To be wary of hatred directed towards the British Empire

[Bumpitybumper]

With the rise of movements such as BLM, there seems to be a growing hatred towards the British Empire and a keenness to point out all of the flaws and terrible things the empire and key individuals within it did. I too am horrified when I think about the role that the empire played in slavery and events such as the Irish Potato Famine. As these things become better publicised then there seems to be a growing school of thought that this is a white or at least British people problem that we must somehow atone for and feel guilty about. The British Empire has been cast as the ultimate villain and something we must be ashamed about.

My concern though is that lots of countries around the world have had empires and inevitably when these countries held lots of power, they acted in ways that we would now regard as morally reprehensible. The Mongol and Roman empires for example, were extremely cruel and many empires sort to brutally stamp out religious or cultural differences and gain control. Equally empires have brought about advancements in technology and improved the living standards of millions of people around the world.

Am I therefore being unreasonable to suggest that it is only fair to look at empires holistically and through the lens of the time they operated in? Of course the wrongdoings and horrendous acts mustn't be hidden, but equally they should be given context and positive acts shouldn't be erased either.

Also, for people who say they care more about atrocities today -- do you not understand how often these are related to colonial rule?

The Rwanda genocide has direct ties to French and Belgian colonial measures (it was they who transformed Hutu and Tutsi into distinct ethnic and political identities).

When ISIS was sweeping through Iraq and Syria, they vowed not to stop until they erased all evidence of the Sykes-Picot boundaries.

If you look at many countries who have experienced brutal civil wars and atrocities, you can see a long record of weak governance, inequality and poverty that is a legacy of colonial rule and decades of Cold War interference.

So anyone who says they only care about current atrocities and not Empire just sounds completely ignorant.

The British Empire may have ended for most British people, it has never fully ended in many parts of the world still suffering from its impact.

Also why do people think current goverments should apologise for things done 100 years ago .
Not repeating the actions os more important , none of is lived in these times so we don't know how the world was then , if it wasn't britain it would of been somewhere else , people believed it was ok and most of us are benifit from this now we are a reasonable rich country for a small island because of history , i bet those feeling guilty wouldn't give up their wealth or if they researched and found there relatives were slave traders would they stand up and apologise for a great great grandfather they don't know
You cant compare here and now and how far do you go back , the romans invaded britain , everybody pretty much invaded everybody
No harm in learning what happened but you can't look at things based on todays standards
You can look at things that currently happen and try to change that here and now as many suffer around the world now

All you commenters who seem to think the Germans haven’t done a lot of soul-searching about their recent history, please do go and stand in a public place in Berlin and shout about all those good things the Nazis did (don’t forget the autobahns!!!) and see what happens to you....

And the British Empire isn’t some distant thing in comparison to the third reich. Our colonies fought for us in WWII!! Independence for most only really started in the 50s and we still had colonies in the 90s! This is not ‘past generations’!!!!!

No one is asking for history to be erased. Decolonising is about acknowledging and educating, about making all aspects of the empire publicly visible - it is the very opposite of erasing! I am not ashamed of what past generations did but I am ashamed to come from a country where our education system is so shoddy and jingoistic that people are still banging on about the ‘benefits of empire’ with no irony.

@BadBanana

I am not English but it has always seemed odd to me that the British are expected to flog themselves for things their far ancestors did, and yet the Germans are not for things their grandparents did.

I personally don’t think anyone should have to ‘stone’ for anything that they personally haven’t done. I am black and have done very well for myself in the Uk, in fact I would say it is 100% the most tolerant country I have lived in and the safest.

It’s only a minority of hand wringing white women who seem to hate all other white (especially poor) people and black people determined to blame their bad choices now on something that speed 100 years ago that are demanding this I’ve noticed.

Seeing this post makes all other posts i've seen from you make SO much more sense. Out of interest which country are you from?

Also, for people who say they care more about atrocities today -- do you not understand how often these are related to colonial rule? I do understand that. So now we should do better.

I am not English but it has always seemed odd to me that the British are expected to flog themselves for things their far ancestors did, and yet the Germans are not for things their grandparents did.

What on earth? Are you really that unaware of how Germany teaches its people about its past?!

@dreamingbohemian

A big part of the problem is that people think the Empire was all a very long time ago, when morality was 'different'. Some posters have even said the Nazis were more recent, which is staggeringly ignorant.

It was the early 1950s when tens of thousands of Kenyans were killed, tortured or forced into concentration camps during the Mau Mau rebellion. Survivors are currently pursuing a legal case against the British government.

In Malaya throughout the 1950s, 500,000 people were forcibly uprooted from their homes and relocated into controlled camps, threatened with starvation if they didn't comply with counterinsurgency measures.

That's not even considering the millions who died due to war/partition when the British badly mishandled their departure from South Asia and the Middle East.

It wasn't just the British of course -- more than a million Algerians died in their war of independence from France (1954-1962).

The scale of atrocity may have been even greater a century or two ago, but it's incredibly dumb to say all of this was over a long time ago.

^ this!!! We’re not talking about some distant age where everyone had totally different worldviews...

