This book high light some of the better aspects of British Colonialism which is a very controversial subject. 17/11/24
From the early 1800s the Empire was committed to abolishing the slave trade in the name of a Christian conviction of the basic equality of all human beings. It ended endemic inter-tribal warfare, opened local economies to the opportunities of global trade, moderated the impact of inescapable modernization, established the rule of law and liberal institutions such as a free press, While the British Empire was not without fault, its crimes have been greatly exaggerated and its virtues have been almost wholly ignored. the Comanche extended their imperial sway over much of what is now Texas, while the Asante were expanding their control in West Africa. And in the 1820s King Shaka led the highly militarized Zulus in scattering other South African peoples. Anglo-American liberal world order that has prevailed since 1945.and they are the target at present human societies all over the world have had slaves since prehistory.
In 1784 the prodigiously polyglot Sir William Jones in founding the Calcutta Asiatic Society .Rhodesia outperformed Ethiopia dramatically in terms of modern development[.]”
1950s and 1960s several million Chinese voted with their feet, fled the lawless mainland and found refuge in the colony of Hong Kong.
The whole campaign Rhodes must fall started in Cape Town University in 2015 . This was build on land donated by Rhodes. The protests moved to Stellenbosch University the Rhodes University, Grahamstown. Later 2016 Pretoria and the Orange Free State University and the issues of Afrikaans as a language medium came up also. At Oxford Oriel Collage where Rhodes scholars get bursaries. There many felt that they should be proud of British Colonialism. This is what encouraged Nigel Bigger to write this book.
Rhodes was a moral mixture, he supported a franchise in the Cape Colony that gave Black African in the Cape Colony the same franchise as Whites based on education and property. He financed a black newspaper. The first black man was a beneficiary of Rhodes a scholarship 5 years after his death.
In history there were many empires that came and went including in 1820 Shake's militarized empire that scattered other native South African peoples. The British was one of the biggest empires and gave birth the the USA , Canada Australia and New Zealand.
The British were involved in the slave trade but later became the leading navy in patrolling to destroy the trade. The beginning of Britain in S. Africa was when in 1814 the Dutch surrendered the Cape to them. Hong Kong was the last big colony given up in 1997.
The British Empire was not from its inception a coherent project and not the fruit of a single motive. The European Empire of the Nazi Regime that lasted 7 years from the Anschluss of Austria 1938 till the surrender to the Allies 1945 was the fruit of a single mind, Hitler's Nazi project. Initially Wessex over England and England over Wales was the desire of a state of security. The Tudor colonies in north America were to secure England against Spanish Catholic domination of Phillip who wanted to wipe out Protestantism. Some overseas colonies were taken as a consequence of international rivalry. Later it was part of rivalry with France and the Napoleonic Wars. Later Russia became a rival for India. Then in WW1 Germany became a threat and Britain acquired more territory in Africa the Americas and the Middle East.
Rival Indian leaders enlisted British military expertise and the British trained their troops. The often paid in land and allowed the British to tax, Warren Hasting in 1875 became the first governor general and the East India Company just developed as commercial opportunities came up. Warren Hasting became fascinated by India's Hindu and Buddhist past mastered Bengali and pioneered the revival of Sanskrit. He and other rendered a service to Indian nationalism that few natives could have done. There was never a widespread European immigration to India and in 1900 there were only 154,691 British to 300 million Indians.
Between 1815 and 1924 25 million continental Europeans migrated. Till 1783 when the USA became independent convicted Britons were transported there to serve out their sentences. After 1788 their destination became Australia till this ceased in 1868.
The reasons for migration differed in 1620 the Pilgrim Fathers sought to escape the Church of England and for religious freedom. 1783 British loyalists left the USA to Nova Scotia. Emigrants from Lowland Scotland and Ireland fled poverty, like the famine of the 1840s In the 1860s Livingstone lobbied the British government to suppress slavery and Nyasaland (Malawi today) was set up for agriculture to be an alternative to slavery..
