For instance, Rome goes more corrupt and falls to the Vandals. Then, almost always, the conquering side installs their own governors. It's how the world has worked for a long time, really up until mutually assured destruction actually. The Korean War is probably the last "this place near us is mismanaged, let's take it over" war on a large scale.

There are a bunch of other ways the world worked for a really long time too: no civil rights, jailing or killing your political opponents is acceptable, no equality between gender or races. Just because the world has always worked one way doesn't mean it's the right way. In fact, quite the opposite. History suggests almost everything we've done in our past is wrong. Like you said Korea suggests we could have been wrong about this idea.

I'd be sympathetic to that point of view, except the British conquered Africa from Shaka Zulu, a brilliant but extraordinarily viciously brutal man. Like, Shaka makes Genghis Khan or Alexander look mild at times. It's really pretty inarguable that the British ruled a hell of a lot better than utter brutality, genocide, and massacre that was Shaka.

Well sure, but you have to remember once upon a time the British Isles were tribal as well. I'm sure they had their own Shaka Zulu equivalents. For example Diodorus Siculus on the Celts:

"They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants and striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses, just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting." [1]

Yes, when British colonization was happening Britain had outgrown that stage, but perhaps they were able to outgrow it because they were allowed to develop independently as a people? I'm not sure justifying colonization because of people like Shaka is valid. Colonization might have slowed down Africa's growth out of the tribal stage.

Once they were in charge though, they were generally pretty good and stable administrators. They built a lot of infrastructure, had pretty low taxes outside of wartime usually, in most places took a live-and-let-live approach with the natives, brought education, sanitation, and industry with them, and the people usually got wealthier, healthier, and more prosperous in places they governed.

The issue here is that everything the British did was based on their own worldview. It's not clear the British worldview is what is right for Africa. The nations they conquered were not allowed to develop their own systems of government and methods of education. From my perspective that seems like a contributing factor for the current instability in the region.

But I understand what you mean about inferiority. I was never too proud of my Irish or Polish heritage in particular until I learned of certain people I greatly admired - Derek Gleeson who rebuilt the Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra, and a Polish-Jewish woman in Los Angeles whose relatives were Polish resistance fighters against the Nazis, and later black market smugglers during the Soviet Occupation.

That's not quite what I meant. It just seems that you aren't open to the possibility that the colonized nations could have grown to govern themselves. I know there is evidence to support this, but I think you might be minimizing the role that colonization itself played in the long term instability of these areas. Like I said in the beginning, if we looked at the British Isles during the time of the Celts (or even before that), we might also conclude that they could never grow to govern themselves.

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This line of conversation has been really interesting for me and I'm definitely going to think about it more as well.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts#Head_hunting