What benefit would my ancestors have got out of Great Britain being an Empire and controlling such a large part of the world?
Posted by Significant_Tree8407@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 412 comments
As the question asks. With Empire and Colonialism being such a hot topic now, let’s bring it down to the level of an individual and their families living in GB during this period of Empire and Colonialism.
kimba-the-tabby-lion@reddit
Depends who your ancestors were. Wealth and power, if they belong to the right class, but most of Britain still lived in poverty.
Sailorf237@reddit
Exactly. Have a read of The road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell to get an idea of how the British working classes lived and died in an age when Britain was the richest country in the world.
My grandmother was two years younger than my grandad and was actually considered a class above him by virtue of having shoes. He went to school in bare feet in all seasons in the 1910s, growing up in central Manchester. He was also regularly beaten for those same feet being dirty, sometimes in front of the whole school.
He didn’t know her then, as they got together years later when he was going up through the ranks in the Army. She never told him that she remembered him at school as he’d have been so ashamed.
He was proud though and devoted his spare time to educating himself. He taught me to read before school age, and bought both the Telegraph and the Guardian every day to keep himself informed.
He fought for the empire as a career soldier, but had little good to say about it.
Glass-Evidence-7296@reddit
your grandfather didn't see the benefits during his time, but the current generation does by the virtue of living in the UK
Sailorf237@reddit
Well he died in 1990 and saw a lot of social change, most of which he’d fought for most of his life. He was a career soldier and obviously influenced me greatly as I was a Naval Officer for more than 25 years. It was he that introduced me to everything from Dickens and Orwell to Solzhenitsyn and James Baldwin. I have all of his books still in my study, and often reflect on the sacrifices he and my Nan made for me. Not a day passes without them being in my thoughts. I hope I’m half as influential on my grandkids going forward.
Glass-Evidence-7296@reddit
yeah, the generation that lived through the Empire didn't see any benefits, if anything their QoL worsened, but the wealth accumulated back then helped turn the UK into what it is today
Routine_Ad1823@reddit
Yeah, that book is eye-opening - especially the lives of the miners.
There's many other similar ones from the 1800s which just paint a horrible picture of life in the UK. Whole families living in one-room in squalor, pawning their clothes to buy food, working 18 hour days with zero health and safety (and I don't mean no high vis - I mean you're highly likely to die early or get a serious illness, at the best you might go completely deaf)
Sailorf237@reddit
Absolutely mate, those stories about the miners (that you can see he massively admired) and sharing beds in filthy boarding houses living on bread and dripping.
Obviously there’s a lot written about British Imperialism and oppression and the English in particular. What is forgotten is that the majority of the English working class suffered under the heel of the same boot of the ruling class as did people across the empire.
jugglingstring@reddit
Fascinating cheers pal
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
"Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938."
Trillions in wealth... All the infrastructure, architecture , fundamental building blocks of the country are what benefited your ancestors and is still benefiting you. Notwithstanding the systemic racism and white-centricity we see in the world today.
Due-Mycologist-7106@reddit
The dollar is worth way more in say India than the USA etc not to mention all the other things to pay attention when converting etc including the year. A laptop from now would be worth billions back then for instance so I wouldn't be surprised if a good Chunk of that wealth is stuff we don't even care much about nowadays. And if that's a real figure then it won't let me like 200billion a year or like less than 1/4 of London every year. What did he calculate? Taxes? Because honestly I would expect a higher number if he was trying to convert everything into today's money and we exploited the fuck out of it. Doesn't seem like that bad from the early amount. And then you think about all the deflation on infrastructure built during that time etc and well yeah. Most our infrastructure is post ww2
oliver__c2003@reddit
I'd be surprised if the entire economy of the world was even worth $45tn between those dates.
Green_Roof_4849@reddit
It will trickle down any minute now.
verzweifeltundmuede@reddit
This is actually an enormous topic and I studied a double module on it at university and wrote my dissertation on it. There is a historical debate about how much the empire impacted the day to day lives of normal folks. From culture, to architecture, language and even economics. John McKenzie's 'at home with the empire' is a good starting point for this topic. He's one of the principal historians in this debate and I think that text provides a really good overview.
Competitive_Pen7192@reddit
It's funny, every time I dare say the British Empire wasn't entirely a force for good and we should learn about all aspects of it I catch downvotes.
I'm not even saying apologise for slavery or out right judge actions as evil by today's standards.
It's just better if we understood our history in it's entirely, not a rose tinted version where everything used to be better when Union Jacks are flown everywhere.
jonewer@reddit
I think that's a case of YMMV depending on what sub.
Certainly I've been buried in downvotes for suggesting that the British Empire wasn't actually worse than the Nazis, or that Winston Churchill wasn't actually worse than Hitler's evil twin brother.
I'm not even joking when I say there have been academic spats on Twitter/BSky with some claiming that the British Empire was worse than the Nazis (apparently oblivious to how holocaust-denial adjacent they are being).
Unfortunately the whole thing is now a football in the culture wars, being kicked about by both sides, which pretty well precludes reasoned arguments.
Glass-Evidence-7296@reddit
The British empire's death count is higher than the Nazis tho, no denying that
jonewer@reddit
Without any qualification of "death count" that would apply to France as well...
and that would make both worse than the Khymer Rouge, the Confederacy, Apartheid South Africa, the Vandals, Ghengis Khan, the Zulus, the Timurids, the Spartans, the Ottomans, and ISIS.
At which point you're hopefully realising that you've said something extraordinarily and profoundly stupid and having a bit of a think about your life so far.
Glass-Evidence-7296@reddit
yeah, the Nazis were horrible, but weren't the only ones, and the same pattern has been frequently repeated throughout history including by the opponents of the Nazis................. is something most historians would agree on
Competitive_Pen7192@reddit
Yeah it sucks and bits of it can be seen on this thread with some unnamed person accusing "my side" having whatever view that makes discussion impossible.
I don't claim to any any side and to take them sells history short. A warped telling of history is awful and every government is guilty of it to an extent, albeit some far worse than others.
If we don't examine the past sensibility with no deliberate or unconscious bias then we won't ever learn anything...
Freebornaiden@reddit
Really? I think it depends on the sub. Plenty on here won't have anything vaguely positive or even nuanced said about it and insist it was one of the worlds great evils.
deflatable_ballsack@reddit
the majority of brits are proud of the empire. is it right to be proud of evil? what if germans were proud of the 3rd reich?
Negative_Innovation@reddit
I’ve rarely seen anyone say anything good about the British Empire on the internet and British people should be ashamed.
Then I read detailed books from historians including those under our rule and my opinion changes. There is so much more nuance to it.
FloydEGag@reddit
Most people don’t do nuance though. I’ve seen people basically saying anyone British who was alive during the time of the empire was essentially an evil racist and worse than the Nazis. You can’t really argue with someone who is that thick and has an agenda.
For the avoidance of doubt - I am not a fan of the Empire in most ways. But you can’t change history. I also think a lot of people pretty blindly slag off periods in history because they’ve been told they’re terrible. In reality there were always people in Britain who weren’t keen on empire or aspects of it - eg opposition to the Opium Wars or to slavery.
Ecstatic_Food1982@reddit
It was a force for good for the UK. Ultimately, that is what matters to the UK and the people who live here.
Competitive_Pen7192@reddit
Can we at least acknowledge that the Empire likely did harm to a portion of the planet and how we didn't bring civilization, prosperity and progress to all?
Of course one doesn't automatically exclude the other. You can uplift people and give them benefits at the same time as you're oppressing some of them too or taking all their resources. It's a discussion that will take a lot of time and examination of many sources to get any sort of clearer idea of how things really went.
Ok-Chest-7932@reddit
No, because that's overly simplistic. It's not a matter of having regions that benefited and regions that suffered. All regions received both upsides and downsides.
SteamPoweredSloth@reddit
I don't see anyone explicitly not acknowledging that? You might find the reason you're catching downvotes is because you're the question didn't ask for an ethical viewpoint on the British Empire & how it impacted countries around the world - it seems you would like to discuss that, in which case its better placed in a new thread.
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
Why are you policing what people contribute? The real reason they get downvoted is fragility.
The truth is you cannot take the ethical element out of the empire because that looting and theft is what benefited Britain and is still benefiting Britain, at the expense of the victims.
"Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938."
Trillions in wealth... All the infrastructure, architecture , fundamental building blocks of the country are what benefited your ancestors and is still benefiting you. Notwithstanding the systemic racism and white-centricity we see in the world today.
neilm1000@reddit
Why do you keep posting this? It's poorly calculated, and at best is full of holes you can drive a coach and horses through. At worst, it's made up bollocks. In neither reading does it stand up to even the lightest scrutiny.
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
But is the principle wrong? That Britain as a nation was fundamentally benefited by what it stole? Therefore the entire people of the nation benefited through infrastructure, commerce etc etc?
neilm1000@reddit
Potentially, yes.
Potentially, no.
Agreed. The key things are commerce and industrial/agricultural development.
SteamPoweredSloth@reddit
"Policing what people contribute" is a pretty heavy response to "please stay on subject matter." The question explicitly asks:
"What benefit would my ancestors have got out of Great Britain being an Empire.... , let’s bring it down to the level of an individual and their families living in GB during this period of Empire and Colonialism."
No one in this thread has challenged the idea that these benefits came at the expense of another country - because that's not what's being discussed. It is purely a discussion of how these benefits would (or wouldn't) have benefitted the average citizen living in Great Britain...
Unless you'd like to take a moment to point out where in the question it's asking for your ethical input on the empire?
Lowest_Denominator@reddit
It was a force for good in many of the nations we ruled over. India for example wouldn't have got the national rail network and industrialisation it got.
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
So looting, mass murder and cruelty is what matters to the UK?
mysp2m2cc0unt@reddit
Might get a different response from the Catholics in Northern Ireland.
verzweifeltundmuede@reddit
That's debatable in itself
Lowest_Denominator@reddit
Because often with the supporters of your side of the debate they refuse to acknowledge or accept the good that happened.
verzweifeltundmuede@reddit
I rarely bother talking about the Empire on Reddit now. But this seemed like a good post from someone genuinely interested in it in an academic way
Left-Steak2819@reddit
What are some of the things that you notice that are woven into the threads of British culture?
my first guess would be something like Chicken Tikka Masala?
TenTonneTamerlane@reddit
I see your reference to John McKenzie and I raise you Bernard Porter's "Absent Minded Imperialists"
It's nothing personal, but in the Porter v McKenzie debate there can be only one winner...
verzweifeltundmuede@reddit
I'm definitely on McKenzie's side. Living in Germany, which has a complicated colonial history has only solidified that for me
MidlandPark@reddit
Ha, some people are under a delusion that being patriotic means never criticising the actions done in the name of 'King/Queen and country'. Absolute nonsense, but that's where we are. Some really don't want to accept some of the truly awful things that happened, and will rather pretend it was all great.
The funny thing is, when people from the Commonwealth say they want acknowledgement of what happened, they're not asking for apologies. But you get these weird hostile response from people who tend to know little about everything and start deflecting on Arab slavery as if that makes historical acts ok. Some of these awful things happened within many of or lifetimes.
terryjuicelawson@reddit
We are probably descended from people just as much a victim of the empire, unless any members of the nobility are present.
Glass-Evidence-7296@reddit
yes, but the wealth accumulated during the Empire helped create one of the wealthiest nations in the world, so later generations did indirectly benefit from it
Southern_Passage_332@reddit
Rich:
Being in the top-top percentile of wealthy
Pre-1833, able to own and trade in slavery.
Access to rare imports, commodities like tea, silk, ivory etc.
Poor:
Squalor, poverty, endemic diseases, misery, perhaps a life in the workhouse, or working down the pits or factories.
Glass-Evidence-7296@reddit
and what about today? The benefits lasted generations
SingerFirm1090@reddit
Bugger all.
During the industrial revolution, many people moved from the countryside to the towns in search of work. Factory owners used to pay their workers in tokens that could only be spent in the factory owned shop. If the worker did something the owner did not like, they were sacked and lost their home too.
The workers were not 'slaes' in that they got paid, but in effect they were little more than slaves.
Glass-Evidence-7296@reddit
but the industrial revolution led to technoligical advancements, which led to the UK being one of the wealthiest countries of the world.
