This book changed my lifeThe Goat writes, "Some books have made a huge impact on my life." It's true. It wasn't until the b3ta mods read the Flashman novels that we changed from mild-mannered computer operators into heavily-whiskered copulators, poltroons and all round bastards in a well-known cavalry regiment.
What books have changed the way you think, the way you live, or just gave you a rollicking good time?
Friendly hint: A bit of background rather than just a bunch of book titles would make your stories more readable
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chthonic, Thu 15 May 2008, 15:11)
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Don't make me laugh...'The British built railroads and provided an unprecedented level of stability and technology to [India]'
Contemporary and present day observers of the British Raj beg to differ.
It's a well-known fact that the mercantilist policies that Britain forced on India destroyed the old feudal support networks and fundamentally undermined her peoples' abilities to cope with the periodic crop-failures that are an unfortunate fact of life in the sub-continent. The result was a series of famines of mounting severity, made worse by Britain's refusal to intervene in any way, shape or form.
The death by starvation of a conservatively estimated 30 million Indians over the course of the 19th Century might be reckoned a rather high price to pay for a railway system.
Doubtless the trains proved convenient to the bible-wielding missionaries whose message in many cases I'll hazard was not dissimilar to your own: namely, that the Indians' unbelief was partly to blame for the charnel house their country had become.
(, Mon 19 May 2008, 18:17, Reply)
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