Decent read. Good food for thought about how behind other places might have been if the British never arrived.
Perhaps in Hong Kong’s case being a port in a global empire was beneficial but one glimmer of wealth does not mean that the countless countries drained of their resources and thrown into civil wars were all worth it.
Interesting that ‘Lai’ ignored the most repressed territory under ’empire’ as it’s just across the water
That’s quite some way to brush over the opium wars
Why was there a war and what was Britain doing and fighting for
Oh yeah it was so we could keep selling opium to the Chinese and destroying millions of lives
There folks local to me related to those opium dealing families who are still billionaires. One of them used to be chairman or arsenal
Google jardine matheson and the Keswick and the weatherall families. The wiki pages are a great start
It’s easy to blindly hate on the British Empire but I think there’s a lot of historical ignorance there. There’s always going to be a strongest empire in the world. But looking back across history we really did do a lot of good for the world, not least trying, and with much success, ending the slave trade. Really, if you imagine what, say, a global Japanese empire would have looked like back then you see the potential for what a truly evil empire could have looked like.
Less shit example? Britain didn’t invade and asset strip any nation the natives benefit.
At least brexit is exposing how a protected ruling class is asset stripping Britain and they manipulated the masses to vote for that.
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Decent read. Good food for thought about how behind other places might have been if the British never arrived.
Perhaps in Hong Kong’s case being a port in a global empire was beneficial but one glimmer of wealth does not mean that the countless countries drained of their resources and thrown into civil wars were all worth it.
Interesting that ‘Lai’ ignored the most repressed territory under ’empire’ as it’s just across the water
A post on r/Ireland https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/uyh75j/lol/ recalled James Craig’s anticipation of the potential of the two areas following the partition of the island
That’s quite some way to brush over the opium wars
Why was there a war and what was Britain doing and fighting for
Oh yeah it was so we could keep selling opium to the Chinese and destroying millions of lives
There folks local to me related to those opium dealing families who are still billionaires. One of them used to be chairman or arsenal
Google jardine matheson and the Keswick and the weatherall families. The wiki pages are a great start
It’s easy to blindly hate on the British Empire but I think there’s a lot of historical ignorance there. There’s always going to be a strongest empire in the world. But looking back across history we really did do a lot of good for the world, not least trying, and with much success, ending the slave trade. Really, if you imagine what, say, a global Japanese empire would have looked like back then you see the potential for what a truly evil empire could have looked like.
Less shit example? Britain didn’t invade and asset strip any nation the natives benefit.
At least brexit is exposing how a protected ruling class is asset stripping Britain and they manipulated the masses to vote for that.