Jamaica was a British colony from 1707 to 1962. Full adult suffrage has been in Jamaica since 1944.
Geopolitics
- Thread starter Mciahel Goodman
- Start date
That just isn't true.
Also, though democracies are in the minority, depending on how you define it they're not a small minority.
I'm saying that the USA would likely not be a democracy today if it had been colonised by Russia or China or Japan or any number of other countries. Many of the principles that have shaped your legal system (e.g. trial by jury of peers, habeas corpus, etc) and various other pillars that support democracy (e.g. a free press, elections by secret ballot, etc) were imported from Britain, a nation that has by far been the biggest single influence on America's politico-legal and philosophical evolution.
It is true. And nor have you provided any evidence to disprove it.
Full democracies comprise only 6.4% of the global population, according to Wiki. That's small in anyone's book.
There we go, at least we have a slightly more nuanced debate now. We've moved away from the silly Team America feck yeah 'global fight between tyranny and democracy' regarding the reasons and actually looking at the real reasons we went to war.
I am merely pushing your argument to its logical conclusion and have directly quoted you whilst doing so. If we fight injustice so regularly, one would have to ask why we didn't fight the injustice of Anschluss? Of Czechoslovakia? Of Klaipeda? I presume we would have removed him in the same way we eventually did with the rest of Europe and the USA? After all, we're locked in this death struggle right?
You keep on using 'whataboutism' without any real understanding of my position, or a wilful ignorance. I've already said repeatedly that I'd personally prefer to live in a world where the 'dominant' block is Western, if a domination needs to exist. I've argued extensively with a certain poster regarding his views on propaganda in these different countries. I will similarly call out your equally silly views though on things like why the West goes to war or your frankly insulting posts about India.
I don't say India would definitely have reached democracy. In fact, I very explicitly said I don't know whether they would have had a democracy or not. What I'm saying is that its offensive and presumptuous to say that its the only reason they have a form of democracy. A few points for you here on the countries outside Europe. Firstly, at its height, the UK had conquered roughly 1 in 4 of those countries. The other European countries roughly shared out the others. Australia, NZ, Canada and USA are essentially extensions of Europe; the Europeans went, they pillaged, they massacred and mostly wiped out local populations. Most of the dictatorships around the world were also once under British and other European empire rule. Coincidence? See how we can both play this game?
Is 350 nuclear weapons not enough then to flatten pretty much all the European and North American major cities? And what do points 2 and 3 have to do with whether Europeans would be willing to go and fight over Taiwan?
It isn't whataboutism. I am very literally quoting your own posts back to you. You stated that we are in a global struggle between democracy and tyranny. Great. You then went on to state that we are not only in a normal struggle but an existential struggle between freedom and oppression (and rightly name dropped China directly in this group). We apparently need to face this struggle face on. Great, I'm totally on board, let's crush those fascists! Do we normally trade with and enrich those we're in an existential struggle with? If so, I think we may have slightly different definitions of what existential struggle means.
As someone else has said, your characteristic zeal when it comes to football posting doesn't translate quite so well when talking about current events and geopolitics.
Here is the table with the results:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
The worst thing about this table is that most countries are getting worse. Correction: almost all countries are getting worse in the past 10 years. This is very sad.
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In other words, democracy was ultimately part of the British legacy.
It depends on how you're measuring it really.
From the democracy index (which I assume is the source you're using), there's 74 full and flawed democracies and 59 authoritarian regimes. 34 hybrid regimes in the middle.
I don’t know anything about Jamaica, but I’d argue in the case of India democracy was ultimately the legacy of those Indians who struggled first for a greater measure of representation and equality within the British imperial system and then against British rule altogether, full equality being shown to be impossible for Indians under British rule. There wasn’t a “semblance of democracy” as you put it that wasn’t produced by these struggles.
The 6.4 % is irrelevant, that's just "full democracies" and we know that's not what you're talking about. Out of the non-European democracies, you mentioned the US, Canada, India, Australia, Jamaica and New Zealand. Out of those six countries, we have 3 full democracies and 3 flawed democracies, so we have to group them together. That gives us 45.7 % of the global population living in democracies, certainly not a small minority.
Related to the discussion on this page, an interesting article from The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/world-war-ii-empire-colonialism/629371/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/world-war-ii-empire-colonialism/629371/
I keep talking about your "what-aboutism" because you constantly resort to this as a deflection, as your above post continues to do.
I can't help it if you don't see that there is today an existential struggle going on between the forces of freedom/democracy vs tyranny and oppression. It's not black and white, it's not purity vs impurity, but it exists nonetheless. Cynicism and muddled-headedness about this in the West is precisely what the forces of tyranny and oppression look to foster.
