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The Brits were the best colonizers. The Indians were the worse (i.e. The Brits allowed India to administer Burma, which is how it got so screwed up).

I originally meant to leave this in a comment on the previous colonisers entry, but since this is the follow-up, I'll say that a straight comparison between the major colonial powers (many European nations, plus the US, Japan, Russia and possibly China) is impossible. Basically, it's an apples-and-oranges question. From colonialism that started out as legalised piracy (the Brits among others) to a deliberate state-led policy for national greatness (Japan springs to mind), I don't think that with methods that different, outcomes can be logically compared.

The British. Their "settler" colonies are the top of the heap: USA, Australia, New Zealand, Anglo-Canada, even South Africa in its region. The colonies which were ruled by Britain but had indigenous populations are a more mixed bag, but in general have done better than their neighbors, e.g. Malaysia v. Indonesia. India has good institutions, though it has lots of awful problems, e.g. rampant corruption. One objective assessment is the LLSV economists' analysis, which has admittedly been tweaked around the edges by criticism.

Overall, the Brits win hands down on this question.

I'd be interested to see any serious counter-argument.

Lex: I have to say that I don't think settler colonies count too much. I realize I didn't mention that in the post however replacing an indigenous population with your own doesn't lead to too many surprises. I mean, it's no wonder E. Europe was fucked up by Russia trying to replicate its system (or the USSR better put). Equally so, it's no surprise England created the USA, NZ, AU, CAN etc.

However, their other colonies are very interesting examples such as India or Egypt though admittedly, the Egyptians have messed things up since then.

I think the worst was the Belgians. At least, they were the worst in de-colonization.

In re worst colonizer: I agree with Younghusband. But remember that Belgium only had one colony which was a disaster for many reasons, so its hard to draw a broad conclusion.

In re best colonizer: While Lexington is right about the success of the settler colonies, that was really just a practice of exporting people and exterminating or disenfranchising the local people. If we look at the overall success of colonialism, I'd like to focus on *which colonial system most improved the lives of the natives*.

And to reemphasize, I say Japan wins. MF is right in that both South Korea and Taiwan had US aid during the Cold War. But so did lost of other states that turned out to be a disaster. What made Japan unique was that it created a merit-based civil society similar to that of Japan, with a strong emphasis on literacy, education, infrastructure, and medicine.

Curzon: But in the case of Taiwan, most of that Japan-created civil society was wiped out by Chiang Kai Shek and his goons after they took over. The entire government bureacracy was replaced by Chinese mainlanders, all of the wealth of the former elite was seized by the Nationalist Party (KMT), and many thousands of Taiwanese who had "cooperated" with the Japanese simply by being successful in civil society were massacred.

I'm not trying to say that Japanese colonization didn't have any positive effect on the development of Taiwan, because it clearly did, but you oddly focusing on Japanese colonization. Don't forget that from 1945 to 1987 Taiwan was run by an alien occupying regime, and could almost be said to have been a "colony" of the Republic Of China government.

Don't forget that Taiwan was also a "replacement" colony of the Chinese, with Chinese settlers displacing the natives, much like the British did in North America, Australia and New Zealand. And it had also been colonized briefly by the Spanish and the Dutch, although naturally their influence is pretty miniscule in the long term.

And Imperial Chinese society was more merit based than most people give it credit for today, with civil service jobs being awarded based on the examination system. Yes, it was a self perpetuating merit system because people who grew up poor rarely had the resourced to become educated enough to pass the examinations, but that is only a more extreme version of the situation that exists today in, say, Japan and South Korea-where access to the best universities is far more difficult for families that cannot afford expensive private grade schools, cram schools, and tutors.

Again I say Korea is the worst as Takashima island is a poor choice for a colony.

Hi, Long time reader, first time commenter.

Although I personally agree with Moorethanthis' idea that a fare comparison of colonial empires is impossible (and I also subscribe to the idea that the question "which brand of colonialism was best" itself is flawed), just by looking at the results themselves, I would have to say that the Italians (the Belgians come a close second) were the worst colonizers of all time. As for the best, I would have to say the United States.

Both Korea and Taiwan has a well educated population with a long history of civilization, which even predates that of Japan itself.

In this sense it did a much better job than the Brits in India.

(let's agree that it is a lot tougher to transform a society of less "advanced" civilization such as Africa or PNG)

However, one should bear in mind that Japan was forced to give up its Korea and Taiwan suddenly (after losing a war). and it could have done less damage that the Brits (india-pakistan partition). So one could argue that (as some scholars did) it was a conscious effort that the Brits tried to mess up India when it left.

---
as to kurt's comment on india vs burma, i think burma was a lot better than india in the 1950-60s. also the indian did not really colonized burma did they?

Ditto on what froggie mentioned. Michael Turton had a post that had a summary of an analysis done by a researcher at a university in Singapore which compared socio-economic indicators in colonial Asia prior to WW2. It turns out that economic and social development levels in Asia were fairly uniform in both British Malaya, French IndoChina, and Japanese Taiwan & Korea. As others noted, the Phillipines under America was the exemplar in the pack and was then the most successful. The Dutch I recall had the most difficulties in Indonesia. The main thrust of the research article was that Japan's colonization experience in Taiwan and Korea was, economically and socially speaking, not particularly unique when compared to the achievements of other imperialists at the time. I'd like to find the entire article at the View from Taiwan, but unfortunately it is blogspot and I don't recall how long ago it was posted.

