The British Empire

[AxiomUk]

I feel that it would also accomodate for the shift in economic priorities in Britain from a production economy to a services economy. I.e - from shipbuilding to banking.

 

[Companiero]

Rambuchan and Plotinus, if you dont mind intruders in your debate, i have a few words to add.
I think both of you pose a very reasonable arguments have solid positions. While i agree wholeheartedly with Plotinus from a utilitarianist point of view, that the right to (even violently) intervene in whatever system is provided by the possibility of the positive outcome for the said system, rather than not intervening; altering cultural systems according to one's own subjective merits is however highly problematic, since it doesnt embody the certainity of such positive outcome. Yes, in the sati example, one could say indeed the positive was highly foreseeable, but doing so creates a dangerous precedent for whatever future interventions, that usually serve primarily hegemonistc interest and thus, never end up good for the "bugged" culture. If a culture has a "bug" I believe its imperative that they themselves come to realization and "fix" themselves, ensuring solid endurable results. Cultures should evolve in conditions of free flow of ideas, not be imposed evolution.
So in fact, i agree with both of you.

 

[Plotinus]

I think what you say is very sensible, Companiero!

 

[Kyriakos]

I enjoyed reading Companiero's paragraph, although the flow of thought seemed to be obstracted in some parts, where "thus" and "one could say" would come unexpectadly to push themselves against the belly of the rest of the paragraph, making some of the more distant sentences in that paragraph probably shake their head in dissaproval. However i am very fond of reading sentences by people who like to write in purely complicated form, by which i mean that the complication is there not due to some "key words" which would have been used with the idea that they include complication in themselves, but by the formation of the paragraph itself, from otherwise simple words and notions. As a writer i write in such a style, and am pleased to read examples of it here too. That said i would also note that, like nietzsche said, one tends to see himself in everything that he can like. My own abrupt opener of the door "thus" and silent crawler down the wall"one could say" is "like nietzsche said"

ps: it is 6.30 AM here, carry on

 

[Plotinus]

I think, varwnos, that you need to try to get up a little later in the mornings. Look what a power of good it did Descartes!

 

[Rambuchan]

Did Churchill a world of good too! I recommend a lie in old chap (Varwnos)! And thanks for the input and patience to read through our debate Companeiro.

 

[Kafka2]

There's been plenty of focus on how Britain changed India- but what about how India changed Britain?

It was a reaction against the worst excesses of the Raj that helped boost the growth of Gladstonian liberalism.

 

[brachy-pride]

If that link is biased towards Drake, you are certainly biased against him.

India, China, and the Arabs had not circumnavigated the globe at that time, and would not in any meaningful sense for centuries. The first Indian, Chinese, or Arab ship to circumnavigate the globe was probably some long-forgotten merchent vessel that did so centuries after Drake.

Francis Drake led, in many ways, the first successful circumnavigation of the world. He did not die while doing it, and he actually managed to achieve some non-exploration goals (i.e., attacking the Spaniard) while on route.

Elcano was the first men to circumnavigate the world, "Primus circumdedisti mihi".
All the credit should go to him, not to the pirate Drake.

This reminds of a guy who has a site where he says that there should be no Columbus day, that it should be Cabot´s day

 

[Rambuchan]

There's been plenty of focus on how Britain changed India- but what about how India changed Britain?

It was a reaction against the worst excesses of the Raj that helped boost the growth of Gladstonian liberalism.

I had a whole reem's worth ready to post and my Firefox crashed out. Lost the whole lot and it was full of figures to go with the points!

Anyway, highlights were:

> It made Britain wealthy beyond its wildest dreams. It wasn't called the Jewel in the Crown for nothing.

> India's large population is oft neglected as a massive benefit to Britain. Simply through taxation of such large numbers of people Britain was able to wage wars all over the world and expand its dominion. Furthermore, such taxation meant that military expenditure in India was not a burden on British taxpayers, in Britian. These taxes offered by Indians themselves, ever since the Mughal court granted taxation rights to the East India Company in the c17th, paid for the British guns in India.

