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krystalxu

'But what about the railways ...?' ​​The myth of Britain's gifts to India | W... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...in-empire-railways-myths-gifts

history politics diplomacy economy British India

shared by krystalxu on 10 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • the British took what they could for 200 years, but didn’t they also leave behind a great deal of lasting benefit?
  • Indeed, the British like to point out that the very idea of “India” as one entity (now three, but one during the British Raj), instead of multiple warring principalities and statelets, is the incontestable contribution of British imperial rule.
  • The idea of India is as old as the Vedas, the earliest Hindu scriptures, which describe “Bharatvarsha” as the land between the Himalayas and the seas.
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • Indian Muslims, whether Pathans from the north-west or Tamils from the south, were all seen by Arabs as “Hindis”
  • there is little doubt that some Indian ruler, emulating his forerunners, would have done so.
  • the dismantling of existing political institutions, the fomenting of communal division and systematic political discrimination with a view to maintaining British domination.
  • Later, in 1857, the sight of Hindu and Muslim soldiers rebelling together,
  • As early as 1859, the then British governor of Bombay, Lord Elphinstone, advised London that “Divide et impera was the old Roman maxim, and it should be ours”.
  • The effort to understand ethnic, religious, sectarian and caste differences among Britain’s subjects inevitably became an exercise in defining, dividing and perpetuating these differences.
  • As late as 1920, under the Montagu-Chelmsford “reforms”, Indian representatives on the councils – elected by a franchise so restricted and selective that only one in 250 Indians had the right to vote
  • many other kinds of social strife were labelled as religious due to the colonists’ orientalist assumption that religion was the fundamental division in Indian society.
  • the creation and perpetuation of Hindu–Muslim antagonism was the most significant accomplishment of British imperial policy
  • The British ran government, tax collection, and administered what passed for justice.
  • Indians were excluded from all of these functions.
  • entire new communities were created by people who had not consciously thought of themselves as particularly different from others around them.
  • Democracy, in other words, had to be prised from the reluctant grasp of the British by Indian nationalists.
  • British law had to be imposed upon an older and more complex civilisation with its own legal culture
  • only three cases can be found of Englishmen executed for murdering Indians, while the murders of thousands more at British hands went unpunished.
  • In his notorious 1835 Minute on Education, Lord Macaulay articulated the classic reason for teaching English, but only to a small minority of Indians
  • The language was taught to a few to serve as intermediaries between the rulers and the ruled
  • But the facts are even more damning.
  • the third-class compartments, with their wooden benches and total absence of amenities, into which Indians were herded, attracted horrified comment even at the time
  • their Indian mechanics became so adept that in 1878 they started designing and building their own locomotives.
  • today rely extensively on Indian technical expertise, provided to them by Rites, a subsidiary of the Indian Railways.
  • The process of colonial rule in India meant economic exploitation and ruin to millions, the destruction of thriving industries, the systematic denial of opportunities to compete, the elimination of indigenous institutions of governance, the transformation of lifestyles and patterns of living that had flourished since time immemorial, and the obliteration of the most precious possessions of the colonised, their identities and their self-respect.
  • In the 17th and 18th centuries, British shopkeepers tried to pass off shoddy English-made textiles as Indian in order to charge higher prices for them.
  • there is no earthly reason why this could not again have been the case, if its resources had not been drained away by the British.
  • Today Indians cannot live without the railways;
  • As I’ve often argued, you don’t need to seek revenge upon history. History is its own revenge.
g-dragon