It is not insulting to state that democracy in India is a legacy of British rule. I've already listed several other nations where the same thing applies - is it therefore an insult to Australia, or Canada (etc etc)? Your problem seems to be an insistence that nothing good emerged from the British empire, whilst I am perfectly willing to admit the bad things that it also entailed.
As for the rest, I've been talking about the British empire, not the empires established by other European nations. Your dragging other empires into the discussion, in an attempt to muddy the waters, is irrelevant to what I've been saying.
People say Stalin was a bad guy but if you really think about it, if he hadn't of staved all those Ukrainian peasants in the 1930's then Ukraine wouldn't be the democracy it is today.
Laugh if you wish, but what I said is true. Just as it's true for all the other nations I cited.
Out of interest, what exactly do you think I am deflecting from?
I'm asking you, if there is an existential struggle between democracy and oppression, why we are still trading with China and why we have been doing so for decades? You yourself listed China alongside Russia in your posts? I haven't even said there isn't a struggle?
It is insulting to say that it is the only reason because the very clear implication there is that Indians would not have been able to reach that stage by themselves. I've not talked about the merits or drawbacks of the British empire as a general point.
Again, what waters am I muddying? My point is that it is almost impossible to know how the countries under British rule would have developed without British rule, just as it would be to do so for the Spanish/French/Portugese/Ottoman/Russian empires etc. The reason for that is that because you can literally count the number of countries which managed to avoid being colonised by those countries on one hand. There are no adequate controls.
Now to be fair, we didn't even have full adult suffrage in the UK for the majority of that time either!
Well, except for all those countries that Britian ruled over in the middle east that never became democracies.
I'm sorry, but democracy does not just emerge as a natural consequence of a struggle for independence from colonialism, as countless countries have discovered. For democracy to take root there has to be an establishment and acceptance of the basic pillars of democracy - a free press, an independent judiciary, secret ballots, the very concept of elected government, limited terms of office, etc etc. Many of these essential ideas came from Britain and were absorbed over a long period of time.
Moreover, power was handed back to India peacefully in the end - it was not the result of a violent revolution. Indeed, one of the reasons the transition was delayed was for fear of widespread violence breaking out between Hindus and Muslims once Britain had left - violence that did indeed begin afterwards on a massive scale.
Yeah it isn't. The democratic rights Jamaica has got just like everywhere is going to mass organisation of workers against the British empire.
This is like someone saying ''freedom'' and democracy was ultimately part of american slave system because it lead to the american civil war and the the civil rights movement in the 60's.
Yep. To claim one of the ''positives'' of the British empire lead is the democracy we have in westminster today would also just rubbish.
That would be the obvious combination of the policy of appeasement, the psychological effect of WW1, and the effects of the Great Depression on military readiness.
Even if there had been the will to go to war over the Sudetenland, neither France nor Britain were anywhere near able to militarily.
Was there any injustice in the Anschluss? One could argue that the injustice came out of Versailles and St. Germain.
You're not seriously putting India in the same category as Canada and Australia, are you? In India, the Brits established a suppressive rule over the native population, which they otherwise left (mostly) untouched. In Canada and Australia, they murdered and displaced large parts of the native populations, essentially removing them from the equation and creating instead local copies of Britain, existing of and ruled for and by the colonial white population. Not the same at all.
Also, since you seem to think Britain is the unique global birthplace of democracy: many North American Indigenous groups had a very strong form of direct democracy to run their society. With democracy coming in many shapes and forms, those pre-existing democracies were much more democratic than the riding-based Westminster system that ended up replacing them. Not quite progress.
You're trying to deflecting from the notion that Britain is a democracy that, when push comes to shove, has mostly stood on the right side of history in terms of fostering democracy and opposing tyranny - at least as much as any nation has done so, and far more than most.
I've answered your question about trade with China several times already: trade benefits us as well as them (so you might just as well ask China why they are strengthening the West) and, moreover, being in an existential struggle does not have to mean immediately declaring war on China, which you seem to imagine it does.
It's insulting to India to suggest that Britain established the principles of democracy in Indian culture? Is it also insulting to India to mention their dreadful caste system? Should I refrain from mentioning the increasingly authoritarian nature of Modi's government? Is it insulting to condemn Modi's refusal to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine?
No, what's truly insulting and patronising to India is the notion that some things must be pussy-footed around or not mentioned all, presumably in the name of "de-colonisation". Some great things have come from India, and some great things have come from Britain, and there is no good reason to avoid talking about them.
