The British Empire was a force for good, stop blaming the problems of today on it!

tbf i have no need to troll. He is the one saying hsi preference was for the nazis.

Cant say i'm a fan myself.

No they didnt, you dirty LIAR

Don't join in this debate it is way to advanced for your level of understanding. I hear they are debating Bob the builder on another forum that might be more your cup of tea.

Don't join in this debate it is way to advanced for your level of understanding. I hear they are debating Bob the builder on another forum that might be more your cup of tea.

10 years on TSR and you have 1 bar .... not surprised!

Why you gotta be so rude?
Don't you know he's human too!
Why you gotta be so ruuuddddeeeee!

Did You take history lessons at school? Or did you call it quits after kindergarten? At which point I can only assume you had reached your full and very limited potential.

Perhaps you need to start off by reading something like "Ladybird learning history books" age range 4-5 then come back and we'll see if you have improved any. Or Maybe we should start you off on a colouring book and see how you go from there.

Ofc reps are what its all about.... really. Strewth.

Did You take history lessons at school? Or did you call it quits after kindergarten? At which point I can only assume you had reached your full and very limited potential.

Perhaps you need to start off by reading something like "Ladybird learning history books" age range 4-5 then come back and we'll see if you have improved any. Or Maybe we should start you off on a colouring book and see how you go from there.

I've gotten used to people using the term savage for non whites but the Irish were colonised by the empire as well so ???

Oh wait just googled. They thought the Irish were lazy savages too

Seems like all you're doing is insulting people, when you've failed to address the points made. You've failed, miserably.

The motivation for it was less than 'good'.
Please don't pretend like the British thought of the people in the colonies as anything more than dirty savages that needed amazing whitey to save them.

It's not like they did bad things to non whites only. The Irish also suffered

People still seem to blame the British Empire for everything that goes wrong in the badly run corrupt countries. This guy Awate says he doesn't feel British or English because he's a African Muslim. Because of what the British empire did 65 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8SZpv3jROo

The left’s view of Empire is that it was just pure exploitation and suppression. This is a complete lie. The British Empire did more to advance civilisation than any other force in history. Let’s look at some of what was achieved.

Rule of Law. Most places we arrived had no rule of law. Might was right. We put in the British legal system which gave the vast majority of people far more human rights than they had ever had before

Trade. The left spout that Empire was exploitative and merely extracted the wealth of other nations. This is a lie. Empire was all about trade, creating markets for British goods around the world whilst creating markets for global goods in Britain. And huge trade between all the different parts of Empire. This massively advanced the economy of the whole world.

Infrastructure. We established and maintained the world’s shipping routes, road systems everywhere we went, and railways including the world’s biggest system, in India. Our plumbing was famous and on the Mediterranean islands we ran, Cyprus, Malta, Rhodes, Corfu, Menorca etc it is safe to drink the tap water!

Education. In many nations we brought literacy for the first time and created widespread educational reform. When we found intellectual superstars we often brought them back to Britain to receive the world’s best education. Look up Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Slavery. The British led the world in trying to get rid of this. The Slave Trade Act of 1807 made the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire, the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 made slavery totally illegal. Between 1808 and 1860, the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.

When Empire ended it was often not replaced by liberal democracy, instead a venal, avaricious ruling class took over and treated whole countries as personal fiefdoms. Very many countries went backwards and lots of people in the world would have preferred to have the Empire back.

So far from something to be ashamed of, the British Empire was one of mankind’s greatest ever achievements. It created the modern world that we all live in and everyone owes it a huge debt for the huge advance in civilisation that it brought. The left are very wrong about this, just as they are wrong about most things.

Look at Hong Kong – since leaving Britain, they have suffered an oppressive regime – culminating in the population asking Britain to re-colonise them! If British colonial rule was so bad, why would they do that?

I think it’s easy to rubbish the achievements of Britain, nothing in life is perfect. The mere notion of perfection is idiosyncratic. The world is an imperfect place.

for me, Aside from writing an essay, I would summerise the british empire as:

Mixed.

People on this thread are getting in a muddle because they are arguing on two different levels and answering different questions..

The OP is focusing on the human race and progress in general..
Taran and the other replies are focusing on the colonies and its effects on them..

I personally would suggest that they are both correct.

The OP is right that the british empire was a brutal, but overal force for good in the world. It pushed ahead progress, and was one of the leading forces in industrializing us, and laying the foundation for the globalization that eventually is happening now. It shrunk the world, and brought communication and resource cooperation to an all-time high, allowing for centuries of increased progress.

However, the cost of this progress was paid for by the lives and countries that came under it. Some did prosper and flourished.. but many suffered brutally under the empire, and whilst I would take issue with the numbers given on the thread, millions certainly did die.

The biggest shame of the empire though, is in its legacy. In many countries the hand-over of power was conducted awfully, and the UK was far to willing to give up control to leaders who would end up exploiting their country and damaging their people to a far greater extent then the UK did. When we look at the commonwealth today, there is a huge divide between those countries that have flourished, and those that are still struggling, and a lot can be attributed to that transition.

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So overall, the empire (like most empires that have come before) did a lot of good for humanities progress as a whole.. but at the cost of many many lives. Its up to individuals to decide whether the increased spread of progress was worth the cost.

1. slave trade
2. imperialism
3. debt-slavery
4. hmm idk invasion????
5. shut the **** up before i kick ya spine in

"Hurr durr muh empire"

Outside of your walled garden in Britain, these "achievements" are notorious for being one of, if not the most brutal, vile and murderous empires to plague the world.

You're an absolute idiot if you're trying to make excuses for one of the largest sources of slavery, murder and systematic oppression the world has ever seen.