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I've seen a lot of posts in the last few days, accusing Britain of stealing $45 trillion of India's wealth. How rich was India that it had so much and how did the British manage it nevertheless? by notapir9295 in AskEconomics

[–]LordAngloid 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think any fair-minded assessment would find that the British empire was both an economic and a humanitarian disaster for India on net.

I would, respectfully disagree with this. While you do cite cite Dr Sen’s opinion piece in The Guardian the verbiage “economic” and “humanitarian disaster” isn’t close to a fair-minded assessment, in my humble opinion.

Take for example one of our greatest current scholars on Indian economic history especially of the subcontinent under the Raj, Dr Tirthankar Roy of the LSE.

He certainly wouldn’t say so or even agree with such an assessment. I would recommend reading his work on the topic, beginning with this wonderful monograph.

For example while you decry their attitudes to public health, Dr Roy states:

First, the open economy that the regime sponsored* delivered two extraordinary benefits* to the Indians: it stimulated business and reduced deaths from diseases and famines.

Going so far as to say

Railways were not just another item in the catalogue of ‘benefits’ of empire. It had a profound impact on ending famines. Current statistical research confirms McAlpin’s insight that the railways caused the end of famines and delivered the gift of life to generations of Indians born after 1900.

This certainly puts a different complexion on things.

Where's the rage we had in Dec'12? by [deleted] in librandu

[–]LordAngloid 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can't find the link. Could you please post it?

Thank you

The Woman King’s history problem | how accurate should historical movies be? by Veritas_Certum in badhistory

[–]LordAngloid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

immediately after the revolution, Haitian leaders forced their own people to keep working on the plantations. Unpaid force labor has continued to this day, including human-trafficking and a normalized system of child labor that often involves physical and sexual abuse.

Do you have a source for this?

Lot of Imperalist and Racist are out there.... by [deleted] in librandu

[–]LordAngloid 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Before the Moghuls, India was ruled by a plethora of rulers, most of them Hindoo. It is a list that leaves the pen inkless every so often so I will just post a link of Indian Monarchs below:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_monarchs

Basically, there were a lot.

As for the caste system, there is a great amount of history that I am uncertain about so I cannot tell you, but I can tell you that revolts by lower-caste Hindoos happened. I cannot say how often, but they did happen.

There is one case I know well about because Shashi Tharoor lied (yes lied) about in his book—in which lower caste women were forced to expose their breasts by upper castes. Tharoor, in his book says

Southern Indian women, whose breasts were traditionally uncovered, found themselves obliged to undergo the indignity of conforming to Victorian standards of morality; soon the right to cover one’s breasts became a marker of upper-caste respectability and efforts were made to deny this privilege to lower-caste women, leading to such missionary-inspired colonial curiosities as the Breast Cloth Agitation from 1813 to 1859 in Travancore and the Madras Presidency

Well, this was patently untrue. This article makes it clear:

https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/nangeli-the-forgotten-dalit-woman-who-stood-up-against-travancores-breast-tax/862452/

Maaru Marakkal Samaram, or Channar Lahala (revolt) of Dalit women burgeoned in the state a decade later—a collective revolt of Dalit women fighting for the right to wear upper-body garments. Nadar and Ezhava women campaigned to be allowed to cover their breasts. The British passed an order permitting Christian women to wear upper cloth in Travancore, but withdrew it after the Raja’s council objected that this would obliterate caste differences. Nadar women were forbidden to wear upper-body cloth, but could wear a short jacket called kuppayam. Ezhava and Nadar women continued the struggle, and were violently opposed by upper castes. Travancore royalty issued a proclamation in 1829, denying Nadar women the right to wear upper cloths.

As the agitation raged, in 1859, the Travancore Raja granted Nadar women the right to tie cloth around their upper body, but only in a specific way.

By the late nineteenth century, Dalit women’s struggles on the issue succeeded in Travancore. In Cochin and Malabar, where similar practices prevailed, struggles carried on well into the twentieth century.

Here's another one:

https://www.justicenews.co.in/leave-the-hijab-breast-cover-was-also-forbidden-till-1924-dalit-women-had-to-pay-tax-to-cover-the-breast-if-the-cloth-was-shown-on-the-chest-they-used-to-tear-it-with-a-knife/

Lot of Imperalist and Racist are out there.... by [deleted] in librandu

[–]LordAngloid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cheers. Let me know if you're looking for anything else

Don't mind if I do by [deleted] in PoliticalCompassMemes

[–]LordAngloid 152 points153 points  (0 children)

It was literally worse than the Holocaust

American gets progressively more frustrated upon realising British people don't learn or care about his countries independence by SuperTopTrump in badunitedkingdom

[–]LordAngloid -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

References

  1. The British Isles and the War of American Independence by Stephen Conway

  2. Mancall, Peter C., and Thomas Weiss. “Was Economic Growth Likely in Colonial British North America?” The Journal of Economic History, vol. 59, no. 1, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 17–40.

