To what extent do you agree that European rule brought about great economic prosperity but untold suffering to their colonies
...it brought about untold suffering to its colonies. Under the European ruling, many of the colonies improved drastically but at the expense of the people’s welfare. Firstly, the Westerners introduced cultivation of commercial crops to some of the colonies in Southeast Asia. As a result, many peasants took on the idea and reproduced the same style but on a smaller scale. Thus, many made great profits based on this idea of growing and selling cash crops which were in great demand leading and upward jump in their economy. Also, many Southeast Asian colonies like Malaya, Borneo, Sumatra and the Netherland Indies, were doing large scale planting which enabled them to produce wanted trees at cheap prices. This concluded in SEA being the one of the main producers of rubber and mature trees something which would not have been possible without the European ruling. On the contrary, the vast expansion of the cultivating of crash crops brought about much unhappiness to some farmers. These farmers who used to farm rice, had to give up their farms for such smallholders to produce crash crops. The unfortunate consequence was that these farmers were forced into the cities to look for jobs. Many were forced to do labour work as they did not have skills to do other jobs. It is in this manner that the European rule brought about suffering for the farmers. The introduction of growing crash crops by the Europeans had caused such farmers t...