Between 1895 and 1902 it is estimated that a million firearms entered British and German east Africa. The British realized that they must be wary conflict with Germany over colonies.
Britain in 1880s had a strategic interest in the region between the lakes Victoria ,Kyoga , Albert , Edward and Tanganyika. Briain had taken over running Egypt who had gone bankrupt and these lakes were the source of the Nile. Egypt had borrowed money for his economic expansion at the same time as cotton from the southern USA returned to the market to compete with Egypt after the civil war. The British Controller General was Lord Cromer who at heart felt he was responsible for the Egyptian peasant and so increased the tax burden on the landlords. He also did away with the corvee and substituted paid labour to clear the canals. Egypt was made up of Muslim peasants , landowners, clerics, but also Armenians , Syrians and Coptic Christians and for the government to transcend ethnic biases you needed the British. British administration had brought prosperity to Egypt. Cromer left Egypt in 1907 but it took till 1956 for the last British troops to leave Egypt. Many Egyptians had welcomed the British in the 1890s but after WW1 with Egyptian nationalism the British had restored Egypt to an independent Kingdom.
In 1919 General Sir Henry Wilson chief of staff had warned the government that holding Palestine would bring similar problems to that of Ireland. The benefits would be outweighed by the military liability.
After WW1 Widrow Wilson promoted the principle of self determination. Before this time all British Colonies with a majority white population had become self ruling Dominions Canada , Australia , New Zealand.
The motives for building the Empire were many and various and differed between the trader, migrant, soldier, missionary entrepreneur, financier, government official and statesmen. Of course good motives get corrupted by vices.
Slavery and the slave trade were well established in Africa long before the Europeans arrived, the Portuguese were the first to seeks slaves in the 1440s. It is estimated that a total of 12,508,351 slaves were exported. The British came into this trade in 1707 and exported 3,259,443.
1787 in London the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was inaugurated. The 1791 rebellion of slaves in Saint Dominque could not be suppressed by either the French or the British and it led to Haiti independence in 1804 and helped the way towards abolition. With the influence of William Wilberforce in 1834 throughout the British Empire slaves were emancipated and the British taxpayer contributed £20 million towards it to pay out slave owners rather than coerce them.
1814-1815 At the Congress of Vienna the British attempted to get all the nations to a general abolition treaty. Between 1833 and 1865 the British navy had ships stopping the transport of slaves from Africa at one time they had as many as 36 ships on this duty. The British government leant on the Khedive of Egypt to stop slavery with general Charles Gordon going into the Sudan where the British were suppressing slavery against the Mahdi.In Zanzibar the consul general did away with slavery in stages and finally did in 1907.
Sir Stanford Raffles after 1807 applied this law to Penang and banned the importation of slaves into Java 1818, and established a school for their Children in Bencoolen.
On the subject of race at a time the Anglo Saxon race was considered superior. When Rhodes arrived in South Africa in 1870 and saw the Bantu Africans it was obvious to him that British civilization was way ahead in natural science, technology and finance, communications. naval power. Later on Rhodes never sought to overturn the colour blind franchise that existed in the Cape Colony since 1853 based on property and education and works.. He fought against the proposal to disenfranchise the Cape Blacks in 1899.Rhodes is considered patronizing. Is it patronizing when others need help? King Faizal of Iraq in 1922 did not want Churchill to withdraw British troops.. In 1896 Rhodes parlayed with the Ndebele at great risk he learned of the humiliations that the blacks had suffered and the white settlers had brought down this retribution on themselves. He allocated part of the land to be kept in perpetuity for the blacks .He stipulated that the scholarships at Oriel Collage would be awarded without regard to race.
1857 The Indian Mutiny had effects on racial relations and Queen Victoria rebuked Her PM Lord Salisbury when he referred to the first Indian MP Dadabhai Naoroji as a black man. The British attempts to stop customs like childhood marriage and female infanticide's antagonized. Indians who lived in England including Mohandas Ghandi did not experience British racism until they returned to India or South Africa.
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