Opinion of the British Empire

[Sol]

Well?

Anyway, loathsome, enormous force for bad in history, racist, etc.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Perfidious.

[Murica!]

Well let's see.
1. killed millions in the name of a hereditary dictator
2. see above
3 see above
4. see above
5. they were a tad bit scummy to everyone in the world.

Conclusion: Scumbags

[Vega]

FE.

It brought opportunities to many people (Gandhi was educated at a London University, for example) and at the end of the day made the world a better place.

[TNF]

Up there in terms of worst institutions in human history.

[Vega]

Up there in terms of worst institutions in human history.

Says the guy with Lenin in his sig.

[SWE]

Disgusting

[Illuminati Blood Drinker]

Up there in terms of worst institutions in human history.

Says the guy with Lenin in his sig.

If it was Stalin maybe you'd have a point, but in terms of "overall vileness", I'm pretty sure the BE comes out on top against Lenin.

[Vega]

Up there in terms of worst institutions in human history.

Says the guy with Lenin in his sig.

If it was Stalin maybe you'd have a point, but in terms of "overall vileness", I'm pretty sure the BE comes out on top against Lenin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror

Quite.

[Cory]

It's one of those things that had an overall net positive impact on the world even if HPish.

[Arturo Belano]

Up there in terms of worst institutions in human history.

Says the guy with Lenin in his sig.

If it was Stalin maybe you'd have a point, but in terms of "overall vileness", I'm pretty sure the BE comes out on top against Lenin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror

Quite.

I'm pretty sure that the Red Terror pales in comparison to being leaders in the Transatlantic slave trade, participating in the extermination of indigenous peoples around the world, and turning a blind eye to the Bengal famine.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Extremely low, of course, but it should be pointed out that the Empire was more complicated than is being suggested here. It wasn't really a single entity and different components had different purposes and were run in different ways, and this is before we consider the way in which it altered as time passed. It is also (obviously) wrong to single out the British Empire for condemnation (why it wasn't even the first true overseas Empire). The history of British India is rather different from that of British North America which (in turn) has little in common with what went on in Africa. Of course writing 'Africa' in this context is also misleading as it isn't as though policies and activities wrt Egypt, South Africa 'Rhodesia' and Nigeria had much in common. And then there is the penal colony turned (white) workers paradise of Australia. Lets not forget the oddity of what happened in New Zealand either. We then have the problematic matter of British involvement in China (what should we even call that?). Similar questions apply to South America. Do we consider Ireland to have been an imperial possession or not? What are we to make of the Empire's final (surreal) expansion into former Ottoman territories (other than 'a complete disaster for all concerned', obviously).

Overall its true that the Empire had more in common with the theories that Hobson and Hilferding developed (and that Lenin plagerised) than most other Overseas Empires, but it was still not entirely driven by economic factors. Further complications; some of the most significant imperial possessions were effectively taken from older empires and expansionist states (c.f. India, surprisingly large parts of Africa, the Middle East), which does rather complicate Postcolonialism for Infants, though not nearly so much as what happened when the Empire ended. Why is it that the most successful post-Imperial states have mostly (there are a couple of exceptions) been the ones who kept the old Imperial bureaucracy in place as opposed to the ones that declared Year Zero? I can't say that I find that question a particularly comfortable one either. In conclusion, I suspect that the problem here is that you all get your morality from Star Wars.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

1. killed millions in the name of a hereditary dictator

Whatever can be said against the British Empire (and I could bore most people to tears with details) that, at least, is patent nonsense.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm pretty sure that the Red Terror pales in comparison to being leaders in the Transatlantic slave trade, participating in the extermination of indigenous peoples around the world, and turning a blind eye to the Bengal famine.

Comparing the horrors of seven years to over three hundred is probably not a brilliant idea if you want to (partially) exonerate the former...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It brought opportunities to many people

Undeniably true. Unfortunately it was also extremely good at doing the precise opposite.

[Frodo]

Better than many of the other empires of its day by comparison (going back to the late 16th century with the First British Empire).  

[TNF]

The Red Terror was the correct response to anti-semitic, proto-fascist reactionaries trying to wipe out the first workers' republic on the planet. It has nothing in common with the Stalinist counterrevolution in the late 1930s, which saw the genuine revolutionaries among the Bolsheviks wiped out as the bureaucrats consolidated control over the Soviet state.

[Murica!]

The Red Terror was the correct response to anti-semitic, proto-fascist reactionaries trying to wipe out the first workers' republic on the planet. It has nothing in common with the Stalinist counterrevolution in the late 1930s, which saw the genuine revolutionaries among the Bolsheviks wiped out as the bureaucrats consolidated control over the Soviet state.

I agree the Red Terror was the correct response but, like any terror, it went to far.

[TNF]

Such are the pressures of any revolutionary epoch.

[Vega]

They did, of course, end slavery in most of their colonies before other countries.

[TNF]

They did, of course, end slavery in most of their colonies before other countries.

But were it not for instituting it in the first place, they wouldn't have had to end it, period. The British were second only to the Spanish in terms of spreading that worst of institutions during 17th and 18th centuries.

[Blue3]

It's one of those things that had an overall net positive impact on the world even if HPish.

[Vega]

They did, of course, end slavery in most of their colonies before other countries.

But were it not for instituting it in the first place, they wouldn't have had to end it, period. The British were second only to the Spanish in terms of spreading that worst of institutions during 17th and 18th centuries.

One has to rectify their mistakes at some point.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Actually the Transatlantic trade at its height was more of a three way British/Dutch/Portuguese thing from a shipping point of view. Some significant French involvement as well. The main markets were Brazil (Portuguese colony) and the West Indies (colonies of many different empires, but this is where Britain comes into things in a big way. Because sugar). And, of course, the... er... procurement... was mostly the work of people in various West African kingdoms. An interesting detail is that direct British involvement in (and the eventual conquest of large parts of) West Africa was a consequence of the abolition of the slave trade...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Come to think of it, the idea that the British had a divine mission to end forever the scourge of slavery also contributed significantly to British conquests further east. Isn't history fun.