[Closed] The British Empire

Financially Good for the private companies who originally set it in motion, Became a millstone around the neck of the British Govt when they inevitably had to step in to 'correct' (i.e. sort out in favour of the British Govt) problems caused by those companies, a threat to other Nations as Britain became richer and more powerful causing turf wars around the globe, bad for the people of the Nations who found themselves under British rule.

Who else will make sure you play cricket properly?

Good: Spread western standards and values around the world.
Bad: Spread western standards and values around the world.

Caused a lot of wars as well.

It's certainly fuelled the bed-wetting apologists for the next 1000 years 😆

Good thing imo, too many reasons to mention. "what did the brits ever do for us" etc

it was a way for a few elites to make money.

it did an awful lot of harm to great many people.

if anyone tries to tell you that bestowing 'public goods' upon the empire was a good thing, ask them to consider the lives of countless african slaves in the plantation colonies of the caribbean and tell them to show a little humility.

Extracts from the Diary of slave owner Thomas Thistlewood 1756

Wednesday, 26th May 1756: Caught Derby by Port Royal eating canes. Had
him well flogged and pickled, then made Hector shit in his mouth.

Sunday, 25th July 1756: Port Royal [a runaway slave] brought back. Gave
him a moderate whipping, pickled him well, made Hector shit in his mouth,
immediately put in a gag whilst his mouth was full and made him wear it 4
or 5 hours.

Friday, 30th July 1756: Punch catched at Salt River and brought home.
Flogged him and Quacoo well, and then washed and rubbed in salt pickle,
lime juice and bird pepper; also whipped Hector for losing his hoe, made
New Negro Joe piss in his eyes mouth &c.

Sunday, 1st August 1756: Hazat catched again. Put him in the bilboes both
feet; gagged him; locked his hands together; rubbed him with molasses and
exposed him naked to the flies all day, and to the mosquitoes all night,
without fire.

Glorious ?

I liked the receptionist who kept the baby in the drawer.

I asked for this to not turn into a diatribe, but there was a heck of a lot more to the British Empire than the slave trade. And Thistlewood was a particularly nasty example of the worst parts of it.

there was a heck of a lot more to the British Empire than the slave trade.

seriously what could have possibly have followed that would in anyway make anyone think that it might have been an overall positive thing ?

add in

famine in ireland
famine in india
informal empire around the globe based on financial muscle
genocide in tasmania and north america
concentration camps in south africa
drawing of a huge percentage of the worlds current borders as straight lines on a map for imperial convenience.

so much more that i'm sure everyone knows anyway.

like i said, show some humility.

I liked the receptionist who kept the baby in the drawer.

😀

I asked for this to not turn into a diatribe,

Some folk will tell you it was great some folk will tell you it was a form of state sponsored capitalistic genocide.

Pick one

Basically we raped and pillaged the world to make us richer and we did not care who we hurt in the process. we were so arrogant we actually thought we were doing good 😯

You have to have no moral code and a supreme sense of arrogance to think it was good ...plenty will be here to expand on that view no doubt

It's certainly fuelled the bed-wetting apologists for the next 1000 years

Not much point apologizing for the Sins of our forefathers, but:

Good thing imo, too many reasons to mention. "what did the brits ever do for us" etc

No point romanticising that it was good either.

People today like yourself have a certain romanticism about "what the brits did for us", thinking that this will somehow make up for all the diabolical things we did.

Like:

ask them to consider the lives of countless african slaves in the plantation colonies of the caribbean

Just to name one thing. And to think, the National trust wouldn't quite have so many stately homes to look after in the interest of preserving our national heritage, if we weren't such keen slave traders.

It was good watching the fall of Singapore the other night on TV. "we are superior to those little yellow fellas". oops.

i love the new discourse that for some reason currently has some credibility. based largely on the work of niall ferguson and resting on the so called 'public goods' that the empire bestowed upon the world.

this idiot is an oxbridge and harvard professor and actually thinks that the empire was a positive sum game because it gave the world :

'the english language
english forms of land tenure
scottish and english banking
the common law
protestantism
team sports
free trade'

What would the world have done without those ?

