The fact of the matter is that the British colonial system has always followed the instruction of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the policy that populations should be kept wherever possible in a backward state of economic and cultural development relative to Britain itself. This was the feature of Adam Smith against which the American Revolution was fought. It is also a fact that the British colonial office pursued a political doctrine of “cultural relativism” with respect to colonial peoples in general, and promoted that doctrine as anthropological propaganda, as a part of the effort of
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