Which Asian Nations Were Never Colonized by Europe? - 0 views

www.thoughtco.com/not-colonized-by-europe-195273

nations European colonization

shared by g-dragon on 24 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Between the 16th and 20th centuries, various European nations set out to conquer the world and take all of its wealth.
  • Rather than being colonized, Japan became an imperial power in its own right.
  • uncomfortable position between the French imperial possessions of French Indochina (now Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) to the east, and British Burma (now Myanmar) to the west
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  • managed to fend off both the French and the British through skillful diplomacy. He adopted many European customs and was intensely interested in European technologies. He also played the British and French off of one another, preserving most of Siam's territory and its independence.
  • The Ottoman Empire was too large, powerful, and complex for any one European power to simply annex it outright.
  • the European powers peeled off its territories in northern Africa and southeast Europe by seizing them directly or by encouraging and supplying local independence movements.
  • the Ottoman government or Sublime Porte had to borrow money from European banks to finance its operations. When it was unable to repay the money it owed to the London and Paris-based banks, they took control of the Ottoman revenue system, seriously infringing on the Porte's sovereignty. Foreign interests also invested heavily in railroad, port, and infrastructure projects, giving them ever more power within the tottering empire. The Ottoman Empire remained self-governing until it fell after World War I, but foreign banks and investors wielded an inordinate amount of power there.
  • Like the Ottoman Empire, Qing China was too large for any single European power to simply grab. Instead, Britain and France got a foothold through trade
  • Both Great Britain and Russia hoped to seize Afghanistan as part of their "Great Game" - a competition for land and influence in Central Asia. However, the Afghans had other ideas; they famously "don't like foreigners with guns in their country,
  • They slaughtered or captured an entire British army
  • , that gave Britain control of Afghanistan's foreign relations,
  • This shielded British India from Russian expansionism while leaving Afghanistan more or less independent.
  • Like Afghanistan, the British and Russians considered Persia an important piece in the Great Game
  • Russia nibbled away at northern Persian territory
  • Britain extended its influence into the eastern Persian Balochistan region
  • Like the Ottomans, the Qajar rulers of Persia had borrowed money from European banks for projects like railroads and other infrastructure improvements, and could not pay back the money.  Britain and Russia agreed without consulting the Persian government that they would split the revenues from Persian customs, fisheries, and other industries to amortize the debts. Persia never became a formal colony, but it temporarily lost control of its revenue stream and much of its territory - a source of bitterness to this
  • Nepal, Bhutan, Korea, Mongolia, and the Middle Eastern protectorates:
  • Nepal lost about one-third of its territory to the British East India Company's
  • However, the Gurkhas fought so well and the land was so rugged that the British decided to leave Nepal alone as a buffer state for British India. The British also began to recruit Gurkhas for their colonial army.
  • Bhutan, another Himalayan kingdom, also faced invasion by the British East India Company but managed to retain its sovereignty.
  • they relinquished the land in return for a tribute of five horses and the right to harvest timber on Bhutanese soil. Bhutan and Britain regularly squabbled over their borders until 1947, when the British pulled out of India, but Bhutan's sovereignty was never seriously threatened.
  • g-dragon on 24 Oct 17
     
    A list of Asian nations that the Europeans were unable to colonize and why. This shows us the strengh that Europe gained and had especially during the expansion era. We also see how the Ottoman Empire fell and patterns with other nations.
Javier E

Is the U.S. ready for Brazil's latest new beginning? - 0 views

rothkopf.foreignpolicy.com/..._brazil_s_latest_new_beginning

brazil US relations international foreign policy

shared by Javier E on 23 May 14 - No Cached
  • This new G9 is the core of the too big and unwieldy G20. It is the United States, China, Japan, Germany, France, the U.K., India, Brazil, and Russia. The countries whose combined economic, political, military, demographic, regional and global strengths set them apart from all others. The EU doesn't belong because it doesn't really have a coherent foreign policy. The other members of the G20 are only invited to show up at the meetings because the world is too embarrassed to ask them to stay home.)
  • Shannon recognizes that he is the U.S.'s first ambassador to Brazil for a new era -- one in which Brazil is no longer principally seen by the United States as a regional power but is instead acknowledged as a major global actor, one in which the U.S.'s relationship with Brazil is no longer the natural axis around which the hemisphere turns and that new axes, such as that between Brazil and China, its number one trade and investment partner, may become even more important. Work on a big Brazil-EU trade deal might -- combined with the United States' limited bandwidth due to domestic and other foreign concerns -- have a similar effect of reducing  U.S. influence on the other big player in the Americas.
  • many in the United States have yet to come to view Brazil as we do, say, countries like China, India or France... where we expect to have differences, some major, and to nonetheless continuing to work on progress where we can find it.
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  • Brazil deserves to be broken out of the Latin policy ghetto and, just as the United States has a China policy or Russia policy or India policy, perhaps it is time we really developed an independent, sufficiently complex and flexible, forward-looking, globally oriented, not-for-or-by-beginners Brazil policy.
horowitzza