> It provided luxuries such as tea, sugar, textiles and precious stones often in quantities that merchants and (the rapidly growing as a consequence) middle class consumers could barely keep up with. The number of expansions and re-expansions on the same site to dockyards in just London's Docklands area testify to the pace at which trade with India kept merchants struggling to keep up. This of course not only means greater wealth but a general improvement in lifestyle.

> Relations with India greatly boosted the British public school, many of which were founded with revenues of trading guilds. To extend this point were comments of the contributions from these schools to Parliament and the Establishment which ran the Empire. Look at a cross section of the founding dates of notable public schools in England and they correlate well with expansions in India and the wider East Indies. Haileybury being the classic example as it was the own training camp for the East India company but many others bear the coat of arms of East Indies trading guilds.

> It provided rapid investor returns. Again I had figures to show the rise of investment banks in Britain and notable battles being won in India (and also Africa).

> It contributed to the image and nature of 'the British personality', both of itself to itself, and that projected to the world. Hard to pin down but quite tangible. The depiction of British folk in literature, films and indeed politics has been contributed to by the British Raj experience. See next point.

> Adventure. Yup, this is a big one. British folk had never had the chance to go hunting tigers and elephants in quite the same way before. They hadn't been able to hike the Himalayas so readily, or enjoy the delights of a hareem. And of course relations in India provided plenty of combat for that kind of adventure too. So again you have a major lifestyle contributions being made here, which fed into Britain's image of itself.

> Manpower. In military terms alone: The two world wars saw massive contributions to the allied effort from India. In WW2 close to a third of the total British manpower was Indian, and about aa tenth of military expenditure came from India in the same. Likewise, the Agnlo-Afghan wars, the Opium Wars and so many other Asian battles would be inconceivable otherwise. In civic engineering and administrative terms: Most of British East Africa was build and administered by British Indians. The railways there were built by Indian labour and the East African colonial administration was populated in the main by Indians. Such contributions in the Caribbean are often overlooked. Also, why do you think the largest population of Indians outside of India is in South Africa??

> India helped Britain towards being cool in the swinging 60s - see Ravi Shankar, the Beatles, hippies, sexual liberation, and the whole generation that tuned in to drop out. India helped give Britain a new alter-culture.

 

[six]

See Simon Winchester's Outposts for a great read on what's left of the Empire.

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

I have to say I would be a little more interested in listening to the Bob and Tom show in the morning, however, any other time of the day I would be a little more inclined to listen. Also, unless BBC has towers in the U.S. I doubt I'd get reception

 

[Rambuchan]

Eh? What???

 

[Rambuchan]

> It provided rapid investor returns. Again I had figures to show the rise of investment banks in Britain and notable battles being won in India (and also Africa).

Here is some of that detail which I lost when my browser crashed. It's a long chronology but most enlightening:

Black text = Military and other interest, focusing on India and Asia but including some African events: http://www.britishempire.co.uk/empire.htm

Blue text = Financial Highlights in the British Empire:
http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/amser/chrono.html

All taken word-for-word and I've resisted the temptation to add commentary:


-----------------------

1764 ~ Victory of British at Buscar secures British revenue collecting rights in Bengal

1784 ~East India Act

1788 ~ African Association formed to explore the interior of Africa

1799 ~ Defeat of Tipu Sultan and the end of the fourth Mysore war. Income Tax introduced.

1803 ~ Wellesley defeats Indians in Maratha War

1805 ~ Nelson wins Battle of Trafalgar

1806 ~ Bank of Bengal founded: For hundreds of years before the creation of the first formal, western-style banks, financial services have been provided in India by castes such as the Multanis, Marwari and Pathans who provide credit, collect deposits and arrange trading deals through bills of exchange or hundi. The Bank of Bengal is the first of the so-called presidential banks to be established during British rule to supplement the internal money supply of India.

1810 ~ Start of the savings bank movement in Britain: Although there had been earlier examples of savings banks in Britain and on the continent, the Rothwell Savings Bank established by Henry Duncan as a bank for the poor becomes widely imitated not only in Britain but also France and Holland.

1813 ~ English East India company loses monopoly.

