How Britain Lost Its Power of Seduction

Aatish Taseer, New York Times, June 22

Excerpt:

As an unapologetic “anywhere,” I am in the grip of a nostalgia of my own. I find myself composing an elegy for that brief interregnum when Britain had ceased to rule but was nonetheless dazzlingly cosmopolitan. “European rule in Asian countries was based on force,” Arthur Koestler wrote in “The Lotus and the Robot,” “but its cultural influence was not.” He added, “We ruled by rape, but influenced by seduction.” As Britain withdraws into itself, I cannot help feeling we are going to miss that last benign act of British power when the rape fell away, and seduction remained.