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The British Empire did good things and bad things. From the point of the people colonized, I'm confident it was a lot more bad than good. If you don't believe m

• Synaesthesia 5y ago
  Wait til you hear what they did to Bengal, one of the richest places in the world when they arrived. Today it’s Bangladesh.
  • hermitcrab 5y ago
    I guess that is what happens when you let a private corporation (The East India Company) run a sub-continent for profit with its own army. At least Google and Facebook don't have their own armies (yet)!
    • rbg246 5y ago
      A private corporation committing atrocities is still the country or empire that sets the rules. It's still British people carrying out / orchestrating the violence.
      • hermitcrab 5y ago
        I'm not excusing Britain in any way for allowing the East India Company to behave as it did. I believe many of the British ruling class were shareholders and benefitted directly from its depredations.
        • rbg246 5y ago
          No absolutely, sorry if I sounded that way. I certainly was not saying you were excusing, just adding an addendum to your comment.
        • hermitcrab 5y ago
          Also, in the British tradition of 'divide and rule' they would generally get local people to do a lot of the dirty work.
  • unmole 5y ago
    Today it's split between the Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh.
• gmac 5y ago
  How confident can we be that we didn’t just do better PR/cover-ups than the Belgians?
  • hermitcrab 5y ago
    Do some reading about King Leopold and the Congo. I am not aware that anything the British Empire did was that horrific. And if we did, I think it would be very hard to cover up.
    • MrsPeaches 5y ago
      This is still one of the enduring images that comes to mind: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/father-hand-belgian-congo-1904/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/father-hand-belgian-congo-1... Truly horrific.
      • jlokier 5y ago
        Wow. The text that accompanies the image is so much worse than the image. I had never heard of the state-sanctioned Belgian cut-off hand trade, and state-sanctioned child cannibalism and beheadings really takes it to another level. It makes modern terrorism seem mild in comparison. This is the sort of thing that should be taught in history classes.
      • hermitcrab 5y ago
        I think I might have seen that picture before. I have no plan to see it again.
    • rbg246 5y ago
      British equally carried out similar atrocities there is so much evidence of this. But none of it is taught in British or Australian schools, I also was brought up with the myth of "British weren't as bad as so and so" Here is the map of British massacres in Australia that have written evidence (so you can double, triple the actual number). They have this right across their empire. https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php If detail accounts I recommend reading "Conspiracy of Silence" a detailed account of massacres throughout colonial Queensland in Australia, the accounts and actions and just as horrifying. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17674559-conspiracy-of-silence https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17674559-conspiracy-of-s...
• mattowen_uk 5y ago
  I'm torn on my opinion of the British Empire. As a subject of Her Majesty, I was taught that in the past we explored most of the world, and where we found native populations we did one of two things: a) educate them into being good British citizens, or b) kill them all if they wouldn't comply with 'a' because they were 'wild'. Granted, I was at primary school in the 1970s, and it was a much less enlightened time, so there was little or no balance in the retelling of the history of the Empire. We we told that the Empire did good, and those that opposed it at the time were just wrong. Even the US revolution got boiled down (pun intended) to those pesky colonialists just not liking our tea. As an adult, I can easily see both sides of it. Yes the Empire did a lot of good things, and if it had not existed a lot of technical, mechanical, dietary and cultural breakthroughs may not have happened which ultimately benefited more than just the UK. On the flip side, it treated most of it's foreign subjects as little more than slaves, and the rest literally as slaves (Although it must be pointed out here, that all western Nations with remote colonies had their own slave trades, and not only with just black slaves). I'm sure that most of the colonised regions would have been perfectly happy not being made British subjects (and then later also being forced into Christianity). It is a hard one, it's part of my cultural DNA and I'm proud of how my home country was once one of strongest and forward-thinking nations on the planet, but I can definitely see it's faults. Should I apologise for it? My personal view is 'No'. I'm not directly responsible for it, in the same way that modern Germans are not responsible for the Nazis; We don't make them apologise for World War II, so nor should modern British people apologise for the old British Empire. It boils down to this: Any group of people who wield absolute power will eventually become blind to their own faults as there's no-one to keep them in check. In this instance it was the British, but history is replete with other strong nations exploiting weaker nations wherever they could. We should learn from history and try not to repeat the mistakes. We should not use it as a tool for blaming others.
  • akudha 5y ago
    if it had not existed a lot of technical, mechanical, dietary and cultural breakthroughs may not have happened I am not sure about this. If Einstein didn't come up with theory of relativity or Newton hadn't come up with gravity, someone else would have, isn't it? Humans are curious creatures. Inventions/progress are bound to happen, the timeline might be different.
• rbg246 5y ago
  You are forgetting enslavement and genocide of indigenous populations they encountered, the Atlantic slave trade, mass land theft all in the pursuit of profit. No indigenous population was left better off - as much wealth and resources as possible were looted. To say that it was anything but utterly disgusting is an understatement.