It was their great grandkids who benefitted from the Empire
silentv0ices@reddit
Cheaper than slaves, it costs money to buy slaves and they were an investment. Workers living in company housing paid in company script were a self replicating resource.
Routine_Ad1823@reddit
There's a book about how workers back in the day get mistreated, called The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, and they basically say that owners look after slaves because they're an investment, like you say.
They at least get food and shelter (usually). But if you're a worker and you get sacked then you get neither.
atomic-bananas@reddit
The vast majority saw absolutely zero benefit whatsoever. If anything they suffered more by sending them to foreign lands to fight in conflicts and work in extremely poor conditions. This myth that our ancestors were in any way responsible for colonialism or benefactors of it needs to end.
Glass-Evidence-7296@reddit
the wealth built during the empire created some of the wealthiest countries in the world today, or do you think the capital came out of nowhere?
NWarriload@reddit
Unless you were rich then probably fuck all.
Adam-West@reddit
You say that but without a rich elite we probably wouldn’t have had the Industrial Revolution. Which in turn elevated our quality of life considerably.
Background-Device-36@reddit
There was a slave owner from the southern US who went to visit the cotton mills in Lancashire to see where all the cotton his plantations grew ended up.
He was utterly disgusted at the conditions the workers had to endure there and remarked that they would never treat slaves as poorly.
Make of that what you will but to me it doesn't sound like the rank and file had a particularly luxurious existence.
Real_Ad_8243@reddit
The IR really didn't improve QoL at all. It suppressed tbe value of labour and produced dramatically worse health outcomes compared to the decades before it. Disease was rife, alcoholism was rife, violence was rife.
It was only with the introduction of policies that limited the effects of the IR that QoL began to improve again. Stuff like legislation about the working day, children be prohibited from work, compulsory education. All that stuff - advanced by Trade Unionism, not coincidentally - came despite the economic growth of the IR, not because of it, because the benefits of that economic growth were at the expense of the working poor.
Overall_Dog_6577@reddit
You need to look into the industrial revolution if you think it increased quality offers people where being worked to death and TB was everywhere from drinking stagnant City Wells
Katharinemaddison@reddit
It’s interesting to consider how much was done historically by people who didn’t need to work for a living. Having food to eat and a place to live never historically discouraged work and innovation. Yet now it’s often framed as though people in general need to need to work or they’d just do nothing…
Adam-West@reddit
I doubt that lords did nothing though. They probably had it easy, but there must have been a fair amount of management to do to keep the money flowing. Even just traveling around the country forming connections with other lords must have been time consuming.
RevolutionaryTale245@reddit
What about poets?
Katharinemaddison@reddit
Oh the lords too. It’s interesting that some of our older works were created by people looking for patrons, some - like Arcadia and other prose romances of the time - by people who were otherwise patrons.
My point anyway is that the upper classes haven’t generally always just lain about doing nothing. They just did the things they did despite not having to work for a living.
Yet nowadays people talk as though unless most people have to worry about their rent or mortgages nowt’ll get done…
Ok-Blackberry-3534@reddit
They're comparable to the billionaires of today. Everyone says they'd pack it all in and live on the beach at a certain level of wealth, but really wealthy people tend to have a need to be doing something that inevitably creates more wealth.
Katharinemaddison@reddit
It’s just interesting that this motivation to work has always existed - people have ambitions when they don’t need to earn.
Which undermines some arguments against a decent universal basic income and points to potential that might actually be lost with current high costs of living…
pajamakitten@reddit
I suspect a lot of people today would be small business owners or be self-employed if UBI existed. People would work but work for themselves instead of for a big company.
Katharinemaddison@reddit
Agree.
Ok-Blackberry-3534@reddit
Absolutely. Albert Camus wrote about it in The Myth of Sisyphus. The gods condemned Sisyphus to roll a stone to the top of a hill, and every time he neared the summit, it rolled back down. Camus reckoned this wasn't the punishment the gods thought it was because they'd given him eternal purpose.
verb-vice-lord@reddit
This is also why Britain and America didn't have any issues with a 90% top marginal tax rate.
Allen_Socket@reddit
I think the difference is: when you're in charge you don't do the work, you just tell your 'staff' to do the work. And then say "I did this!"
Just as an example, 'Clarkson's Farm'. Rich person makes stupid decisions, farm manager (i.e. somebody that actually knows what they're doing) says politely "That's not the optimal solution". Ignored by rich person, staff have to just go with it or no job.
tldr; work hard, decisions easy
Markies_Myth@reddit
Depends when and where in time. Up until the Restoration 1660ish, lords were also basically soldiers and servants to the court. They had functions beyond land management. Some were MPs and some of course were in the Lord's.
After this time the idea of a "gentleman" came along and that you lived off assets and followed elevated pursuits like hunting and riding and travel and did not work in the basic sense. Some aristocrats were renowned for being idle wastes of space like the Hervey family. Yes, the ancestors of Lady Victoria.
Adam-West@reddit
That’s actually mega interesting. Thanks
Markies_Myth@reddit
Ta I agree it is interesting. Basically before Cromwell brought in the New Model Army (not the band) in the middle 17th century then monarchs relied on their aristocracy to provide all troops for war via militias. There was no standing army.
another_online_idiot@reddit
A good documentary. The amount of sword swinging and head lopping was difficult to keep up with. And where did all those severed heads end up?
Realistic-River-1941@reddit
We don't hear about the people who did nothing...
scouse_git@reddit
Apart from the TV series they made about themselves....
conrat4567@reddit
The rich did these things to stay rich. Machines meant less paid workers but an easier time for those who operated the machines but this was not always universal, the cotton mills, for example, employed children to fish out jams in the machines which was know to crush them.
Then you get absolute chads like Robert Owen who basically proved that providing your workers with food, board and education as well as fair wages, gave you much more productivity and more profit. New Lanark Mill was his experiment. It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows compared to now but it was much better than the workhouses.
SarkyMs@reddit
A fair few did do nothing. You know the ones their house is owned by the national trust
lunniidoll@reddit
The Industrial Revolution has elevated our quality of life considerably in the modern day, but talking about our ancestors it actually worsened their quality of life. The average quality of life for the working class dropped significantly due to the Industrial Revolution.
Average people went from rural communities working fairly standard hours to working 12 hour days 6 days a week in factories with very little pay and in extremely dangerous and unhealthy environments. In cities like Manchester the life span of the average working class man dropped.
Also the Industrial Revolution moved the fruits of labour from the workers to the middle man - the business owner. Pre Industrial Revolution, quite often workers owned what they produced (I.e. individual textile workers) but the Industrial Revolution took that away from them and without the safe guards we have today like the minimum wage and workers rights, exploitation was rife. Mill owners would often cut wages to the absolute bone in competition with each other. And when people did push back you would get events like the Manchester Peterloo massacre and Preston Lune Street Massacre.
So yes, we benefit a lot but our ancestors that lived at the peak of industry and colonialism didn’t. They suffered greatly just to make the rich richer.
laudable_lurker@reddit
This is mostly false, as the majority of people worked the land in rural areas. Even in medieval times, peasants and serfs gave a portion of their own harvest to their lord (the peasants' plots being part of the common fields), in addition to working on their lord's land for several days a week. This meant that most of the product of their labour went to their lord.
The Industrial Revolution changed that in workers not being directly and legally tied to specific land or a specific lord anymore; they could relocate and find other employment without being seen as a vagrant.
mariegriffiths@reddit
Garbage.
That portion they were allowed so sustain themselves did so very well then that was taken away for them to slave in factories with lower life expectancy.
laudable_lurker@reddit
You're oversimplifying and romanticising medieval times to make your political point.
In the fields, there was regular famine, disease, and the demands of feudal lords were very harsh. Early industrial work was also brutal, but this accompanied population growth and changes in the economic system that ultimately benefited workers.
mariegriffiths@reddit
No I am basing it on fact and extensive historical knowledge.
Look at the average age of death.Look at the highland clearances.
You are just repeating the lie of population growth benefiting workers. It benefits the rich. see my comment above about the plague causing an increase in rights of workers due to the lack of workers.
laudable_lurker@reddit
It's not whether the rich profited from these things or not, it's whether the poor were better off before industrialisation.
The average age of death is a flawed stat to use in the first place, because most people forget about infant mortality--which is the primary factor here. Industrialisation was accompanied by urbanisation--these cities were overcrowded and had a lot of disease, which had a severe effect on newborns. However, outside of this, the average life expectancy increased.
The Highland Clearances were essentially like the abuses of the pre-industrial period--they are the doing of a rural elite, not factory owners or townsmen, reflecting land grabs by the aristocracy as opposed to industrial labour policy.
Industrial capitalism obviously wasn't a good system for workers--but neither was the system before. Both systems exploited labour, but many more people lived hand-to-mouth under feudal labour, essentially dependent on their local landlord due to their obligations. They had less autonomy both legally and socially. Industrialisation helped end that.
Adam-West@reddit
I kind of believe this. Like I said im not a historian. But I do know about modern day international development. And something people miss is that sweatshops (which I imagine are as close as we have to the original factory system) are not run by slaves. People intentionally move from their rural lifestyles to work there. It may mess your health up, but it probably means you have the money to buy your kids food when there’s a drought, or medicine when they are dying of a preventable illness. So I’m cynical but willing to be proved wrong.
mariegriffiths@reddit
Garbage
People had their land taken from them both in those times and more recent times so they had no land to support themselves and so forced into factories.
Adam-West@reddit
Ok but stop saying garbage. If you’re gonna be rude like that at least say ‘rubbish’.
mariegriffiths@reddit
Rubbish.
I am talking to an American or more probably and American bot that does not understand Rubbish.
DameKumquat@reddit
There's still stories of students being warned of hellish workloads in school or college, and they respond they live/grew up on a farm, and go to school/college for a rest.
Farm work involves lots of long hours especially in summer, and hard physical work even with modern machinery. As you say, there's a reason people move away as soon as other job opportunities or an education let them.
mariegriffiths@reddit
Garbage
The life expectancy dropped like a stone for people that moved from agriculture to factories.
_Sc0ut3612@reddit
At the expense of others? But it's okay because it's white people who are getting all the benefits, right?
Adam-West@reddit
Every single country in the world in every single development metric we have has improved since the time of the Industrial Revolution
No_Coyote_557@reddit
The industrial revolution didn't elevate the quality of life of mill workers or miners or child labourers. Just the owners.
thepoliteknight@reddit
Quality of life no, but actual life.
You're comparing the awful life of a worker in the industrial revolution to your life now. Try comparing it to the awful life of a peasant pre industrial revolution, where a bad harvest would have you seeing your kids and yourself starving to death.
Everything is preferable to starvation. Once upon a time people used to sell themselves into slavery just to be able to eat.
Adam-West@reddit
It gave them a hard life but It’s what kept their children alive and allowed our population to skyrocket
No_Coyote_557@reddit
Their children were working in the mills. Children under 10 were only allowed to work 10 hours a day though.
South_Leek_5730@reddit
It is generally accepted the Industrial Revolution absolutely shat on quality of life. It created slums and workhouses where poor people were treated like slaves and left in disgusting conditions while the owners got rich. That would have continued today had it not been for workers striking and threatening to set fire to the owners. That's why we have a better quality of life and the 5 day working week. If that hadn't happened you would still be working 7 days a week and living in slums and so would your kids. It took till the 1950/60's to finally get rid of all those slums.
The Industrial Revolution helped the country and the rich but it did nothing for the people.
Lazy_Age_9466@reddit
1970s to get rid of slums. I lived in one in my early life. Families in 1 or 2 rooms, no running hot water and outside toilet shared between 4-6 families.
Adam-West@reddit
I don’t doubt that initially but look at the population boom that arose from it. That’s from children making it to adulthood whereas before they did not. We can see the same process happening in developing countries around the world. People move to slums in droves and migrate to cities to work in sweatshops by choice. You don’t do that unless the alternative is worse.
South_Leek_5730@reddit
Medical advances and science allowed children to make it to adulthood. Which offset the numbers dying in the mills and the mines.
https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/read-this/bodies-of-dozens-of-real-life-oliver-twist-children-worked-to-death-in-the-industrial-revolution-have-been-unearthed-some-just-eight-years-of-age-4145672
Adam-West@reddit
You don’t get scientists in subsistence farming communities. You need customers to in order to invest in innovation. You don’t get customers if the population live in extreme poverty.
