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I want to start a discussion here on a historical subject I've never been able to get a decent answer on anywhere else. The question is:
What is going on with how colonialism worked in its heyday versus how difficult it seems to be to conquer and control other countries nowadays?
Back in the heyday, tiny little England controlled something like a quarter of the world, off and on during various periods, including such areas as all of India, most of the Middle East, the original American 13 colonies, Canada, Australia, sometimes hunks of China, various large hunks of Africa, etc. The somewhat larger France controlled other hunks of North America, a bunch of Caribbean islands, large chunks of Africa, and the Middle East, etc. Even tinier Belgium, with a modern-day population of only 11 million, had some pretty big colonies in Africa that they controlled. At the time, they (mostly) seemed to have little trouble controlling these colonies for centuries, sometimes with mostly peaceful means and sometimes with quite brutal violence.
Meanwhile nowadays, mighty continent-striding America can barely keep Iraq and Afghanistan under control for a decade or two. Russia had little better luck in Afghanistan and mostly hasn't done too well in controlling areas other than tiny regions on their borders already at least partially populated with Russians. China doesn't seem to be doing much better. All of the former colonial superpowers can now barely dream of controlling a single hostile city overseas. The British stretched themselves to the limit trying to take the Falklands back, and managed to hold I think it was a city or a small region in Iraq with a lot of help from America. I think France intervened briefly in Mali a decade or so ago, with only limited success.
So ahem, what the hell happened? How did it go from super-easy to super-hard to control a foreign country on the other side of an ocean? Questions about this in Reddit history subs seem to generate mostly uhhs and grunts and vague excuses. I wonder if anyone in here, with mostly more open discussion on tougher topics has any interesting thoughts on the subject?
Short answer. Buy in
I'm on record as having said that if you really want defeat radical Islam what you you need to do is say "fuck realpolitik", bulldoze every al-Wahhabi mosque in the area, and build a McDonalds and a school for girls on the empty lot. Anyone who objects gets a visit from 1st MEF.
Back in the day such an approach was seen as just good sense, these days morality is a bit more relative, the public a bit more squeamish, and ironically this makes violence more likely.
Hanging Indians who went against western moral sensibilities is not how the British have conquered India. It’s rather an obsession from the period when their hold on the country was already waning. The people who actually conquered India were either pirates who just wanted to loot and couldn’t care less about Indian widows, or people like Fraser who had great respect for the Indian way of life and almost assimilated with the local elite.
Same with your analogy of fighting against something called “radical Islam”. When the west was making its successful inroads into the Arab world they didn’t make much fuss about the fact that many of these countries were theocratic kingdoms with literal slavery. It is a 2000s phenomenon that the west tried to settle on a civilisational mission to fight against Islam, and it has catastrophically failed. It made westerners lose a lot of influence and self confidence and is ultimately abandoned at this point.
The 19th century French invasions of Algeria was justified (partially) on the basis of ending the Barbary slave trade by force. It was also referenced in Napolean's adventures in Egypt and Syria. I think "literally slavery" is something the West is (too) often willing to overlook, but not universally so.
Important to note here in the context that Barbary slave trade included raiding European/Christian ships as well as European coastal villages. This is not as big of an anti slavery crusade as you imply, but more specifically European naval powers defending their own people.
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