To think this was an inappropriate school task

[Lalalabrador]

My year 8 daughter was asked to write an essay today on the question How did India benefit from colonialism and how was it harmed by it? I’m pretty gobsmacked. I’m a professional historian and sad that something so intellectually bankrupt is being taught to young people.

I haven’t RTFT.

But I don’t understand your problem with the question, it is open and invites debate.

If she believes there were no benefits at all, then she should make that point in her answer.

Mummyoflittledragon

DenisetheMenace
“the country was raped and pillaged and the British pulled out leaving the vast majority illiterate and below the poverty line. “

Were the majority not impoverished and illiterate before the British arrived, under the rule of Mughals and Maharajas? (Sorry if those titles are incorrect, not an historian, remembered from school history).
I believe the former rulers made a pretty penny out of colonialism too?
The Moguls, ie outsiders were losing power and the Maharajas gaining. The latter were the ruling classes of the population and I appreciate very far from perfect. With indigenous princes in power, however, the wealth would have stayed in the country. Jobs would have been for the locals and the country would have gone in a different direction. We cannot say if it would have been worse or better. But the country wouldn’t have been stripped of its assets by a ruling class, who brought ‘progress’ in its own image and denied the population an ability to govern their progress or even operate it. Indians weren’t allowed to work on the railways or build locomotives for example; so when the Raj pulled out, no one knew how to operate and maintain the railways and India was forced to ask for help from their former rulers. That was the British legacy. Better for some. Worse for a lot of others.“

Thank you, this is really interesting. I realise how very little I know. Going to order some books, I ought to know more!

@DenisetheMenace - also look out for the East India Company...

Thanks Ylvamoon, I will.

Could your daughter not focus on a particular period of colonial rule to make it is easier, for example the story of Abdul Karim?

Dennis It is very simplistic to describe the Mughals (moguls are the bumps on ski runs) as outsiders. They were invaders originally coming down from Afghanistan but they were very inclusive and bought local rulers into the effective government they established as well as intermarrying. Emperor Jahangir, father of Shah Jahan (of Taj Mahal fame) was the son of a Rajput Princess and that influence really showed in the way he cultivated the arts. The Emperors spent their life on the road fulfilling their duty to govern the people effectively and could and did act if they found injustice or famine. Their culture, art and architecture /gardens were a mixture of influences, Persian, western and local which were distinctively Indian, not just a Persian culture imposed on the lands they conquered. They had an occidental approach to the west in particular, believing their own art far superior to that bought there by the Jesuits and the envoys sent by European rulers, and cherry picking artistic techniques such as perspective to serve their own perceived cultural greatness. The East India Company too, certainly in the early days, appreciated that India had a very rich culture and heritage. Arguably the great “English” country houses are actually as much “Indian” as they are English, financed by the profits of the East India company and furnished with the goods bought back in its ships. It was only when the British government disbanded the EIA and decided to impose military rule on India that the Victorian belief in racial superiority and the values of orientalism that permeated through British culture emerged as the guiding principles of colonialism.

The very argument being proposed on these threads that somehow India pre the British was a disparate mess and would have carried on that way if the British had not colonised it manifests those Orientalist values, that somehow British rule was some sort of civilising unifying influence? Even without the obvious lie to that of partition, whilst the Mughals were ruling most of India, in the south there were rulers equally ruling thriving societies with rich economies and cultures, and leaving a rich legacy. India was at the centre of a worldwide textile trade long before it had Britain’s “help” for instance, “help” that consisted of closing down India’s export markets for textiles so that Lancashire’s cotton mill owners could take them over......

Of course inequality existed but so it did in British India and in modern India, that is a constant... but any questions about the “benefits” of British rule should not refer to some sort of uncivilised pre existence, at the mercy of foreign invaders, that would have persisted, that is an orientalist myth.

*Yesterday 07:51 icedgem85

You’re a professional historian? It’s just a simplistic question. I’d go along the lines of, colonialism in India meant there were lots of jobs in cotton/silk/spice export, but this was greatly outweighed by [ insert everything else ]*

Well you might go along those lines but you would be totally wrong..... The Indian textile trade had thrived for many centuries before British rule. Indian textiles have been found in the Egyptian tombs and by the time the British arrived they were producing the textiles that met the needs of each of their markets, from Japan to South America, and that included the Britain of the Industrial Revolution. Then the Lancashire cotton mill owners spotted that these were markets it wanted to exploit and under British control. Through a combination of tariffs and regulation they reversed the flow of textiles making India a market for their goods and decimating the Indian textile industry. The goal of reinvigorating their domestic textile industry became an important symbol for the independence movement.

I am sure an 8 year could see that was not a benefit with only a tiny bit of Googling www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/the-fabric-of-india/textiles-in-a-changing-world/

Not read the whole thread but my immediate thought is this is something I'd have written about at university, not aged 8!