South_Leek_5730@reddit
What are you talking about? You don't think the owners had doctors for the workhouses? Can't have your ~~slaves~~ workers dying. Medicine took some huge leaps around that time. Nurses were introduced who kept things clean where previously they weren't. We had smallpox vaccines which saved quite a few lives contributing to increased populations. Do you even know how many kids were dying of small pox?
On your other point you applying current world economics to a different time. These people weren't their customers. They didn't have the money for the things they produced. The were literally in extreme poverty.
Not sure why you want to argue this. These are facts. Capitalism has never ever been about the greater good and helping everyone and it never will be. It's greed of the few and always has been. Exploitation of people and resources in the pursuit of profit.
Adam-West@reddit
That’s the same thing though. You’re saying that children living until adulthood as a result of the Industrial Revolution is a bad thing because factory owners didn’t have good intentions. Workers were not slaves. It was a shit time to be alive. But that doesn’t mean it was worse than the alternative. Because the alternative (which we both seem to be agreeing with) is death.
South_Leek_5730@reddit
No. I clearly said it wasn't a result of the Industrial Revolution which is fact.
Adam-West@reddit
You literally just said that owners had doctors and nurses to stop their workforce dying. How is that not a result of industry?
South_Leek_5730@reddit
I never said Nurses and the doctors were only there to treat workplace injuries as in amputations for example. They didn't have GP practices.
You are are now being facetious and a troll so this conversation is done and you will be blocked.
silentv0ices@reddit
I can remember the last of the slums on tyneside getting knocked down in the 1970s.
Passionofawriter@reddit
... and started a chain reaction of us absolutely destroying the climate by dumping toxic byproducts into rivers, pumping toxic and greenhouse gases into the air we breathe and saturating the world with plastics that may only degrade in millenia.
What elevated our quality of life was people fighting against capitalism for workers rights, for kids to not be sent to factories to work for cheap, and outsourcing all our dirty factories to the global south. Your elevated quality of life only exists because of others suffering.
And thats ok, its not your fault. But it is absolutely the fault of the greed of capitalism and capitalists.
Adam-West@reddit
I didn’t really comment to get into a debate about whether capitalism is good or bad. It’s easy to criticize because there is so many downsides to capitalism. But if you think that our life would be better without it then you’re just categorically wrong. And im not just talking about us in the UK. Im talking about globally. Every possible metric of development has improved dramatically since the Industrial Revolution, in every single country on earth. Yes, things are still shit for many many people. Children shouldn’t be working in brick factories and sweatshops. But it beats starving to death in a tribe with everlasting boundary disputes with Neighbours. Go on a website called gapminder.org and play around with the interactive metrics for a bit and it will help you feel more positive about capitalism.
Dizzy_Context8826@reddit
Half of our kids still died of preventable diseases under capitalism.
The capitalist class didn't just gift us the NHS, affordable housing, environmental regulations, time off work, enough money for leisure activities, and so on.
Those things were all achieved by commited democratic socialists.
NiceGuyEdddy@reddit
Up to 3/4 children died before capitalism.
So capitalism still saved a lot of children.
Capitalism is responsible for modern medicine, modern agriculture and modern technology, and all of the positives and negatives those bring.
If you can't even be honest and objective enough to acknowledge the reality of positive change brought about a system that you and I both disagree with, you're not arguing in good faith and your argument is worthless.
Dizzy_Context8826@reddit
You've inferred a disagreement where there is none, then gone after me for claims I didn't make. I never said capitalism led to no positive advancements.
Maybe just have a conversation rather than running with your inferences and assumptions?
NiceGuyEdddy@reddit
How is you point about children still dying under capitalism relevant if it wasn't in disagreement to the previous claim that children die less since formation of the modern, capitalist world?
And the irony of you complaining about others assumptions.
I never claimed that you said there were no positive advancements made by capitalism, I called you out for not acknowledging said advancements and effectively presenting a biased point.
Maybe try and be more coherent in your arguments, rather than blame others for your poor ability at expressing yourself clearly?
Dizzy_Context8826@reddit
If you pay closer attention to the previous claim, you'll notice it's built on a false dichotomy i.e. capitalism or pre-Industrial subsistence. I was responding directly to this by showing capitalism got us so far then something else already made further improvements.
Distinction between subtext and supposition.
I'm not a public broadcaster covering party politics or discussing branded products, ergo not obligated to present information in the way you're suggesting.
"Capitalism improved some things" ought to be completely uncontroversial, particularly for Marxists. Again, I shouldn't have to say every single thing I believe about a topic in one comment to convince strangers of my objectivity or whatever. You could just ask what I think, seems way less exhausting for everyone.
NiceGuyEdddy@reddit
If you pay closer attention to the comment you were replying to, you'll notice there was no false dichotomy, instead it was clearly a comparison of a pre capitalist and capitalist society. Ergo, no dichotomy.
"Distinction between subtext and supposition"
Elaborate lol.
You may not be a public broadcaster, but you made a public comment on a public forum, and therefore open your comments to criticism.
""Capitalism improved some things" ought to be completely uncontroversial"
Agreed, but the main point of the person you replied to was exactly that, and rather than acknowledge their point and then continue into your own, you instead ignored it, thereby framing your comment as an overall disagreement.
This can be either incompetence, or disingenuous, but either way it's wrong.
Passionofawriter@reddit
Correlation =/= causation. Capitalism isnt responsible for modern medicine, developments in the sciences are. Capitalism if anything makes research harder by keeping the research they do to themselves, patenting all their work and wasting smart scientists' time with new ways to reinvent the wheel in order to avoid patent law issues with other companies. Wed be much further in the sciences if it wasnt for capitalism, which drains all our smart people to work for lucrative drug companies and finance or tech sector jobs that benefit noone other than rich shareholders.
mantolwen@reddit
Funny because all that stuff makes people happier and more able to work so it's also good for capitalism.
Independent-Try4352@reddit
Absolutely. Life didn't start to improve for the majority of people until after the First World War, when the government and the upper classes got very worried that millions of veterans weren't happy to go back to being serfs after seeing their mates slaughtered for King and Country. The Russian revolution also focused their minds on keeping the populace happy. (That's when gun control started to kick in).
The NHS and improvements in working and housing conditions only really started after the Second World War, when ex servicemen voted for Labour post war.
It looks like we managed about 50 years before all of the above started to be reversed. The future will probably see a return to pre WW1 working conditions as the assault on those pesky H&S and environmental laws continues.
The only change from Victorian times is we'll have to doff our caps to Oligarchs rather than Aristocrats.
MixGroundbreaking622@reddit
If you want to see true unregulated capitalism just look at industrial revolution England. It was horrific. What we've got now is a result of centuries of work force industrial action.
Passionofawriter@reddit
Its not like our options are capitalism or tribal living, so im not really sure why you went there. Yes our life expectancy and standards of living have increased but in spite of capitalism, not because of it.
Our life expectancy increases can be mostly attributed to scientists and medical practitioners who were either rich and bored, and had lots of time, or working in the field (i.e. the guy who invented germ theory). Their stories have nought to do with capitalism.
Id argue capitalism actually slows our scientific progress, by introducing NDAs and patents that employees have to sign when conducting R&D, and taking our smartest STEM graduates away from valuable research into less profitable ventures like cancer treatment, or even alternative energy sources.
I think back to the industrial revolution and genuinely think, how much better life would have been if Marx was right, if actually people did get fed up of industrialisation and decided to socialise their societies, if we lived in planned economies where everybody had what they needed. But marx didnt predict a lot of things, and somehow the capitalist monster is still around, bigger than ever, causing misery for 98% of people on this planet. But yeah as members of the 2% we are living well, buying clothes produced by a worker in a sweatshop who can barely afford to breathe and visiting poorer countries on vacation, leveraging the weakness of their currency to feel wealthy. Yes of course life is great for me right now. But i care about the 98%, who are feeding the infinite growth machine with their lives and the lives of their children.
Adam-West@reddit
There hasn’t been a single example of a none capitalist society where the quality of life has improved like ours has though. Despite there being many many examples of none capitalist societies. When a capitalist society moves away from capitalism their quality of life drastically decreases every time.
Suspicious_Banana255@reddit
I'm not convinced the industrial revolution benefitted anyone but the rich. I know I'm looking through rose tinted glasses but the idea of a family all working together at home sounds nice to me. Either working the land or all being weavers or something similar. Sounds better than being in large factories all doing different things, having to move away from family to work for a rich industrialist in a stinky crowded city.
Adam-West@reddit
You are living right now in a post Industrial Revolution society. You can’t get to where we are today without the revolution.
cnsreddit@reddit
Yeah but the people then ate shit so I could write this while having a shit
Gildor12@reddit
They say because it’s true. The life of workers during the Industrial Revolution was totally grim, much worse than farming. No health and safety, exposure to horrendous chemicals and physical hazards. Tell us how life was better for anyone but the rich.
Adam-West@reddit
Look at population growth at that time
Gildor12@reddit
That doesn’t mean that life was objectively better
mariegriffiths@reddit
The opposite in fact.The plague was the end of much of serfdom as the lords had to compete for workers.
mendeleev78@reddit
it's kind of a huge chicken and egg dilemma: were we rich because we had the empire, or did us being rich cause us to have an empire?
mariegriffiths@reddit
Great answer.
Adam-West@reddit
You should read a book called guns germs and steel. Or for a more fun but slightly less academic read try ‘prisoners of geography.’
Freebornaiden@reddit
'We' suddenly found ourselves at the centre of the world and quickly developed the maritime capabilities to exploit it. Wealth Inequality was much lower in Britain that elsewhere in Europe and having more calories per day made our workers more effective and we didnt get too bogged down fighting our neighbours like those sucker europeans.
Obviously the Empire brought advantages and a lot of wealth was siphoned off, but dont overlook the fact that inventing the industrial revolution means we invented the greatest wealth generating epoch in human history. People take it for granted now.
Adding Silk Road to that reading list too. The chapter on rise the British Empire is succinct.
mariegriffiths@reddit
Garbage.
The Darby family were Quakers and abolitionists. The same goes for the Cadbury family. They were looked down upon by the elite for doing 'trade' and excluded from the rich elite due to their religion. The industrial revolution was built though on the backs of those slaving in the mines, foundries and factories.
https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/local-hubs/telford/ironbridge/2021/03/08/unfair-namecheck-for-darby-pioneers-in-slavery-report/
bewilderedheard@reddit
Their input was coincidental to their existence.
MixGroundbreaking622@reddit
The industrial revolution made life so much worse for the working class initially.
the_sneaky_one123@reddit
Well, that is all subjective and it depends on how you look at it.
The industrial revolution certainly led to improved quality of life eventually thanks to innovation. But in the shorter term not so much. Life in a factory was not an improvement over a life in agriculture.
And I guess you could say that the long term benefits remain to be seen. Sure, we have so much technology today but it is also unsustainable. It's not clear what we will have in the next few hundred years and it could well turn out that life was better as a small holder practicing sustainable agriculture in the 1600s than whatever the hell we might have by the year 2200....
sobrique@reddit
I mean, just look at how much of our existing infrastructure was build during the Empire.
London Sewers? Tube Network? Rail/Canal network?
And then look at how much shilly-shallying there's been to try and deliver HS2?
It's my believe that we've been coasting on the legacy of The Empire for a hundred years now, and are - slowly - finding that they huge investments are starting to wear out.
Dolgar01@reddit
The Industrial Revolution made the workers lives measurably worse, in general. Life expectancy dropped, slums appeared, factories were hell on earth to work in. ‘The dark Satanic Mills’ as Blake called them.
unleashtherats@reddit
The industrial revolution was the cause of Britain's global empire, not the consequence. Britain's empire came mostly after industrialisation. Britain had overseas colonies before this, but so did every other empire in history.
UnderstandingSmall66@reddit
Ah yes the rich elite did a great job working in those factories and running the gears of the empire.
this-guy-@reddit
If the question is "how did my ancestors benefit" the majority of them really didn't benefit from the industrial revolution. A chunk of them were farmers in Ireland and while a few of their siblings made it away to Canada my direct ancestors went into workhouses. The Scottish branch didn't apparently like it much either as my ancestors spent a lot of time in and out of poverty or getting arrested. A few male ancestors managed to work on the trains when they came, and the women were "in service" that seems to be the way out of the workhouse for most of them (After living in those places for over 20 years). Looking back at their lives it seems pretty grim.
