View Single Post
  #33 (permalink)  
Old 12-16-2007
Agentorange Agentorange is offline
Speaker of the House

 
Member Since: Jan 2005
Location: Somewhere in England
Posts: 914

United    
Re: Hawaiian Nativism redux...

Quote:
Originally Posted by DGG View Post
Not always, not if the people of the colony want to stay subjects of the colonial power. One such example is the people of the Falkland Islands.

However, the will of the people does not always count. If a referendum would have been held in Hong Kong, most people would probably have preferred to stay under UK rule instead of being transferred to the People's Republic of China, but China was allowed to take over anyway.
True enough, by and large though when the majority of a country wants to leave there comes a point where either:

1] you force them to stay
2] you have to let them go.

America is unusual in that unlike most colonial powers it has retained and actually absorbed it's colonial territory making it part of the nation state. Not many countries have achieved that.
__________________
England has no eternal friends and no eternal enemies, only eternal interests - Palmerston
Reply With Quote