1821 ~ Restoration of convertibility of Bank of England notes: This is two years earlier than the target date set by the 1819 Act for the Resumption of Cash Payments and completes the establishment of the gold standard in practice as well as in law.

1822 ~ Discovery of a Tea bush growing wild in India ends Chinese monopoly. (Not so sure about this one)

1825-1826 ~ Banking crisis in England:
During the year 60 banks fail. To alleviate the liquidity shortage caused by the financial panic the Bank of England issues one pound notes and the Royal Mint steps up the production of sovereigns.

1828 ~ The Hindu BrahmoSamaj sect established in India

1829 ~ Western Australia founded; abolition of Suttee in India

1833 ~ Abolition of slavery throughout Empire

1835 ~ East India Company authorized to issue rupees: Up to this time India has had 25 varieties of indigenous rupees but after the East India Company is authorized to issue its own rupee it comes to be accepted as the standard in India and abroad. At the same time the silver rupee is given legal tender status but gold coins lose that privilege.

1838 ~ First Afghan war starts (1838- 1842)

1840 ~ Bank of Bombay founded: This is the second of the presidential banks to be established during British rule to supplement the internal money supply of India.

1843 ~ Sind conquered

c. 1840-1844 ~ Currency School versus Banking School: With hundreds of banks issuing notes in Britain in uncoordinated fashion the value of the currency is difficult to control. A controversy arises between the currency school which believes that gold and Bank of England notes are the only real money and the banking school which believes that notes are just one among many forms of money.

1845 ~ First Sikh War (1845-46)

1842 ~ Oriental Bank founded in India: This is an exchange bank established for financing external trade and foreign exchange, from which the presidency banks are debarred by their charters.

1843 ~ Chartered Bank founded in India: This is another exchange bank for financing external trade and foreign exchange.

1843 ~ Bank of Madras founded: This is the third of the presidential banks to be established during British rule to supplement the internal money supply of India.

1844 ~ Bank Charter Act passed in Britain: This Act combines most of the rules demanded by the currency school with just a few of the discretionary powers demanded by the banking school for commercial banks, but these powers are mostly grabbed by the Bank of England.

1847 ~ The Woolwich, Britain's first permanent building society, is registered: Previous building societies were temporary associations which terminated when all members had purchased houses. The Woolwich, which was actually founded a few years before its official registration, is the first permanent building society and thereafter permanent societies quickly become the norm.

1848 ~ Second Sikh War (1848-49)

1849 ~ Gough annexes Punjab

1851 ~ Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace

1852 ~ Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852-5)

1853 ~ First railways and telegraph in India

1854 ~ Civil Service formed

1855 ~ Livingstone is the first European to see the Victoria falls

1856 ~ Oudh annexed, Second Chinese Opium War (1856-60)

1856 ~ The Mercantile Bank becomes the first note-issuing bank in Singapore and Malaya:
This London-registered bank expands from its Indian base to Malaya and Singapore.

1858 ~ East India Company dissolved, Burton and Speke discover Lake Tanganyika

1860 ~ Kowloon leased from China,

1869 ~ Suez Canal opened

1875 ~ Britain buys Suez canal shares

1876 ~ Victoria becomes Empress of India; Famine in India

1850-1914 ~ Huge amounts of capital are exported from Britain: Huge amounts of British capital are invested abroad, especially after 1890, in the United States, parts of the British Empire, and Argentina. The total reaches billions of pounds. Britain's later economic problems may be partly due to the neglect of British industry by the banks during this period.

---------------------------------------

And here is a much more famous example. See where this fits into the chronology above, right next to:

"1856 ~ Oudh annexed, Second Chinese Opium War (1856-60)"

The HSBC Group is named after its founding member, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, which was established in 1865 to finance the growing trade between Europe, India and China.

Painting of Victoria West, Hong Kong, in about 1860, shortly before the founding of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.The inspiration behind the founding of the bank was Thomas Sutherland, a Scot who was then working for the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. He realised that there was considerable demand for local banking facilities in Hong Kong and on the China coast and he helped to establish the bank which opened in Hong Kong in March 1865 and in Shanghai a month later.

http://www.hsbc.com/hsbc/about_hsbc...te/about_hsbc/en/group_history_1865_1899.html