Realistic-River-1941@reddit
Alternatively, having a load of iron, tin and coal, stable law and politics, a 20+ mile wide moat and general attitudes conducive to trying out new stuff meant an industrial revolution could happen, and give a technical advantage in imperialism.
abfgern_@reddit
But thats more or less equally true of everywhere
Adam-West@reddit
We started it though didn’t we. We probably could have waited for somebody else though I guess
Routine_Ad1823@reddit
But at the time it didn't help people - they were basically moved off the land into horrendous factories... then later on, made redudant from those factories by development, without a consequent social safety net.
I agree that it helped in the long-term, but not for the oi polloi at the time
erinoco@reddit
The Poor Laws were one. Yes, indoor relief was seen as a horrible recourse; but it helped pave the way for modern welfare systems. Besides, you did have the network of friendly societies and similar institutions that grew up alongside industrial revolution.
tangerine-hangover@reddit
Again isn’t that answering that it made things better for today, at the time the workhouse was not a benefit, it was slavery and torture.
PraterViolet@reddit
The workhouse was a place to be avoided at all costs but prior to their introduction, a person could die in the streets from cold/hunger with no recourse even to parish relief (if they werent from that parish). As others have said, workhouses, for all their faults were a start in the right djrection towards better social support.
erinoco@reddit
Compared to starvation or whatever people could be prepared to give in charity, it was a relative benefit. (Besides, even with indoor relief, the New Poor Law didn't necessarily have to be administered with the harsh principles of "least eligibility" and hard labour in mind, and standards of welfare had significant local variations.)
lunniidoll@reddit
Exactly, the OP asked about ancestors not today. Yeah today we benefit but for our ancestors at the time of industry it was hell, and quality of life dropped significantly due to the Industrial Revolution.
gitsuns@reddit
The Industrial Revolution fed colonialism, rather than the other way around.
Adam-West@reddit
Colonialism started hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution though
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
Not true at all.
"Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938."
Trillions in wealth... All the infrastructure, architecture , fundamental building blocks of the country are what benefited your ancestors and is still benefiting you. Notwithstanding the systemic racism and white-centricity we see in the world today.
hooligan_bulldog_18@reddit
Can I ask why your timeline for your outrage starts on chapter 15? Conveniently ignoring the Romans & vikings invading & enslaving brits when we were peaceful
Vikings are fetishised these days as hero warriors. This happened only a few hundred years before you cherry picked 1765-1938
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
What are you on about? OPs question is asking about the British Empire. Your fragility is showing.
hooligan_bulldog_18@reddit
Yes & you had a whole spiel pre-loaded with facts, figures & outrage.
I simply asked your opinion on atrocities carried out on British while we were a peaceful godfearing nation?
I'm hearing Crickets...
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
Not related. Go away. Your argument is infantile. Whataboutism at best.
Ecstatic_Food1982@reddit
Says the person who keeps posting data that is literally made up.
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
The fragility is so telling.
neilm1000@reddit
What do you mean by this? You've said if a couple of times to different people.
Ecstatic_Food1982@reddit
What does that mean?
Ambitious-Sun-8504@reddit
The Vikings didn’t enslave Saxons, they quite famously had agreements and diplomacy between each other after the initial raids. Then integrated into the royalty. This was also not ‘a few hundred years before 1765’ it was in 865… Also, the Saxons themselves were invaders who ousted the Roman celts. First you have to define what you even mean by Brits, because in the events you’ve mentioned, they were entirely different cultures and ethnicities being invaded.
Not even sure what you mean in saying Saxons were peaceful either as they had 7 different kingdoms fighting each other, hence why some of them teamed up with the Vikings
hooligan_bulldog_18@reddit
Lmao!!!!!!!! Yes & famously brits had a deal with India e.g. we bought the The Koh-i-Noor diamond fair & square... now they want it back.
Do you think the vikings massive ficking savage army had anything to do with us obeying & allowing them to subjugate us?
Let's just say Britain = bad
Everyone else = the world was different back then. Law of the jungle was to be expected
Ambitious-Sun-8504@reddit
What are you on about? You’ve just completely avoided addressing the points I brought up. It’s weird that you’re even saying us, do you think that you’re a 9th century Saxon, or do you think there’s maybe a chance that people have integrated dramatically in over 1000 years?
Never said Britain = bad. I’m addressing the extremely flawed arguments you’ve made.
Victimising yourself using Vikings invading people you have absolutely zero connection to is just insane, and not relevant to people whose grandparents and great grandparents were directly colonised.
silentv0ices@reddit
An Indian politician writing a book about to appeal to Indian populism.
erinoco@reddit
The $45 trillion as calculated is not the gain to Britain; it's the imputed loss to India. I don't agree with the figure personally, as I think the assumptions behind the calculation are wrong.
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
But is the principle wrong? That Britain as a nation was fundamentally benefited by what it stole? Therefore the entire people of the nation benefited through infrastructure, commerce etc etc?
erinoco@reddit
I think it's partially wrong. IMO, Britain had unusual intrinsic factors which allowed for economic success, and these led to global expansion and exploitation. To a certain extent, this led to a positive loop, stimulating further development, but this wasn't the sole or most important factor, and the impact varied greatly over the centuries. Sometimes, it had a large impact over various parts of the economy; at other times, the net benefit was only sectoral.
neilm1000@reddit
You've posted this several times and it needs to be addressed.
This figure is debatable at best and total bollocks at worst. Happy to discuss further, it's not often that I get to use my cliometrics training.
Freebornaiden@reddit
I did a deep dive on this. That all comes from one paper and it has been fiercely disputed. The author is a marxist hindu nationalist engaged by the Modi government.
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
So your point is Britain did not benefit at a fundamental level from what it stole during empire?
Freebornaiden@reddit
No my point is that the $45 trillion figure is a total crock of shit.
mendeleev78@reddit
I would be very sceptical of numbers like that - especially as UK entire GDP now is 2.54 trillion. See this reddit thread for the debate over that figure:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gc3ifr/utsa_patnaik_claims_that_the_british_siphoned_45/
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
The number may be questioned but the principle can't.
Mission-25@reddit
So true it was only a minority, the ruling elites, who benefited. The vast majority of British people were impoverished and remain impoverished.
When people go on about colonialism and empire as if it enriched all Britons they forget it was only a minority who gained wealth that they passed onto their own families.
RagingMassif@reddit
This is incredibly naive.
Everything that the Edwardians and Victorians invented - good and bad - benefited (or not) British people first. Whether it's access to tea, medicine, elevation from working to middle class, education outside of church indoctrination, etc etc
flowering_sun_star@reddit
You're very wrong. The industrial output of the country both allowed and required the colonial empire. Raw materials come in from the periphery, processed in the UK, then the resulting goods are sold both in country and exported.
One of the big things that did for the country was allowing regular people to have more stuff. I've seen estimates that pre-industrial societies would be spending about 40% of their labour on clothing, and another 40% on food. Industrialisation drags that right down within the country, allowing that labour to be used for other things.
The wealth the owners of those industries accrued was also spread around somewhat, both through taxation and charitable works. Think just how many schools, libraries and theatres around the country date to the Victorian era
mariegriffiths@reddit
Also lets not forget we 99% had to pay the elite in our taxes when we abolished slavery instead of fining them instead and giving that as reparations.
mariegriffiths@reddit
And we where paying them until 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Compensation_Act_1837
Lowest_Denominator@reddit
Fuck all other than an education and jobs.
mariegriffiths@reddit
Schools were there so that both parents could work and make the rich richer and indoctrinate this work ethic and skills required to make the rich richer.
RomfordGeeza@reddit
Exactly this. The gentry were largely as unpleasant to working class/poor Brits as they were to everyone else they ruled over.
mr_herz@reddit
Job creation for the have nots, probably
The_Geralt_Of_Trivia@reddit
They would have got jobs. Wealthy merchants piling money into the local area happened a lot. Newer roads, parks, communal buildings.
Industrial revolution benefits. UK hit the industrial revolution first, so was able to benefit massively because of the empire and huge trade.
Chidoribraindev@reddit
Yeah because rich people didn't spend any money in trades, arts, commerce, industry, war, etc.
The fucking potato wouldn't have nourished an expanding European population if it wasn't for colonialism.
Ok-Exercise-801@reddit
Thank God for all their expenditure on war!
Chidoribraindev@reddit
Welcome to the real world? War enriches the country that wins it... Are we going to pretend that didn't help the country?
Ok-Exercise-801@reddit
First of all, the original question posed wasn't about 'tge country', it was about the average citizen. These are not coterminous.
Second of all, victory in war doesn't necessarily enrich the country by any means - what good did world war I do for Britain, for example?
Chidoribraindev@reddit
"Country" means people, too.
Businessmen, traders, builders, sailors, craftsmen, artists, medicine, and sciences all directly benefited from the money available because of war. If OP wants to know if their family benefited, the answer is almost definitely yes.
Re: ww1: the UK had more social programs and its chemical and machinery industries grew a lot. Also, they weren't destroyed, so winning saved its whole economy, too. Not its biggest win but not being wiped out seems like a benefit of winning imo
Markies_Myth@reddit
Exactly. Most of us got nothing.
You see smug comments on here saying "British raided the world for spices but have bland food etc etc". Like as if these bastards collected millions of millions of quids worth of rare items and just shared them out so we all got nice things. Course they fucking didn't. It is called the class system.
Also forgetting that up until about 1955, starvation and malnutrition for poor people was a common thing. Charles Dickens wrote some books about it. One became a musical. Never mind spices.
NERV-Miata@reddit
This.
ThePolymath1993@reddit
We were the first industrialised country and we haven't been able to grow enough food on this island to sustain our entire population since around the 18th century. We're an island and we are/were heavily dependent on imports of food and raw materials to fuel our industry. Controlling the overseas territories where those resouces come from and having a massive navy to protect our seabourne trade network was the logical conclusion.
Time_Candle_6322@reddit
Ah yes I am sure this question requires you to squeeze in some bullshit about the right wing
Goldf_sh4@reddit
Did those hard-won rights come to pass in spite of the industrial revolution or because of it?
ThePolymath1993@reddit
Bit of column A, bit of column B. The fat bloke who owns the mill would really rather not have to pay the grotty little oiks who work for him, but unfortunately for him they've banded together and gone on strike.
But if there were no mills the whole thing wouldn't have happened.
cnsreddit@reddit
The second part is because without the industrial revolution workers as we think of them aren't really as much a thing.
Goldf_sh4@reddit
You're right.
VibraniumSpork@reddit
100% this.
There’s a lot of “If you were poor, it did you no good at all,”…but there were obviously trickle-down benefits for all, as evidenced by the quality of life most people in the UK have compared to the quality of life most people in ex-colonies have IMO 🤷♂️
mariegriffiths@reddit
The far right capitalism bots are out in force pushing the totally discredited trickle down economics theory.
silentv0ices@reddit
The wealth of the UK was built by the hard work of the workers and the industrial revolution the wealth of a lot of the families that still rule us came from the empire none of it has or ever will trickle down.
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
This is a very naive view. "Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938."
Trillions in wealth... All the infrastructure, architecture , fundamental building blocks of the country are what benefited your ancestors and is still benefiting you. Notwithstanding the systemic racism and white-centricity we see in the world today.
laudable_lurker@reddit
Other commenters have noted flaws with your source. The British Empire was not a profitable business in the long term: Imperial Measurement: A Cost–Benefit Analysis of Western Colonialism.
TenTonneTamerlane@reddit
I'm sorry but the "45 trillion" figure is a highly controversial one, which has been debunked by a number of economic historians, such as Tirthankar Roy.
For one thing, Patnaik added a 5% compound interest year on year on year, and adjusted her calculation for a brief period when the pound was very strong against the dollar, which inflated the figures further.
Undoubtedly Britain made some profit from India - Roy asserts a figure around 2% Indian GDP a year- but the 47 trillion is simply absurd
silentv0ices@reddit
Benefitted my working class ancestors? The people who benefitted keep that wealth offshore now. The infrastructure was built from the wealth generated here. Bla bla bla some Indian politician made up a number.
VibraniumSpork@reddit
What about British workers indirect benefits, such using raw materials secured from colonies at lower prices than before, thereby increasing profit and wages for those workers?