  • refurb 5y ago
    What makes a distinction between “land theft” and just conquest? I mean, if I think about North America, when one native tribe attacked and defeated another tribe and took their land, was that land theft? When the British, French or Spanish did the same, was that “land theft”?
    • rbg246 5y ago
      Your argument is a rhetorical diversion away from my comment regarding the crime's of the British empire. When someone commits a murder do you say. Well what about all the other murderers? What hypothetical American indigenous tribes may or may not have done is not the subject of this thread.
      • pedrosorio 5y ago
        I don’t see an argument, just a question. Is land theft a neologism for conquest or does it mean something else? If so, what is the difference?
        • rbg246 5y ago
          Please you tell me, do you think conquest is different to land theft? To me they are the same thing
          • pedrosorio 5y ago
            The concept of conquest is clear to me. One country/civilization/tribe occupying land previously owned by another through violent means. The concept of conquest does not imply "crime" as it occurs at the intersection of two societies with different laws, and in most cases neither would consider a conquest benefiting them to be a criminal/negative activity. I have never read a definition of "land theft". If it is supposed to mean the same as "conquest", it goes about it in a confusing way, by including the word "theft" which is a crime, whereas as we saw, "conquest" cannot be a crime in the traditional sense. It's also unclear to me why use "theft" rather than "robbery" which seems more appropriate given the violent nature of conquest. I guess the point of using "land theft" instead of "conquest" is to imply that in an ideal world there would have been a supranational law enforced on all human groups that forbids violent displacement of one group of humans by another (i.e. conquest), which I guess most people would agree would be a good thing. So, assuming conquest and land theft are synonymous, with the latter being used to express disapproval, and going back to your first comment: "To say that it was anything but utterly disgusting is an understatement". I suppose this is true, but the reply from refurb seems appropriate: humans have engaged in warfare long before we have written record. Our cousins, the chimpanzees do abominable things to each other in war, and so did our ancestors, of every race and every culture, including the native people that were the victims of the British empire. "What hypothetical American indigenous tribes may or may not have done is not the subject of this thread" is a silly reply, as far as I can tell. American indigenous tribes engaged in warfare and conquest [1] like every other human group in history. The British Empire did not, as far as we can tell, come up with new and particularly hideous ways to inflict harm upon other humans, that we had not considered in the hundreds of thousands of years we've been harming each other. They have the distinction of being the first ones to do it globally. The true harm of the British empire is the delta between the harm they caused to humans in the places they occupied and the harms other humans (the ones conquered, others in the region) would have caused in the same area over the same period of time. Unfortunately, I don't have a way to estimate what that delta is. But I am sure the answer is not "all the harm the British empire caused minus 0 because everyone they conquered was a peaceful post-warfare civilization, disturbed only by the British savages". [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/military-history/history-heritage/popular-books/aboriginal-people-canadian-military/warfare-pre-columbian-north-america.html https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/service...
• thu2111 5y ago
  That seems like an extreme oversimplification of history. The Partition is what happened after the British Empire left. The British were very much NOT in favour of it, and it was a policy created and implemented entirely by the local population and their leaders. Hindu vs Muslim animosity was a long term problem, very deep seated and something the Empire worked hard to keep the peace around. Even as the British implemented independence, they were encouraging the two sides to form a united India and were brokering what were effectively 'peace' conferences to try and ensure that outcome. However, it didn't work. Once independence was granted the two sides immediately went to war to create the partition. Thus describing that event as being caused by the British Empire seems doesn't seem fair. The British were the ones suppressing it during the time of Empire and arguing against it even as they granted independence to engage in it. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India: In early 1946, new elections were held in India. With the announcement of the polls, the line had been drawn for Muslim voters to choose between a united Indian State or partition ... The negotiations between the Congress and the Muslim League, however, stumbled over the issue of partition ... Recovering from its performance in the 1937 elections, the Muslim League was finally able to make good on the claim that it and Jinnah alone represented India's Muslims[66] and Jinnah quickly interpreted this vote as a popular demand for a separate homeland ... Britain had wanted India and its army to remain united to keep India in its system of 'imperial defence' ... Even though the unity of India would have been preserved, the Congress leaders, especially Nehru, believed it would leave the Center weak. On 10 July 1946, Nehru gave a "provocative speech," rejected the idea of grouping the provinces and "effectively torpedoed" both the Cabinet mission plan and the prospect of a United India ... That very evening, in Calcutta, Hindus were attacked by returning Muslim celebrants, who carried pamphlets distributed earlier which showed a clear connection between violence and the demand for Pakistan, and directly implicated the celebration of Direct Action Day with the outbreak of the cycle of violence that would later be called the "Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946" Fundamentally, trying to blame the British for religious sectarian violence that occurred the moment independence was granted looks like the standard attempt by certain viewpoints to blame westerners for all the world's problems.
  • hermitcrab 5y ago
    I'm by no means an expert on this, but my understanding is: * The British has done plenty to stoke up division between different ethnic groups as part of their 'divide and rule' policy. * Britain could have used its troops to help ensure a peaceful transition, but decided not to.