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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31958 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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As far as I'm aware, rather than become subjects of the native authorities they instead set up their own and in some cases subjugated the native authorities by force of arms, which modern day immigrants generally don't.

This is, generally speaking, not a particularly accurate description of colonialism as it actually occurred. It postulates some kind of actual "native" authorities, a condition which the world often did not satisfy.

For example, the British displaced the Mughal empire. The Mughal empire was not native, it was founded by an Uzbek warlord who was in tern descended from Gengis Khan. Insofar as this Uzbek warlord became native, he then expanded his empire into other quite distinct regions.

Whether you attribute Mughal rule to Uzbekistan or Agra, it was still foreign to Bengalis by the time it reached Calcutta.

Mughals were displaced by the Maratha empire in some places, and the British in others. Eventually the British replaced the Maratha everywhere.

From the perspective of someone from Delhi or Calcutta, "native rule" is so far in the past that it's silly to consider the British as removing it. (In contrast someone from Poona can claim to have been ruled by natives - the Maratha - until the British displaced them.)

And in some cases - e.g. the princely states - the British never did what is considered "colonization". For example, the British had a longstanding alliance with the Nizams of Hyderabad. But in 1948 the British were forced to exit and allowed the Princely states to decide what they wanted to do. The Nizam of Hyderabad chose independence, and shortly after that it was invaded by India.

Was Hyderabad colonized by the British?

Isn't much of Indian Hindu-nationalist historiography based on hating the shit out of Mughals, though?

Probably deservedly so, but then also projecting some of that hatred onto contemporary Muslims who don't really deserve any of it.

Mughals - warlords who steal lots of stuff to buy luxury items.

Contemporary Indian Muslims - owner-operators of bakeries and non-veg restaurants.

This seems to be a new definition of colonialism: colonialism is not determined by any actions or properties of the colonizers, but instead by the actions of their descendants?

In any case, the idea of "Indian culture" is meaningless in the 1526-1760 period. The Marathas and the Mughals today fall under the "Indian" umbrella, but at the time most of their empires were foreign subjugation by a distant ruler - it's just that prior to 1948, "foreign" might include Aurangabad or Poona.

It is far from clear to me that the Mughals were better than the British (or worse). Nearly all the research is too politicized to be trustworthy; leftist academics tend to support the pro-Mughal/anti-Britain position and western sources tend to defer to them. By "leftist" I of course mean what English language Indian newspapers describe as "left", i.e. generally aligned with Congress party and opposed to "right wing" Hindu nationalism.

I've seen some esoteric and well disguised academic work suggesting they were dramatically more extractive than others (most notably "Taxation under the Mughals") and the visual artifacts that remain are consistent with this - just compare the opulence of Mughal tombs to those of Maratha or Bengali palaces. The beauty of Taj Mahal and Bibi Ka Maqbara are the product of taxes paid by lacs of poor peasants.

In contrast, think about British artifacts that persist. The biggest of these are Bombay (about 20% of India's GDP) and EIR/some other companies (today known as Indian Railways). In terms of specific structures they are quite visible today - e.g. an iconic train station which tourists refer to as "Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus", various universities, bridges and museums.

At least based on what I can see, the British certainly seemed to have invested more into building India up than the Mughals did. I visited the Taj once in my life. I've taken trains built by the British more times than I can count.

If we're comparing the tyranny of the two empires,

We aren't, we're disputing the definition of "colonialism".

To be fair, positive effects of the British Empire are probably more noticeable now due to the fact that it was much more recent.

Not that much more recent. The British arrived in India about 80 years after the Mughals, 1610 or so. They built factories.

By 1781 they were building schools cause literacy was profitable. In 1837 the postal service was founded. By 1855 India had a telegraph system. The Mughal empire ended in 1857. All throughout this time they were creating new lines of business, for both domestic and foreign consumption - e.g. widespread chai cultivation.

What did the Mughals do during the time period of overlap? Keep in mind that they were far richer and more numerous than the British, particularly early on.

their policies weren't nearly as egregious as the British Raj since their ultimate goal was to improve the condition of India rather than England; the British implemented all sorts of policies to benefit their own country.

If I plot the graphs of "median wealth of native Indians" under the Mughals vs. under the British, which one do you think will have a higher annual growth?

Also: how do you tell the difference between "this policy was for the benefit of Britain" and "this policy was for the benefit of Indian trade, the fact that Britain profited too just proves that trade is non-zero-sum"?

Spain adopting border and trade laws that were drafted in Strasbourg and enrich France, doesn't mean Spain is a colonial possession of France, it means Spain wants the benefits of smooth movement of goods and people from the EU. If it's not egregious when France does it to Spain, why is it egregious when Britain does it to India?

India was ultimately a net drain on the British Empire, though.

There's a popular position that Europe benefitted greatly from colonisation and therefore owes the world. There's a less popular take that colonialism was in many cases a lose-lose proposition just like any other bad economic system, but despite this Europe still thrived due to other factors.

In Ireland's case I think it was a matter of Britain securing a military weak point at great cost (Ireland gained its independence only after it stopped being considered a valid staging ground for an invasion of Britain), and the counterfactual where they both remain Catholic or both convert to Protestantism or achieve good relations some other way is one where both are much wealthier today.

In any case, I don't think the amount of profit derived from India really matters. The actions I listed were still taken to benefit Britain, even if the resulting profit wasn't huge.

Even if there was no profit I think you could just say it was misguided economic policy intended to benefit Britain, like mercentalism was.

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