Not much point apologizing for the Sins of our forefathers, but:

So overall, because on one end of the seesaw we have the slave trade, famines in Ireland etc., ......which I don't need any convincing were a very bad thing..... nothing on the plus end of the seesaw can be considered to be of value because it can't counter balance the bad?

I think actually this is the point of her homework assignment. To show that the empire on balance was (significantly) more bad than good but you can't measure it in binary terms.

Could equally have asked - A lot of the techniques in heart surgery / transplantation were initially pioneered by Nazi doctors in concentration camp experiments. Are they of no value because of the way they were developed?

The BBC programme "Empire" was great, and had a bit of balance to it but without being too gruesome for a 12y old.
Maybe order her the free OU poster from it, if its still available.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00p138b
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/whats-on/ou-on-the-bbc-empire

One must also remember not to take any actions out of context. The slave trade for one, their own countrymen were enslaving them long before we got involved. Slavery has existed probably as long as mankind has.

In tens/hundreds/thousand of years we'll all look back at the barbaric practice of mutilated any childs' genitals, of course now some get away with saying it's acceptable.

as has prostitution/sex trafficking. If I sex traffic some prostitutes my conscience will be clean and I have done nothing wrong then?

We're onto nazi surgery and circumcision and we haven't even hit page 2 😐

Tbh, I can't see beyond the famine. I read all of tm's excellent post above but it all comes back to the potato famine for me. Never forgive. Never forget.

Jaysus, JY's brought whoring into it now. Classic driftage. 😀

The Empire was - unlike the other European Empires - an accident of trade. England and later Britain never really set out to obtain and run an empire, it was a byproduct of private trading monopolies granted to trading Companies that often had influential people on the board.
The Honourable East India Company was one such, it grew to be so powerful and had so much money invested in it by Govt Ministers (privately) and by the Govt itself (i.e. public money) that it inevitably became an arm of Govt itself. The conquest of India was never projected policy by the British Govt, rather that British Army troops had to help John Company protect its substantial interests in the three main trading 'cantons' on the Indian coasts. The thing is, the threats to these trading centres were being directed by French and other European powers, so it was basically a war-by-proxy fought a long way from Europe. It is interesting to note that the lessons learnt on the Indian Peninsula enabled Sir Arthur Wellesely to defeat France in Europe.
The Zulu Wars came about because the local African representatives of the Govt defied Govt instructions and caused the war in order to steal Zulu land and the vast cattle herds.
The 2nd Afghan War was similar, local Govt representatives went against direct instructions and caused a war, of course in both cases the British Govt had to step in and finish the job because Britain could not afford to be seen as weak.
By the time of the Zulu and Afghan Wars, Britain (just as Rome discovered) had realised that the Empire was costing far, far more to administer than it was earning for the exchequer - the last thing they needed was for blithering Imperial pillocks to be trying to add to it!

Remember, overall the Empire was administered by the ****less, useless and often directionless 2nd and 3rd sons of the Gentry and Aristocracy - all the bright chaps were in Britain sat in the House of Commons and Lords, leaving the thickos to wander off to the fare flung reaches of Empire to try to find a way to make a name for themselves.

How typically British, we blunder into owning the largest Empire the world has ever seen then staff it with blithering nincompoops who's only qualification for the job was an inbred sense of superiority and self-entitlement.

And all the while, as all the money from Empire disappeared into the pockets of the select few the people of Britain starved, suffered in the new factories and were denied representation...

how about drawing up the map of the middle east

iraq, iran, palestine, israel,saudi arabia, egypt all those lovely stable, peaceful,democratic places we can be proud to have had a hand in creating

can you argue colonialism is anything other than exploitaion?

What it certainly didn't do was teach the 'natives' efficiency..., as anyone who's spent time in India will attest to 🙂

The slave trade wasn't specifically due to the empire as we would now think of it, it started before we had much of what we ended up with in the heyday 19th century.

It was a mixed bag, I reckon. Remember a lot of places were pretty desperate under their own rule before the Brits waded in. It spread certain positive modern values around the world a bit, but also brutally repressed the natives at times. A bit like the Romans really.

I suspect the trade brought a lot of money for (some of) the locals, of course it wasn't very fairly distributed but wealth never was in those days.

