Independent nations carved out of former empires

[samiaseo222]

Frequently react by choosing names for themselves which evoke the "childhood" of their history, their "innocence", the time before the imperial "educators" came: Sri Lanka, Baku Faso, Zimbabwe, Eire. But when an empire withdraws it is not a golden age but civil war which ensues. Whether the Roman Empire, Assyrian Empire, Ottoman Empire, the Hapsburg


Empire, the British Empire, the Russian Empire, the sons of the Empire were always sent out with the same injunction: "you are there to give names, chart maps, clear up muddles, maintain the rule of job function email list law and keep the peace, our peace, but don't expect any thanks -- it is your duty as the representative of civilization, that's all."

A weakness of empires from the beginning: the reluctance to honour all work: certain kinds of work are not fit for the conquerors, only for the slaves. Exceptions are where the imperialists exterminate the local inhabitants and so have to work the land themselves. As James Morris noted in his acount of the colonizing of Rhodesia.

"There was no denying the settlers' guts and courage. It took guts to go to Rhodesia at all, and many of them were now performing prodigies of land development in the bush...But too often they had a blind spot about manual, ungenial labour. That was the black man's work." The hunt for slaves is a significant factor in imperial growth and equally a significant factor in later decline. Imperial histories follow a pattern of increasing dependence on slave labour, a distancing on the part of the rulers from manual labour, a displacing of the peasant class at home by slaves.