I wasn't saying it was "imperialism", pdq, I was just saying it happened in various places during the colonial era, that's all. Whether one should call it imperialism or not is a whole different discussion.

If I'd been running the UK at the time, I might have done the same thing, after all. Who knows? But I'm saying that the boundaries drawn for many of those countries in Africa and the Middle East after WWI were probably drawn without full awareness of what the cultural aftereffects would be for the local people. To say this is not to be insulting "the West", it is simply to state what happened.

Larger powers always end up determining the future of various indigenous populations in weaker areas...for better or for worse. If we're going to argue about whether or not to call it "imperialism", it would be well to remember that there was a time not too long ago when every great power was proud to speak of its "empire". "Empire" was not a dirty word then, it was a badge of pride. When I was born in 1948, the British Empire still spoke proudly of itself and celebrated the fact that "the sun never sets on the British Empire".

Now, tell me....how can an empire NOT be imperial???? ;-) All empires practice imperialism, pdq, because to have an empire at all necessitates the practice of imperialism....and people used to be proud of themselves for doing it! Read some Rudyard Kipling, and you'll see that right away, although he was not blind to the aspirations of the subject races. He just honestly felt they were better off under British rule....and he may even have been partly right about that! After all, the British were good administrators, weren't they? And they kept the different ethnic groups under their rule from slaughtering each other. Look what happened when they finally left...not exactly a lovely scene, was it?

Yet, I believe it was inevitable.