File:Letter from the Editor - Industrialization and Imperialism.doc

Fictitious Letter from the Editor - Industrialization and Imperialism

The recent rise in global inequality concerns me. Britain continues to develop new technologies to make more goods faster and cheaper. These advances lower the cost of goods and make them accessible to British citizens. However their giant manufacturing engine uses many natural resources. A large percentage of these resources don’t come from Britain. They must be imported from other countries. However, Britain is now going too far with trying to streamline their supply line. They are starting to take over nations in order to easily steal their resources from them. They find a country that has what they need, and they rip that out of them. They do not care for the health or safety of the inhabitants of the colony. They do not care about our quality of life. They do not bother wondering if we want to be taken over.

Once they have stolen a country, they put the poor inhabitants of the foreign colonies hard to work with little or no pay to extract what they need. They then load our natural resources onto British ships owned by wealthy British businessmen relaxing in a British resort on the British coast. The materials are then processed in factories on British soil, again owned by wealthy British businessmen. Some of these goods are then sold in Britain to British citizens. However, a large portion of these goods are put back onto merchant ships and shipped back to the original colonies that supplied the raw materials.

I can not see the need to have these goods shipped back and forth to Britain. I believe that they do this because they want to make us reliant on Britain, so that we dare not revolt for our independence. We are not allowed to produce anything for ourselves. This system takes money from the colonies and brings it to mainland Britain. This is just not fair to us. Britain should be helping its colonies become self sufficient by giving us factory machines, or at least informing us how to build them. Industrial power should be spread around to everyone, and all people should benefit from it. I believe that Imperialism is bad for us island inhabitants. The benefits of Industrialization should be shared with us directly. We MUST NOT LET Britain get away with all of our money and resources before it is too late.