The imperialism of Britain

[Yureina]

Didn't cover the British much at all in school until I got to college. The stuff I did learn was mostly negative, focusing upon oppression and Gandhi and all that sort of stuff. For my own part however, I see the British Empire much like anything else that has had a tremendous impact upon history: not perfect, but important. The ends didn't justify the means, but they are not something to totally demonize either.

 

[thejboy88]

When we were taught this history at school we were all informed of the negative aspects of our empire. Yes, he enslaved people, yes we conquered whole nations, yes we wre the big boys on the world playground at one point. However, no nation ever just goes to other countries and does those things for the fun of it. Everything that was done had, then, legitimate reasons for it. At them time, Britan was one of the many European nations competing for dominance in the world. We had been fighting amongst ourselves for centuries but with the discovery of the Americas and other places, new opportunities came about. Opportunities for land, wealth, resources, everything we would need to keep competing with the rest of Europe.

So to summarise, our Empire was not the result f some British ideal of superiority but rather a consequence of our need to stay ahead of our immediate neighbours.

If anyone disagrees please let me know.

P.S. Just incase you misinterpret my words, I DO NOT endorse the conquest or enslavement of other people. Just so you know.

 

[Sevre]

If anything I can understand not teaching it in schools. The amount of material you would need to cover is immense, from Mercantilism to Opium Wars.

I don't believe they're trying to sugar coat anything, I believe they're trying to save you the trouble.

 

[Kenko]

As with all aspects of our history, nothing is hidden or sugar-coated in any way. Totally bullshit free. There's no way you could soften it when teaching about how we once ran half the world and were generally shit to a lot of people.

Although some good did come out of it, as our knowlege of engineering (and technology in general) advanced, our wide-reaching empire meant that these advances were felt worldwide.

I think Blackadder put it best. "When we saw a man in a skirt we shot him and nicked his country".

OT: The empire is not taught to us as something we should be sorry we lost. We did a lot of shitty things to a lot of people who didn't deserve it. At the same time, we do get to take credit for a lot of things those countries did because of our colonisation.

Complete and utter poppycock. British colonialism was only good for Britain. Dont fool yourselves. All Britain did was rob countries blind of their natural resources.

 

[Arkeetk]

This topic always brings out alot of anger and misinformed...ness. Something people who feel like they personally suffered at the hands of the Brits seemed to forget is that no one who was involved in the slave trade is still alive. I personally never colonized anywhere or put anyone to slavery and i dont expect to be treated like I have. Generally British historys was taught apologetically at my school so we just learnt how shit we were to people but also to bare in mind that at the time everyone was being shit, everyone forgets that spain had a huge empire that wiped some entire nations off the earth and alot of western countrys traded slaves blah blah blah. I'm trying not to be defensive cos the British empire did some really bad stuff but i do think we should move on. Its like getting annoyed at all Germans because of nazi germany. We're all different modern countrys now.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

When we were taught this history at school we were all informed of the negative aspects of our empire. Yes, he enslaved people, yes we conquered whole nations, yes we wre the big boys on the world playground at one point. However, no nation ever just goes to other countries and does those things for the fun of it. Everything that was done had, then, legitimate reasons for it. At them time, Britan was one of the many European nations competing for dominance in the world. We had been fighting amongst ourselves for centuries but with the discovery of the Americas and other places, new opportunities came about. Opportunities for land, wealth, resources, everything we would need to keep competing with the rest of Europe.

So to summarise, our Empire was not the result f some British ideal of superiority but rather a consequence of our need to stay ahead of our immediate neighbours.

If anyone disagrees please let me know.

P.S. Just incase you misinterpret my words, I DO NOT endorse the conquest or enslavement of other people. Just so you know.

I heavily disagree on so many levels. The Famine created in Ireland was due to British greed and imperialism at the time. They absolutely hated the Irish and thought that we were savages because we were a vastly different culture. I will give you an example of some Brehon(Celtic) law. Basically a man could beat his wife as long as he did not leave a mark if he she could divorce him, A man could divorce his wife if she was a bad cook(might need to double check that one), A woman could divorce her husband if he was acting homosexual. Also in Celtic Ireland women were able to own land and leaders were always elected from the royal family and inheritance was split evenly not like in England. Which was just give it to eldest son even that son was a rapist, murdering, paedophile(I am over exaggerated but it did mostly go to eldest son).

Ok back on point. The Famine was cause by the British because they continued to export grain out of Ireland. There was enough food to stop the "Famine". I use the word famine loosely here as there wasn't a genuine lack of food. Letting the Irish people die fits perfectly into British views at the time. Around this time British thought eugenetics was the way forward although that only took off around 20[sup]th[/sup] century if I remember correctly.

A British Economist Thomas Robert Malthus with his Theory on Population and Food supply fits into this. Basically his theory stated that population increase geometrically(that is by multiplacation for anyone reading that doesn't know) and food supply will increase arithmetically(that is by addition). Thus he believed that population should be kept in check with two type of checks. One was by stopping increase(can't remember name of it at this time) by either absitnance or contraception. Since he was a cleric he did not believe in artificial contraception nor did he have any faith in the ordinary man practising this so he advocated positive checks. These were checks that would decrease population and things that he stated would do this were war and famine. There were others but no need to bulk this up much more than it already has been.

