Introduction
Herbert Bury, whose duties as an assistant bishop to the Bishop of London took him all over Europe, came to believe that Britain’s place in the world depended not on bending other countries to our will or draining their resources, but on helping them to grow.
IT must ever be remembered that people who cannot leave their own country must judge largely of other countries by what they see of those who come from them. If English ideas, manners, and customs are held in favour and esteem in Russia and Siberia it can only be, therefore, because English men and women have worthily represented them there in business and commerce, by upright and moral conduct.
Englishmen have succeeded amongst the Russians for precisely the same reason that they have succeeded in building up vast colonies and a huge empire. They have developed, and not exploited.* There is a way of becoming rich by exploiting resources at the expense of those employed. True development, on the other hand, is cultivating and bringing into use the resources of a country and improving the conditions of life for those who produce them at the same time.
This remark would have drawn a sardonic laugh from critics of the Empire such as Adam Smith and William Cobbett: see A Conflict of Interest and Free Trade, Free Peoples. But the objects of their reproof were politicians and their big business cronies, headquartered in London and, if doomed to go abroad, always itching to come home. The private Englishman (or Scotsman) whom Herbert Bury saw in Russia, setting up enterprises such as Muir and Mirrielees, at that time Moscow’s flagship department store, lived among Russians and knew that his prosperity was bound up with theirs. Colonial regions benefited from many such men, though they were frequently at loggerheads with London. See for example our posts tagged Sir Stamford Raffles (4).
Archive
Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Spinners Find in Think and Speak
For each group of words, compose a sentence that uses all three. You can use any form of the word: for example, cat → cats, go → went, or quick → quickly, though neigh → neighbour is stretching it a bit.
This exercise uses words found in the accompanying passage.
1 Rich. They. True.
2 Conduct. Man. Remember.
3 Colony. Precise. Woman.
Variations: 1. include direct and indirect speech 2. include one or more of these words: although, because, despite, either/or, if, unless, until, when, whether, which, who 3. use negatives (not, isn’t, neither/nor, never, nobody etc.)
Subject and Object Find in Think and Speak
Use each word below in two sentences, first as the subject of a verb, and then as the object of a verb. It doesn’t have to be the same verb: some verbs can’t be paired with an object (e.g. arrive, happen), so watch out for these.
This exercise uses words found in the accompanying passage.
1. Reason. 2. Resource. 3. Business. 4. Judge. 5. Man. 6. Empire. 7. Condition. 8. Way. 9. Use.
Variations: 1.use your noun in the plural (e.g. cat → cats), if possible. 2.give one of your sentences a future aspect (e.g. will, going to). 3.write sentences using negatives such as not, neither, nobody and never.
Add Vowels Find in Think and Speak
Make words by adding vowels to each group of consonants below. You may add as many vowels as you like before, between or after the consonants, but you may not add any consonants or change the order of those you have been given. See if you can beat our target of common words.
wld (5+1)
wailed. weld. wield. wild. would.
wold.