Or are technicalities like that too indirect or incompatible with a belief that British people built British success with 100% British blood, sweat and tears with no help from anyone or anything non-British ever?
silentv0ices@reddit
Yeah your living in a fantasy land if you think the workers gained wage increases. I'm also interested in what materials you think were gained at a lower cost? Steel, coal? The empire was exploited by its trading conpanies.
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
You're the one living in fantasy land if you think 45 trillion stolen from just India alone had nothing to do with benefiting Britain as a whole.
silentv0ices@reddit
Your imagined 45 trillion.
VibraniumSpork@reddit
General quality of life increasing for Britons over that period with no increase in wages or expansion of business? Really? I think you’ve carved out your own little bit of Fantasy Land there, mate.
Or what about the schools, roads, hospitals built in part from the money brought in by colonialism; did British workers not benefit from that stuff either?
You don’t get to draw such easy lines as “Colonialism money went straight into landed gentry’s pockets”; that’s incredibly obtuse, and sounds like you have an ideological axe to grind.
It’s fine to admit that we made our lives better, wholesale, by the exploitation of people in other lands through military and economic expansion. That’s the game. We can all share in the shame and the benefits, deciding which bits of the equation we do or don’t morally object to. Trying to wash your hands of any and all bad bits just sounds a bit naive and childish IMO.
arpw@reddit
Based on that you could argue that the main benefit that OP's ancestors got was their literal existence in the population. The industrial revolution and the empire went hand in hand, and the combination of them enabled massive population growth. Without the empire, population growth would have been far more modest and OP's ancestors may not have been born at all.
FemboyFPS@reddit
What does colonialism have to do with workers rights and civic rights? If we're talking about civic rights probably the biggest gains were a result of the general populace being in a state of malcontent after major wars, the Napoleonic wars and the economic issues after led to a lot of drive for votes.
As for industrialization, iron and coal were things the UK had plenty of - some of the best coal in the world actually. Obviously that would matter nada and nil if it wasn't for the fact that the technological revolution that led to those resources mattering hadn't started within Europe and realistically it is those things that enabled control of a globe spanning empire and if those developments had happened anywhere else then that country would have done the same things.
EdmundTheInsulter@reddit
Hence the logic in scouting the world for more people to live here. Despite life being so unrelentingly vile of course. Quite a feat.
Future_Challenge_511@reddit
For average person the cost of sugar and tea plummeted over the course of the empire and helped them produce more because they genuinely had access to more calories and caffeine than other places in the world, most of the value of which was taken by the people they worked for but they were likely more productive. The markets of the empire heavily incentivised the importation of raw materials (outside of specific protected industries that had support from oligarchy class eg the grain law subsidising the farming estates they owned) which allowed a lot of the industrial revolution and factory working- as well as the massive overproduction that flowed from it. Victorian Britain's obsession with different cutlery and so on was a product of this. This massive overproduction certainly trickled down in terms of clothes and material goods prices. There were also so real positive social gains in terms of clean water and sewers that came from rich people needing to live near the production that created their wealth. All in all though being a working class person in the imperial core who wasn't willing to engage in the oppression of others in one way or another wasn't a great life and was probably worse than elsewhere because the cost of living was extremely high comparatively.
cknell95@reddit
The members of the British working class who participated in and benefitted the most from colonialism are now called Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Americans, and white South Africans
Unless you were in the army or a toff, it didn’t impact most brits besides maybe consumer goods availability
AppointmentTop3948@reddit
We got pepper
Strechertheloser@reddit
It depends on who your ancestors were and where they lived.
CatchRevolutionary65@reddit
In order to keep grain prices down and it’s domestic population quiescent your government would simply take food from the Indians ensuring many of them will die in famines.
So there’s that.
Apidium@reddit
They didn't starve to death. Or if they did they had kids before they starved to death.
We kinda can't grow enough food.
Jensen1994@reddit
If they were working class, nothing at all. Probably had to send their son's off to fight in some colonial wars to die somewhere.
If they were part of the elite, they got richer.
Nothing much changes.
Salty_Bridge_9110@reddit
My grandpa was alive at the height of the empire and its Wealth and despite living in mainland Britain he was wearing cloggs had a hard life and poverty and the world war 2 came along…..
I think people in positions of power as they can have work done cheaply benefited.
Also people who came to Britain from some of the parts of the empire probably benefitted more than some brits as they would have in certain periods of time saw a drastic increase in life quality despite it not being great for anyone who isn’t rich.
StatisticianAfraid21@reddit
Industrial jobs in factories as Britain used its Empire to force colonies to buy British goods (famously for example cotton to India).
Once other industrial powers started to compete with the UK for export abroad British industry declined massively. For example, Glasgow wasn't able to compete with Japan post-war in ship building. Some of this was labour costs but other European countries were able to retain manufacturing prowess like Germany. It also related to lack of investment and innovation by industrialists in the UK. My theory is that the mercentile system of the British empire didn't create enough robust competition nor drove innovation long-term. Poor vocational education also contributed.
idontlikemondays321@reddit
Plenty of work and by work, I mean 12 hours a day sat winding cotton or other mind numbing or physical jobs that leave you riddled with arthritis, a stooped back or in the workhouse because your body had given up.
BuyOk1427@reddit
What have the British ever done for us? /S
skibbin@reddit
A nice cup of tea
DarthJarJarJar@reddit
Access to spices which they then chose not to use
Mission-25@reddit
This is quite a subjective question. Perhaps you should research your family history as it’s not a one answer fits your particular situation. It depends on who your ancestors were and also perhaps how you live today in terms of health, work and education.
Banterz0ne@reddit
I don't know how it's not obvious that if you steal wealth you get wealthier?!?
_ThePancake_@reddit
Until the industrial revolution, none.
kh250b1@reddit
Most of my relatives were dying of TB back then, so not a lot of
bluebullbruce@reddit
I'd say having access to such a massive market to sell manufactured goods to and then buy raw materials back at a significantly lower price due to them being colonies created a lot of wealth within Britain and in turn there was a ton of innovation and advancement of tech as well as development which would have significantly benefitted your ancestors.
This would have had a positive impact on their standards of living, health and their ability to generate generational wealth. Of course some were better at taking advantage of these opportunities than others, but there would have been so many advantages of controlling so much territory.
Kamic1980@reddit
A lot of jobs were created in the UK through Empire
The trade in goods would have opened jobs in shipping, ship building, dock workers, stevedores etc.
With empire the need for more ships grew and so there were more jobs in shipbuilding.
A larger navy and army were needed to protect British overseas jobs, also increasing not just the opportunities there but there would have been additional jobs created to support the activities of a larger navy and army.
The goods themselves - all the cotton for the mills came from overseas. The UK doesn't grow cotton to my knowledge.
The raw sugar was brought to the UK for further refinement. So more factory jobs created.
Cocoa, tea and other goods would have created more jobs and industries around their refinement and distribution. Look at Bournville and Cadbury for example.
The need for easier transport and distribution of goods would have hastened the development of better transport and created more jobs through the building and expansion of the train, canal and road networks.
The wealth flowed in to the aristocracy and those enterprising people who could be entrepreneurs but it trickled down too as they could hire more people from the lower classes to cater to their needs.
Empire brought a ton of wealth to this country and it benefited the nation as a whole even though a lot of people might want to imply otherwise.
It also provided new lands for opportunity for people to leave here and take a chance.
CommandSpaceOption@reddit
I think people are too wedded to the idea that they grew up “working class” for generations. While some of them are straight up lying like Victoria Beckham does, others underestimate the impact of living in an economy that has access to an Empire.
All of what you’ve said is correct, but if anything it underestimates the benefits of Empire.
Britain couldn’t have industrialised without having reliable supply of food and raw materials from Empire. And all other things being equal, it was far better to live in an industrialised country than an agrarian one.
bewilderedheard@reddit
Well the vast majority did. The middle and upper class was tiny until the postwar era.
CommandSpaceOption@reddit
Did you read my whole comment or only the first sentence?
bewilderedheard@reddit
I read it all. I don't think people are too wedded, it's likely an accurate reflection of their ancestry.
CommandSpaceOption@reddit
My point isn’t that 19th century UK factory workers had it good compared to us. They didn’t.
My point was that they had it better than the peasants in Bengal. And without colonies to act as a source of raw materials and a market for products, the Industrial Revolution might never have gotten going.
And the Industrial Revolution did improve lives across all strata of society. Even those at the bottom of the pile found it easier to organise political movements now that they were urban.
vj_c@reddit
Huge parts of the country have tall poppy syndrome/crab bucket mentality around this. It infuriates me - my family only arrived in the '60s (I'm British Indian) - whilst my grandad was obviously working class, I'm in a white collar job, making an ok wage through his & my parents hard work. That's the whole reason we moved here! Not to stay working class forever FFS. If there's one area I hope never to integrate properly, it's the British class system.
SignificantAssociate@reddit
All of the above and more. Empire made the nation wealthy so when came the time of welfare, we had significantly more wealth to tap into. People say the level of welfare isn't enough, and I agree. But the empire is the difference between being poor in the UK and being poor in India today. Unpopular opinion so expecting downvotes
mendeleev78@reddit
britain had a big navy, but a very small army for its size (which may have helped us - we lacked the huge standing armies that often created nasty politics in the continent).
Dotty_Bird@reddit
Many foods we take for granted like potatoes and rice.
MattHatter1337@reddit
Industry. We made so much money from the empire and advancements, without it we may not have been the first.
And although mostly amongst the "elite" there are things from abroad that would have been brought over that people could at least see.
We got food and spices too. And there was movement within the empire though idk how affordable it was for you average Joe.
Leading-Annual-4390@reddit
Answering your question with reference to the individual rather than deviating to the morally of this, here's my response:
Financially, the UK extracted large sums of money from its colonies (I've heard a figure of 6% of India's GDP?), which is basically moving wealth from colonies to the UK itself. This tended to enrich the upper classes and probably some of the middle class (job creation within colonies themselves). For lower class people they would benefit as rich people would set up businesses and employ servants, giving them employment opportunities.
Culturally, the UK would have imported food, spices and customs from other countries, enriching its culture. Consequently, individuals would benefit from having access to additional goods that were previously unavailable.
Individuals would also have access to life in colonies, experiencing different cultures and climates.
cnsreddit@reddit
I find it interesting that if you spin those benefits around it becomes kind of insulting.
'Indians benefited from job creation by the empire. They also benefited from British culture and some Indians could move to the UK and experience new cultures and climates.'
If you said that you'd be downvoted to oblivion.
Otherwise_Craft9003@reddit
The country developed faster at their expense and we were no longer threatened by anyone as such.
Lots of rich people were able to develop their various societies and structures.
RedFox3001@reddit
Whenever someone bangs on about the British empire and what the British did during empire…I always think about what life was like for the average Brit back at home.
I’m pretty sure at some point the average age of death was in the 20s in Liverpool. Cholera was rife. Men were press ganged in to the army and navy. Kids were forced to work in factories. Work houses existed for the poor.
In short, it was shit. There was no benefit for the average Brit.
For the rich yes. For the vast majority, no.
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
"Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938."
Trillions in wealth... All the infrastructure, architecture , fundamental building blocks of the country are what benefited your ancestors and is still benefiting you. Notwithstanding the systemic racism and white-centricity we see in the world today.
RedFox3001@reddit
Where did it all go?
cnsreddit@reddit
It never exited the figures are made up bollocks
scouse_git@reddit
In Liverpool in the 1820s, life expectancy at birth was 16.
Danph85@reddit
Yes, and why do you think we're not still in that situation, but the countries we colonised often are?
RedFox3001@reddit
There are lots of reasons.
winobeaver@reddit
tea with sugar
Goldf_sh4@reddit
Yay for him.
winobeaver@reddit
really the benefits to even Oliver Twist would've been pretty significant. He lived in a country that had the infrastructure for clean water and sewers. His contemporary elsewhere would be dealing with cholera and open sewers.
cnsreddit@reddit
Victorian London, notably free from cholera apparently
Goldf_sh4@reddit
I think Oliver Twist would not have had opportunities to engage with intellectual thought.
winobeaver@reddit
dunno. The Cooperative moment was started by normal working-class people. A lot of the Radicals were working class people, like those at the Peterloo Massacre.
But yes most of the leading intellectuals of the time came from wealthy backgrounds.
