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jernfrost | 7 years ago

> Best refrain from reading the Guardian, it's what they do best. Despite the fact that nobody alive today had anything to do at all with the horrors from our colonial pasts.

I don't think their writing is bad. My issue is not so much what they write, but rather how a lot of people end up interpreting it. Many will use such writing to vilify whites. OTOH there are plenty of whites who uses any writing about say coloreds to do the same. People in general are eager to create simplified narratives and blame the other guys.

> Do you have some references that back this up? I don't dispute it, just curious.

I would say it is a logical conclusion from reading history. India and Africa was already progressing at a certain pace and was several hundred years behind Europe in development.

What has been observed through most of history is that most countries progress by importing ideas from other rather than by inventing it themselves.

Africa e.g. has very little coastline and rivers relative to landmass. That makes water based transport mostly inaccessible. Labor specialization and mass production relies on that. Industrialization was thus highly unlikely to occur in Africa spontaneously. Adam Smith remarked this over 300 years ago.

The founder of modern Singapore remarked that the most important technology for their development was air condition. India, Africa, South East Asia etc are simply too hot places. It gives a lot more diseases, makes it harder to work and think. There are limits to how much heat the human body can dissipate. Cold climates are thus more practical for working as long as you have suitable means of providing heating.

Until the invention of air condition, the southern states of the US were far more backwards. Air condition led to a surge in people moving south.

In short India, Africa etc had a lot of natural barriers to development which meant they were always going to be far behind Europe. European invasion gave a way of leapfrogging many of these disadvantages.

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wornohaulus|7 years ago

Thank you for teaching us a valuable lesson. And thank you for bringing "civilization" to India. We have learnt our lessons well from our white Masters. We Indian slaves are forever in your debt. I am sure there will be more lessons to learn.. for all of us..

codeisawesome|7 years ago

It’s truly astounding to see the views aired here... on HackerNews... on threads like this.