[mr dragon]

I'm not going all teary eyed for the Empire- I'm glad Britain got rid of it and turned it into a Commonwealth via choice for the members who wanted to stay connected. But I thought this was fascinating to read.

It is rare to hear former Marxist revolutionaries apologise for having successfully driven out an imperialist power decades before. In the rundown former British colony of Aden, a backwater that was once one of the world’s key shipping hubs, such regrets are not uncommon.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 981556.ece

[waterbeetle]

Money talks......

[mr dragon]

Lol, probably true. But I think it's more than that. Yemen's turned into a corrupt almost failed state encroached by terrorist organisations, including Al Qaida. Some of the pan Arabists who were rebelling and fighting the last vestiges of what was the British Empire in the ME and parts of Africa as 'we' slowly gave the whole thing back after the second world war, never really saw what was coming to replace what they had gained and experienced under the British. The end of British colonialism was inevitable because people within a sovereign area quite rightly want to rule themselves without outside influence, but I often think the tragedy of some of these places like Yemen, or even places like Zimbabwe (though that had nothing to do with pan Arabism, more post colonial 1950's pan 'Africanism'), was that they wanted to force change too quickly when there should have been a much slower and orderly transition to creating their own rule and independence. Despite not always being dealt with as equals (one of some of the worst mistakes of the British Empire) many of these places were given modern civilisation, the rule of common law, the idea behind the structure of good governance and democracy, good commerce, free trade, roads, schools, 'modern' hopitals etc etc. All that tragically disappeared in some (not all) of these places as soon as the British left. It lead to chaos in some places- that still reverberates today. You can see why some of these older guys today miss what they once had- even to the point of saying they want the British colonial influence back (which is crazy). Zim is probably the most relevant example. It was the most productive and 'freest' (I use that term loosely) nation in Africa- once known as the 'breadbasket of Africa'....But look at it today.

It's a tragedy.

[waterbeetle]

I agree, I don't think many of these countries had the know how to run a country. Even if the British did show them how and gave them the tools, the actual process is something that they really have to learn and do for themselves and as you pointed out, they tried to do too much too soon and when things didn't go just right, the wheels fell off the cart.