Witness for Peace : Informal Economies: Reflections from a recent delegation ... - 0 views

www.witnessforpeace.org/article.php

witness peace reflections recent delegation nicaragua

shared by horowitzza on 02 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • In Nicaragua, I came to understand the reasons that poor people, sometimes accompanied by their children, sold newspapers, snacks, and washed windshields while standing in the swirl of traffic
  • observed the many ways that poor Nicaraguans struggled to support their families.
  • Clearly in both India and Nicaragua there are not enough job opportunities with fair wages, and poor people are unable to provide for their families by working in the formal economy
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  • my experiences in Nicaragua changed my perspective. I hope to continue my travels in the developing world, and I want some of those travels to be with Witness for Peace
Javier E

For Migrants, New Land of Opportunity Is Mexico - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-of-opportunity-is-mexico.html

mexico opportunity culture economy latin america

shared by Javier E on 22 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • it is already cheaper than China for many industries serving the American market.
  • while Mexico’s economy is far from trouble free, its growth easily outpaced the giants of the hemisphere — the United States, Canada and Brazil — in 2011 and 2012, according to International Monetary Fund data, making the country more attractive to fortune seekers worldwide.
  • residency requests had grown by 10 percent since November, when a new law meant to streamline the process took effect. And they are coming from nearly everywhere.
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  • Spanish filmmakers, Japanese automotive executives and entrepreneurs from the United States and Latin America arrive practically daily — pursuing dreams, living well and frequently succeeding.
  • “There is this energy here, this feeling that anything can happen,” said Lesley Téllez, a Californian whose three-year-old business running culinary tours served hundreds of clients here last year. “It’s hard to find that in the U.S.”
  • more Americans have been added to the population of Mexico over the past few years than Mexicans have been added to the population of the United States, according to government data in both nations.
  • If the country of 112 million people can harness the energy of foreigners and newly educated Mexicans, become partners with the slew of American firms seeking alternatives to China, and get them to do more than just hire cheap labor, economists and officials say Mexico could finally become a more equal partner for the United States and the first-world country its presidents have promised for decades.
  • “There’s been an opening to the world in every way — culturally, socially and economically.”
  • global trends have been breaking Mexico’s way — or as President Enrique Peña Nieto often puts it, “the stars are aligning” — but there are plenty of obstacles threatening to scuttle Mexico’s moment.
  • The challenge, he said, is making sure that the growing interest in his country benefits all Mexicans, not just newcomers, investors and a privileged few.
  • Mexico has failed to live up to its economic potential before. “They really blew a moment in 1994 when their currency was at rock bottom and they’d just signed Nafta,”
  • The number of Americans legally living and working in Mexico grew to more than 70,000 in 2012 from 60,000 in 2009, a number that does not include many students and retirees, those on tourist visas or the roughly 350,000 American children who have arrived since 2005 with their Mexican parents. For DiscussionWhy did you decide to move to Mexico?Please share your story in the comments below.
  • closer ties with Mexico’s beloved and hated neighbor to the north, through immigration and trade, have made many Mexicans feel less insular. Millions of emigrants send money earned abroad to relatives in Mexico, who then rush out to Costco for more affordable food and electronics.
  • “Europe feels spiritually dead and so does the United States,” Mr. Quemada-Díez said. “You end up wanting something else.”
  • “We are now more certain about the value of sharing certain things.”
  • Some of the growth is appearing in border towns where foreign companies and binational families are common. American retirees are showing up in new developments from San Miguel de Allende to other sunny spots around Cancún and Puerto Vallarta. Government figures show that more Canadians are also joining their ranks.
