Winston Churchill- what do you reckon?

Devdas said:

The thumbs of weaver were cut so that they can't make find textiles

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killerargo said:

you don't have facts for me to counter them. Atleast give me a source which states British brought IR to India. You assertions are again as valid as a "xx wailing n ....."

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Zanis said:

why did the British ban refinement of sugar, production of iron and aluminium of more than 30 tonnes per annum per factory and processing of cotton in India ? The answer is simple: the Indians had been refining sugar, making the best iron implements in the world and processing cotton before even the Romans had began civilizing themselves, let alone the British. They also grew
cotton and sugar and were one of the greatest sources of iron ore.
Without British policy specifically condemning Indian industries, India would continue to be rich and Britain poor: only by banning industries in India did the British manage to sustain their industrial boom: raw resources came out from India, processed in Britain (specifically, manchester and liverpool region) and then shipped back to India for sale.
This is the fundamental backbone of the British economy of the late 1800s and early 1900s: pillage resources from India, prevent them from processing it, process it in Britain and sell it back in India.
Obviously, with such a policy in place, Indian industrial output would be greatly depressed compared to their domestic need.

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Zanis said:

why should i when churchill was resposible??did the japs took away the grain in case whites might be hungry?anyway his response was that of denial to whole situation.

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Devdas said:

India was only meant for a dumping ground for British factory goods and cheap raw goods for Britain's industries. Any industrial revolution in India was disastrous for Britain's industries. When British annexed India, systematic programmed were launched to destroy the local economy to create a space for dumping the British factory goods in India. The thumbs of weaver were cut so that they can't make find textiles, heavy taxes were imposed on exporting goods out of India and all British import were duty free, peasants were forced into cultivating indigo.

Beside that, even today major part British public are addicted to "poverty ...." from third world countries of Asia and Africa and "we are the savior" mindset.

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SirOrmondeWinter said:

No

No, these were all industries which collapsed BECAUSE of the IR, India was now in competition on the international stage. It's not like the traditional industries throughout Europe also didn't collapse at this time?

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SirOrmondeWinter said:

The Japs started the war, without that there would have been no famine and even if there had been we could easily have countered it

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Zanis said:

No,indian traditional industries were forced to shut down in favour of british industries
British policies also discouraged indigenous manufacturing. In England, imports of silk and cotton textiles faced duties of 70-80%, whereas British imports into India only faced duties of 2-4%. The result was that Indian exports to Great Britain decreased by 75%, whereas British exports to India increased by a factor of 50. Consequently, millions of artisans, craftsmen, spinners, weavers, potters, smelters, and smiths became landless agricultural laborers.

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Sindane said:

British cottage 'artisans, craftsmen, spinners, weavers, potters, smelters, and smiths' were also shut down by industrialisation. They lost their cottage industry and agricultural skills to new machinery, and were forced to work in factories and coal mines at reduced wages. That's why it's called the industrial revolution. It just so happens that it started in Britain

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rvsakhadeo said:

One has only to read about Warren Hastings and Robert Clive and their looting in the days of the East India Co. to realize what were the intentions of the British since early days.

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Zanis said:

No,indian traditional industries were forced to shut down in favour of british industries
British policies also discouraged indigenous manufacturing. In England, imports of silk and cotton textiles faced duties of 70-80%, whereas British imports into India only faced duties of 2-4%. The result was that Indian exports to Great Britain decreased by 75%, whereas British exports to India increased by a factor of 50. Consequently, millions of artisans, craftsmen, spinners, weavers, potters, smelters, and smiths became landless agricultural laborers.

one such case of exploitation was salt tax
In 1835, the Government appointed a salt commission to review the existing salt tax. It recommended that Indian salt should be taxed to enable the sale of imported English Salt. Consequently, salt was imported from Liverpool resulting in the increase of salt rates. Subsequently, the Government set up a monopoly on the manufacture of salt by the Salt Act. Production of salt was made an offense punishable with six-months imprisonment. The committee also recommended that Indian salt be sold in maunds of 100. However, they were sold in much lesser quantities. In 1888, the salt tax was enhanced by Lord Dufferin as a temporary measure. Cheshire salt imported from the United Kingdom was available at a much cheaper rate. However, Cheshire salt was of highly inferior quality than those made in India. India's salt imports reached 25,82,050 metric tons by 1851.

The most significant early economic policy of the British was the salt tax. It is said that in hot regions salt is worth more than gold. It was a necessity of life, which is why the British made sure to monopolize it. Anyone who made their own salt could be imprisoned for up to 6 months, and the British would raid any house or building where suspected salt making was taking place. By the late nineteenth century these salt taxes constituted an onerous burden on the poor Indian population, as Abhay Charan Das notes in his The Indian Ryot published in 1881

Quote:
Then again there is a still more wretched creature, who bears the name of labourer, whose income may be fixed at thirty-five rupees per annum. If he, with his wife and three children, consumes twenty-four seers [ 49 lb] of salt, he must pay a salt duty of two rupees and seven annas, or in other words 7 ½ per cent income tax. Now we leave it to our readers to judge, whether the ryots and the labourers can procure salt in the quantities they require. We can positively state from our own experience, that an ordinary ryot can never procure more than two-thirds of what he requires, and that a labourer not more than half.

indian industries collapsed because such unfair rules were imposed,and british did pretty much nothing to promote transition from traditional to modern industries like in european countries resulting in indian populace swarming up to agriculture to meet basic needs of life.

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Zanis said:

famines were frequent even before the war
The British were concerned primarily with extracting resources; the irony is that the building of the railroads starting in the 1860s, which was supposed to bring progress to India, coincides precisely with the emergence of frequent famines. As W. Digby observed in 1901, stated "roughly, famines and scarcities have been four times as numerous, during the last thirty years of the 19th century as they were one hundred years ago, and four times as widespread."

the crux matter was indifference displayed by people in power,i.e. the british towards indians,anyway british PM did not even acknowledge there was great bengal famine at the time,his response was a cold one that if there is really a famine then why gandhi isn't dead
Books: Churchill's Shameful Role in the Bengal Famine - TIME

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Zanis said:

and?you are completely ignoring tarrifs and other factors which were for benefit of england at cost of india,anyway i am not suggesting that whatever was looted from india was given to england fairly to all her people,but it still doesn't mean colonial powers were here to do any good to india,they were here for profit and never made an attempt to even pretend otherwise.

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rvsakhadeo said:

One has only to read about Warren Hastings and Robert Clive and their looting in the days of the East India Co. to realize what were the intentions of the British since early days.

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SirOrmondeWinter said:

Yes because India was now competing on the international stage against Industrialized European countries and now operated within the protectionism of the empire.

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SirOrmondeWinter said:

Yes famines before but not into the C20th

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as agriculture had advanced, Bengal is the exception but that was due to the war. I don't blame Churchill for his attitude to Ghandi, his 'Quit Now' movement during WW2 was ludicrous.

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SirOrmondeWinter said:

No one is suggesting that any of the European Empires (or any in history) were wholly altruistic and were always for the benefit of the 'mother country'. But equally all brought benefits as I will let these gentlemen demonstrate;

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