This is the tale of how an expatriate Briton in Copenhagen made a fortune in Imperial India and then, unusually, chose to retire to Sweden rather than the UK.
Its _not_ a shocking new discovery of Scandinavian collusion in colonisation and empire building.
-Scandinavians did try to find a few small bits of empire, though - mostly to find that the only places left over were the ones none of the major powers cared about.
The US Virgin Islands used to be The Danish West Indies until 1917, also there were colonies in present-day Ghana and in India - at least part of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, as well as a couple of places on the mainland whose names escape me. Iceland was Danish until WW2.
Today? Greenland and the Faroes remain (sort of) in the Danish Empire.
Norway, being in union with Denmark when the empire building took place, bided its time until the nineteen thirties, when a group of whalers occupied parts of Eastern Greenland, an occupation which was backed by Norwegian authorities after the fact until the League of Nations told us to snuff it.
The Swedes, too, dabbled in colonialism but never really putting their heart in it; the only overseas colony lasting more than a few years was Saint Barthelemy in the Caribbean, which was Swedish from the latter part of the eighteenth century until the late nineteenth century.
> Railways were a powerful institution of British colonialism that facilitated the economic exploitation of colonies and a smooth control over its people.
A lot of people praise British for developing India. They don’t realize that everything they did was to maximize their imperial control and economic gain.
I recommend Shashi Tharoor's "An Era of Darkness".
The reason why the railways became so developed during the British Era is because the Crown promised up to 10 percent returns in many cases. So it was a speculative boom, with the cost underwritten by the miserably poor citizens of British India.
The mathematician Andrew Odlyzko has a lot of material on the railways boom, which occurred in England and in India during the 1840-1860s.
Many of the rail lines were also quite absurd. The first rail line in Kerala for example. Even 170 years later, there are no major population centres around. Why was this route chosen? To transport teak most economically.
'Don't realize'? Which of the huge number of colonizers in the history of humanity ever set about colonization with the intent of minimizing control and minimizing economic gain?
>A lot of people praise British for developing India.
A lot of British people praise Britain for developing India. Indians themselves and other ex-colonies (much of the world that was Victorian pink) aren't so convinced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4
British railways were basically Roman roads. They served to move the army -- the fact the citzens could use them for trade was a massive incidental benefit.
For people interested in the subject, I recommend "Empire of cotton" by Sven Beckert.
One thing that I learnt was how actively the British undermine the local industries on their colonies. They wanted the colonies to be only raw material exporters. The effects of that policy can be felt even nowadays.
Another thing that I had not realized before, but it's obvious in retrospective, is how important was the British manufacturing demand in consolidating slavery in the USA.
> To do so, one needed the ability to ... command the will of thousands of workers, and have a European supervisory staff.
It's interesting to me how important the class distinctions were in managing the politics and workforce (same factors were used of course in the US Jim Crow regions once significant naked force was, er, discouraged).
The British were effective at titrating titrating this, by recruiting Indian professionals (lawyers, doctors, accountants etc) to manage non-Indian portions of their empire. Gandhi got his start (in the private sector) in South Africa for example. My own grandfather was recruited in the 1920s to move from Maharashtra to (then) British Malaya to be the doctor for a mining town.
It was a form of the effective "divide and conquer" strategy: they could get competent people who were, like the Europeans, not embedded in the local power systems.
Trivia: The names "Stephens" and "Huseby" probably ring a bell with some Swedes because of the scandal around the management of the estate in the mid-20:th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Stephens .
A nabob is a conspicuously wealthy man deriving his fortune in the east, especially in India during the 18th century with the privately held East India Company.
In late 19th century San Francisco, rapid urbanization led to an exclusive enclave of the rich and famous on the west coast who built large mansions in the Nob Hill neighborhood. This included prominent tycoons such as Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University and other members of The Big Four who were known as nabobs, which was shortened to nob, giving the area its eventual name.
