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John Henry's post is a good corrective, but perhaps goes overboard: 
colonisation was (and is?) immensely more complicated than he suggests. For 
instance, British colonisation of my own country, India, went through four 
phases. In the first phase, which might correctly be termed pre-colonial, 
the British were simply traders trying their luck with all the other 
traders, local and foreign. In the second stage (the beginning of 
colonialism proper), they simply looted whatever they could get hold of, in 
competition with other such looters (foreign or local). In the third stage, 
they became relatively responsible while continuing to draw substantial 
economic benefit from the colonial connection. In the final stage, they 
increasingly lost that sense of responsibility at the same time as tbe 
cost/benefit analysis swung against the worthwhileness of having India as a 
colony, for reasons to do with developments in Britain (the result of the 
two World Wars) as well as reasons to do with developments in India (the 
educated elite and the business elite raising the cost of governance 
through their drive for independence). 
 
The third stage, which lasted from roughly the 1830s to the 1900s, is 
relatively unexamined, but for a thorough, though inelegant, discussion 
from a historical point of view of the internal struggles which resulted in 
Britain holding its colony with some sense of responsibility, see Vishal 
Mangalwadi's India: The Grand Experiment (Nivedit Books, Mussoorie, UP, 
India, 1997). 
 
It is fairly evident to any economist who analyses the respective 
historical situations, that the reign of the British masters from the 1830s 
to the 1900s was much more benign than the reign of the Indian business and 
political ruling class has been in the fifty-five years since Independence. 
 
prabhu guptara 
 
 
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