Similarities Between The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire

Going back and reading Dadabhai Naorji, “The Benefits of British Rule”, Bernard S. Cohn’s, “Representing Authority in Victorian India”, and John Darwin’s, “The British Empire: Themes and Perspectives”, as well as Piers Brendon, “The Decline and Fall of The British Empire”. You can see the similarities between the four especially the authority from the British that was constant in nineteenth-century Victorian England and India. All of them relate to each other. In this essay, I will point out the similarities in all four and between the societies in which the stories take place. For better or worse, Britain has had a lasting effect on every country it has claimed and put money into. The British Empire was the largest empire the
So, when Dadabhai Naoroji mentioned that the natives remarked on how, “the British system cut like the knife of sugar” (Naoroji, 2), they meant it. This could be considered a good thing or a terrible thing depending on which side you take. You must agree with it because, from the British side, everything is all great and moving along the way they want it to but, on the other hand, the natives of all these countries that they had invaded wanted their independence and traditions back. The knife of sugar signifies no oppression, but there is oppression, as the British did control the countries they invaded to a certain extent. But the knife also signifies that despite everything going well for the British there was still a problem. In John Darwin’s, “The British Empire: Themes and Perspectives”, the book states that the British had this unspoken confidence when it came to certain territories. Or how despite abolitioning slavery, there was still slavery going on, now with the name of the apprentice. Darwin states that “Yet this aggressive self-confidence had as its doppelganger a strong undertow of anxiety and self-doubt. The abolition of slavery in 1833 was shadowed by the insistence that liberated slaves should remain as,
He then goes on to explain how, “The British rule has been: morally, a great blessing; politically, peace and order, on one hand, blunders on the other; materially, impoverishment, relieved as far as the railway and other loans go”. (Naoroji, 2). That is the knife of sugar all rolled into one. This can also be referenced back to Representing Authority in Victorian India by Bernard S. Cohn. In the begging paragraph, it is shown that the British basically came and had taken charge of India changing everything. Cohn states, “By the middle of the nineteenth century, India’s colonial society was marked by a sharp disjunction between a small, alien ruling group, British in culture, and a quarter of a billion Indians whom the British effectively controlled. The military superiority of these aliens had been successfully demonstrated in the brutal suppression of a widespread military and civil revolt which had spread through much of Upper India in 1857 and 1858”. (Cohn,165). This goes on to show how the knife with sugar that is supposed be no oppression; could potentially and did start an oppression in India. The British were outsiders and became even more outside and deteriorated when Queen Victoria proclaimed herself Empress, it had worked for a little while with all the