[Cal.]

Originally Posted by Soldier Boy

As with anything there's a lot more to it than the black and white (literally, there are entire degree courses on Empire/Colonialism that I imagine still barely scratch the surface. It will always be the case that real history is far more complex than the buzz topics and phrases... And the most simple reality is that human history is incredibly murky. We've not been very good to each other.

LOOSELY though - it's very difficult to take the stance that the British Empire (or any other empire) was in any way a good or benevolent thing... Empires from the beginning of history to right now have ultimately been about selfish resource hoarding by wealthy people, to the detriment of pretty much everyone else, but affecting some far more than others.

Its also a pretty spectacularly ill considered take the stance that "Britain heroic" for being one of the first to outlaw slavery or for making efforts to help end it in other places too. I mean yes, they did do those things, but ... They wouldn't have been able to "heroically" stop trading slaves if they'd never traded slaves in the first place, and making amends by utilising the Royal Navy to help stop slavers wasn't heroic either, it was really the least they could do at the time as part of making amends.

Imagine someone keeping a human locked in their basement for years, and then one night having an epiphany and letting them go the next day... Would anyone say "Wow a hero!!". It seems unlikely. And if that person dedicated the rest of their life to getting other people out of basements that would be the right thing - but really the least they could do. And you wouldn't expect the person who had been in their basement to say, "You know what? You're actually an OK guy!".

Then there's the idea that the Empire "brought civilisation" to the world which of course, it didn't. It brought capitalism to the world, and people who equate capitalism with civilisation might see it that way... But it really all rests on that old premise that before the Empire brought order, people in colonial areas were "Savages" with no culture when of course that wasn't the case at all, it was just different culture, and thus rejected as being culture at all.

Agree with all of this!