CapitalistImperialistPig

For Macaulay, an English education for India’s ruling elites had been only the first step in a far wider diffusion of modern learning to the largely illiterate mass of the subcontinent’s population. He had correctly predicted that the English language would be the key to success in a globalized knowledge economy. And he would almost certainly have lamented the fact that, almost two centuries later, Indian English, like medieval Latin in Europe, remains the preserve of the better of 10 per cent of the population who can afford to pay for it. He would probably have blamed the Indian state for its failure to provide free and equal access to English, in much the same way as he castigated the Orientalists of his own day for their backward-looking revivalism. Masani, Zareer (2012-11-16). Macaulay: Pioneer of India’s Modernization (Kindle Locations 3654-3660). Random House India. Kindle Edition.

Who were the "Orientalists" that Macaulay opposed, and what did they want? Well, mostly they were James Mill and his son John Stuart Mill, the noted philosopher. Here is Masani: ...And yet, the difference between their two positions was not so wide. Both agreed that government should promote some English teaching; the question was how quickly and extensively. Mill wanted efforts to be concentrated on a small elite of Indians who were already scholars of Oriental Studies and through whom knowledge would trickle down to the vernacular-speaking masses. Macaulay, on the other hand, wanted to use English as the medium for giving as many Indians as possible a Western education, responding to the aspirations of a rapidly expanding middle class and eventually of the entire population. Though not explicitly stated in his Minute, his ultimate goal was of an Indian empire whose citizens, like those of Rome, would become equal partners of their British mentors, with English, like Lati...

The British East India Company (EIC) began as traders, became free-booting mercenaries, and finally conquerors. Their ambition was to suck as much money as possible out of the territory. The company's bad behavior, and in particular it's role in exacerbating the catastrophic famine of 1770 attracted a lot of negative press in Britain. Mostly as a consequence, parliament took some tentative steps to reining in it's reckless rapacity. In particular, it set up a government "Board of Control" to oversee the EIC in India and required that the Company set aside some funds for "improving" the lives of Indians, including 100,000/yr rupees for educational work. These were the funds that were potentially available to the governor and his board, including Macaulay. It's worth noting that in England at the time, the government funds allocated for education were zero - it was a purely private enterprise. The powers of the board of control in Indian civil ...

If our ancestors of some time ago had been a bit more forward thinking and had set up suitable time-lapse photography, we could have had a nice record of a spectacular event. I'm talking about the collision of India with the Eurasian land mass, of course. 300,000 years worth should have been enough to capture the land mass looming out of the distance, the seabeds buckling upward, and the wild explosion of earthquake and volcanic activity. I suppose we can't really blame them much though, since they were all squirrel sized pro-simian insectivores with little knowledge of digital photography or long term archival storage.

By Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, the British Empire sprawled over five continents and hundreds of islands. It was by far the largest empire that had ever existed. The war of revenge against the dervishes - Salafis in the Sudan - culminated in the slaughter of Omdurman. Machine guns and artillery beat spears and muskets. But signs of rot were already showing up. The turn of the twentieth century war against the Boers in South Africa was brutal, difficult, and was conducted ultimately with a policy of burning farms and imprisoning women and children in concentration camps, where poor food and sanitation killed tens of thousands. Of course this was a small scale slaughter compared to some previous colonial wars, but this time the victims, or many of them, were white Europeans. The peace would be a technical victory but mostly a loss. Disgust with the conduct of the war combined with the well-founded suspicion that it had been fought for the benefit of a tiny number of rich ...

As a reward for his critical work on electoral reform in England and in the anti-slavery cause, Macaulay was appointed to the board of control of the East India Company - a government appointed board tasked with oversight of the East India Company, which had lost some of it's autonomy after various outrages past. While there, he became interested in the work of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who was then in London, and who had equally radical ideas on such then extreme ideals as the rights of man, racial equality, and women's rights, as well as his own radical take on religion. Roy died in London before Macaulay went to India, but many of Macaulay's policies, notions, and speeches appear to derive, at least in part, from Roy. According to Masani

One provision of the proposed immigration reform package looks like an invitation to a racket - the proposal for automatic green cards for anyone earning a MS or PhD in a STEM field. How do you keep this from producing a raft of diploma mills in the US - and we already have plenty. Also, why should degree holders from top foreign schools be excluded? Maybe some exam standards would be better - it would also put pressure on US schools to pay attention to what their grads are learning.