In addition to helping India, the British Empire negatively affected India. According to Monhandas Ghandi’s speech in Document 7, the British impoverished India by controlling the Indian government. Year by year Britain stole India’s money. The British destroyed India’s spirit, and disregarded their feelings. India wasn’t the only country that Britain negatively affected.
The housing market also plummeted leading to negative equity, which the majority of the working class could not afford resulting in the repossession of their houses combined with the drastic increase in unemployment Britain was in a mess. However Major did have some success, he abolished poll tax, which was very popular among the public, he increased spending on the NHS and introduced transport subsides to keep travel fares low.
The British introduced a parliamentary system of government to the Indians. As stated in document 3 by Romesh Dutt, “Englishman has given the people of India the greatest human blessing – peace.” They have introduced Western Education. This has brought an ancient and civilized nation in touch with modern thought, modern sciences, and modern life. This means that the British have positively affected India because they brought over their knowledge and educated the natives, which results in more skilled workers. They also modernized India with their economic system of Mercantilism, and their parliamentary form of government.
This is demonstrated in documents 4, 5, and 6. Henry Haskell states that “The government undertook such far-reaching responsibility in affairs that the fiber of the citizens weakened” (Document 4) This shows that the decline of the empire was due to heavy taxation that couldn’t support the government. If the taxes couldn’t sustain the government then it wouldn’t be able to control the people. According to Montanelli “The military crisis was the result of… proud old aristocracy’s… shortage of children” (Document 5) This means that many children weren’t old enough to go into the military which caused the decrease of soldiers. With the lack of soldiers, it would be easier to invade Rome, which could’ve led to the decline of the Empire.
The roman empire the economy system got weak. The economy system got weak because of the tribes and pirates outside of the empire disrupting the trade. Trying to expand to their limit, the romans had less of new sources like silver and gold. Extremely desperate for the new sources the government raised all of the taxes. They started to cheat people out of their silver and gold by putting less and less of silver and gold in their metal.
In addition the interest on the debt alone was £9 million per year. All of this made it clear to Pitt that something had to happen to try to escape from the mess the government was in. In the 18th century there was a serious problem with people smuggling goods such as tea and tobacco into the country. This was to avoid the duty tax on products, which gave them a huge profit margin. This profit margin made the risk worth taking for many, resulting in the government losing money due to be not paying duty tax.
What Evans means by this is that the desperation of the people led them to polarising their votes and seeing radical leaders like Hitler as a solution to the mess that Germany had become. Hitler took advantage of this, and from there was able to play a huge role in the collapse of the Weimar Republic. The economic strain that Germany was placed under was also a major impact of the Depression on the collapse of the Republic. Firstly, the Depression had the obvious impact of the debt rising and the banking crises however, there were a number other impacts. Germany relied heavily on international trade for resources; almost one third of their resources came from overseas.
Nina Phan 01/17/13 Period 2 British imperialism in India had many positive and negative effects on the mother country, Britain, and the colony, India. Many people argued about which effects were more important while some agreed that they were both equal. According to O.P. Austin, the benefits of the British imperialism were building roads, canals, railways, and telegraphs. They would be able to establish schools and newspapers for the people of the colonies.
Heavy taxes on the smaller countries disrupted local economies. Famines started to happen because of mass crop exportation. And just the overall resentment smaller, more traditional countries had because western ideas were being forced upon
As shown in Source E, the people with more income are for getting rid of the penny, while the more poor people are against the abolishment. This is probably because the more upper class people do not have to pay for simple things with the pennies they find on the streets. Poorer people who make less than $25,000 a year obviously don’t have good jobs, probably not full coverage health insurance, and a lot of the time, have more children to take care of. Due to the insurance they have, their prescriptions and doctor co pays are very expensive. Penny pinching may be these deprived people’s only option in paying bills.