Anonymous 2023-05-19 (Fri) 10:39:44 No. 17334
>Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history. What we call its history, is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society. The question, therefore, is not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Briton. <England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia.
Anonymous 2023-05-19 (Fri) 10:43:35 No. 17335
>>17334 that spreading westernism across the world was historically progressive (correct)
don't overthink it, marx can be a bit callous but he's not saying 'india deserves it', just that it's inevitable
Anonymous 2023-05-19 (Fri) 10:44:22 No. 17336
>>17335 Well ok, the bits about India having no history is pretty insensitive, but whatever, the overall point is correct
Anonymous 2023-05-19 (Fri) 10:54:01 No. 17337
>>17335 I mean brits didn't really develop India tho
they were just extracting resources for free using local labor for peanuts. If they really cared about progress, literary rates in India would be on par with European nations when brits fucked off but it was below 8% in 1947. There was barely any capital. No industry. Dozen famines every decade and poverty made people even more retarded.
I think westernizing on their own like Japan would've been more fruitful
Anonymous 2023-05-19 (Fri) 11:00:32 No. 17338
>>17337 Also they incited religious conflicts when mughals before them were pretty secular for Islamic rulers.
They didn't do anything to delegitimize caste system. Instead they took advantage of the caste system by giving administrative jobs to brahmins, making dalits do menial labor, turned sikhs into martial caste etc
Anonymous 2023-05-19 (Fri) 11:02:47 No. 17339
>>17337 Fair point, India probably would have been better off westernising on their own, but that's not what happened. And arguably wouldn't since it was divided between dozens of little princes.
Anonymous 2023-05-19 (Fri) 11:04:12 No. 17340
>>17338 >>17337 Marx lived in the imperial center at that time. Even he wasn't immune to colonial propaganda about le white man's burden.
Anonymous 2023-05-19 (Fri) 11:07:55 No. 17341
>>17339 >And arguably wouldn't since it was divided between dozens of little princes. Some of those princes/sultans were pretty ambitious. It's not like the subcontinent was isolated from the rest of the world. It kept up with advances in the Islamic world before the 16th century and it got colonized before the technological advancements of the 19th century.
Anonymous 2023-05-19 (Fri) 11:12:42 No. 17342
>>17341 True but look at say China, they were never occupied by the west (invaded a few times but not like India) but never managed to westernise on their own really.
Anonymous 2023-05-19 (Fri) 11:16:47 No. 17343
>>17342 China was raped by the west. Why didn't India do what China did, and rid the westaboos
Anonymous 2023-05-19 (Fri) 11:17:55 No. 17344
>>17343 I'm aware but my point is China was never occupied like the Raj but that didn't stop them being victimised or allow them to really develop until the PRC.
India did try to align with the soviets but it didn't really work for various reasons.
Anonymous 2023-05-19 (Fri) 11:23:23 No. 17345
>>17342 It's just Chinese rulers being Chinese rulers. They were staunchly opposed to any change.
India was politically unstable and every major ruler had a reformist attitude to one up their rivals. They would've followed ottoman empire if brits hadn't won the battle of plassey.
Anonymous 2023-05-19 (Fri) 17:08:48 No. 17346
>>17335 He was not correct lol, marx would disagree with you as he completely changed his view on this and other issue relating to imperialism later in life, see Marx at the Margins for a collection of such changes in views with the context
Anonymous 2023-05-20 (Sat) 03:15:02 No. 17348
>What we call its history, is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society
Anonymous 2023-05-20 (Sat) 03:19:02 No. 17349
>>17348 Also it's worth noting that the Indian Subcontinent is fucking huge
Of course any noteworthy polity existing on it would be a massive empire
There are subdistricts of India that share the population number of a European nation-state