Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Aug 19, 2024 9:55 am
WeepingElf wrote: ↑Mon Aug 19, 2024 8:26 am
The only way in which India could be considered a "Western" nation is linguistic: the majority of the people of India speak Indo-European languages.
I think keenir's point was more like that India used to be a colony of a Western power. But, well, almost every place was.
Ehh, more like that, India
used to be a colony, at which point England downloaded all England's history, literature, etc into Indian education ...and, yes, a lot of the world was at one point a colony of a Western Power (though then we have cases like Alaska, colony of Russia, which didn't get much of the Russian education system or culture, aside from Orthodox missionaries)
So, as I delve deeper into my old assumptions about The West & what those assumptions add up to, I find a few categories. However, for simplicity sake - and at risk of igniting a firestorm - I'm using a definition that includes
any population exchange*, and thus excludes when a country puts up a few coastal forts (ie Portugal in India) but has little to no involvement with locals beyond that.
Yes, I know there are other movements of populations, such as what resulted in Cambodia's and Indonesia's Chinese populations. but as I said before, I've only recently begun hammering out the wrinkles of these thoughts and their meanings.
* = even before Independence, Indians could move to England and South Africa, for example; at least after independence, Maori could visit the UK (possibly New England pre-Independence)
Countries where colonization was either never attempted or was tried & failed for one reason or another (ie, Korea - normally a client state, aside from early 20th Century)
Countries where colonization was never attempted. (ie, Thailand, Easter Island)
Countries where colonization was successful and its teachings (see above - literature, etc) were retained in independence. (ie, USA, India, Mexico, Chile)
.......{when I say they were retained...if I ask my Mexican cousin-in-law who it was that tilted at windmills, he'd be able to answer}
Countries where colonization was successful, but its teachings were destroyed once independence was attained. (ie, ?)
...a subsection of that might be when populations from two places are taken to a new land (such as Pitcairn Island)...though I don't know how much knowledge from either population was retained in the new community, hence my placing it as a subsection here rather than of an earlier category.
...and a lot of times, when I see people talking about Western democracies, India is usually at the front of the list, alongside the UK, and US.