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Are former colonies bigoted mostly because of rules from former rulers?

 
 
 
repoman

repoman

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Or is it from older traditions, religions or basic human nature of how we can be assholes?

This is an interesting topic to me and this is as basic an example of this assertion as you can get:

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I think you'd have to look at on a ex-colony by ex-colony basis. Certainly the British left all sorts of anti-homosexual laws in the lands they colonized. Up until the at least the 50s homosexuality was criminalized in England - you could be imprisoned and chemically castrated. However, I would be very skeptical that Middle Eastern former-colonies in particular wouldn't have enacted similar laws left to their own devices.

Now, the British Empire was the largest empire in history, and I would not be surprised if homophobic and other bigoted sentiments were solely British imports in at least some of the areas that fell under the umbrella of the British Empire.

I've heard the claim that current Indian prudishness/homophobia is an import from the British. I wonder if anyone could comment on that specific instance? India is quite diverse so it would likely have to be considered on a case-by-case basis.
 
I live in a place which was a colony of both France and Spain. I think this explains it all.
 
My country was colonized by the British and I'm terribly bigoted against uncouth boors.
 
Pretty ridiculous claim, especially with "Palestine" which was under British protectorate for only a few years while it was under Islamic influence for over a millennium.
 
Derec said:
Pretty ridiculous claim, especially with "Palestine" which was under British protectorate for only a few years while it was under Islamic influence for over a millennium.
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Damn right. That's British efficiency at work, baby.
 
I live in a former British colony, and I have no problem at all with poofters, sheilas, or poofters dressed up as sheilas.
 
The US seems far more bigoted on some matters than the British.

I think the OP is mixing up two different things. If you don't have much of a sense of cultural cohesion as a nation, then one answer is to turn to traditional cultural or religious practices to hold people together. Since many of these are quite old, they tend to be quite bigoted. Thus The Middle east can be bigoted because of the British without the bigotry that they have coming from Britain.

But the idea that all anti-homosexual attitudes came from Britain is just silly.
 
The British and French DID practice the principle of 'divide and rule' in order to control their colonies. Many, many ethnic divisions were, if not created, definitely irritated by the british. For example; they would buddy up with smaller ethnic groups to enlist them in keeping down the bigger ones. The ones that cooperated would earn both greater monetary rewards, plus the resentment of the oppressed group. The Tutsis and the Hutus in Rwanda are good example of this. India owes much of its strife due to the machinations the british employed to keep such a massive nation divided and weak.

As far as the middle east goes, the introduction of European Jews to Palestine didn't seem to be a deliberate policy of colonization, so much as the result of a careless promise from Lord Balfour, who MIGHT have been thinking that it would be advantageous to introduce Europeans to the mix, but then he might not have been thinking, at all.

As far as homophobia goes, it is absolutely true that these countries inherited the bigoted laws of the British (the French laws were based on the Code Napoleon, which are a bit more liberal) and it is absolutely true that they were homophobic. It is also absolutely true that many of the people they ruled over were already homophobic, that being the norm. There's plenty of things to blame the British Empire for, but that's stretching it.
 
There is one aspect that I just thought of:

It seems that it is a good possibility that when these places became colonies that they also started to become more legalistic with systematic applications of all laws and maybe even turning religions that were NOT enforced into points that eventually became part of legalism.

Look at the madness of zero tolerance descending on the USA now. Ironically, it is also happening at the same time as more rights for gay, transgenders and so on. But on the other hand, civil forfeiture is a massive violation of the rights of all of us. This is a type of hyper legalism. How much less legalistic were we 50, 100, 200 years ago? Also the increase of technology can legalism more practical.

Just shooting from the hip on this.
 
repoman said:
There is one aspect that I just thought of:

It seems that it is a good possibility that when these places became colonies that they also started to become more legalistic with systematic applications of all laws and maybe even turning religions that were NOT enforced into points that eventually became part of legalism.

Look at the madness of zero tolerance descending on the USA now. Ironically, it is also happening at the same time as more rights for gay, transgenders and so on. But on the other hand, civil forfeiture is a massive violation of the rights of all of us. This is a type of hyper legalism. How much less legalistic were we 50, 100, 200 years ago? Also the increase of technology can legalism more practical.

Just shooting from the hip on this.
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I made essentially the same argument in another thread. I'm suing you for copyright infringement. :mad:
 
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