Worst: Belgium. The Congo was a vast butcher-shop, an asset-stripping rampage, a site of inexcusable atrocities. There was nothing like it until the totalitarian genocides of the 20th Century.

Second Worst: Russia/Soviet Union. Toxic waste dumps, mass graves, vicious and cruel governments, acres of poorly-set cement, absurd ideology rammed down peoples' throats at gunpoint, tanks in the street if you grumbled. Nothing good came of Russian or Soviet occupation for most of those who suffered under it.

Third Worst: The Dutch. The totally failed to even get anything serious going in two of the best pieces of real estate in the world -- New Netherland at the mouth of the Hudson, and the Cape of Good Hope. No other colonial power would have been so stupid. But that pair of incredible botches aside, the one major place they did hang onto, Java and the islands around it, they ran poorly and brutally and inefficiently, leaving a legacy of nearly unmitigated hatred for their rule.

I have to agree, the Belgians were pretty bad. Congo was run as a vast charnal-hell while it was their colony. Many of their colonial administrators bragged about how nasty they were. They did not consider Africans to be human.

Chirol, the parameters you've set (maintnence of indigenous culture) seem to indicate vassal or client states, not colonialism.

I'm surprised noone has mentioned the Spanish yet. They probably did more colonizing than anyone else, and yet this whole argument seems to have forgotten about them. Any thoughts?

As for the Philippines, the US did a very excellent job of building the education system (particularly in contrast to the Spanish, who seemed hell-bent on keeping anyone aside from the priests and elite class from learning how to read), but unfortunately the democratic institutions were not strong enough to prevent the Marcos dictatorship. On other hand, this was probably more a result of cold war thinking, which led the US to back Marcos over the Communist New People's Army despite the consequences, and not really a failure of colonial era policy per se.

Also, the subordination of the southern Muslim provinces under the Manila-based government really only occurred during the American period. The Spanish had more or less ignored them, only nominally incuding the far south in the Philippines territory and the "Moros" cause very little trouble at that time.

By the way, at risk of entirely changing the discussion, to Chirol's list of criteria (civil society, functioning government, infrastructure, economic prosperity and long term stability), how do things like up if we add preservation of/destruction of native culture? Admittedly, there are few if any colonizers that would do particularly well under that category.

Take Japan for example. Regardless of the actual extent of Japan's long term influence on the economic development of Taiwan (my favorite colonial example, since I know the most about it after my native USA), when it comes to the cultural sphere they get a failing mark. Japan's long term plan was to essentially erase Taiwanese culture completely and, in a couple of generations, add another sizable, fertile, and strategically placed island to Japan proper- not continuing to keep it as a colony full of colonized subjects, but as a full part of Japan, with its citizens fully acculterated and legal citizens of Japan. They had, in fact, made a rather good start on this plan when they lost the war. For years all new literature published in Taiwan was written in Japanese instead of Chinese, and you can still find many elderly people who grew up speaking Japanese.

Chiang Kai Shek and the KMT were basically the same. As occupier of Taiwan, they wanted to stamp out both the Japanese language AND the Taiwanese language, and acculturate the population as Mandarin-speaking Chinese.

Are there any colonizers out there who can credit BOTH for the criteria of economic and political success that Chirol set AND for preserving the native culture and population?

People who claim that the Brits were the best are spectacularly wrong. The reality is that the Brits inherited the pick of the crop when it came to colonies. The most outstanding and productive British colonies, as opposed to settler societies, had a lot more by way of movement into modernity than the colonies of other European powers. On whichever continent you look where British bureaucracy was imposed on a local substructure; that local substructure was almost always possessed of a native state system. The Brits really didnt do much. The folks who actually embarked on a civilizing mission complete with infrastructural establishment etc were the Japanese. All one has to do is look at how much influence the Brits had on educational structures in Africa, vis-a-vis Japan in Korea etc; consider that in many British colonies, educating the natives was in many respects illegal - ditto for many continental colonies. On every count; infrastructure (Britain\'s many railroads-to-nowhere), political structure (Britain handing over to big men, after stratifying local politics along ethnic and racial lines) and sheer racism (we have yet to see a colonial system that matches the horrors of apartheid) etc - the British dominions consistently underperformed their contemporaries: The total body count coming out of Africa in the postcolonial period is made up mainly of casualties from ex-British colonies (add Biafra to Sudan and much of Eastern Africa and South Central Africa etc), by contrast with Congo, Angola etc. The peculiar racism of British colonialism is mostly to blame for the horrid situation in Zimbabwe today: I simply cannot find another colonial power with this dismal a record.

I think Goa stands as a monument to an example of enlightened "colonialism". The Duke of Alburquerque insisted that those coming out from Portugal to India be single men willing to marry "christian hindus", and thereby created a blend of two civilizations whose strongest tie, as the 1961 invasion showed, was to the land of their birth. Not sure of what the Macanese experience was in Macau.

And definitely agree with the Brits being highly successful, not only in the case of the nearly virgin lands they settled, but in the case of the subcontinent as well. British institutions survived in India and Pakistan. And they certainly contributed to Singapore.

Apologies for not having the time to amplify these observations.

As William Dalrymple points out, when British colonialism in India was run as a commercial operation under the East India Company, cultural adaptation and assimiliation was widespread. However, when Britain began to inhabit and believe its role as the pre-eminent global power, and Christian missionaries spread though the colonies, attitudes of racism and superiority grew to define the Empire. So, in regard to MF's question on preserving native culture: private enterprise good, civilising mission bad.

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