“In the United States today, we have more than our share of nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H club—the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”
[+] [-] fergie|5 years ago|reply
Its _not_ a shocking new discovery of Scandinavian collusion in colonisation and empire building.
[+] [-] lb1lf|5 years ago|reply
The US Virgin Islands used to be The Danish West Indies until 1917, also there were colonies in present-day Ghana and in India - at least part of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, as well as a couple of places on the mainland whose names escape me. Iceland was Danish until WW2.
Today? Greenland and the Faroes remain (sort of) in the Danish Empire.
Norway, being in union with Denmark when the empire building took place, bided its time until the nineteen thirties, when a group of whalers occupied parts of Eastern Greenland, an occupation which was backed by Norwegian authorities after the fact until the League of Nations told us to snuff it.
The Swedes, too, dabbled in colonialism but never really putting their heart in it; the only overseas colony lasting more than a few years was Saint Barthelemy in the Caribbean, which was Swedish from the latter part of the eighteenth century until the late nineteenth century.
[+] [-] mellosouls|5 years ago|reply
The story is more nuanced than your "Briton who just happens to end up in Sweden" summary though.
[+] [-] vinni2|5 years ago|reply
A lot of people praise British for developing India. They don’t realize that everything they did was to maximize their imperial control and economic gain.
[+] [-] sn41|5 years ago|reply
The reason why the railways became so developed during the British Era is because the Crown promised up to 10 percent returns in many cases. So it was a speculative boom, with the cost underwritten by the miserably poor citizens of British India.
The mathematician Andrew Odlyzko has a lot of material on the railways boom, which occurred in England and in India during the 1840-1860s.
Many of the rail lines were also quite absurd. The first rail line in Kerala for example. Even 170 years later, there are no major population centres around. Why was this route chosen? To transport teak most economically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nilambur%E2%80%93Shoranur_line
https://www.google.co.in/maps/dir/Nilambur,+Kerala/Shoranur,...
[+] [-] vixen99|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s_dev|5 years ago|reply
A lot of British people praise Britain for developing India. Indians themselves and other ex-colonies (much of the world that was Victorian pink) aren't so convinced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4
British railways were basically Roman roads. They served to move the army -- the fact the citzens could use them for trade was a massive incidental benefit.
[+] [-] RobertoG|5 years ago|reply
One thing that I learnt was how actively the British undermine the local industries on their colonies. They wanted the colonies to be only raw material exporters. The effects of that policy can be felt even nowadays.
Another thing that I had not realized before, but it's obvious in retrospective, is how important was the British manufacturing demand in consolidating slavery in the USA.
[+] [-] jariel|5 years ago|reply
From an economic perspective, it's not zero sum game.
Canada and the US are colonies as well remember.
[+] [-] gumby|5 years ago|reply
It's interesting to me how important the class distinctions were in managing the politics and workforce (same factors were used of course in the US Jim Crow regions once significant naked force was, er, discouraged).
The British were effective at titrating titrating this, by recruiting Indian professionals (lawyers, doctors, accountants etc) to manage non-Indian portions of their empire. Gandhi got his start (in the private sector) in South Africa for example. My own grandfather was recruited in the 1920s to move from Maharashtra to (then) British Malaya to be the doctor for a mining town.
It was a form of the effective "divide and conquer" strategy: they could get competent people who were, like the Europeans, not embedded in the local power systems.
[+] [-] Pinus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] progre|5 years ago|reply
https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1261864
[+] [-] lehi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adolph|5 years ago|reply
In late 19th century San Francisco, rapid urbanization led to an exclusive enclave of the rich and famous on the west coast who built large mansions in the Nob Hill neighborhood. This included prominent tycoons such as Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University and other members of The Big Four who were known as nabobs, which was shortened to nob, giving the area its eventual name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabob
[+] [-] adolph|5 years ago|reply
--VP Spiro Agnew "as scripted by William Safire"
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/07/10/nattering-nabo...
[+] [-] goodcanadian|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabob_(coffee)