QUOTE (bond007 @ Nov 20 2005, 02:21 AM)
QUOTE (Jagger @ Nov 15 2005, 09:34 PM)
True. Without him, the British Empire would have taken a lot longer to collapse... but was it really worth 60 million lives?
Hitler was also apparently interested in Asian culture, particularly Hinduism, which is where he got the word "Aryan" from, along with the Swastika symbol for his Nazi flag. He would often send Nazi troops over to India and Tibet for excavation. In fact, the Aryan Invasion Theory of India (a false claim) by Max Muller in the 19th Century, was heavily responsible for influencing Hitler's Nazi ideals.
The European empire could have fallen the first time those bastards set foot in our countries.
Afghanistan defeated and kicked the British out, Haiti defeated and kicked the French out, the USA defeated and kicked the British out, Simon Bolivar got independence for Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia but defeating the Spanish in 1821. Why countries allowed themselves to be humiliated like that is beyond me.
What I do not understand is the Congo had a statue of "king" Leopold as a saviour to them in 2005, while this Belgian crackpot genocide their people when he conquered a country over 40 times the size of Belgium and coerced the natives to produce rubber for his personally playground in the late 1800s
Europe did not have the manpower to control the world. What they did was to have one tribe or ethnic group fight another. I.e. the Opium war with China, The British used all Indian armed forces to defeat the Chinese; it was the Chinese versus the Indian. Why did the Indian just not fight the British and kicked them out, possible invaded her directly? They (India and China) fought again in the middle of last century for Kashmir (India vs. China vs. Pakistan all were fighting each other) however, in this case the Chinese won.
The British Empire was only able to control countries that were divided, and turn different factions against one another. In India's case, it was after the Mughal Empire had declined that it became divided, thus giving the British East India Company a perfect opportunity to turn different rulers against each other, while at the same time, expanding their own Indian army and conquering each region one by one. On the other hand, the British weren't able to control countries that were united, like China (with the exception of Hong Kong), which was united under the Qing Dynasty at the time, which made it very difficult to turn the Chinese against one another.
The British East India Company had a massive Indian army, which they used to fight their wars in places like China and Afghanistan, and they were all unfortunately very loyal to their British superiors. In 1857 however, on the 100th anniversary of the Company's Indian rule, many of the Indian soldiers had an uprising against their British superiors during the Indian Mutiny but unfortunately there were still many Indian soldiers loyal to the British, so they were unsuccessful in the end but had at least put an end to the British East India Company, forcing Britain to take direct control of India.
If it also weren't for the British Empire, the Industrial Revolution in Britian and Europe would never have happened at the time, since they needed the financial capital from their colonies, along with their scientific and manufacturing knowledge.