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Hurrah and huzzah for market forces!

Wednesday, 27th February 2008

Being something of a (very) amateur historian I’m reading a fantastic book by John O’Farrell called ‘An Utterly Impartial History of Britain’. (Just to make clear this isn’t your average history tome, the cover includes the subtitle: ‘…Or 2,000 years of upper class idiots in charge’.) I’ve got to the bit about the spread of the Empire and want to share this passage which sums up just how effective capitalism is, like it or not:

“The British Empire was conquered more by market forces than armed forces. Some possessions such as Gibraltar or Cyprus were seized by the Navy or acquired at the post-war conference table for their strategic military value, but on the whole the pink bits on the globe were wherever British companies happened to have landed and managed to outdo other competitors.

…just as today every Starbucks is a small individual franchise under one corporate logo, all the British trading stations began as unconnected adventures in private enterprise that used the Union Flag logo to protect themselves from a hostile takeover from the French Empire or Coffee Republic.”

It’s very unfashionable to look at the Empire as anything other than some despotic evil imposed on unwilling nations (thus blithely ignoring advances in education, healthcare, communications, transport, social mobility etc etc). So before I’m pelted with rotten fruit, I’d just like to say hurrah and huzzah for capitalism! (All washed down with lashings and lashings of ginger beer).