Coming from a former colonial possession (Ireland), I agree that one shouldn't dismiss the injuries of colonialism, but I also think it's easy to fall into the trap of imagining that the pre-colonial era was one of benign harmony. It's easy to put the blame on a rapacious colonial power for a society's ills, but in many cases the only reason the external power was able to take over was due to dysfunction in the colonized country that limited its ability to respond to externally-imposed challenges.
> Coming from a former colonial possession (Ireland),
It's really not historically responsible to equate British rule of Ireland with colonialism as it existed in India.
> but in many cases the only reason the external power was able to take over was due to dysfunction in the colonized country that limited its ability to respond to externally-imposed challenges.
This is also not a particularly accurate depiction of the way that colonial powers built their empires. It's not a particularly accurate depiction of the way that the British took control over India either.
>>It's really not historically responsible to equate British rule of Ireland with colonialism as it existed in India.
I'd be interested to find out why you think this is the case? I'm not an expert by any means on the history of either colonial era but the little I do know shows some striking similarities in how the natives were treated by the British as far as rapacious barbarity in multiple cases.
As someone who both has a lot of Irish blood (read: many relatives who hate the British), and someone who considers himself an amateur historian I'd like to make a single point:
"starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than that of sturdy Greeks"
~ Churchill 1943
I think this quote captures the ethos of British colonial rule quite nicely.
While the British ruled many of their colonies by a identifiable play-book (i.e. a superiority complex that lead to brutal governance), cultural preference, as it always seems to, lead to favorable treatment of those demographics closest to anglo-saxon / protestant / etc, characteristics.
So I assert while famines were induced by the British in both Ireland and India, the Indians would have been seen as lowlier then the Irish, by a debatable amount.
The Indian population would thus have suffered harsher under colonial rulers.
This is coming from someone who has traced his ancestry back to a British lord, which in all likelihood means a family member (likely 3-4 generations) was raped as a direct result of British colonialism.
History is brutal and everybody likes to call foul. However treatment of different, far off, peoples by colonial powers will never seek to amaze in its vicious and sickening nature.
Well, the 'potato famine' in Ireland wasn't just due to potato blight. The English were ripping heaps of food out of the island. Given that the population of Ireland halved as a result, it seems much of a muchness to me when playing 'oppression olympics' about who had it worse.
Remember also that the English didn't conquer India just with their own armies. They used allies and puppets; England didn't have the sheer manpower it'd take to conquer India alone. Basically their tactic was find a small power and give them advanced weapons. The small power then enjoys becoming a big power... but is then dependent on England for the arms supply, and so becomes a puppet. The English were very good at politics, playing people off each other.