How many democracies emerged from the Russian empire, or the Ottoman empire, or the French empire (etc)? I'll let you answer that.
Please tell me more about this “nationalism by proxy” idea. I don’t agree at all that opposing Russia means somehow adopting Ukrainian nationalism. How does that work?
And it’s “a priori”, not “apriori”. You’re saying everyone is born knowing Russia is evil? That’s ridiculous.
I haven't said that Britain is the unique global birthplace of democracy. I've said instead that it has played a major global role in the spread of democracy. Nor have I put India in the same category as Canada or Australia, except insofar as they are today all counted as democracies.
You're the one who made the claim, it's not up to me to disprove it.
But anyway, I count 39 non-European democracies on the Democracy Index. 16 of them are previous British colonial possessions. And while that sounds very impressive, the Spanish have 11. The Dutch have 3. Don't you see what's going on here? It's basically proportional to the size of the colonial empires. If anything, the Spanish have a higher rate of democracies (flawed as they are) in their ex-colonies, and yet we don't talk about the Spanish and their nurturing of democracy or anything like that.
The only thing to take from this is that the French have done a pretty poor job.
You said that 'It is not insulting to state that democracy in India is a legacy of British rule. I've already listed several other nations where the same thing applies - is it therefore an insult to Australia, or Canada (etc etc)?'
My point is that listing these in the same breadth is nonsensical, as entirely different mechanism led to the political outcomes of these countries. And further, that the Brits in the case of Canada can't even be said to have improved the political system, but rather the opposite.
How am I trying to deflect from a topic which has become the main topic of discussion? My main initial gripes with you were, as I've said repeatedly, your naive approach to why all countries act as they do, as well as your Indian comment.
Trade benefits us as well as them but of course the benefit is not equal. Europe has gone from being the richest continent in the world to 3rd richest, with Asia having leaped to 1st (largely off the back of China's growth). One has gone from a middle class society to....the same whilst the other has changed from a genuinely agrarian country which was being dominated by external powers. Even if an existential crisis doesn't mean immediate war, it does surely mean not funding that other side? Isn't that what all the arguments about Germany have come down to? Their reliance on Russian energy and the money they've funnelled and continue to funnel to Russia?
That would be an absolute slam dunk point if I'd said that India or aspects of Indian culture can't be criticised, which of course I've never said, insinuated or thought. It is not insulting to mention their awful caste system. You should not refrain from mentioning the authoritarian or communal nature of Modi's government (I do this regularly). You can condemn Modi's refusal to condemn the invasion, whilst perhaps understanding that most non-Western countries don't care about Ukraine in the same way as Europeans do (and don't see it as any different from the multiple ongoing conflicts worldwide).
It is however insulting to say that the only reason they have democracy is because of the UK, which, I'll say again, was my main issue with that aspect of your post. If you'd said it was one of the reasons, I would genuinely have said nothing at all.
Russian minimal. Ottoman likewise. French a few. Spain even more. Again though seeing as I didn't say I'd prefer to live in a Russian or Turkish dominated world (and in fact said the opposite), I'm not entirely sure what relevance this has.
That may be so, but if you're only using Full Democracies then you can't use India or the US to talk up the UKs democratic colonial heritage, as they don't qualify. Hell, the UK itself barely makes the cut, at 8.10. Ideally ever country should be a "full democracy", but you can't use full democracies in one discussion and all democracies in the other. Not unless it's clearly stated that you're using very different criteria.
What? I'm saying it's not insulting to any of these nations to simply state historical facts.
Nor does it especially matter for the purposes of this discussion that various mechanisms were involved. The essential point is the outcome shared in common: democracy.
As for Canada, I've no idea what you are trying to say unless you are referring to pre-colonial times, in which case Canada did not exist as a nation-state..
As Spain lost 95% of its empire at least 100 years before it (briefly) gained any form of democracy itself, that would be a rather pointless argument wouldn’t it?
Yeah but they had some great railways built all over the country. Sure, they were built to loot the country but there's no chance they'd have developed their own railways had it not been for the Empire.
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You've answered your own question as to why we don't talk about the Spanish and their nurturing of democracy.
Would it? Maybe they cultivated democratic sentiment, or something? Yes, obviously that's facetious, but he used the US as an example, and they specifically revolted because they weren't included in the democracy.
The real lessons of democracy and equality were taught by the British.
It's hardly the UK's today fault if India and the U.S have slid down the democratic rankings. Best ask folk like Modi and Trump and their cult followers about such things.
Perhaps, but in that case why is it the UK's credit that New Zealand, Australia and Canada all have significantly higher scores on the democracy rankings than the UK?