>>The analogy I was going for was that the Balkans contained a number of local identities with ethnic and religious distinctions - and then were occupied by Moslem invaders - causing both conversions and settling of yet another group. The strength of empire more or less kept the lid on until the Ottomans decayed then there were brief stirrings previously suppressed identities then another lid was put on by a centralized government with little patience for "Balkanization" ( as the word has come to be understood in English) - not sure how well the analogy holds - comparing Tito to the Raj - but then the lid comes off again and there are scores to settle and demagogues waving bloody banners and some perfectly understandable strivings for identity.
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>Tito's ideology in that regard was "brotherhood and unity", which was a great wave of overall everyone-forgives-everyone-else (or else...) after the WWII and the revolution (which happened simultaneously, which is quite rare - the liberating army was the revolutionary army, while the other forces were either helping the nazis, or considered the communists a greater evil, or just fought among themselves).
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>And had it lasted for just another twenty years, it would have worked. A generation such as mine grew up as a tabula rasa, blissfully unaware of who did what during the war, and even the descendants of the brotherly slaughter victims were willing to let it go, seeing that peace brought prosperity.
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>I guess we'll have to wait another 30 years or more to see which forces brought balkanization back to the Balkans in the nineties. Again, 90%+ of the people didn't want this; it was foreign forces who didn't want an example of a successful and viable socialist system in the middle of Europe, with open borders where anyone can come and see how it works (and millions of tourists did, over the years). Our shame is the ease with which they found the thugs who will do the dirty work of dismantling the country and turning it into six or seven colonies again.
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I certainly defer to your experience in all matters Balkan. I think it is not necessarily a bad thing for someone to put a lid on endless hatred and blood feuds, hoping to break the cycle. But didn't the re-Balkanization, if you will, happen after Tito ( you mention the idea that outside forces wanted to undermine a successful socialist state, but I thought the disintegration was more the product of the disintegration of central control with the fall of communism -though I have to admit I am hazy on the 80s in that region.)

But I think the analogy holds as to the Ottoman colonization of the region leaving a community that was identified with former oppressors but was now a more vulnerable minority. ( as the Moguls in the India and the majority Hindu population. )


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>>I think the amazing thing about 1947 wasn't that India and Pakistan didn't immediately become fast friends ( and there were 15 million people scrambling for a number of years to get on the right side of the border ) but that India maintained unity and democracy. That certainly ranks with the miracles of the US and Canada as a credit to what Britain gave the world.
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>With any amount of soul searching, I remain completely unable to find any sympathy for colonialism. It's just plundering and daylight robbery, call it what you want.

Well, I don't think most examples of it differ from your analysis, but of the lot, Britain seems to have left behind as much as it took. The areas that were colonized were generally vulnerable because indigenous rulers were not doing a particularly good job and in most cases were even less responsive to ( or in some case representative of ) the general population than the colonial administrations that co-opted or replaced them. And legacy of law, technology, education and language they left behind gave most former British colonies a decided edge in the post-colonial period.


French, Belgian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and briefly German colonialism seemed to run on a slightly different model - and was certainly less constrained by 'do-gooders' in the home country. Napier in India and King Leopold in the Congo were quite different in both purpose and method. There were some heartbreakers, of course - Burma and Uganda come immediately to mind - but for the most part that was despite rather than because of British colonial influence.