Routine_Ad1823@reddit
Ah... but there's a quite well developed theory that tea and sugar were basically required to fuel the Industrial Revolution. Prior to that people drank ale, but that wasn't conducive to operating heavy machinery for hours. Tea and sugar gave a bit of an alertness boost, and sustained people through long shifts.
MonitorJunior3332@reddit
There’s actually a lot of debate about this, with some economic historians arguing that the formal empire was actually net drain on the UK’s domestic economy (and certainly public finances). The wider “informal empire” of free trade had many benefits though, most of all manufacturing jobs from British exports
mariegriffiths@reddit
This really bugs me about the elite who run the media going on about the guilt of ancestors and that we should ALL be ashamed. NO it was THEIR ancestors. They are trying to spread their guilt out and not accept responsibility. They got rich they used that wealth to build extravagant follies using the labour of the masses who were paid the minimum they could get away with. Serfdom still existed till the 1600s. Yes celebrate the African slaves who created the riches in the stately home but also celebrate the grunts that built the place including my ancestors. They always say house was by by sir and architect You never see the list of the workers despite this being known.
Nyx_Necrodragon101@reddit
There was a bus that went all the way to India in 50 days stopping at tourist spots en route. Tickets cost roughly £2500 in todays money.
Hollywood-is-DOA@reddit
Coal, diamonds, slaves, copper, timber, you name it and they took over countries to get it.
Exotic_Mobile8744@reddit
Jobs. Infrastructure. Food. Security. police. Sanitation. Safety. Schools.
without empire, non of this would have happened.
Juliiouse@reddit
Absolutely nothing for a very long time. As with many empires, the first people to get colonised are the nation's own working class. Our common lands were broken up into enclosed partitions for wealthy landholders, the diverse crops that formed our mostly forgotten rich local cuisines were replaced with sheep fields and we were funnelled into the slums of industrial towns and cities where our local cultures were regarded as the silly and outdated oddities of the country bumpkin.
After that, people were exploited as a disposable workforce: pay was bad and houses were cramped and subpartitioned over and over again.
Things ironically got better during the age of the industrial wars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During the Boer War, the Empire had a panic on their hands: a full third of all men who volunteered to fight were rejected due to poor physical fitness, disabilities caused by preventable childhood illnesses and low levels of literature.
The welfare state was one of the great products of many things, including the Empire: in order to produce a household capable of truly benefitting the nation, the nation's wealth would be injected into improving education, fighting childhood illnesses and improving diets.
It prepared us very well to send men to the Somme.
However, 1900-1920 saw the greatest benefit of the Empire for the average British citizen. The vast majority of our food was imported from across the Empire at preferable prices (mostly so our frields could remain for wool), meaning that food was cheap but of a pretty good quality for the time. Even with the German Empire raiding our sea trade, we were still able to bring in enough food that it wasn't deemed necessary to keep agricultural workers out of the draft.
l0singmyedg3@reddit
without knowing anything about you, your family, or your ancestors, not sure how i'm supposed to reply to this one.
TheNathanNS@reddit
One of my great-great uncles had the pleasure of dying in a field at age 36 in Belgium being shot at by some German in 1918
BobbyWeasel@reddit
Access to cheaper goods in general, including goods that cannot be produced at scale in the UK like tea, rubber, coffee, tobacco, sugar, chocolate etc. much of which was (is) produced via slavery, then later cheap manufactered goods made in the colonies, thats probably the main obvious thing for most people who aren't descended from wealth.
Less obvious example: most of the UKs rail and canal networks (which used to be much more comprehensive) were built by Irish navigational engineers working in appalling dangeous conditions, that cheap migrant labour could be considered a benefit of empire because Ireland was, at the time, part of the empire.
Then more recently the UK had access to millions of soldiers from the commonwealth (and Ireland) during the great wars (and since then too, to an extent) so arguably your ancestors benefited from that in the sense that the UK didn't get invaded, and food and material was shipped from all over the world to the UK for the war effort.
lordrothermere@reddit
Is Empire and colonialism such a hot topic right now?. Certainly doesn't feel like it is as hot as it was during the major sub-saharan conflicts of the 90s and 2000s, or the NI peace process.
Where's this hot topic cropping up?
Adorable_Pee_Pee@reddit
Your ancestors got to work down a mine for a penny a day then die of consumption. Life only really started to get better for the common man from after ww2 and then only because a large number of armed and well trained solders demanded a fairer deal.
cut-it@reddit
Yes, and the USSR showed many things were possible like free health and education.
scouse_git@reddit
No, it started from the 1880s and 90s when the cost of the improvements could be met from the spoils of empire. This is when the factory acts and free compulsory education started to kick in. By the 1910s there were old age pensions, unemployment benefits and sick pay. After ww2 the welfare state accelerated the trend but the empire had ensured that started well before this.
Ironically, it was the poor physical health of army recruits during the Boer War that made the govt realise that the health of the nation was severely impaired and in need of improvement.
Mediocre_Sandwich458@reddit
Lol the upper classes exploiting the "indigeous", doesn't take away from how much the British Empire pillaged all over the world.
silentv0ices@reddit
Did you read the original question?
Mediocre_Sandwich458@reddit
Yeah. It's a dumb question.
sole_food_kitchen@reddit
I’d have to argue that all the public infrastructure and money splashing around allowed innovations that absolutely benefited the workers including the miners. I’m a miner and you have no idea how advanced empire era British mining was compared to even some places today
morriganscorvids@reddit
sugar, tea, most of the food you eat now, including potatoes and tomatoes. glood quality clothing. pukka roads.
and all of this made on slave labour.
cut-it@reddit
Empire bought a lot of goods and raw materials.
This has meant that a privileged section of the workers has benefited off this and showed little sympathy for the colonised peoples.
Marx and Engels spoke about how the Irish and British workers should unite against their common enemy but it never happened, probably for some of these reasons.
Not all trade unions have been against colonisation and the Labour Party was not really against it either. Decolonisation came about through massive backlash and pressure inside the colonies and a new way of puppet regimes and control through finance was established
Significant_Tree8407@reddit (OP)
Thanks for all of the replies. As for my great grand parents and their generation it was working in the ship yards of Scotland, Rosyth, Sunderland, Portsmouth and Plymouth. Some in the Scottish coal mining area of Fife and south of Glasgow. Probably never out of work but not much fun either.
GreatBigBagOfNope@reddit
Your ancestors? Statistically likely to be the working class, the factory workers, the farmers? Almost nothing.
The decision makers, officers and owners of the imperial project, though? Their benefit was ungodly quantities of money
erinoco@reddit
There wasn't that much money in the political side of imperial administration, unless you were senior enough in the East India Company at its most rapacious. Generally, imperial careers were like most other public service careers: attractive because they paid regularly and solidly, and you could build up a pension for retirement. Indeed, because living standards were weaker abroad, you could, while actually serving, live a much more affluent lifestyle abroad then you could hope to achieve on the same salary in Britain.
AnonymousTimewaster@reddit
This is a better question for r/AskHistorians
It will highly depend on where exactly your ancestors lived. Some of my ancestors owned rope mills in Lancashire, so they benefitted enormously.
Dranask@reddit
Free travel to Australia, apparently it was a steal.
Stunning_Buyer_64@reddit
People loved it so much hardly any came back
Onions99@reddit
Criminally easy, you could say
StrongEggplant8120@reddit
Should be outlawed its so easy.
HelikosOG@reddit
One immediate pops into my mind, you were able to travel to parts of the empire for free however this usually was only accessible to the middle class and higher. This is speculation but I imagine it wouldn't have been difficult to set up business ventures out there. May even have received help from the local governance particularly when the venture aligns with their goals.
PhantomLamb@reddit
Bragging points over the French
Apprehensive_Bus_543@reddit
Normal working class guys joined the army and traveled the world.
Routine_Ad1823@reddit
Traveled the world makes it sound kind of fun though. In reality they were treated only a few steps above slaves, and many died from disease or war.
Apprehensive_Bus_543@reddit
Yeah but I wonder if any historians have ever made a comparison. Escape an inner city slum which were full of disease to serve abroad, I wonder how the disease and death rates compared.
FloydEGag@reddit
Probably not much, most of my ancestors were scraping by then starving in Ireland, then scraping by in Wales. I assume they’d have at least drunk tea though which ofc came from India
hhfugrr3@reddit
I've been doing some family research recently. I think the answer is "not much". My family seem to have all been labourers, occasionally boiler makers. Most of them seem to have ended up dying in a workhouse. I've seen no evidence that any of them left London, let alone the UK.
Puzzleheaded_Hat5235@reddit
Adam Smith argued it was costing Britain to have an empire, trade agreements with countries would have been more beneficial
GiftOfCabbage@reddit
We weren't the Roman's. We didn't go to places and industrialise them very often. Mostly we just took over and demanded a levy.
Ok-Chest-7932@reddit
Jobs would probably be the big one: the more that was conquered, the more materials that could be brought back to the UK to be manufactured into end products, and the more UK workers that were needed to manufacture them.
Difficult_Falcon1022@reddit
Huge amounts of wealth were brought to the UK economy, which was used for buildings, infrastructure, employment etc. Obviously there is a massive class element in this, but this class exploitation is the same fabric which allowed for colonial exploitation. I think sometimes the fact the working class didn't benefit in the same way is brought up so as to prevent culpability of the UK as a whole; but I don't think this talking point makes much sense at all. There has never been a widespread acknowledgement of the evils of British colonialism, stolen artefacts have never been returned, there has never been an apology, it is controversial to even consider taking down statues of those who did directly benefit and architect the empire. Realistically that stolen wealth is still here, that is why the UK is still one of the richest countries on the planet, and the fact that the wealthy hoard that wealth away from the masses doesn't change that fact. I don't think the average person owes penitence, but I do find the bloody minded attitude towards it thats very common to be distasteful.
There are human remains which have been requested back which have been refused. It's not right at all.
LilRoi557@reddit
So I explain this to my students. To think about it as "well, my family was poor so we were never affected by it" is to assume that society was separate to the empire. Take Liverpool. If you made products in or around Liverpool, they were your products that were taken across the Middle Passage and traded for enslaved people. The profits of slavery built Liverpool, Bristol, London, and Glasgow. Entire quarters were offices that employed clerks, domestic servants, and other sellers who could live off the wealth that slavery brought in.
The UK had one of the largest navies in the world, which allowed for the empire's expansion. While only 2.7% of the population was in the Navy as soldiers, that's not accounting for shipbuilders (again, Liverpool, Hull, Aberdeen, Southampton, etc. built entire economies off of shipbuilding), clerks, servants, and farmers whose produce went to feed the navy—that and the coal that went to steamships.
I haven't even gotten into the Industrial Revolution because I'd just be repeating myself.
The empire was so woven into the structure of society at the time that everyone benefited from the empire and the UK's control over such a large part of the world, even the poorest, just because its so baked into how the UK functioned.
tikkataka@reddit
The British government encouraged and facilitated resettlement to the colonies during deindustrialization and after mass closure of the coal mins. When living conditions became tough in the UK, many white South Africans of British ancestry moved over in the 70s as relocation was subsidised and often times arrangements were made to secure housing and jobs.
These days you would need to qualify for a visa and get zero financial assistance to leave the island.
the_sneaky_one123@reddit
They would have benefited off the infrastructure that all of the spoils of the Empire.
The reason why the UK had roads, trainlines, bridges etc. is because of this excess wealth. Also things like scientific advancements that you benefit off laterally that would only be possible thanks to this concentration of wealth.
You also would have benefitted off a peace dividend. Not much war or strife at home while everyone was out pillaging the rest of the world.
Now, those are all indirect benefits that your ancestors would have gotten just from being included within the imperialist society.... as for direct benefits? Most likely not very much. The biggest direct beneficiaries of Empire would have been the upper classes which your ancestors most likely would not have been a part of.
There also would have been some indirect damages caused to your ancestors. Thanks to cheap goods and labour coming from the colonies the value of their goods and labour at home would have been diminished, likely leading to a reduced standing within society. This is the same kind of disbenefit we see with globalisation today.
BarNo3385@reddit
Depends on who your ancestors were.
If they were in the merchant class they may have benefitted from Imperial Preference (the Empire basically acted a lot like say the EU, an internal single market with protectionist barriers outside), and access to overseas markets on favorable terms.
If they were part of the governing class, overseas postings could bring career advancement, ans potentially opportunities for enrichment.
If you were a Welsh coal miner dying of black lung at 19.. you probably didn't.
