> Michael Lorrey wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> Just curious:
>
> Given that, as you say above, the British colonised north america and australia in the "early
> period", which countries did it colonise later?
India, Ceylon, Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Rhodesia, Belize (then British Honduras), Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Burma.
India and SA are notably the nations still in the best shape, and which took to being colonized
rather well. While SA had the Dutch blight of apartheid to deal with, it is coming out of it
rather nicely (note that that did not exist until SA was indpendent), India on the other hand is
the shining light of the third world for stability and industry, as well as cultural diversity.