Writing shortly after the Second World War, Somerset Maugham urged the USA to reflect on Indian independence. The Americans, he said, were starting down the same path as the British Empire, hoping to make themselves both loved and respected by funding and shaping Europe’s war-torn nations as Britain had funded and shaped India.

Maugham warned that neither money nor government expertise would endear the Americans to the nations of Europe, if thereby they created a condition of permanent and humbling dependency. Whatever the benefits might be, such a relationship had sowed the seeds of lasting resentment in British India, and the USA risked doing the same in Europe.

108 words