I worked for a while with a bloke from a rural part of Sudan, who lived in Manchester. He said that when he went back the old folk would ask him hopefully if the British were coming back.

iraq, iran, palestine, israel,saudi arabia, egypt all those lovely stable, peaceful,democratic places we can be proud to have had a hand in creating

What was it like before? And what would it have been like if we hadn't been involved?

General Gordon was wondering the same thing til he finally got the point...

of course it wasn't very fairly distributed but wealth never was in those days.

JY - it is a lot more fairly distributed overall, I think.

A lot ?

Nah we have abolished slavery and the peasant class but the very wealthy elite is as far away and as rich as always especially if you think globally.

If fairness is rated 1 - 100 and the empire is 6 we are 8 -10 now

deadlydarcy - Member
Never forgive. Never forget.

That's certainly not a route towards world peace! Never forget is absolutely right, without lessons from history we are likely to repeat the same mistakes. But, as younger generations understand, their peers in Germany and Japan are not responsible for the actions of the fathers and grandfathers.

The Empire was a product of its time. It has to be understood within the context of how it came to be. Muddydwarf has, IMO, summed a very complex piece of history really well in a few paragraphs- I'd copy it quick and say nowt!! 😀

If that period of history interests her and she wants to understand the international pressures and competition for overseas trade there is a very readable book called [url= http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Game-Struggle-Kodansha/dp/1568360223 ]The Great Game[/url]

Never.

Nah we have abolished slavery and the peasant class

You talk about those things as if they are not important! In Europe in the 19th century most people had bugger all. Now we have widescreen TV and foreign holidays etc.

Never forgive. Never forget.

Nah we have abolished slavery...

Really? Tell that to those poor buggers on the 'travellers' sites!

Yes clearly I think the abolition of slavery and the peasant class is trivial, thankfully you nailed the important issues of big tvs and package holidays.

the richest 2% own half the world wealth, 10 % 85 % bottom 50% 1 % of the wealth

this is not what i term a "lot more fiarly" though you are free to do so if you wish

Doesn't take much these days does it. 😀

I'll never forgive the southern Irish for bombing our cities. Never.

Or the Americans who funded them or their government who allowed the fundraising...'War on Terror' my arse.

Or Brian o ****ing Driscoll for running British backs ragged.

as has prostitution/sex trafficking. If I sex traffic some prostitutes my conscience will be clean and I have done nothing wrong then?

I didn't say it wasn't wrong. But it is ignoring fact to paint the British as being responsible for a trade that was very well established even amongst the slaves own peoples. Don't see many of them apologising for their forefathers wrongs either.

thankfully you nailed the important issues of big tvs and package holidays

Access to leisure time and pursuits are extremely important, yes.

the richest 2% own half the world wealth, 10 % 85 % bottom 50% 1 % of the wealth

How does that compare with 100 years ago? I didn't say it was FAIR, I said it was MORE fair. Two things can be bad but one can still be better than the other.

We had a load of Africans over to Cambridge for a training course the other day. They were so amazed that we had pavements and reliable electricity they actually said they wished we were still in charge as nothing worked in their country (and having worked in Africa for the last 10 years, I have to agree).

Access to leisure time and pursuits are extremely important, yes.

How does that compare with 100 years ago?

Given it is currently the richest 2% own half the world wealth, 10 % 85 % bottom 50% 1 % of the wealth
I cant see anything being considered to have achieved what you claim [b]a lot more fairly distributed overall,[/b] . it may be better [ it probably is*] but a lot more fairly distributed would seem to be an over statement on your part.

*It must be better I assume as the bottom 50% owned nothing but were instead owned.

footflaps, I know where you are coming from, I lived in South Africa as a kid, and we travelled around the rest of Africa a bit on holiday.

I remain gobsmacked at being able to get clean drinkable water from basically any tap in the UK.

in comparison to ending slavery and the peasant class? No. It depends why not go to the bottom 50% and ask them whethe rthey want food, clean water, health care, education or a big TV and a holiday

That would be a stupid question, and it has nothing to do with my point.. Ask them if they want the basics, or the basics AND the luxuries. What do you think they'll say then?

