> I am kind of curious as to how you are defining civilization here. Don't get me
> wrong, they did stamp out ignorance and such, but at what cost? I tend to think
> that more was lost than was actually gained by this as many cery colourful and
> diverse cultures were lost or sometimes conveniently irradicated in the name of
> progress.
The British tended to respect cutural diversity, except in matters such as cannibalism
and wife burning, etc., at least in their later colonial period. Of course the early
period gave us countries like the US, Canada, and Australia, to name a few, with their
attendant decimation of local native populations. Unlike the Spanish or French, who
tended to wipe out cultures and enslave them throughout their colonial history, the
British merely overlaid systems of parliamentary government, judicial systems, and
undertook to educate the best and brightest of the natives. If you looked at a list of
countries today that were once British colonies, and compared them to the former colonies
of other former great powers, you would find that the former British colonies are today
much more stable, and developed economically, politically, and culturally, by and large.
Of course considering that three of the most well developed countries in the world were
former early British Colonies where the natives were widely massacred, one might lend
credence to old Longshanks' saying," The problem with Scotland is its full of Scots."
Because the atrocities that were commited by many powers during the imperial era so
besmirched the colonial concept, it is politically impossible to engage in such a
practice today, no matter how badly needed it is, and how well publicly overseen it might
be. Of course, the PC term today would be 'nation building' but everyone knows what it
means.
-- TANSTAAFL!!! Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:retroman@together.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive MikeySoft: Graphic Design/Animation/Publishing/Engineering ------------------------------------------------------------ How many fnords did you see before breakfast today?