| Actually, that is quite untrue. Britain did not rule with a heavy hand. In India, it largely left local principalities intact, for example, and rarely interfered with local customs or religious establishments. There was no "virtual enslavement of heathens", for the most part, their lives went on as before, and to the extent that the British changed them, it was mostly for the better, providing schools, hospitals, improved courts, infrastructure (such as roads and railways), investment, and improved standards of living. Natives were made part of the Army and civil service, were admitted to the bar, were licensed to practice medicine, and sometimes amassed fortunes doing business within the imperial framework. The problems with empire were much more subtle and complex than suggested. Indeed, it is almost certainly true that natives were better off under the British than they had been under indigenous elites....... |
