Australia will have one last chance this year to revert to being a Nation of thinkers & doers or go further down the path of being a Nation of hangers-on & deceitful & problem causing sheeple !

Foxy,

I really try not to do this, but it gnaws at me when I see flagrant historic errors.

1. Colonisation. It isn't an ideology. It has been around since at least the time of the great Phonetician expansions in the 2nd millennium BC and probably way before. There is nothing different about the British Empire as compared to, say, Rome or the Median empire.It has been a part of the human condition for as long as we know. No one needed to justify it in the same way no one needed to justify maternity. Its only been since the rise of western liberal ideals that colonisation has developed a bad reputation. Even then, it was only the rise of the USA that has seen the end of colonialism. But as with other such ideals, the eventual decline of the west and western ideals will see the resurgence of things like colonialism and slavery.

2. The subject people didn't accepted the legitimacy of colonisation. The accepted the legitimacy of superior weaponry. When you've got a spear and the other guy has a gun...he's in charge.

3. Nationalism. The subject races didn't "created an ideology that expressed their own interests, nationalism." Nationalism was a western idea, as was the very idea of a nation. The subject races, or more exactly their elites, used nationalism as a tool to escape subjugation.

Foxy I after reading some things said here I know I am a lucky man
See I will take my brain into the polling booth in two days
Some have not used theirs for near a decade

mhaze,

What you need to do is look up - colonial ideology.
Then look up what was the ideology of the British Empire.
And if you have the time check in on the British Empire
in India to which I was responding.

http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/views/document/obo-9780199730414/obo-9780199730414-0034.xml

cont'd ...

OOOOOps - I again made a mistake in typing "views"
in the link when it should have been - "view"
My apologies.

http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199730414/obo-9780199730414-0034.xml

Foxy,

Have you actually read the book you recommended in your link? Because it doesn't say what you think it says. It points out there wasn't/isn't a colonialism ideology but instead each nation developed its own thinking behind their empire's purpose. It also makes the rather easily proven point that these various ideologies were developed more as an excuse or justification for the empire as opposed to a reason for it.

If you really want to find out about this issue, rather than make ill-informed pot-shots at the past, might I suggest the following:

1. Greek and Roman Colonization by Bradley and Wilson which explains the earliest examples of colonisation and justification thereof. It also draws the comparisons with modern empires that I mentioned earlier.

2. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire by Lawrence James. This is probably the most credited history of the empire although at 600 pages (in my copy of it) its very heavy going.

3. India and the British Empire - Oxford University Press. A series of essays that cover most issues on the British Raj and again some of the issues I've mentioned.