Scarboroughwarning@reddit
There were (and I hate this phrase) trickle down benefits.
This applies to the colonised also. Granted, plenty of suffering, but many did well from it.
The Asians that went to Africa did pretty well, until they were booted out. But, they still now benefit from that as it set many up.
collapsedcuttlefish@reddit
Literally every modern convenience and comfort that you enjoy today was built on hundreds of years of colonialism and slavery. Even the poorest in the country living in modern poverty experience benefits from their country's history of colonialism.
AnalysisGlobal5385@reddit
My forebears worked in cotton mills, they wouldn't have existed without the Industrial Revolution which wouldn't have happened (then) without the Empire and slavery. I exist because of it.
TenTonneTamerlane@reddit
Hi there!
So the trouble with this is that it's such a large and heated area of debate among historians, that finding an absolute answer to it is nigh on impossible.
See for example the idea that empire generated jobs, such as ship building. Well that's true to an extent; but many other extra-imperial trades, such as with the Baltics and South America, also played a role here. So we have to try to tease out just how much shipbuilding was related to empire, and how much was generated by trading with countries outside of empire.
Likewise; the profits of Empire, where they went, and even whether they existed at all, are also hugely nuanced issues - never mind the extent to which they "trickled down" to the masses.
What I'm trying to say here is that most "Benefits of empire" need to come with an asterisk, followed by a foot note of "But actually it's more complicated than that". A great example would be Cornish tin mining; did some tin mines expand due to imperial trade? Possibly; but then tin also flowed into other non imperial avenues as well. But then the empire arguably undermined (pun intended) Cornwall, as cheaper tin was found elsewhere.
Personally if you're looking for a good start, the book Empireland might be a good shout - though if you've got the time/resources for something more academic, try even getting into the Porter McKenzie debates, or the Oxford History of the British Empire!
verzweifeltundmuede@reddit
I feel like we probably sat in the same seminar based on your answers 😂 Did you study history per chance?
TenTonneTamerlane@reddit
Ahah guilty as charged! Ever wondered who was sitting behind you in the lecture theatre ..?!
But yes, old history student reporting - though most of the reading on Empire I did after I graduated, when I had more money than sense and far too much time on my hands !
verzweifeltundmuede@reddit
I wanted to do the Soviet Union for my special subject but glad I got shunted into the Empire module! Possibly the best thing that happened during my time at uni.
I wish I hadn't sold my books once I graduated. They're so expensive to buy back now 😂
TenTonneTamerlane@reddit
Aha! For me; showing my age here, but I graduated in 2012 when the empire wasn't the hot button culture war issue it is today! It came up a few times in various modules but nowhere near with the intensity you'd expect these days!
Flash forward a few years later, suddenly everyone and their gran is talking about it - and well trained from seminar debates, I felt like I should probably do the required reading before I joined in!
Ive always leaned towards the John Darwin/Bernard Porter side of the aisle on Empire issues - but I appreciate it's a topic on which mileage can very much vary!
Lowest_Denominator@reddit
Benefits of the industrial revolution. They'll have received an education they would likely never have had. Jobs which would never have existed.
Ill_Professional6747@reddit
In theory, spices 🙃
Big-Teach-769@reddit
None at all
Big-Teach-769@reddit
Unless you were part of the 0.1%
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
This thread is jam-packed full of historical inaccuracy, nativity and white-fragility. Such snowflakes. The mere thought of accepting that looting and stealing from other countries benefited the nation as a whole and therefore ALL the people e.g. infrastructure, has these snowflakes crying and shivering.
Psimo-@reddit
Living in London meant your got the sewers, which means less likely to have died of cholera.
Psimo-@reddit
Living in London meant your got the sewers, which means less likely to have died of cholera.
lysergic101@reddit
Cheap opium
Independent-Try4352@reddit
In 1886 the Maharajah of Varanasi paid to have a well dug in Stoke Row, Derbyshire, as he was appalled that the villagers didn't have a clean water supply.
I think that indicates how life was for the average person during the glory days of the Empire.
thefirstofhisname11@reddit
Plainly put, your ancestors would have lived “better” than people of similar stature in other parts of the world. That does not mean they lived like kings, but that in a like for like comparison, they came out better than e.g. Chinese farmers.
The really big improvements came in the 20th century, which the West “won” as a result of their 19th century conquests. By virtue of being so much richer than everyone else, western countries could afford entitlements and safety nets that were not attainable for other countries.
Much of the decline that you see today in Britain is just that; the levelling of the playing field. British factory workers work much less than Chinese or Bangladeshi workers - they are also paid a lot more. That results in less competitiveness, which, in the long run, results in less wealth.
miko7827@reddit
Surplus grows societies. You ancestors benefited from this growth and development in the society
putlersux@reddit
Exports to these countries keep factories going
Suspicious_Banana255@reddit
It was all for money, rich people got richer by exploiting resources in other countries, the poor probably didn't feel much benefit. No different to nowadays, and no different to what every other country has always done. The vikings, Romans and Normans did it to Britain.
Realistic-River-1941@reddit
Depends what they did. Does your family have a big house in Bristol?
erinoco@reddit
One thing I would point out about the winners. I wouldn't say that the landed classes and the aristocracy were invariably the winners: rather that, as was the case for most of British history, whoever did win sought to join the landed classes once they became rich enough, and their descendants stayed there whenever they could. The old landed families without investments, urban land or mining royalties fell behind relatively, or even lost their wealth. And those who replaced them weren't representative of all the winners; just the ultra-successful portion of them.
HatOfFlavour@reddit
You might not have been able to afford it but there was food available. Famines suck.
There were jobs beyond backbreaking agricultural labour, yes a lot of these jobs were backbreaking industrial jobs but some people got to be writers/artists/actors.
British being a lingua franca could let you travel and trade easier than other non-empire nations.
Military security of the imperial core, at least until WWI.
ark19790@reddit
If you were a poorer person who committed a or was accused of committing a relatively minor crime, you may get sent to the "new world" to build and populate it rather than just your basic hanging. If you're incredibly wealthy, you could rinse the empire for resources. If you were a sailor, there was a lot of work because boats were the only way to connect that empire. If none of the above, then probably no benefit.
thehoneybadger1223@reddit
My british ancestors were farmers and fishermen in the north. They'd have gotten sweet fuck all, except maybe smallpox or Scarletina when it drifted up that way
PraterViolet@reddit
Christian philanthropy was a massive thing in Victorian Britain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:19th-century_British_philanthropists
Workhouses were grim in many ways and life was still unimaginably hard but there was increasing amounts of support available for the destitute in Britain often due to the charity of those whose wealth stemmed directly from the Empire.
ouverture8@reddit
Colonial powers extracted a great amount of wealth from other countries. While that wealth might not have been distributed equally across society, it still trickled down to a significant extent (infrastructure, jobs, ...).
I don't believe that colonialism is something that should now be compensated for. But we can at least recognise that some countries have historically been exploited to benefit other countries, and that the effects permeated all of society and live on to the present day.
monkeyhorse11@reddit
Nil. Maybe working 7 days per week as a chimney sweep from the age of 4
MrsValentine@reddit
Cheap meat from Australia & New Zealand
bambonie11@reddit
Probably got the chance to go abroad somewhere and die either in a war or by tropical disease.
Chicken_shish@reddit
Growth.
Take a really small simple model for the UK. King -> Lords -> Serfs. You're a serf because your dad was a serf, and your kids will be serfs. You work on the lords estate, that's your life.
UK then takes over several countries. You need a command structure in those countries, you need administrators, you need police and armies.
Clearly the Lords mates will take all the top jobs. but the serfs have a crack at all the others because bodies are needed to fill the roles. In a growing economy, there is loads of opportunity.
roddz@reddit
Better wages, cheaper access, to foreign goods, opportunities abroad in the military/various trading companies/massive infrastructure projects/colonising a new land for a new start.
Not to the new "super crops" from the Americas like potatoes, corn and tomatoes. Famine in UK at least was virtually irradicated in this period because of these.
Timely_Egg_6827@reddit
On one side, not a lot - they were in service. It would have kept their employers rich enough to hire them.
The other was more interesting. Five generations of working in engineering sheds or heavy industry even working in Stephenson's sheds. Without the empire, there wouldn't have been the demand for heavy engineering and that was a good high-pay as skilled and dangerous industry to work. It funded them moving into wholesale farming - rent a field on many farms so as to minimise of blight etc -and led to two profitable businesses.
Cotton and linen from the colonies came back to UK so be spun. With those mills, we wouldn't have had New Lanark and similar initiatives. They invested in the education of the working classes and that became something fought for in parliament and then primary schools with routes like grammer schools. And education helps a lot.
Crittsy@reddit
A good view of ordinary, working class people can be found in the book "The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists"
Routine_Ad1823@reddit
+1 for the book.
It's pretty heavy-handed and goes on, but it is interesting.
I'd recommend The Jungle by Upton Sinclair instead though. It's not UK based, but is better!
Dapper_Otters@reddit
The UK hasn't been self sufficient in food production for about 200 years, so I suppose the most immediate benefit would be not starving.
Routine_Ad1823@reddit
That would've sorted itself out though, without sounding too callous. Surely the population growth mostly comes about due to the extra food?
Dapper_Otters@reddit
It's honestly hard to say. At that scale of famine there'd be a major risk of political upheaval, so things could 'sort themselves out' or get significantly worse.
Either way, I'd argue it was the most widespread and far reaching benefit of the empire for the average person.
Upper_Character_686@reddit
Throughout the world prior to the mid 20th century, famines were common. But not in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, why? The empire stole food from its colonies exporting famines to the colonies so taht your ancestors did not have to die in famine.
devildance3@reddit
It’s a question of scale. If your ancestors were cotton mill workers then you’d have regular work for a long time at pittance per week. If you were the mill owners then you’d make 1000s and thousands. If you’d import you’d make more, but if you were an investor, say in the East India Company (the largest company the world has ever known) you’d make millions upon millions
skyepark@reddit
The wealth probably went into the building of the institutions that we use in a daily basis, even schools and transport
brinz1@reddit
I've had this discussion often enough to realise that if you are working class, especially if you are from Scotland, Wales, NI, or anywhere in the North, then you probably have more in common with the people that were colonised than you do from those who profited off it.
Even now, London and the upper classes consider these parts of Britain the same way they did the colonies. They are only seen in terms of what wealth can be brought down to London.
Routine_Ad1823@reddit
- Oh, there you go, Dennis, bringing class into it again.
- Well, that's what it's all about. If only people would hear of...
atomic-bananas@reddit
Agreed but you can also include the majority of England in this too - especially the rural areas.
HenrikBanjo@reddit
Read People of the Abyss by Jack London.
It describes in detail what it was like.
Summary: it was shit.
Laescha@reddit
Lots of people have mentioned food. Another important one is infrastructure - a huge amount of public works were funded by profits from colonialism. So mains electricity, water, telephones, the education system, libraries, even the NHS would have likely been created much later or not at all. Of course, the degree to which a specific individual benefitted from any of this will vary massively depending on their circumstances.
Professional-Bear857@reddit
If they were wealthy then they would have gained from it, otherwise most likely they saw no benefit. Remember running a colony isn't cheap, especially when you can't tax the natives, the increasing cost of maintaining the empire is one of the main reasons it ended. It's possible that people at home paid more tax due to colonial expansion, whilst the wealthy groups profited. You know the good ol', privatise the profits, socialise the costs approach.
MacViller@reddit
Much lower chance of being invaded and subjugated by a foreign power. The UK from Waterloo to WW2 was an extremely safe country for the average person to live. A lot of history involves foreign powers invading places which unfortunately includes rape and pillage. Our navy was by a long long shot the top dog so that was never really a threat once we sorted Napoleon out. Even in WW2 the blitz was an awful thing to live through but Germany never really had a chance of actually landing troops on the ground. Looked quite different if you were French, Polish or Greek.
Economy_Judge_5087@reddit
White colonisers generally had a vastly better standard of living in the colonies than they could afford at home. If you read Spike Milligan’s biography, his father was an army NCO in India, and the family had a decent house with at least one servant. On their return to the UK in around 1930 they lived in a succession of small rented houses or flats and servants were way out of the question, as they lived in near-poverty.
