I am currently reading Kwasi Kwarteng’s fascinating and exhaustive book, Ghosts of Empire, which examines the British Empire’s role in several very different former colonies such as Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria, Kashmir, Burma and even Hong Kong. One of Kwarteng’s central themes is how the paths of these nations were influenced not only by British ideals and values, but also those of the powerful colonial administrators who governed them.
He also documents how the British class system was applied to the colonies and how administrators worked with native elites to run their colonies. This is an interesting idea and a more nuanced way of considering the conventional wisdom that ex-British colonies have fared better than former French colonies, and much better than those formerly ruled by the Portuguese, who controlled colonial administration more tightly with less native involvement. This is well-trodden ground. Yet, it made me think about nations that develop more organically and are not constructs of a colonial system. Can a nation lacking a deep colonial past achieve prosperity and maintain peace more or less easily than those with such a heritage?
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