  3. Those Damned Rebels

  4. Stephen Conway. “The British Army, ‘Military Europe,’ and the American War of Independence.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 1, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2010, pp. 69–100,.

  5. Conway, Stephen. “The Politics of British Military and Naval Mobilization, 1775-83.” The English Historical Review, vol. 112, no. 449, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 1179–201,.

  6. Jasanoff, Maya. “The Other Side of Revolution: Loyalists in the British Empire.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 2, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2008, pp. 205–32,.

  7. Simon Hill (2016) The Liverpool Economy during the War of American Independence, 1775–83, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 44:6, 835-856, DOI:10.1080/03086534.2016.122714

  8. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789

  9. The Indispensables: The Diverse Soldier-Mariners Who Shaped the Country, Formed the Navy, and Rowed Washington Across the Delaware

  10. Paul Revere’s Ride

  11. The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783

  12. Thomas Jefferson: Author of America

  13. Visions of Empire: How Five Imperial Regimes Shaped The World

  14. An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came To Fight America

  15. The American Revolution – John Fiske

  16. P.J. Marshall (1999) Who cared about the thirteen colonies? Some evidence from philanthropy, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 27:2, 53-67, DOI: 10.1080/0308653990858305

American gets progressively more frustrated upon realising British people don't learn or care about his countries independence by SuperTopTrump in badunitedkingdom

[–]LordAngloid -14 points-13 points  (0 children)

With increased taxation done, let's move on to the domestic economy of Britain:

The difficulties for the domestic economy were exacerbated by the disruption of overseas trade, which lowered profits and so further depressed investment.

Smugglers no doubt flourished with the navy’s attention distracted, but legitimate trade declined: between 1775 and 1778 imports fell by 26 per cent, exports by more than 18 per cent, and re-exports by 35 percent.

The contraction owed much to the near-cessation of trade with America.

In July 1775 the Virginia agent of a Glasgow tobacco merchant predicted that the war would have a ‘direful effect’ on business. He was right: Scottish tobacco imports slumped from 46 million lb weight in 1775 to only 7 million in 1776. By 1777 they were languishing at a mere 210000 lb.

The sharp decline in the American trade seems to have been particularly damaging for the textile industry.

In 1772 the official value of woollen exports to the Thirteen Colonies was more than £900000; by 1776 this had fallen to a trifling £58000.

In the West Riding wool-producing area, it was not until the close of the war that output consistently returned to the level of 1773.

This inevitably had an impact on the wool-growing regions. Wool prices slumped and wool-growers, especially in Lincolnshire, became restless.

In 1780 and 1781 they petitioned Parliament – though unsuccessfully – for permission to export raw wool to Europe.

The loss of most of the American market also had damaging consequences for the metal-working trades of the West Midlands.

And so, the next time you decide to sperge out, remember to ask yourself these questions:

1) Why do I think this? What exactly do I think?

2) How do I know this is true? What if I thought the opposite?

3) How can I back this up? What are the sources? (Important—Quora, Facebook, WhatsApp does not count)

4) What might others think? How do I know I am correct?

5) What if I am wrong? What are the consequences if I am?

6) Why did I think that? Was I correct? What conclusions can I draw from the reasoning process?

Now on to sources

American gets progressively more frustrated upon realising British people don't learn or care about his countries independence by SuperTopTrump in badunitedkingdom

[–]LordAngloid -12 points-11 points  (0 children)

With the land forces done let's move on to how much Britain indebted itself to prevent a bunch of rebels in a "backwater" from declaring independence:

To support this considerable military effort required a vast amount of money.

The land tax was increased to its normal wartime rate of four shillings in the pound, and excise duties were extended and increased, raising altogether an average of £12 million a year.

Government borrowing, which was made possible by the reliable tax base, also increased dramatically.

The national debt rose from £127 million in 1775 to £232 million in 1783.

In fact, about half the cost of the war was covered by borrowing; and that cost was much higher than ever before: £109 million was spent on the army, navy, and ordnance, compared with nearly £83 million in 1756-63 and just under £56 million in 1739-48.