Tina That was tongue in cheek l, actually it was a piece of work for a Year 8, 12 year old and preparing them for GCSE History which these days does require pupils to develop an argument

Emilyontmoor

Dennis It is very simplistic to describe the Mughals (moguls are the bumps on ski runs) as outsiders. “

If you mean me, I didn’t! That was someone kindly answering a pp of mine.

I have already admitted how ignorant I am on the topic - but I did spell Mughals correctly 😁

Diverseopinions I wouldn't be surprised if ideas were linked to socialist and equality -based beliefs in Europe. A means of doing the Labour Party over there. A way of being enlightened and progressive and better. As Britain changed and took on responsibilities of maintaining a welfare state, people in GB probably thought it was time for a change overseas too.

This is such an example of unconscious orientalism. The west as the leader in a forward progression to the philosophical absolute truths of enlightenment? With the othered oriental / colonised like a child being led to the path of this absolute truth? No agency of their own?

It didn't actually happen like that. Post war the Labour Party in the UK held on to the remaining colonies in order to source cheap commodities for a country that was still rationing food and to secure markets for British goods. India was gone but there was still the African colonies The ground nut scandal, possibly one of the worst colonial projects was in 1953.

As to where the independence movement got their ideas from? They studied western ideas but Sun Yat Sen in China, Ghandi in India and other independence leaders came from rich cultures with philosophies that fed into the enlightenment in the first place. There would have been no enlightenment without the philosophies that emerged from the Middle East and Asia. Confucianism proposes the checks and balances of a democracy. When the students occupied Tiananmen Square they were fulfilling their confucian duty for the literati to bring any failings on the part of the Emperor to meet his responsibilities to the people to their attention. Dend even went down to the square to fulfill his duty to listen. If they failed to react Confucius gave them license to overthrow the Emperor as they did each dynasty giving way to the next, exactly why the CCCP reacted by massacring the students. Sun Yat Sen (and the Tiananmen students) and Ghandi took western ideas but also ideas that had emerged from their own cultures in order to develop a system of governance that would work (or not) in their own historical and cultural context.

It really helps if you try and look at these issues from the perspective of the othered as people with their own agency, history and culture as opposed to our rich tradition of othering. Then try finding any benefits to colonialism.....

Was it really beyond the ability of those who were colonised to develop their own civic societies and adopt the trappings of modernity in the shape of sanitation. railways, hospitals etc.? Without all that exploitation and genocide........

Denise Sorry, I also often lose the quotations.....

And as with political philosophy where would western Science be without the progress made in the Middle East and Asia in Maths, Physics, Chemistry, long before Fleming.

Each to their own Emily, it is my genuine opinion and not tongue in cheek. And I'm not ancient so I do understand things "thesedays"

Tina Tongue in cheek because lots of posters on the thread had misread Year 8 for it being a question for an 8 year old. And actually I do think even an 8 year old is ready to understand these issues, mine did as they lived and travelled in the former colonies in Asia.

I am quite sure the question is actually a standard GCSE history question, the syllabus is still riddled with orientalism. I was involved in the marking of A level exam answers to question on a module on Modern China, the syllabus was entirely based on a western perspective, analysis that nobody in area studies academia would get away with now.

I think that question is too hard for an 8 year old but as a historian myself I don't see the problem with it. The question offers a balanced view of the issue. But the question is more suited to a year 8 student.

@Littlepaws18

I think that question is too hard for an 8 year old but as a historian myself I don't see the problem with it. The question offers a balanced view of the issue. But the question is more suited to a year 8 student.

Yes quite...

@Littlepaws18

I think that question is too hard for an 8 year old but as a historian myself I don't see the problem with it. The question offers a balanced view of the issue. But the question is more suited to a year 8 student.

Ha! Poor reading skills all around, it seems. What’s the first task of any exam/ piece of homework? Read the question properly,

[quote Lalalabrador]@EarringsandLipstick I earn my living from practising history. I conduct research and publish papers and books.[/quote]
That's a worry, considering that you cannot recognise the need for balance in research!

YYY to the cold hand of Orientalism, @Emilyontmoor. It's far from dead yet.

It really helps if you try and look at these issues from the perspective of the othered as people with their own agency, history and culture as opposed to our rich tradition of othering. Then try finding any benefits to colonialism.....

Was it really beyond the ability of those who were colonised to develop their own civic societies and adopt the trappings of modernity in the shape of sanitation. railways, hospitals etc.? Without all that exploitation and genocide........

Very well said. Emilyontmoor, I have really appreciated your intelligent and articulate posts on this thread. I wish more people could see things as you do.

I’ve found this thread very interesting and enlightening.

Mine live in the north of England love.

Yesterday 18:09 daisypond

I’ve found this thread very interesting and enlightening.“

Ditto

Just to offer an alternative perspective, half of my family is from India and has no squabbles with this question at all. In fact they think it rather ridiculous that it would invite calls for censure.