Worst European Colonial Power

I think the British were the most invasive and the Spanish the greediest. The French were arguably the most inept. The Dutch seem to have been the least violent, but the Dutch East India Company was a kraken of acquisitiveness.

Of those not listed, the Belgians score very, very high for their work in Africa.

They all sucked. I suppose the French at least spent the money on Tasteful Things.

The British, not so much.

The Belgians were not a major power, but they were the worst or their monarchy was in its personal colony of the Belgian Congo.

Forgot Belgium, but they basically had only Congo.

If the British had colonized today's Brazil, the Amazon would still be intact. Canada preserves its wilderness.

The Portuguese started the Transatlantic slave trade.

Yeah, but they wrung a continent's worth of suffering out of the locals.

It always annoys me that Europeans get weepy about the plight of the "red Indian" and America's history of slavery when they were up to their armpits in gore from Peking to Pago-Pago.

R4, Canada preserves its wilderness to any extent because of the example of the US, which invented the National Park. Australia, which was entirely a British venture, has done less well on that count in terms of things like forest cover (although they too have an extensive national park service).

British wilderness consists of peat bogs and three trees a a little to the left; its largest wild carnivore is the vole.

Surprised to see the Spanish ranking so low, they probably did more to wipe out the indigenous inhabitants of the places they conquered than any of the other powers.

Plus they didn't even build anything lasting with all their loot, they just lived off the rents and plundered silver.

The Brits are going to win because they were the biggest.

Germany was horrific.

The Belgians were, by far, the worst.

The British did a pretty good job.

America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand - nothing to sniff at.

R11. That's odd. "Sniff at America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand" seems to be a British career.

I'm fairly sure it's a PhD at this point.

The British New World (plus Australia and New Zealand) colonies are all wealthy, first world nations. The former Spanish colonies are dysfunctional shitholes except for Argentina.

I'm surprised the British so far is deemed the worst. Is this just a matter of our knowing the most about it?

The British at least built and left a legacy of a lot of infrastructure (e.g railways and ports for India, Hong Kong) in the areas they colonized. They also established legal, political, and economic frameworks that the most successful of those countries follow even today - again, India being the stand out as the world's largest democracy. Their civil service would not exist were it not for the British.

Question: Do do former Spanish/Portuguese universities have an equivalent to the postcolonial studies of Anglophone universities?

R6, absolutely, but I think the argument still stands. Had the UK colonized Brazil at the same time as Canada, the Amazon would be protected. Australia colonized its coasts. They would have colonized Brazil's eastern coast, much of which was grassland.

I really is sad. If the New World had to be colonized, then it would have been best if the British had done it all.

R14, the British were the most aggressive in terms of amassing land. The list of countries or nations not invaded or claimed by the British at some point could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

And even by the standards of European empires they were condescending cunts.

R14 It's a matter of having been the most recently biggest, having most self-hating liberal culture, and having the most pampered former colonial populations.

We have all been fed a diet of extreme anti-colonialism for decades. It's time for some facts and a reassessment. This guy has received the usual death threats just by publishing a factual, peer-reviewed paper. His lecture is well worth at least listening to.

Yeah, R19, they sure pampered the shit out of China and India.

UK: America, Australia, Bahamas, Bermuda, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore. All rich and developed (yes, the Bahamas is just fine).

And yes, some shitty failures, but is there a single success the others can point to? Quebec? Maybe...

R16 the equivalent would probably be a mixture of Latin American philosophy and liberation theology, and if I wanted to study that I'd probably look first and foremost to Brazil, Mexico, or, failing that, the US.

[quote]And yes, some shitty failures, but is there a single success the others can point to? Quebec? Maybe...

Quebec was an underpopulated, undeveloped backwater completely ignored by France and didn't start to thrive until after the British took control.

I immediately looked for Belgium on the list and was planning to vote for that country as the worst.

[quote] The former Spanish colonies are dysfunctional shitholes except for Argentina.

Actually Chile is more of a success now than Argentina with a higher per capita income and stable political institutions. Argentina has largely been economically and politically dysfunctional for about 100 years with it serving to academics as a living laboratory for how a once-successful economy and society can fail.

Worst in terms of viciousness - definitely Belgium, but the Spanish win for absolute pillaging of their colonies.