  • More and more American consultants helping businesses move production from China are crisscrossing the region from San Luis Potosí to Guadalajara, where Silicon Valley veterans like Andy Kieffer, the founder of Agave Lab, are developing smartphone applications and financing new start-ups. In Guanajuato, Germans are moving in and car-pooling with Mexicans heading to a new Volkswagen factory that opened a year ago, and sushi can now be found at hotel breakfasts because of all the Japanese executives preparing for a new Honda plant opening nearby.
  • Mr. Pace, bearded and as slim as a Gauloises, said he moved to Mexico in 2011 because college graduates in France were struggling to find work. He has stayed here, he said, because the affordable quality of life beats living in Europe — and because Mexico offers more opportunity for entrepreneurship.
  • Some Mexicans and foreigners say Europeans are given special treatment because they are perceived to be of a higher class, a legacy of colonialism when lighter skin led to greater privileges. But like many other entrepreneurs from foreign lands, Mr. Pace and his partners are both benefiting from and helping to shape how Mexico works. Mr. Rodríguez, the former Interior Ministry official, Cuban by birth, said that foreigners had helped make Mexico City more socially liberal.
  • Many immigrants say Mexico is attractive because it feels disorderly, like a work in progress, with the blueprints of success, hierarchy and legality still being drawn. “Not everyone follows the rules here, so if you really want to make something happen you can make it happen,” said Ms. Téllez, 34, whose food business served more than 500 visitors last year. “No one is going to fault you for not following all the rules.”
  • compared with South Korea, where career options were limited by test scores and universities attended, Mexico allowed for more rapid advancement. As an intern at the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency here, he said he learned up close how Samsung and other Korean exporters worked. “Here,” he said, “the doors are more open for all Koreans.” He added that among his friends back home, learning Spanish was now second only to learning English.
  • There were 10 times as many Koreans living in Mexico in 2010 as in 2000.
  • Europe, dying; Mexico, coming to life. The United States, closed and materialistic; Mexico, open and creative. Perceptions are what drive migration worldwide, and in interviews with dozens of new arrivals to Mexico City — including architects, artists and entrepreneurs — it became clear that the country’s attractiveness extended beyond economics.
  • Artists like Marc Vigil, a well-known Spanish television director who moved to Mexico City in October, said that compared with Spain, Mexico was teeming with life and an eagerness to experiment. Like India in relation to England, Mexico has an audience that is larger and younger than the population of its former colonial overlord.
  • “In Spain, everything is a problem,” he said. “Here in Mexico, everything is possible. There is more work and in the attitude here, there is more of a spirit of struggle and creativity.”
  • it was not a country that welcomed outsiders; the Constitution even prohibited non-Mexicans from directly owning land within 31 miles of the coast and 62 miles of the nation’s borders.
  • He struggled to make sense of Mexico at first. Many foreigners do, complaining that the country is still a place of paradox, delays and promises never fulfilled for reasons never explained — a cultural clash that affects business of all kinds. “In California, there was one layer of subtext,” Mr. Quemada-Díez said. “Here there are 40 layers.”
  • Mexico has allowed dual nationality for more than a decade, and among the growing group of foreigners moving here are also young men and women born in Mexico to foreign parents, or who grew up abroad as the children of Mexicans. A globalized generation, they could live just about anywhere, but they are increasingly choosing Mexico.
  • Domingo Delaroiere, an architect whose father is French and mother is Mexican, said Mexico’s appeal — especially in the capital — was becoming harder to miss. When he came back here last year for a visit, after two and a half years in Paris, he said he was surprised. “Art, culture, fashion, architecture, design — the city was filling up with new spaces, things that are interesting, daring,” he said. He soon decided it was time to move. Compared with Mexico, he said, “Nothing is happening in Paris.”
Javier E