Everyone likes leisure time and the means to enjoy it. And in the West most people have more now than they did 100 years ago. You can't argue against that. Wealth is spread more evenly than it was. Your 2% stats do not tell the whole picture.

are you asking me to evidence your claim. I rather thought my role was to counter it and you to support it

I said that I THOUGHT wealth was better distributed now than 100 years ago, because I don't have direct evidence. You're saying it isn't (aren't you?) and you also don't have direct evidence.

I cant see anything being considered to have achieved what you claim a lot more fairly distributed overall, . [b]it may be better[/b]

Strange semantics there. BETTER would seem to be equivalent to MORE FAIR in this case, no? In which case we would be agreeing with each other.

I remain gobsmacked at being able to get clean drinkable water from basically any tap in the UK.

Which you couldn't do ooh, 150 years ago...

nice edit why not finish the sentence?
but a lot more fairly distributed would seem to be an over statement on your part.

I cant be bothered its like nailing jelly discussing with you. Fine you said it, you cannot evidence it and you dont need to and I agree with you.

Again fairer - yes a lot more NO
Leaves thread

edit:Which you couldn't do ooh, 150 years ago...
yeah but apart form the aquaducts and sanitation 😀

You still cannot in many parts of the empire that was his point was it not?

I cant be bothered its like nailing jelly discussing with you.

It's not me that's jelly, it's the vague terms of the argument itself. I just took issue with you because you were actually countering my point with a different point. That offended my sense of logic 🙂

Some folk will tell you it was great some folk will tell you it was a form of state sponsored capitalistic genocide. [b]Pick one[/b]

Not the greatest advice for school essay! Unless you want a FAIL. Simple case of balancing good and bad points, no shock there. Then perhaps she could mention the fact that in many countries of the old empire, education still includes children using textbooks (especially when internet access in not available) and doing work "for themselves." 😉 Rather than relying on parents, friends and wiki!!! Oh, and the fact that we celebrate other empires (Greek, Roman, Ottaman, Persian) for their glories and feel embarrassed by the failures of our own. A certain lack of balance there perhaps!

I think imposing a Victorian working 8 till 6, 6 days a week and living in brick built homes culture on Australian Aboriginals went particularly well.

yes, and they learnt how to speak english, play cricket and read the bible too - at no extra charge.

i'm begining to think that the positives do outweigh the slavery and the famines and the spreading of disease pathogens and the imposition of culture and the border drawing and the asset stripping and the genocide and the............

It would have been much, much better if we'd never had the empire and let Spain and Belgium get on with it.

Everyone else would have done a better job than us.

Or there wouldn't have been ANY empires if we Europeans weren't evil imperialists.

Cos all of the subjugated countries were, frankly, socialist utopia's in the making, before the evil empire builders got there.

Not ONE of them would have turned bad, not ONE I tell you.

Where the [b]HELL [/b]are my hindsight glasses, when i need them....

Still can't forgive the Normans for imposing their gentry upon us. (Guillaume le) Bastards

BaronVonP7 - Member

.........................

Where the HELL are my hindsight glasses, when i need them...

probably in the same place that you left your logic. 😉

Still can't forgive the Normans for imposing their gentry upon us. (Guillaume le)Bastards

like it

Trailmonkey - No, I'm clearly not saying that. We have the benefit of hindsight.

However, it could have been the best thing to happen, ever.
It could be the ruination of us all.

We don't have the benefit of a "what if" time machine.

Thanks for the insult BTW.

lets not forget the imperial measurement system

still it seems more popular in the commonwealth than back here in blighty

i mean its obvious that there are 63360 inches in a mile or 7920 inches in a furlong
or 112 pounds in a hundredweight

Well, I can't claim to be surprized.
🙄

As others have pointed out, for Example, Queen Elizabeth the first.
Could not have foreseen how issuing charters to privateers, would eventually lead to Empire as the British Empire turned out to be.

Its a pity that people did, unquestionably, suffer during the time of the British Empire, but whos to say that they wouldn't have anyway.

Which raises another issue.
Were the British the only people spreading / growing Empire ?.
No.
So, might we consider the fate of those we subjugated.
Had they been colonized by say, the Russians, the Japanese ?, to name a couple of rival Imperial entities with a hunger for expansion, in centurys gone by.

