Monday, September 28, 2009

What are We?

Someone said to me " you know, what are We (the Malaysians) if not for the British?" Is it just me, or is there something seriously wrong with this statement.
Are we supposed to be appreciative of the British colonization?
What are your thoughts? I want to know.

6 comments:

philters said...

i think we should appreciate our past, no matter how they are like. the bad. the good. the beautiful. the ugly. only by embracing and acknowledging what our forefathers have been through, can we decide for ourselves how we choose to lead our lives - in their shadows or down the road less taken.

we cannot change the past. we can ignore it. we can criticize it. we can pretend it never happened. but this will not make the past go away. it will always be there, distorted maybe, but will always be there. for better or worse.

question is, where do we go from here?

Herman Chew said...

if not for the British, Chinese will still be in China, Indians will still be in India, and Malaysia wouldn't be Malaysia today and the state will be worse than now...

philters said...

i disagree. malaysia would definitely be different. but we are not to say if they would be better or worse off.

and it was the arabs that brought some of the indians in too lah. come to think of it, the indians were already here way before the british went sailing. and some chinese came on their own boat. we cannot give the british all the credit. duh!

tihtahpah said...

haha my point exactly. why should the british get the credit? how come no one thanked the indians for bringing all the spices over! hahaha.

Unknown said...

Of course we should thank the Indian for bringing all the spices over...

The Brits do not deserve ALL the credits but they deserve some credits, that's my view. Being colonised is not great. But given the choice, I would rather be colonised by the Brits than the French, Spanish, Dutch and etc. Why? Look at the countries around us?
Cambodia, Loas, Vietnam - French
Philippines - Spanish, American
Indonesia - Dutch

You can't deny the fact that the countries which are former British Colonies are generally doing a bit better than their neighbours, especially in SEA. Yes, they came and they 'borrow' many of our stuff and are currently displaying them at the British Museum. They came and they mined all our tins, etc. But hey, look at the bright side, we have got railways... we have got some basic infrastucture to start off with when we gained independence... we have got rojak English (at least)... we have got the English law... Parliamentary Monarchy system... Commonwealth scholarships... Visa-free entry to many countries because of our Commonwealth country status (my favourite)...

What I am trying to say is that the world would not be the same if it was not because of the Brits. Would it be better or worse, I don't know. But I think they had done things that had shaped the world as it is today. Don't forget that our country, Malaysia, has the similar historical background, religion, composition of ethnicity with Indonesia... aren't you just glad that we don't end up like them, in some aspects?

Unknown said...

By the way, I forgot to mention that I do not like them. NOW.
hahaha... they seem to have forgotten the 'British Empire' is at a distance past.

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