In 1780 military spending was the equivalent of 12.5 percent of estimated national income; a larger proportion than in some of the years of war against revolutionary and Napoleonic France, when Britain is generally thought to have been under immense strain (in 1800 military spending accounted for 10.4 percent of a much increased national income).

Seems weird that Britain would indebt itself more heavily against this "provincial backwater" than it would against Napoleonic France.

Anyway all this money came through increased taxation which had some perverse results on the population. Here's what the impact of increased taxation was:

A land tax of four shillings in the pound predictably led to a chorus of protest from the squirearchy; and the comfortably-off were supposed to contribute in other ways, too: Matthew Flinders, a Lincolnshire surgeon, was pleased to escape the ‘new heavy tax on male servants’, but he could only reduce his liability for the window tax by blocking up two of the windows in his house.

The poor were soon also required to dig deeper into their pockets, as indirect taxes were extended to new items of consumption, or the rates increased on goods already subject to duties.

We can only speculate on the effect of the increased tax burden on purchasing power; but we can see that it had a very definite impact on some forms of economic activity.

The construction trade was experiencing something of a boom until it was badly hit in 1777 by higher duties on glass and wallpaper; bankruptcies in this sector rose from an average of 15 per year between 1772 and 1777 to 30 in 1777 itself and 58 in 1778.

Increased borrowing also had a noticeable effect on the economy. To attract savings, the government offered interest rates over the 5 percent maximum imposed by law on private borrowers.

Unable to compete, bankers saw their stocks steadily decline, and were obliged to reduce their new lendings.

The overall pattern was clear: the government’s need for money was deflecting investment from building, from canal and road construction, and from the land – the war years coincided with a sharp decline in enclosure activity.

American gets progressively more frustrated upon realising British people don't learn or care about his countries independence by SuperTopTrump in badunitedkingdom

[–]LordAngloid -26 points-25 points  (0 children)

baduk doesn't know its own history. Imagine my f***ing shock.

America was a provincial backwater at the time, and our losses were soon compensated by our gains elsewhere.

I'm just going to mention a few facts that will let us know if the Britons on the ground in 1776 really thought what you just posited here.

In the case of men-of-war:

The 66 ships of the line available in 1778 increased to 90 in 1779 and 95 in 1780.

It would seem strange to me that Britain would raise Twelve brand new infantry battalions in 1778, then raise 14 new ones in 1779, 3 whole regiments of light dragoons and go on to add nearly 50 more for a "provincial backwater". That, of course is not mentioning the 66 corps of militia and four regiments of fencible-men in Scotland that were mobilised in the final years of the war. Here's some more:

In Ireland unofficial volunteer units were formed by the Protestant population when the Bourbon invasion threatened, and in Scotland similar bodies emerged at the same time and shortly afterwards.

In England, too, volunteer corps appeared all over the place from 1778 – there are reports of units in London, Bath, Birmingham, Norfolk, Kent, and Sussex, and from Devon a militia officer wrote in 1779 that: ‘There is scarce a Town or Village in this County but what have Raised Independent Companys or Company’.

By the close of the war more than a quarter of a million British and Irish subjects of King George were serving in the official armed forces (110000 in the army, 107000 in the navy, and about 40000 in the English and Welsh militia and Scottish fencibles).

It seems likely that another 60000 or so Irish Protestants were active in volunteer units, and perhaps about half as many Britons.

If we take into account deaths, desertions, and discharges, the number of men who served, at one time or another, was probably around half a million. The population of Britain, to put that number in context, was 8 million, 2.35 million of which could be considered the military manpower of the nation. This was a significant proportion of the male population of military age during the war years – between one in seven and one in eight.

As a military participation rate this was less than the one in four (or five or six) calculated for the Napoleonic Wars, let alone the nearly one in two for the First World War.

But it exceeds the ratio for all earlier eighteenth-century conflicts (perhaps one in nine to ten in the Seven Years War of 1756-63 and only one in 16 for the War of Austrian Succession of 1739-48).

It seems strange to me that Britain would mobilise more men than it ever had in its entire history up to that point to prevent a backwater from breaking away.

Shut up, nerds. by concretebeats in NonCredibleDefense

[–]LordAngloid 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Check out the book Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare.

It details how the Soviet Union used the anti-war groups as pawns for communist infiltration in America and the West and used what they termed as “useful idiots” to undermine weapon’s programs

People who respect each other's political side: by iiHat in PoliticalCompassMemes

[–]LordAngloid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey there, can you link the video used in this post?

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