Lets also not overlook, that while the Slave trade was doing fine and dandy before the Brits arrived and invested.
It was us, who would in the end crack down on the trade, outlaw slave trading within our colonies and the Empire and enforce an anti slave trade policy.
Sometimes you have to make a mistake, before you know you've made it.
You might believe that its the easiest thing in the world to know that having and trading in [i]Slaves[/i] is compeltely wrong.
Obviously, it is a terrible thing to do.
But them were different times.

Another matter which may seem insignificant to anyone wanting to dish the Empire.
Was the ritual burning of the Wife of a man on his funeral pyre.
A horrific practice, which British imperialism fought against and outlawed.
Yeah, there was resistance to us wanting to stop all that.
But I'm gald that in the entire history of Mankind.
It was a bunch of brits who rocked up and stopped that.

Its swings and round-abouts.
I did look forward to the Paxman program, air'd not too long ago.
But in his opening scene, first episode, he went on about how the sun never set and the blood never dried.
At that point I switched off.

You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
And you don't want to go hungry.
Generally, in them days.
Either you had an Empire, or you were subjugated.
People weren't just gonna leave you alone.
So what were our ancestors going to do ?.

If we had our time again, would we choose to do it as it was ?.
I'd like to think not.
However, who we are as a nation today, has been greatly influenced by our past.
So, if today we would run an Empire, in the form of our previous one.
Then I believe we'd do so in a better fashion, for being mindfull of the mistakes we made in the past.
If we can learn from our mistakes.
Then that mistake was, if it had to happen, a good thing.

BaronVonP7, no insult intended - apologies, should have added winky face, in fact i'll go back and do it.

i still however don't get your argument unless you're going to argue that we had no idea that slavery, genocide, cultural imposition, border drawing, asset stripping would actually be bad things until we had the benefit of hindsight.

in which case i understand your logic entirely but just happen to think that you're talking gibberish - 😉

I just took issue with you because you were actually countering my point with a different point. That offended my sense of logic

Not the greatest advice for school essay! Unless you want a FAIL. Simple case of balancing good and bad points, no shock there.

If i was to ask you about the Nazis, rape or racism and whether it was good or bad you would presumably tell me the pros of all of it then the cons and then a conclusion in just a few sentences.

to do a survey on the British Empire. No more than a few sentences - not a diatribe - was it a good or bad thing and why?

probably in the same place that you left your logic.

... the decisions made were in the context of the time (again, I'm not daring to prescribing "right" and "wrong") but we fall in to the trap of applying the "now" to "then" - what appears abhorrent to us now seemed like good sense and often righteous benevolence at the time.

Likewise, in the future, we will be judged and surely be found wanting.

[i]but we fall in to the trap of applying the "now" to "then"[/i]

Only some of [i]us[/i].

"Only some of us." - Yes, sorry! 😳

Oh dear....

Let's please refer to the OP and to Muddydwarf's excellent post on the first page.

Everything else appears to be born from individual prejudices, beliefs, here-say and dodgy stats. Not really required for a school essay - you might as well reference Wikipedia

The British Empire existed. As did all the previous 'empires'. As will all the future one's. The big difference with how the British Empire came about from those that were before, was that it was - as MD states quite correctly - it was an accident of trade. It did not come about through any military invasion.

And quite frankly, to publicly state 'never to forgive' is simply unforgivable... 😕

what appears abhorrent to us now seemed like good sense and often righteous benevolence at the time

You are correct that morality change sand people may have thought they were doing good when they did bad things [ exorcism and getting the devil out you to treat disease for example but this is not one of those cases

'never to forgive' is simply unforgivable

I argued with your view that it was a lot fairer - you know the one you have no evidence for. It has been exactly about the point you made and your inability/reluctance to support it.

I haven't claimed to have evidence. I think things are 'a lot' fairer than they were. Of course 'a lot' is not quantifiable. I offered examples of how much easier and more fun the lives of the average prole are in this country and perhaps continent than they were 100 or 150 years ago. That seems fairly obvious to me.

You then went on to talk about global wealth distrubution at the present day. Well your argument is pretty empty without any sort of comparison to how things were a century ago, isn't it?

