I'm not sure what cultural influence over the indigenous population of a colonized country has to do with the "shortest colonised European history." E.g., what does the cultural impact of European settlers on the "Native American" population in North America have to do with that question? For that matter, what does it matter what impact colonization had on the aboriginal peoples of Australia when discussing "shortest colonised European history?" What about the impact (or relative lack thereof) on native Poles when Germany "colonised" Poland? So I pose the question for academic purposes: What does the fact that the "culture there...is still more that of the ethnic-Indians than that of the British" really say about the colonial incursion of that geography by a European power?

All that statement means is that in India, the colonizing culture did a less effective job of subjugating, integrating, enslaving and/or obliterating the indigenous people and culture in India than they did in Australia, all of the Americas and others. But by no means is India unique in this sense! Most of the African colonies (including now even South Africa) retained much of the culture of the indigenous population, as did most of the European colonies in Asia (even including, although clearly to a lesser extend, Hong Kong).

OTOH, the indiginous cultures in Poland under Germany, Czechoslovakia under the Soviets, the Philippians under the United States (hey US may not be Europe, but it is NATO), etc, etc all culturally survived colonialization and all are "shorter" by either definition than Oz.

Of course this is a bit of an oversimplification, but the distinction is clear.

So while IMHO, all this has nothing to do with Ozstamps misstatement of fact (and even if Oz had mentioned "culture" it is still incorrect), as you can see, I am equally fascinated by this topic. So thanks for bringing it up!!!!!

Frankly, one of my favorite countries in the world is Thailand because they were one of the few countries able to resist colonization throughout modern history (even England was once a colony of Rome and the Normands).

Another fascinating petri dish are Caribbean countries like Jamaica and Haiti where one culture was obliterated by a second culture but the vacuum was filled by a third (sometimes hybrid) culture!

Well, fascinating to me, at least...


[This message has been edited by kokonutz (edited 08-01-2000).]