I've recently been facinated by the British rule of India, I've been reading a book 'The Raj' By Lawrence James, and whilst I found it informative and excellent to reference, I just wanted some general opinions on a whole about the legacy it left? Was it good? I mean we did leave infrastructure, a government and also education legacy, also, what would of been achieved if the British didn't control India?
The British Raj: Good On Balance?
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innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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You've (re)opened a can of worms. Just wait until it's daytime in India... 
Verbose
Deity
Actually, the Belgians weren't too bad. Just make sure you don't end up at the mercy of a private enterprise headed by a world-class scumbag like king Leopold of Belgium, which was what happened in the Free State of Congo.
The Belgians were eventually called in to sort out the situation. The colony they set up wasn't really better or worse than any one else's.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
India was modernized and united by the British, so I guess the overall legacy is positive. Of course the Indians managed to screw up many things in the years following the independence.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Funny, I thought that the Mughals were just as "outsiderish" as the British.
Given the alternatives, it's just like Patroklos said - they probably got the best possible colonizer. Not only did the British introduce the fruits of modern Western civilization to India, they united it (under their rule) and thus laid the foundations of present day federal India. Without the Brits, India would most probably have remained a fractioned, backwards place.
The flip side is that the Brits triggered the demographic explosion which will soon end in an epic disaster.
aelf
Ashen One
I'm wondering how it can be judged good or bad. It happened; then it needed to go, and it went.
This is like asking, "The Black Death: Good on Balance?".
This is like asking, "The Black Death: Good on Balance?".
I don't see how an ideal or a value can be said to be "debunked". We don't share it today and we think people were (morally) wrong to hold it - but you can hardly refute it, because it's not a factual claim.
Why is that an analogy worthy of comparing the Raj too?
On another note, Gandhi, Nehru and Al Jinnah were all products of the British Education system.
If the Raj didn't exist or was controlled by someone else, would it have been much more harder to maintain the Empire\or would of it falled much sooner than anticipated?
I'm just wondering about this because after we left India, the empire pretty much fell like a deck of cards.
And one thing that puzzles me is that something like hasn't been given closer attention too, I mean, there's plenty of books about the legacy of the French in Indo China, but scant attention is paid to the Raj and the legacy it had IMHO.
aelf
Ashen One
Why not? The question is inherently absurd, just like this one.
Would yourself not being born be good on balance?
I've not died yet, so cannot allow others to make an impartial judgement. The Raj however, is very much long gone, and can be given an impartial balance by the best of our abilities.
aelf
Ashen One
Calling it good would hardly be impartial, would it?
Of course there's something wrong. What I meant to show was that sometimes there's just no saying whether something is good or bad. I suppose it's possible to say that it's better than the alternative, but does that make it good?
On a related note, I think it's very possible to have options and not like any of them, nor be inclined to choose any. To give another example, if you had a accident that was nearly fatal but you learned a great deal from it, would you say that you would have wanted it to happen if you had a choice? Chances are you wouldn't, unless you're some Nietzschean madman.
Saying that colonialism was good on balance would not only implicitly endorse it, it's implying that it was the right 'option' given a choice. I can't say that. At the same time, it brought some benefits and changed the place. Would a united India have been possible without it? I don't know. In the end, there's just no answer.
Verbose
Deity
And you're happy with that kind of misleading imprecision?
aelf
Ashen One
Yeah, but to say good on balance, who can say that with any shred of respectability?
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