Visiting Latin America's real success stories - Opinion - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

english.aljazeera.net/...2011322112136636199.html

latin america economy foreign policy US international

shared by Javier E on 28 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • n the international arena, the new president, Dilma Roussef, has pulled back from Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva's many excesses (indifference to human rights abuses, support for Iran and its nuclear program, and rhetorical anti-Americanism) during his last year in office, and may even have a present for Obama.
  • South America is booming, as India and China swallow up its exports of iron, copper, soybeans, coffee, coal, oil, wheat, poultry, beef, and sugar. Its foreign trade and investment patterns are diversified and dynamic. With a few minor exceptions, migration is internal to the region, and a modus vivendi has been reached with the drug trade, mainly coca leaf and cocaine in Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. Moreover, relations with the US, while important, are no longer paramount. South American governments can afford to disagree with the US, and often do. They have just elected a new president of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), whose headquarters are being built in Quito, Ecuador. As its name suggests, Unasur's main raison d'être is to exclude Canada, the US, and Mexico (in contrast to the Organisation of American States).
  • None of this holds true for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean islands – mainly the Dominican Republic, but eventually Cuba, too, and, in its own way, Haiti. These are not mineral-rich or bountiful agricultural nations: some coffee and bananas here, a little sugar and beef there, but nothing with which to sustain a boom. While Mexico is America's second-largest supplier of oil, this represents only 9 per cent of its total exports. Instead, these countries export low-value-added manufactured goods (Mexico does more, of course), and live off remittances, tourism, and drug-transshipment profits. All of this is overwhelmingly concentrated on the US: that is where the migrants are, where the towels and pajamas are shipped, where the tourists come from, and where the drugs are bought. For these countries, including Mexico, stable, close, and productive relations with America are essential.
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  • One area is freeing itself from US hegemony and is thriving, but may founder if Chinese and Indian growth slows. Another is increasingly integrated with the US and Canada. Despite its current travails, it will discover a path to prosperity when the US does.
Javier E

Brazil's European Dream - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...brazils_european_dream

brazil foreign policy europe loan international IGO BRIC diplomacy

shared by Javier E on 23 May 14 - No Cached
  • The news that Brazil has overtaken Britain to become the world's sixth largest economic power is being touted as a sign that that the longtime "country of the future" has finally arrived.
  • In the past 20 years, Brazil has become well known for turning crisis situations into geopolitical opportunities, becoming a leading voice in international forums devoted to AIDS, poverty, and even the environment. And now, it is doing it again with a challenge that Brazilians understand all too well: a debt crisis.
  • The IMF contributions stem from Rousseff's intention to maintain a tradition that began under her predecessor, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of using foreign assistance as a means to strengthen Brazil's international reputation and influence. Yet another example is Brazil's annual contributions to the World Bank, which have averaged $253 million from 2004 to 2009. Brazil was the first nation to contribute -- $ 55 million -- to the World Bank's Haitian Reconstruction Fund. From 2003-2007, Brazil also gave approximately $340 million to fund the U.N.'s operations. Lula also increased Brazil's contribution to the U.N.'s World Food Program from $ 1 million in 2009 to $ 27 million in 2011.
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  • in 1998, it was the Brazilian government, under President Fernando H. Cardoso, that was running to the IMF for assistance. Brazil was trying to recover from a capital flight of roughly $30 billion dollars, triggered by a lack of foreign investor confidence due to exorbitant debt and recession. To help quell investor speculation that Brazil would default (like Russia did months earlier), the IMF provided a bailout package of $41 billion on the condition that Cardoso prune government expenditures by 20 percent and reform the pension system.
  • in 2001, after a steep decline in foreign investment, currency depreciation, and a debt crisis in neighboring Argentina, Brazil essentially begged the IMF to help avoid a default on its external debt. This time the government received $15 billion in exchange for reducing federal expenditures and maintaining a primary budget surplus of approximately 3.75 percent through 2005.
  • Rousseff also wants an expanded role for Brazil within the IMF, along with the other BRICS, mainly through increased quota shares and voting rights. She has joined her colleagues from China, India, Russia, and South Africa in emphasizing that the IMF needs to recognize the importance of the world's largest emerging economies
  • Rousseff's European strategy is a smart move. By providing financial support in time of need, Brazil can strengthen its partnership and economic relationship with several European countries, as well as with the IMF. And by lending a hand, Rousseff may be able to garner more European support as she strives to boost Brazil's influence within the U.N. system and the IMF. Through these calculated endeavors, Rousseff can signal that Brazil isn't just arriving on the international scene, it's here to stay.
Javier E