The Belgians are legendary for how terrible they were.

Belgians, by a mile.

Is it fair to say 'Belgium'? The way I learned their colonial history was that the king personally owned Congo and was solely responsible for the atrocities. Once that finally became public knowledge, the king was forced to hand his colony over to the country. And then the government put an end to the worst. I am not sure how Belgium then handled the colony before leaving it to independence a couple decades later.

The unsustainable expansion of industrialization which will likely render the earth uninhabitable to our (and probably most) species within the next few generations will lie mainly at the feet of the British empire. Their laying of a few train tracks in India does little to make up for this.

R31, the British aren't burning the Amazon rainforest.

How could you not include Belgians?

R33, note the use of "major" in the OP. Belgium had one possession. That's not major, regardless of how big it was. Also, King Leopold owned it for most of the time.

R32 the legacy of commerce that depends and thrives on the destruction of natural environments started with British industrialization. I never said the British are burning the Amazon rainforest.

R35, industrialization is inevitable. The discovery of the steam engine - someone was going to discover it.

*invention of the steam engine... invent it

[quote]Do do former Spanish/Portuguese universities have an equivalent to the postcolonial studies of Anglophone universities?

Yes. However, it is very recent. During my mother's lifetime, "La Conquista" of the Americas was taught as one of the high points of civilization.

[quote] If the British had colonized today's Brazil, the Amazon would still be intact. Canada preserves its wilderness.

Oh you mean like Ghana, which was a british colony and has the most severe increase in deforestation in the world? (Brazil is only highest because of its enormous land mass.)

The former Spanish colonies have more indigenous representation than the British colonies in America, because they let them live r7. The British colonies almost completely destroyed the native population and they become " white people lands". The Hispanic population in America are mostly mixed race.

R15 is correct. Quite apart from other western powers, the British left an educated middle class to assume control of their former colonies in Africa and Asia.

The British did not actively colonize, after the loss of the first British Empire. The government only stepped in to assert control, when British interests were threatened.. They did not go out to amass land. the British were looking for markets and resources. And as for their colonies in Africa, they caressed the coasts and did not penetrate the interior of the continent.

It's a mistake to think that the British wanted to colonize a land. The most perfect relationship was one that benefited British interests but required little if any rule from Britain. Such was the case with their relationship with Argentina. The British needed beef tp feed the population. The British built the infrastructure (rails et a) in Argentina for transportation of the cattle to Buenos Aires, the slaughtering houses et al. And they developed refrigeration to preserve the beef on the transatlantic voyage. But Argentina maintained its independence.

I came for the Belgians as well. If you know the history of Rwanda, you know that their exit strategy for the country gaining its independence directly set in motion the Genocide to come.

R42 girl you’re a mess look at the correlation of British colonization and famines in those countries as a direct result and see how you feel. Empty out the British museum while you’re at it and return the stolen merch.

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Countries in purple are the only countries the UK hasn't invaded ^^^^^^

R45 and their hypocrisy now complaining about immigration. It boggles the mind.

R45, that map is absurd. The British never invaded Japan or Korea. Or Thailand.

Spanish or portuguese. Consider: they committed genocides, tried to enforce a racial caste system, brought in more slaves than anyone else, committed mass rape, forced their own religion or burned the indigenous people alive. The british just sort of left their colonies alone with the least amount of involvement

So... We're not going to throw the Germans or the Japanese or the Soviet Union into the mix?

There should be fucking despotic Belgium on the list, fat ho OP.

R13 Argentina's a shithole, too.

[quote] Only the major European ones.

You motherfuckers are retarded.

[quote] Only the major European ones.

Where is the Roman Empire?

While we're on the subject of how well the British treated the rest of the world, let's not forget that time they declared war on China because China tried to ban them from selling opium and addicting much of the Chinese population. That jeopardized the profits of English opium investors so the British government declared war and later made China reimburse them for the cost. The British government has no moral high ground to stand on ever.

British by far which is why English is spoken so widely from east to west.

Niall Ferguson's Empire is very good. Net, he argues, the British empire did more good than bad. If you read about the history of conflict with Indians in New England, it actually wasn't that awful. Nothing like what occurred to the Plains Indians in the mid- to late 1800s.

