An effective dual use ship (British used two much smaller ocean liner ships to carry soldiers to repluse the Italian Agrentinian invasion of the Falklands). A fleet of 10 could perhaps move 65000 infantry to Australia, the Philippines or Indonesia in a few days. Your car transports can move the IFVs/LAVs.
If they are bots then they are bots the puppet masters or banksters have chosen to support, empower and enrich.
anybody notice how the British built infrastructure in India, allowed immigration, allowed Indians to own things, treated Indians as citizens, moved Indians to other nations, gave them jobs, allowed them to be rich outside India and now the UK is a sh*t hole place with almost nothing left?
UK already made sh*t. Russia, France, USA, Canada rapidly going to sh*t.
The fact that it was not Indians that urged the rapid construction of railways in the country, but the Chambers of Commerce of Manchester and Glasgow, and the European Chambers of Commerce at Calcutta and Bombay, underlines why the British built railways in India — to make exploitation of raw...
economictimes.indiatimes.com
“We (the British) have given India not only internal peace and security of life and property, but we have profoundly modified the most prominent characteristics of the country….” This is what The Sphere, a British weekly on December 2, 1911, said as it pompously praised The Crown for gifting India the railways, irrigation and the English language. In the many decades since then, the view that the British built
railways that benefited Indians has been thoroughly rubbished and has been called out for what it was: yet another tool for the British to bleed India of its resources to serve its own needs.
Extractive infrastructure
Building railways in India would be beneficial “to the commerce, government and military control of the country”, Governor General Lord Hardinge had said in 1843. The fact that it was not Indians that urged the rapid construction of railways in the country, but the Chambers of Commerce of Manchester and Glasgow, and the European Chambers of Commerce at Calcutta and Bombay, underlines why the British built railways in India — to make exploitation of raw material more efficient.
It was the British private enterprise that first built the Indian railways in the 1840s and controlled them, initially totally and later in part, until 1947 when the government took complete control. Their motive was straightforward – import agricultural raw materials from India and export the cheaply manufactured products from Europe to India. But to build a robust railway network in a ‘backward’ country that was deeply segregated, British businessmen sought guarantees from the State of India, run by The Crown, and those guarantees were funded by the Indian taxpayers. Under this widely criticised ‘guarantee system’, the private companies were promised an income, irrespective of a profit or a loss, paid for by the taxpayers of India. While Europeans and European countries gained the most from trade in India, it was the Indians who had to bear the burden of losses entirely.
Buried under the burden of heavy debt incurred due to the construction of freight railway lines, the Crown took greater control starting in 1880, paving the way for public-private ownership, note economists Dan Bogart and Latika Chaudhary in their research on
colonial railways. Furthermore, only British companies were given contracts linked to Indian railways, depriving Indian enterprises of market participation.
Colonial commerce, disadvantage Bharat
The Crown’s Britain-first approach to railways ensured that the priorities of the Indians took a backseat. The emergence of a railway network opened India to the global market, leading to an increase in the export of raw materials and foodstuffs, including commodities like grain, oilseeds, pulses, cotton, tea, and jute. However, India’s artisans famed for their expertise in indigenous arts & crafts for centuries, gradually disappeared as cheap manufactured articles flooded in.
Renowned for its textiles expertise, India produced about 25 per cent of world industrial output in 1750, which eventually fell to 2 per cent by 1900, “The new world which thus burst forth upon India found the people quite unprepared for it and the Government (Britishers) did not think it its duty to train Indians for modern industry and commerce,” wrote Rai Saheb Chandrika Prasada Tiwari in his book 'The Indian Railways: Historical, Economical and Administrative Aspects' in 1921. Not only was the humble Indian artisan stripped of livelihood, but so was the nation’s unprepared populace, who were caught by surprise. Millions were reduced to penury.
It was thought that at least the farmers would gain as a result of the increased export of agricultural produce aided by railways. However, the reality was different. Historians note that Indian farmers ended up buying their own produce at a higher rate as most of the profits made from the export trade went to traders, most of whom were not Indians.
Crucial for India, but not for Indians
It is undisputed that under The Raj, India’s logistical landscape transformed from one characterised by many segmented markets with high transportation costs, to one with local centres linked by railways to one another and the world. Historians note that by 1919, the Indian railway’s revenues represented 3.2 per cent of national income, which gradually rose to 4.9 per cent by 1939.
Furthermore, the higher pricing meant that the average Indian peasant could not reap the benefits of rail travel. Experts say high tariffs showed there was a divergence between the railroad charges and the economic conditions of the people. There was a need to lower charges all the more in a country like India, where the masses were poor and the margin of funding was small.
In theory, a revolutionary transportation option like railways should ideally improve the standard of living of the populace. But European priorities meant Indians couldn’t reap the rewards. Dan Bogart, Latika Chaudhary and Alfonso Herranz-Loncán have noted that at the height of the ‘railway era’, India fell behind other economies. While Latin American countries like Mexico, Brazil and Uruguay , which were not ruled by colonial powers, saw their average per-capital income rise 110 per cent between 1870 and 1910, India’s rose by a measly 31 per cent.
Truth laid bare
In a 2019 YouGov survey in the UK, nearly 32 per cent of respondents thought that they should be proud of the British Empire and a similar number of respondents felt that colonised countries were left better off by the British.
The Sphere, in its 1911 article, wrote, "We have faithfully adhered to John Stuart Mill's conception of our rule in India as not only one of the purest in intention, but also one of the most beneficent acts ever known among mankind."
But the colonial railways, far from being a boon bestowed on Indians by the British, itself is a glaring example of the systematic loot and exploitation by the British. It also belies the naive belief that India wouldn't have got modern infrastructure such as the railways so early if not for the British.
The railway workshops in Jamalpur in Bengal and Ajmer in Rajputana were established in 1862 to maintain the trains. The British were surprised when their Indian mechanics became so adept that in 1878 they started designing and building their own locomotives, mentions Congress leader Shashi Tharoor in his book 'Inglorious Empire'.
"Their success increasingly alarmed the British, since the Indian locomotives were just as good, and a great deal cheaper, than the British-made ones. In 1912, therefore, the British passed an act of parliament explicitly making it impossible for Indian workshops to design and manufacture locomotives. Between 1854 and 1947, India imported around 14,400 locomotives from England, and another 3,000 from Canada, the US and Germany, but made none in India after 1912. After independence, 35 years later, the old technical knowledge was so completely lost to India that the Indian Railways had to go cap-in-hand to the British to guide them on setting up a locomotive factory in India again," writes Tharoor.
Fundamentally speaking, certain parts of a society are bound to benefit from an economic policy to a certain extent, whatever its final outcome. But that alone may not paint the entire picture. The apologists for the British Raj base their arguments on such benefits to negate the overall reality.
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Cope bitch. More to come.
China has five of the top 10 engineering schools in the world -- including the #1 Tsinghua!
But okay!
