Look at how the British covered India with railroads, and it is easy to view them as modernisers. Look, however, at the abysmal levels of mass illiteracy in the subcontinent they left behind in 1947, and they appear rather differently.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the contrast between the advancements brought by British modernization and the failures in education that persisted after colonial rule.
Linda Colley's quote reflects on the dual nature of colonialism in India, pointing out that while the British introduced infrastructure such as railroads, they simultaneously neglected vital educational developments, resulting in a legacy of mass illiteracy. This juxtaposition challenges the perception of colonial powers as solely benefactors of progress by emphasizing the negative impacts of their role in society and the lasting consequences of their governance.
In practice
In a discussion on the impacts of colonialism in a history class.
Empire in the past was always a far harsher and much more accident-prone business than conventional history books imply. And the costs of these overseas invasions were borne not just by those on the receiving end but - frequently - by ordinary, vulnerable people among or associated with the invaders.
Much of how Americans have always understood their history, culture, and identity depends on positioning Europe as the 'other,' as that 'old world' against which they define themselves.
The tide of history only advances when people make themselves fully visible.
Women enjoyed rights in Egypt they would not again enjoy for more than 2,000 years. They owned ships, ran vineyards, filed lawsuits, practiced medicine. Their husbands supported them after divorce. Their power was unprecedented.
The Edmund Pettus Bridge - which in 2013 was declared a National Historic Landmark - isn't symbolic of the Civil War in a meaningful way. It is, however, the modern-day battlefield where the voting rights movement was born.
Reconstruction was a vast labor movement of ignorant, muddled, and bewildered white men who had been disinherited of land and labor and fought a long battle with sheer subsistence, hanging on the edge of poverty, eating clay and chasing slaves and now lurching up to manhood.
The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight.
History is simply a piece of paper covered with print: the main thing is to make history, not to write it.
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