Are former British colonies better off now compared to other colonies and why
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The English colonies you mentioned ended up better because they tended to be better to begin with. The successful ones had either a lot of structure or few natives. India and Singapore had established economies and political systems before the British got there. They didn't need to be built from the ground up. Cape Colony (south africa) was a dutch colony for 150 years before the British got there and there was also something to tie in to. Australia and Canada had few natives.
The French colonies had a lot of natives without a lot of structure. The Saharan ones also had more nomads and raiding was a common part of the nomadic economy. These nomads had to be contended with. Rather than adapting an existing system to fit their needs, the French had to impose a new one from scratch.
The Belgian Congo was very poorly managed. The Germans didn't rule their colonies for very long and didn't invest as much as the British did in them. The Dutch colonies tended to be stolen by the British but they tended to be pretty good while they lasted.
Upvote:4
I seriously doubt you can make any such generalisation. Case in point, Zimbadwe is one of the worst countries in the world, when under British rule it was affluent. It used to be the bread basket of Africa, now it's starving. And that has nothing to do with the fact that it was British before, and everything with the way it's being run now.
And the same is true of everywhere else pretty much. Indonesia is doing rather well, despite the way the Japanese ripped everything that could be fit into a cargo ship from the country during WW2.
OTOH despite being very rich in natural resources and having received massive aid over the decades, Cote d'Ivoire is dirt poor.
What most of these countries have in common is that they pretty much reverted to the state they were in prior to the colonial powers coming there.
Indonesia was a mostly peaceful nation of farmers and traders, Zimbadwe en Cote d'Ivoire were scenes of near constant tribal warfare.
Of course many people don't want to hear that, and will call you a racist for pointing out the truth, but there you have it. The current situation in those countries has pretty little to do with the way they were run during the colonial era, and much more with the mentality of the people that were there before and still are there now.
Most all the colonial era did was give them a bit of infrastructure to build on if they so chose after independence. And yes, the British colonies mostly got more of that than the French ones, but if they ruined or ignored it after independence (as happened in general in sub-Saharan Africa, far less so in Asia) you can't blame that on the colonial power that left those roads and other structures behind, and the trained people.
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