Belgium, OP. Jesus. The utter hell DRC, Rwanda, and Burundi have gone through far outweighs the other more expansive empires.

R10- You beat me to it. They were the worst..

Belgium - Atrocities in Belgian Congo unmatched.

Germany - Decimated whole tribes in Tanganyika and, especially, South West Africa (Namibia)

Portuguese - Pulled down infrastructure like like power lines, communications and plumbing when finally kicked out of their African colonies of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and Sao Tome e Principe. These countries literally had to start from scratch in 1975.

France - Literal gutting of colonies' wealth where every last bit was sent back to develop mother France and providing independence in name only for African colonies while continuing to economically exploit them to the present day by various means including the CFA Franc, a currency used in much of francophone Africa controlled from Paris. In other words, France continues to be a colonial power.

Britain - Responsible for many of the world's most intractable problems including third-world poverty, systemic racism and economic inequality as well as tensions in the Middle East. They used a ruler to draw most of their borders without caring about the communities on the ground, dividing families, tribes and communities therefor are responsible for 90%+ of the world's conflicts today.

Spain - Literally created a perennially impoverished New World.

The Netherlands - Some of the earliest practitioners of deforestation and trans-Atlantic slavery.

R56 Limey decides that other limeys did pretty well empiring people. Film at 11.

R60 lol I was thinking the exact same. Hah R56 you’re funny. In other news prince Charles declares royal family important for future generations.

R60 Smuggest, most self-righteous and self-satisfied limey I ever met, too. And I have met a few.

Several times seeing him on the street in Cambridge, it was all I could do not to walk up to him and slap the stupid smile off his face.

The Spanish and Portuguese tended to mix with the local women while the British brought their wives along. I always laugh at light skinned Latinx people claiming victimhood as if Spanish isn't a European language that was forced on indigenous people.

The Spanish and Portuguese tended to mix with the local women while the British brought their wives along. I always laugh at light skinned Latinx people claiming victimhood as if Spanish isn't a European language that was forced on indigenous people.

Latinx?

Niall Ferguson claims he was the only person trying to warn people about the impending threat of COVID at the World Economic Forum in Gstaad in late January of this year.

The Germans. What they do to Mallorca every year!

It is interesting to compare the portuguese colonies in latin america to goa (india) which was held on to for over 400 years. There is no remaining trace of the language there, and only a minority are catholic.

The Italians, who OP probably doesn't know colonized Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia in the 1930's by invasion.

And, as the Italians always do, they fucked it up, losing the colonies (and WWII) in less than a decade.

Ethiopia was never colonised. It was an invasion/occupation that lasted less than ten years, much like other European countries did to each other during that time.

R66 His “warning” even two weeks after Davis was pretty weak tea. Asked about the possibility of a pandemic in mid-February, he replied:

“Yes, it could be. We don’t really know yet just how dangerous it is and we don’t know just how far it is going to spread because Chinese statistics are not very trustworthy.” The Chinese stats are never very trustworthy, but the Chinese had announced they had 70,000 cases when he made that remark.

He’ll take credit for anything, but the above statement hardly makes him sound like the town crier. Or terribly prescient, either.

“Davos” not “Davis.”

The Belgian Congo colony was primarily a private enterprise (Leopold II's), propped up with the help of other European countries. But things got so bad that the country of Belgium had to wrest control.

[quote] [R45], that map is absurd. The British never invaded Japan or Korea. Or Thailand.

R47 YOU are absurd.

The British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) was the British Commonwealth taskforce consisting of Australian, British, Indian and New Zealand military forces in occupied Japan, from 21 February 1946 until the end of occupation in 1952. Headquarters: Kure, Hiroshima, Japan

Apr 20, 2001 - Almost 100,000 British troops fought in Korea 50 years ago in conflict as bloody as any seen before or since. ... Fifty years ago 600 soldiers of the British Army took on a force of 30,000 Chinese troops crossing the Imjin River in Korea

British troops arrive in Thailand

3 September 1945. Advance elements of the British occupation force arrive in Bangkok, commanded by Maj.-Gen. Geoffrey Evans. The Thai government is greatly disconcerted by reports that the force, charged with disarming and repatriating Japanese troops, is expected to number as many as 20,000, mainly Indian soldiers.