The British Empire

India was invaded beforehand by the Greeks, Persians, Afghans, Mughals, the British.... like they say it was a jewel in the crown and it was too crippled to retaliate.

. They reaped the rewards of a growing, thriving business (such as the East India Company) and this was built on the labour of Indians, who were promised good wages and a job, but given appalling working and living conditions.

Yes, good ol' East India Company. I still believe GB went to trade with India and settlement of the Whites was an added flavour.

Why do you talk about it so playfully, when it resulted in dire living conditions for millions of Indians?

This is what I resent. Whether people say it or imply it, the value of a non-white's life us worth less than a white persons.

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Maybe you're reading too much into my use of words. The creation of the Empire was established to commence trade. Settling in India and colonising India was never part of the British agenda beforehand.

And I never discriminated nor did I say that white people are superior to Brown or Black people. Sigh..

So what? They still felt it was appropriate to go to other people's lands, splinter the people against each other and use that to take over. Not to mention the way Indians were treated and virtually robbed India of cotton which was a highly valuable crop. Millions died. But I suppose we got train tracks so that makes it all OK?

You didn't read the bit. Did you? I didn't say you said it, I said people. If you didn't say it, you implied it.

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You having a go at me isn't going to make history reverse itself. What's done is done. GB is sorry for all her downfalls. I suppose we have to accept that and move on, even though it's easier said than done.


I implied nothing.

The notion of 'Empire' was a totally natural progression, it always had been. The only reason England takes all the stick is because we were by far the most successful, you never hear people harping on about the Dutch Empire do you?

Most people on this site are historically ignorant, petulant children, that don't care to look at things objectively. They demand that it was evil but can't site a single shred of evidence, they just say something pathetically vague like "yea, bt india!". Just morons. For me when I don't know something I read about it, if these morons that blindly put it down could do the same then maybe we could have a reasonable discussion on this site. But we can't. Fact and liberal bigotry go together like chalk and cheese.

And obviously a lot of the criticism comes from America. In their 200 year history they have more blood on their hands than we do in 2000. But the USA is the centre of the universe now so what they say goes.

people have a tendency to reduce events into simplistic and overly emotional narratives which suit their own particular biases.


like it or not, civilisation has been spread through empire and the british did more than anyone else spread the modern world with all of its technological advancements and personal freedoms -- mainly because britain was birth place of much of the modern world itself.

with the passage of time, the british empire and its contributions to civilisation will not be able to be denigrated and denied like they are now.

I just wanted to know your opinion, do you reckon it is fair that the UK is still to date lashed out at because she had an Empire?

For example, the Windrush, the 1960s; when people immigrated from Asian countries; the Indian sub-continent to be more specific, the latest entries to the UK and there are talks of Romanians and Bulgarians entering the country.

There are plenty of other countries that had an Empire in Europe, but they don't seem to receive the stick, but Britain always does..

I think it's half and half. Being an Indian, I can't help but sometimes focus on the atrocities committed and I also feel that the current divide & conquer politics of India with minorities was introduced by the British. Also found the pace at which partition took place was...interesting. India itself is still effected negatively by colonialism, but not in a way I could expect a non-Indian to understand. It has a lot to do with the Indian identity, and the rubbishing of Hinduism and Indian history by Indologists from the Empire. The British were more than happy to oblige Indians when there was nothing to gain on their end. However I am happy to see a united India (not happy to see Pakistan & Bangladesh, however) and democratic system (although I'd say India is NOT democracy at all in practice). The infrastructure built definitely has helped India HUGELY although I'd like to see it upgraded.

Too many people justify the deplorable acts of the Empire calling it 'natural progression' and that is sad.

Out of interest do you believe that India was better off after independence from from the Empire or would you have preferred to see an evolution to a more federal like structure with Indian representation (i.e. do you believe British control of non-economic issues like justice, defense and foreign policy would have been of greater benefit than those policies enacted by your own domestic governments).

I think the distate for the UK lingers from the Suez Canal crisis, and as that was a remnant from colonialism I'd be willing to accept the statement that Englands reputation in particular comes comes from the Empire.

That crisis was more about America being hypocritical. With haughty faces the American officials protested about "colonialism" at a time when America was spreading its influence more and more across continents.

Yet it was England and France who received the bad reputation from it. Whether in hindsight we want to note American hypocritical tendencies or not, at the time the newspapers throughout the world condemned the two former Imperial powers and they've been sullied forever more.

It was a shame to be honest. Perhaps American involvement in Vietnam was a bit ironic then?

It was pre American foreign policy recognising terms such as peak oil and them consuming more oil than they could produce. The American involvement in Vietnam was a complete political shambles, but there was enough fear of communism still around to justify it on a global scale. The Suez crisis was pre 'terrorism' so there was no similar media justification.


But yeah, we all know American foreign policy is pretty disgraceful. Their big businesses in some ways have created a modern slave trade.