[AnAmericanMother]

This is the same argument between capitalism and socialism.

"Oh!" say those who say they simply want to "see two sides" - "Capitalism is EVIL because it is motivated by GREED. Those nasty entrepreneurs don't go into new markets to spread the wealth to the deserving consumers! Oh, no, they go into new markets because they want to exploit them for their own benefit! Oh, the horror!"

Guess what -- if there's nothing in it for the people who are going to invest their time, their money, their lives in opening new markets, then they aren't going to bother. If the East India Company hadn't been able to make a profit, it would have gone home. And then you would still have a bunch of warring little states on the subcontinent run by despots in many cases far from benevolent, all hampered by a sclerotic system that kept a majority of the population in squalor and burned women to death.

The alternative . . . whether it's rapacious tribal conflicts or the dismal gray command economy of socialism . . . is much worse.

[microgood]

This is the same argument between capitalism and socialism.

Not really. A better analogy would be to state that blacks in America today have benefited from the slavery of their ancestors. That does not make slavery right, but if it had not happened there would be very few blacks in America and they would conceivably have been born in Africa instead of America.

Throughout history, anything related to humans have had good and bad sides to it, as did British imperialism.

If the East India Company hadn't been able to make a profit, it would have gone home.

The East India Company not only traded with India, it ruled India. They never planned on going home, and made their profits by taxing the native population. They were at war in various regions of the country the whole time they were in charge. After a rebellion in the 1850s, the British government took over the country, but the East India company ruled parts of India with their private army for 100 years.