Professional-Bear857@reddit
Unsurprisingly the people who enforced colonial rule were rewarded, the same would have been true of some of the natives in the colonies, there would be a smaller group their who would have been made rich by it. Many of the descendants of those families will be running the government of the former colonies today
Routine_Ad1823@reddit
At the time - probably none or very little. Maybe even worse than not being in the Empire for many.
The vast majority of our ancestors would've led horrible lives - basically being brutally oppressed by those above. And the factories of the industrial revolution were absolutely horrible.
I read a book about the first European settler-convicts who got sent to Australia and even the marines and sailors who transported them there were treated like total dirt, and they weren't even the prisoners.
However, as time time went on - we definitely got a benefit as ordinary people - just look at how grand most of our cities are. Most of that was probably build off the spoils of the Empire.
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
"Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938."
Trillions in wealth... All the infrastructure, architecture , fundamental building blocks of the country are what benefited your ancestors and is still benefiting you. Notwithstanding the systemic racism and white-centricity we see in the world today.
Nielips@reddit
Trickle down economics would have benefited everyone somewhat, this we include people whose ancestors were slaves, how much or how quantifiable that improvement would be is not going to be easily figured out.
urtcheese@reddit
I guess it's a bit like asking what the average person has benefited from the wealth of Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, absolutely fk all for the regular person
harvey_motel@reddit
Well depends on who your ancestors were. Some families became extremely rich from Empire, others would not have benefited directly or even suffered from it.
But in general, Britain gained vast wealth from exploiting the resources of it's colonies, which paid for huge amounts of buildings in our cities, was invested into industries, paid for our railways and other infrastructure, and so on. London became the world's financial centre because of Empire. English became a global lingua franca - which is a huge benefit to us even now - because of Empire. And many other factors.
Which means all of us - even if we're Black or brown Britons - are benefiting in some way from the exploitation of Empire, even if our families also suffered as a result of it.
Rough_Reveal5640@reddit
More chance of getting a job. The colonial markets were fixed to not compete with British made goods and buy them from our ancestors. The mills in the north were booming until end of Empire. Once the fixed markets went independent then the factories supplying them closed down. Pretty much finished off the UK north of Birmingham, effects felt to this day.
AddictedToRugs@reddit
The main benefit Britain got was a market for its manufactured goods. Some of that might have trickled down to ordinary people.
WoodSteelStone@reddit
Most Brits are descendents of ordinary people who lived in Great Britain and were downtrodden, exploited and oppressed by a tiny rich elite. Most Brits are not descendents of those who actually orchestrated the Empire and controlled it. Most British people back then were just as poor and badly treated as other ordinary people across the nations.
Some Brits are the offspring of slaves who have since made good lives in Europe, enjoying economic privileges they wouldn't have had otherwise if the Empire hadn't existed.
Senior-Error-5144@reddit
They lived in the wealthiest country in the world. They were protected in a time where many other countries were constantly under attack. The likelihood of being conquered and sold as slaves or being forced to live under foreign overseers was non existant.
They didn't have to be financially compensated to benefit. You can be on benefits today and still benefit from living in a 1st world country.
Professional-Bear857@reddit
A lot less than the wealthy groups who colonised other countries. Being a normal person, your life would have been quite bad, better than those who were colonised, but still quite bad. The main beneficiary of colonialism was the king/queen, wealthy people and politicians, and wealthy or politically involved people who came from the colonised countries, as they would have gotten a slice of the pie.
Zealousideal-Wash904@reddit
The town I live in was built on the Empire and unfortunately the slave trade, so I would say my most recent ancestors did benefit from living in a fairly wealthy town which has declined in the last 40 years, so any benefits were quite short lived.
Stralau@reddit
Colonialism is such a huge and complex topic it’s not really possible to quantify, as it amounts to asking what would happen if history had played out completely differently. And as has been said, it’s highly dependent on who your ancestors were, to which class is get belonged, where in the UK they lived, what decisions they made and what you call a “benefit”. In the UK as in its colonies the effects were multiple, and there were winners and losers.
The principal benefits come from the opening up of markets for exports, which created opportunities for enterprise and industry in the UK, which resulted in a broader sharing of wealth and power in society, albeit starting from a very low base. There are also benefits from imports: coffee, sugar, chocolate, tea, tobacco and opium.
It’s possible to argue that these benefits could have come without colonialism, but as mentioned above, you get very quickly into a set of imponderable questions.
JavaRuby2000@reddit
Almost nothing unless your family were part of the landowning class. The British elite had already fully exploited their own working class citizens before moving on to Ireland, India, Africa etc..
Goldf_sh4@reddit
If any of your ancestors were upper class or upper middle class, they may have benefitted from slavery.
Odd-Wafer-4250@reddit
Ask yourself, if generational trauma is real, then generational evil must be as well right?
Honest-Possible6596@reddit
Colonialism would have had zero effect on 99% of the population, who weren’t rich enough to either engage in or benefit from it. Much like today, the country was built on the backs of labourers, and the wealthy profited from it.
Emile_Largo@reddit
Industrial revolution + colonies changed the face of Britain.
Like many thousands of others, my farmworker ancestors left a rural farm in the late 18th century to move to booming Manchester, where the steady jobs were - in cotton imported from the colonies. Three generations of millworkers followed. You can make a case for them being better off if they'd stayed on a farm rather than on meagre wages in slum housing, but that's to ignore how hard life on the farm must have been.
trmetroidmaniac@reddit
Depends on whether you owned the capital or not.
verzweifeltundmuede@reddit
What of the many working class British subjects who moved to the colonies and sent money back home? We know that this was a substantial amount and contributed significantly to family budgets
I_ALWAYS_UPVOTE_CATS@reddit
For most individuals, nothing. The peasantry in Britain had far more in common with the peasantry in, say, Ireland than they ever had with the colonial rulers in Westminster.
exile_10@reddit
If you're genuinely interested you can put your ancestors' town / county of birth into https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/search/ and see what 'compensation' was paid to local slave owners. When I did this it quickly became clear that the local estate (as in big house in the country) was built with this money, it's now a prep school so those kids benefit, but the local church and (state) primary school also received significant donations from the family. So even my own kids benefited from the proceeds of slavery in way.
verzweifeltundmuede@reddit
Thanks for this link - didn't know this existed!
LevDavidovicLandau@reddit
You have clean running water, electricity, an NHS, (virtually) no slums, etc. unlike large parts of your country’s former colonies because previous governments took the revenue generated by colonialism to build these things for you. I’ve copped a bit of flak for telling people in the Northeast this but I’ll carry on saying it because it’s true.
Oh, and colonial troops in their millions were indispensable to Britain in the two WWs, lest we forget.
tutike2000@reddit
OP asked about ancestors, so I'm assuming they're talking about someone in the 1920s.
Life wasn't a picnic for the average brit back then
LevDavidovicLandau@reddit
Yeah, you’re right, I didn’t read it properly. I agree to a large extent with your 2nd point too.
Far-Hope-6186@reddit
Honest answer absolutely nothing.
Next_Grab_9009@reddit
Unless they were rich, they wouldn't have experienced a better life than anyone else subjugated by the British.
The first people the British Empire conquered were the British.
OldManHavingAStroke@reddit
For most people...a misplaced sense of power, patriotism and metaphorical flag waving juxtaposed with no actual change in your living or social standard.
___GLaDOS____@reddit
There were good careers to be had by joining the East India Company, if you were brave enough to travel for months and years away from home.
Brexit-Broke-Britain@reddit
British industry benefited hugely from having captive markets. This helped industrialisation and the ability of British industry to dominate. How much this was a benefit to most people in the UK is debatable.
This also explains why deindustrialisation has been so painful as markets were lost.
Pleasant-chamoix-653@reddit
Britain became developed and moved fast from agrarian to urban. Food security improved as did employment opportunities as Britain used its position to have monopolies and control world trade. Textiles is an example and how it was used to drive employment here but as a result took it away from the poor Indian farmer who produced it
Joshthenosh77@reddit
We could force everyone to drink tea!
DiscoChikkin@reddit
The rich would get richer, and the poor would do the work/die to enable it.
Ecstatic_Food1982@reddit
Is it? Amongst whom and where? I've never had a discussion about it.
exile_10@reddit
Now you have
sole_food_kitchen@reddit
They got to survive without starving to death for the most part. They also had access to to wage employment if they really wanted it
Naive_Product_5916@reddit
Well, they got to work in the mills of Manchester instead of being destitute farmers.
avspuk@reddit
At the time nearly all the money went to paying other nations to fight Napoleon it cost so much for so long that income tax was invented.
Later the wealth funded the building of the UK sewers
ldn-ldn@reddit
They got food on their table and a job to pay for it. As other said, Britain didn't have enough resources and food itself, without colonies your ancestors would die of starvation and you wouldn't be here. There's a big difference between miner village breaking their backs for pennies and a dead village.
R2-Scotia@reddit
We got stuck in the UK due to manipulation of the nsscent Empire 🏴
Lanky-Big4705@reddit
Your people were at the forefront of the British Empire only having failed to establish your own!
Mediocre_Sandwich458@reddit
Use your brain or basic logic. History has consequences.
smithismund@reddit
My OH tracked my family back a few hundred years. All farm labourers and domestic servants. So not a lot, I suspect.
Odd_Feedback_7636@reddit
You had the opportunity to be worked to death manufacturing all the raw materials stolen from the occupied countries. Unless you where rich of course then you had the opportunity to make loads of dosh.
GreatWolfRex@reddit
They had the privilege of paying tax to fund the navy
LifeMasterpiece6475@reddit
The rich got the life for luxury, the poor got the opportunities to work in dirty unsafe factories living in absolute squalor. Or maybe forced into the navy or army to risk life and limb with no benefits or assistance on return (if they manage to return).
Little fun fact, after the battle of Trafalgar when the British ships returned to port, the sailors were not allowed to leave the ships for a significant time. The reason was they didn't get paid until they left the ship.
OwineeniwO@reddit
Travel, whether as seamen, workers or soldiers, and most workers would have been given a better job than the one they could get in the UK, for people in the UK I suspect the wealth that came from having an empire translated to better conditions and a surge in ideas, inventions and better strategies for business and running the country.
EdmundTheInsulter@reddit
Well it was stealing from the countries and therefore richer than they were, although his much filtered down to normal people I'm not sure, but it would be some.
Walt1234@reddit
Mine got quite a lot out of it. They were mostly penniless, or close it it, when they left England to settle in what became South Africa in the early 19th Century. They couldn't have had an easy life, but their descendants have had a far better existence in Southern Africa than would have been the case back "home".
Masterful_Touch@reddit
They got to work luxurious lives in the coal mines.
Nimble_Natu177@reddit
Wrong sub, political bots should be going to r/AskBrits
wholesomechunk@reddit
In my case, none whatsoever.
Majestic_Owl2618@reddit
BillyJoeDubuluw@reddit
It would massively depend on you being in the middle or upper classes as to whether you felt any kind of direct benefit amid the situation or not.
For reference, my Indian family were fundamentally better off (had staff and a well maintained house etc) than my Irish family was in the latter portion of this period at least.
The reality is that most people of the era would have been in poverty and/or service of some description, so there would be little in the way of “tangible perks”.
EnigmaticAmbiguity@reddit
The food, resources and materials we were able to bring back to Britain. I think we all still benefit from those days now as we are a fully developed country and a service based economy which gives people more opportunities than most other countries.
Jenkes_of_Wolverton@reddit
Historically, families and individuals have always had mixed outcomes.
For every Dick Whittington who achieves fame and fortune, there are thousands who don't. Victorian England had a huge housing problem with abject poverty rife - but Charles Dickens made a successful career from writing about it. The British army of the Georgian era weren't just busy in Europe, India and the Americas, they were also slaughtering native Scots as part of the Highland Clearances - so any of your ancestors called McGregor or Campbell might not have faired so well.
No-Particular-2894@reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/ytzh3j/book_recommendations_about_the_british_empire/
too big of a concept to ask on reddit. you're going to have to do some proper research.
luala@reddit
cheap tea and sugar
No-Particular-2894@reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/ytzh3j/book_recommendations_about_the_british_empire/
too big of a concept for an r/askUK post. You're going to have to do some proper reading or watching.
ShanghaiGoat@reddit
What benefits? Spicy food and Olympic grade athletes.
LewisMileyCyrus@reddit
flexin' on peasants?
HotelPuzzleheaded654@reddit
For the vast majority, absolutely nothing.
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