> Dwayne wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
>
>
If you consider India to be in good shape, then you can probably say that
most 3rd world countries are. The fact that they've got a large industry
is just a product of their massive population, but if you consider GDP per
capita, poverty levels, literacy levels and life expectancy, i think you
would find that, just like the rest of the latter Brittish colonies, they
do just as badly, if not worse, than the French or spanish colonies.
chau