So in short the beauracracy in Britain at the time had a massive superiority complex and not everything done at the time was necessary to help Britain. I also know you do not agree wit hthe British empire and their ideals I just do not think everything they done had true legitmate reasons to help Britain.

 

[Arkeetk]

Complete and utter poppycock. British colonialism was only good for Britain. Dont fool yourselves. All Britain did was rob countries blind of their natural resources.

I don't intend to question that statement as I lack prerequisite knowledge of British Colonialism outside of the U.S. But in regards to the U.S., I'm left to ponder something. If we have such a hatred of monarchy and other caste-style systems of government, why is our country seeming to move back in that direction?

the same reason the French rebelled and over through their monarchy and replaced it with an extempore

 

[Arkeetk]

that was meant to say emperor

 

[Wadders]

they don't teach history anymore in our school, I have to teach myself We make no excuses unlike america which coats everything because they think their kids can't take it

Your school dosnt teach history?! I'm pretty sure that goes agaisnt the national curriculum, as well as being pretty daft

OT: I havnt actually been taught much about British colonialism, even though ive studied history through GCSE, A level and Uni. Just one of those topics that never came up really, I learned about it in a very general way when studying WW1 and it's causes, but othing too detailed.

I'd guess most places that teach it give the facts and little else, it's not one of those areas of our history that you ought to sugar-coat.

 

[Desaari]

I didn't get taught about it in school at all. In fact, I didn't even know the empire existed until after I'd finished school and was told about it by my brother, prompting me to do my own studies on the subject.

 

[El Poncho]

snip

Well that depends on how many of them chose to carry on history for their GCSE'S/Standard Grade exams. You can't exactly cover all of the British Empire in high school, the one who did learn it were probably told everything about the section of the British empire they were doing. Not learning about the British empire in America wouldn't be sugar coating their campaign in India or Africa.

edit: Looks like 2 posts above me rendered my post invalid >.>

 

[Aeriath]

We never did the British Empire in any detail at my school. Standard Grade (equivalent of GCSE level) history was as far as I continued studying it, and during those 2 years we studied Russia from about 1880-1925, WW1 as a whole but mostly focusing on the UK and Germany (Homefront, Technology and a few of the social movements caused by it) and we also studied Scottish history between 1800-1950.

To be honest I would have prefered something in place of Scottish history as the period we studied was incredibly boring and had too much overlap with the other 2 subjects we studied for my liking.

The British Empire is mainly mentioned in passing in my experience, there are mixed feelings about it (pride and disgust). I think it would have been interesting to study it in a little detail, but none of the classes at my school offered that.

 

[CountRaven]

It is touched on slightly in the Australian highschools, even more so if you take Modern History in year eleven and twelve. What I got was the impression of was that many nations in Europe were empire building and Britin just happened to be good at it (or more persistent). As an example; Australia was orginaly claimed by the Dutch and called New Holland but they came around the west side of the country, which was mostly where the ocean meets the desert, and rejected it, the same thing happened to the French (sailed to a barren part and thought it was all the land had to offer). Then the British came along to the eastern side, stuck at it, and managed to find a good site to settle in (and dump their convicts).

The way they are presented in the major wars that Australia fought with them (first and second world war mostly) was generaly positive.

 

[Danzaivar]

As with all aspects of our history, nothing is hidden or sugar-coated in any way. Totally bullshit free. There's no way you could soften it when teaching about how we once ran half the world and were generally shit to a lot of people.

Although some good did come out of it, as our knowlege of engineering (and technology in general) advanced, our wide-reaching empire meant that these advances were felt worldwide.

I think Blackadder put it best. "When we saw a man in a skirt we shot him and nicked his country".

OT: The empire is not taught to us as something we should be sorry we lost. We did a lot of shitty things to a lot of people who didn't deserve it. At the same time, we do get to take credit for a lot of things those countries did because of our colonisation.

Complete and utter poppycock. British colonialism was only good for Britain. Dont fool yourselves. All Britain did was rob countries blind of their natural resources.

Isn't there a graph of GDP around the globe that goes up significantly for countries that are/were part of the commonwealth? As in, compared to their neighbouring countries anyway. Most of the cricket-playing countries have a high English literacy rate (hence all the Indian call centres) which helps them in the global economy and some form of Parliamentary democracy.

I mean, overall I agree with you. The point of the Empire was to basically rob these countries blind. But there are some positive side effects of all this. Except for Zimbabwe, we done messed up in Zimbabwe.

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OT: British Imperialism was only lightly touched during my time in school. The overall vibe of it was "some good stuff, mostly bad stuff", very fact based with statistics and the like, no sense of "you should be proud of your country".

Then again most educational stuff is very empirical in terms of why you should think stuff. Unlike the rumoured US educational system where they make you stand up and do the oath thingy. That just reeks of wrong to me.

 

[manaman]

Then again most educational stuff is very empirical in terms of why you should think stuff. Unlike the rumoured US educational system where they make you stand up and do the oath thingy. That just reeks of wrong to me.

I swear some people will literally believe anything that plays into their obvious bias against the US.