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British Colonialism Quotes

Browse 17 quotes about British Colonialism.

British Colonialism Quotes

“British intellectual idiots often glorify the Empire by drawing example of India. They say, before the British came to India, it was a land of warring tribes. To them I say, the Indus valley civilization has quite literally provided the world with more thinkers, philosophers and reformers than any other nation in the world. Indians were making jaw-dropping advancements in mathematics, astronomy, medicine and philosophy, when the Brits were just beginning to learn farming. The list will never end if we start recording the involvement of India, Arabia and China in the course of humankind's progress, just like the entire electrified and connected world will fall into chaos, if we went back in history and erased one Serbian scientist from the timeline, Nikola Tesla.”

“The old imperialism had the ‘advantage’ that the leading metropolitan power of the time, Britain, could keep its economy open to the goods of the then newly-industrializing countries, without getting indebted (on the contrary it became the largest capital exporter in the years before the First World War). For at least four decades up to 1928, India had the second largest export surplus in the world (second only to the USA); and this despite the imports of goods that caused domestic de-industrialization. But this export surplus was entirely appropriated by Britain not only to pay for its current account deficit with continental Europe, North America and regions of recent European settlement, but also to allow it to export capital to these regions.”

“The criticism of Leopold II often came from the Anglo-Saxon side, who thus did not have to talk about their own dirty path. Chopping off the hands of dead soldiers to justify ammunition use, for example, was a mutilation practice also used by the British in Sierra Leone, the Germans in Cameroon, French in Brazzaville and so on.”

“In the old days, farmers would keep a little of their home-made opium for their families, to be used during illnesses, or at harvests and weddings; the rest they would sell to the local nobility, or to pykari merchants from Patna. Back then, a few clumps of poppy were enough to provide for a household's needs, leaving a little over, to be sold: no one was inclined to plant more because of all the work it took to grow poppies - fifteen ploughings of the land and every remaining clod to be built; purchases of manure and constant watering; and after all that, the frenzy of the harvest, each bulb having to be individually nicked, drained and scrapped. Such punishment was bearable when you had a patch or two of poppies - but what sane person would want to multiply these labours when there were better, more useful crops to grow, like wheat, dal, vegetables? But those toothsome winter crops were steadily shrinking in acreage: now the factory's appetite for opium seemed never to be seated. Come the cold weather, the English sahibs would allow little else to be planted; their agents would go from home to home, forcing cash advances on the farmers, making them sign /asámi/ contracts. It was impossible to say no to them: if you refused they would leave their silver hidden in your house, or throw it through a window. It was no use telling the white magistrate that you hadn't accepted the money and your thumbprint was forged: he earned commissions on the oppium adn would never let you off. And, at the end of it, your earnings would come to no more than three-and-a-half sicca rupees, just about enough to pay off your advance.”

“World Domination (A Satirical Sonnet) White people's pain is pain, Everybody else's is just discomfort. That is why you peddle Hitler, As such a monster. You don't hate Hitler because, He wanted to dominate the world, You hate Hitler because he wanted, To dominate everybody, including the whites. The world is but heirloom to the whites, All other claims are null and void! Loot like a pommy, rebel like an insurrectionist, Trod on whoever, just not the fellow white! World domination is the ultimate white privilege. Threat to white welfare is the ultimate human rights infringement.”

“Many African leaders started out ostensibly modern, liberal, but began to behave more like traditional leaders- not as a leader who is part of an institutionalized political system, but as the system itself. They opened up their economy, but out of necessity; if it could no longer be obstructed. The same goes for elections: They were held to prevent civil war. The so-called “African renaissance” was only that on the surface. The leaders did not really believe in it. In reality they returned to forms of mythical, traditional governance. That is how they smashed into the wall. African tradition is irreconcilable with the modern world. Every country will have to break with it’s traditions in order to create a modern society.”

“The restrictions [Lord Cromer] placed on government schools and his raising of school fees held back girls’ education as well as boys’. He also discouraged the training of women doctors. Under the British, the School for Hakimas, which had given women as many years of medical training as the men received in the School of Medicine, was restricted to midwifery.”