I have £100 in my pocket. Am I richer or poorer than this time last week?

what they did not realise slavery was a bad thing and they thought they were doing some good by exploiting the shit out of the countries?

I think he's talking about stuff like westernisation of natives, and missionary work etc. Which wasn't blanket policy afaik.

Junkyard you are a great bloke but you don't come over as being terribly well read in history.

"what they did not realise slavery was a bad thing and they thought they were doing some good by exploiting the shit out of the countries?"

I think if we looked hard enough there would those that held a view that they [i]were [/i] doing nothing wrong.

We have recent evidence: the Nazi's, White supremacists, etc.

I would expect many who were complicit knew it was wrong but did it anyway, for many different reasons - again examples in Nazi Germany.

Judging something as immensely complex as the British Empire as either good or bad is not possible. Tell her teacher to stop dumbing down and draw out some of the contradictions of the government's and businesses actions.

JY, with respect, you/we are merely demonstrating confirmation bias.

IMO, this is a school essay and as such is more likely to be looking for the ability to weigh pros and cons. I talk about both sides. You read it as asking for a categorical good OR bad.

Happy to put money on the way in which the teacher meant it and as someone preparing people for exams right now, I will stick to my guns and my bias here. But the Op can makes his/her own mind up!!

Basically we raped and pillaged the world to make us richer and we did not care who we hurt in the process. we were so arrogant we actually thought we were doing good

A view perhaps - a model school answer, hardly!

[i]what they did not realise slavery was a bad thing[/i]

Something like that.
Those devious types even went to the [i][b]Good book[/b][/i] to prove that other races were fine for slavery.

You might want to consider that the views you hold are taken from a perspective, resultant of and commensurate to your education and modern day experience.

What you might also wish to consider is that Slave traders and owners, did not view their slaves as people, as they viewed themselves.
Once you realise this, it may become easier for you to understand the mistake those people made.

I want this on T - shirt oh the ironing ...you do know what unforgivable means dont you

Junkyard you are a great bloke but you don't come over as being terribly well read in history.

....Or irony 8)

Solo - Member
what they did not realise slavery was a bad thing

Something like that.
Those devious types even went to the Good book to prove that other races were fine for slavery.

Which one - Aristotle's Virtue Ethics? 😉

Let's please refer to the OP and to Muddydwarf's excellent post on the first page.

Everything else appears to be born from individual prejudices, beliefs, here-say and dodgy stats. Not really required for a school essay - you might as well reference Wikipedia

well, i've just completed an 8 month ou course on empire so i'd like to think that my opinions on the matter are based on more than prejudice. i've also quoted directly from ps and ss material so why that should constitute referencing wiki i don't know.

as for the empire being an accident of trade, this is neither here nor there, the question was, was it a good thing or a bad thing. no one has come within a whisker so far of pointing out a single positive aspect that i've been able to see and i don't recall reading much in the historiography either.

as for

And quite frankly, to publicly state 'never to forgive' is simply unforgivable.

as i mentioned earlier, show a little humility.

No positive things?

What about the spread of progressive ideas and democracy? (Non-rhetorical question, not trying to make a point)

What about increasing trade and providing markets for export goods for the colonies?

trailmonkey - Member
well, i've just completed an 8 month ou course on empire

Did you pass? 😉

No positive things?

What about the spread of progressive ideas and democracy? (Non-rhetorical question, not trying to make a point)

What about increasing trade and providing markets for export goods for the colonies?

gosh yes, what would the planet do without the benefit of our worldviews.

Did you pass?

distinction on ocas awaiting ema result 8)

Excellent (ps I was only joking!!)

OOI - what is ocas?

Trailmonkey - how would you define positive and negatives? Is there a context to your view, say: social, political, trade etc. - genuine question - I was at school a long time ago.

gosh yes, what would the planet do without the benefit of our worldviews.

No need for sarcasm. Let's have some proper discussion.

Let's have some proper discussion.

as i mentioned earlier, show a little humility.

I humbly touch my forelock in deference to your esteemed knowledge on the subject and admit that my thinly veiled sarcasm was indeed a knee jerk reaction to the shock of reading the earlier statement.

Fetches coat and withdraws to safe distance to observe...