Re: who really started ww2 in the pacific?

In article <4b26098e$0$34596$4fafbaef@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
don'tspammeatall@xxxxxx (Michele) wrote:

It was handy to have in the previous
centuries - maybe. But not any more.

In most cases Empire was only worth it when it made possible access to
materials unobtainable from anywhere else and unobtainable by trade. In
most cases Empires ran at a loss. On reason we were willing to let India
go was that it was barely breaking even. The EIC made far more money out
of China than it ever did from India.

A lot of the British Empire was acquired for strategic reasons. This
applies to Egypt (Suez), Malaysia (rubber) and Cape Colony
(replenishment stop). In most cases countries were lucky to break even
on their colonial program. The German colonial program was run at a net
loss with only one or two individual colonies producing a profit. There
were exceptions to this. The Spanish New World colonies produced a
profit in the form of gold and silver. However the final effect of this
was to wreck the Spanish economy. The other exception I remember was the
Belgian Congo which Leopold ran with methods the Maffia would have been
ashamed off.

Ken Young

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