Eduardo Galeano Disavows His Book 'The Open Veins' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-his-book-the-open-veins.html

leftist critique capitalism latin america history economy marxist

shared by Javier E on 24 May 14 - No Cached
  • For more than 40 years, Eduardo Galeano’s “The Open Veins of Latin America” has been the canonical anti-colonialist, anti-capitalist and anti-American text in that region
  • now Mr. Galeano, a 73-year-old Uruguayan writer, has disavowed the book, saying that he was not qualified to tackle the subject and that it was badly written. Predictably, his remarks have set off a vigorous regional debate, with the right doing some “we told you so” gloating, and the left clinging to a dogged defensiveness.
  •  ‘Open Veins’ tried to be a book of political economy, but I didn’t yet have the necessary training or preparation,” Mr. Galeano said last month while answering questions at a book fair in Brazil, where he was being honored on the 43rd anniversary of the book’s publication. He added: “I wouldn’t be capable of reading this book again; I’d keel over. For me, this prose of the traditional left is extremely leaden, and my physique can’t tolerate it
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  • “If I were teaching this in a course,” said Merilee Grindle, president of the Latin American Studies Association and director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard, “I would take his comments, add them in and use them to generate a far more interesting discussion about how we see and interpret events at different points in time.” And that seems to be exactly what many professors plan to do.
  • “Open Veins” has been translated into more than a dozen languages and has sold more than a million copies. In its heyday, its influence extended throughout what was then called the third world, including Africa and Asia, until the economic rise of China and India and Brazil seemed to undercut parts of its thesis.In the United States, “Open Veins” has been widely taught on university campuses since the 1970s, in courses ranging from history and anthropology to economics and geography. But Mr. Galeano’s unexpected takedown of his own work has left scholars wondering how to deal with the book in class.
  • “Reality has changed a lot, and I have changed a lot,” he said in Brazil, adding: “Reality is much more complex precisely because the human condition is diverse. Some political sectors close to me thought such diversity was a heresy. Even today, there are some survivors of this type who think that all diversity is a threat. Fortunately, it is not.”
  • In the mid-1990s, three advocates of free-market policies — the Colombian writer and diplomat Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, the exiled Cuban author Carlos Alberto Montaner and the Peruvian journalist and author Álvaro Vargas Llosa — reacted to Mr. Galeano with a polemic of their own, “Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot.” They dismissed “Open Veins” as “the idiot’s bible,” and reduced its thesis to a single sentence: “We’re poor; it’s their fault.”
  • Mr. Montaner responded to Mr. Galeano’s recent remarks with a blog post titled “Galeano Corrects Himself and the Idiots Lose Their Bible.” In Brazil, Rodrigo Constantino, the author of “The Caviar Left,” took an even harsher tone, blaming Mr. Galeano’s analysis and prescription for many of Latin America’s ills. “He should feel really guilty for the damage he caused,”
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