 50% in PR so it's wrong to suggest there is a clear preference there. Statehood offers some pride and voting benefits but they lose some advantageous tax and other legal benefits and as they already enjoy citizenship its a less big deal.
Heck, if I had the option to take my state to the status of territory where I remain a citizen but gain some beneficial tax/legals advantages I might consider voting for that.
I remember a conversation on David Friedman's page about a keyhole solution to immigration: The guy was suggesting that maybe immigrants could come and work in the US but would be ineligible for benefits but also, to be fair, exempt from the taxes that pay for said benefits. I said: Man, if that were an option, you'd have a long line of naturally-born US Citizens renouncing their citizenship! haha
I think all you need is to charge them a higher tax rate when they arrive and use that to cover our deficit.
"How much did the median inhabitant of British India actually care about independence? Barely at all, in my estimation."
I'm not so sure. This seems like a hard thing to prove.
I agree that de-colonization was bad, but I'm not sure your model here is accurate.
It's hard to preach the white man's burden that the west should keep subsidizing their colonies.
How much does your “least optimistic plausible scenario” differ from actual history, in practice? As you mentioned, native nationalism started with local elites, influenced by (among others) the Soviets. If your least optimistic scenario occurred, wouldn’t world events look kind of like that in practice?
Once colonial leaders decided they didn’t want their colonies any more, wouldn’t the most politically expedient move be to at least Let Local Nationalism Happen On Purpose, to borrow a phrase from conspiracy theory? Sure the Soviets (or whoever) fomented the actual nationalistic behavior, but because colonial leaders no longer wanted the colonies anyway (perhaps because of their own nationalism), benign neglect allows the fuse to be lit with history as we know it continuing apace.
I wonder if India had stayed part of the British Empire if economic conditions might have improved so much there that there would be little migration out. The big flux of Indian emigrants seems to have followed the years of hard socialism after independence. Dodging that, India might well have had 2-3 generations of solid economic growth and been a hell of a strong economy today.
Why didn't that happen for the 200 years of British colonialism?
There was a speculative piece written a long time ago about what would have happened if the US has stayed as a British possession, peaceably. No Civil War, or not much of one, over slavery. No WWI, no WWII and probably no communism. The British empire would have been to vast for any single nation or alliances to go against. Decolonization would have probably happened but slower and more peaceably in most cases. Maintaining a huge empire is expensive and a lot of work.
I don´t know where are you from, but it's weird to me that you include the US as an Empire and defend this stance, since the US was actually a colony. Not only that, the american revolutionary Patrick Henry said "I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" Why do you think this feeling wasn't shared by other colonized peoples? Besides, you seem to think that the colonial period was peaceful. It was not. Just two exemples: First, Under King Leopold's II rule in Congo there were atrocities including forced labour, torture, murder, kidnapping, and the amputation of the hands of men, women, and children. Second, the Great Famine of 1876-1878 in India, was in part because the plundering of Britain of indian grains caused several million fatalities in the subcontinent. Now, something you said at the begining of your text is that the Third World Rulers are very corrupt, and that is right, but a very important reason is because the former empires continue to meddle in the affairs of their ex-colonies, promoting coup d'etats, political assasinations, instability and insane amounts of debt. So, not only these governments are to blame.