@unmarkedbythat maybe the poster means perceived by others not necessarily how germany themselves deal with it ? But as you know can you explain what do they teach themselves about it , are the current goverment apologising now to all the countries they invaded as this is what people seem to think the british should do

@feelingsareweird but yes even 60 years ago people had different views and perceptions
Do you really think if you went back 60 years as you are today say in a time machine , you wouldnt see a very different world

@derxa

The 1707 Acts of Union declared that the kingdoms of England and Scotland were "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain".[36][37][note 13] The term "United Kingdom" has occasionally been used as a description for the former kingdom of Great Britain, although its official name from 1707 to 1800 was simply "Great Britain".[38][39][40][41] The Acts of Union 1800 united the kingdom of Great Britain and the kingdom of Ireland in 1801, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Following the partition of Ireland and the independence of the Irish Free State in 1922, which left Northern Ireland as the only part of the island of Ireland within the United Kingdom, the name was changed to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".[42 Here's my Wikipedia cut and paste again. No opinion there. I had no idea that Wikipedia was a tool of oppression and an advocate for the British Empire.

It's not a tool of oppression or an advocate for the british empire. It is, however, notoriously inaccurate and unreliable.Wikipedia pages can be written by anyone. They can then also be edited by anyone. Some pages are excellent and use solid evidence. Others are utter drivel written by people with agendas.

Some are edited mischeviously (e.g. after the death of Alan Rickman, someone edited his Wikipedia page to say “Alan was killed on the 14th of January 2016, when his heart was cut out with a spoon. Robin Locksley, Harry Potter and John McClaine are prime suspects.”)

Germans may not 'flog' themselves as you put it unmarkedbythat but they look after their citizens, they welcome and look after refugees, they acknowledge their past and they don't go to war.

@Oliversmumsarmy well said what i tried to say but you put it better than me

It's not a tool of oppression or an advocate for the british empire. It is, however, notoriously inaccurate and unreliable.Wikipedia pages can be written by anyone. They can then also be edited by anyone. Some pages are excellent and use solid evidence. Others are utter drivel written by people with agendas.

Some are edited mischeviously (e.g. after the death of Alan Rickman, someone edited his Wikipedia page to say “Alan was killed on the 14th of January 2016, when his heart was cut out with a spoon. Robin Locksley, Harry Potter and John McClaine are prime suspects.”)
You seem to think I don't know this.

@asIlayfrying you truly believe all germans welcome refugees, i think a lot of people believe what they want to believe, also i thought germany had soldiers in iraq ??

[quote Notfeelinggreattoday]@feelingsareweird but yes even 60 years ago people had different views and perceptions
Do you really think if you went back 60 years as you are today say in a time machine , you wouldnt see a very different world [/quote]
Of course, but plenty of people in the 60s (and indeed the 1860s!) were criticising colonialism, indeed much of the ‘revisionist’ postcolonial histories that posters here seem to think are a new fad were written in the 60s. It’s a lot more nuanced than dismissing the whole thing with ‘oh people in the past had different standards’

@dreamingbohemian

Also, for people who say they care more about atrocities today -- do you not understand how often these are related to colonial rule?

The Rwanda genocide has direct ties to French and Belgian colonial measures (it was they who transformed Hutu and Tutsi into distinct ethnic and political identities).

When ISIS was sweeping through Iraq and Syria, they vowed not to stop until they erased all evidence of the Sykes-Picot boundaries.

If you look at many countries who have experienced brutal civil wars and atrocities, you can see a long record of weak governance, inequality and poverty that is a legacy of colonial rule and decades of Cold War interference.

So anyone who says they only care about current atrocities and not Empire just sounds completely ignorant.

The British Empire may have ended for most British people, it has never fully ended in many parts of the world still suffering from its impact.

Whilst colonialism may have impacted those events, it is naive and revisionist to imply that there have not been throughout history tribal conflicts and that countries' modern woes all lie at our door.

I find it a huge patronisation to use a narrative of peaceful indigenous peoples uniformly living happily and harmoniously until the bad colonialists arrived to ruin everything and if we had only stayed away they would have been and stayed prosperous, peaceful, happy and carefree.

Yes we plonked ourselves where we were not wanted, assumed superiority, steamrollered our version of culture and often treated the peoples of the country as servants in their own land. We behaved appallingly through modern eyes. But do not deny agency to people in their own lands now and blame us for every bad thing. It's very arrogant.

@derxa

It's not a tool of oppression or an advocate for the british empire. It is, however, notoriously inaccurate and unreliable.Wikipedia pages can be written by anyone. They can then also be edited by anyone. Some pages are excellent and use solid evidence. Others are utter drivel written by people with agendas.

Some are edited mischeviously (e.g. after the death of Alan Rickman, someone edited his Wikipedia page to say “Alan was killed on the 14th of January 2016, when his heart was cut out with a spoon. Robin Locksley, Harry Potter and John McClaine are prime suspects.”)
You seem to think I don't know this.

I have no idea what you do or do not know. I can merely respond to what you post.

[quote Bumpitybumper]@Dailyhandtowelwash
Yes, of course the Romans influenced our systems. That is not what I was referring to. None of the legacy from almost two thousand years ago has any effect on our lives in the way that the Nigerian Empire example cited above has. It’s disingenuous in the extreme to claim the two are comparable. These threads are always very disingenuous though.
But isn't the only difference time? I imagine in your example that over 2000 years the influence of Nigeria invading the UK wouldn't necessarily have an obvious effect on the daily lives of the average British person. The elements that we retain would be so interwoven into our culture and economy that we would struggle to know how the UK would have developed if it wasn't for the invasion and other major events would happen to a country that would bring about change.

I would also suggest that the picture would become even more complex if we were to see certain advancements whilst Nigeria ruled over the UK. Say if they introduced us to a cure for cancer that saved lots of lives. This wouldn't eradicate the harm and damage done, but it could be identified as a beneficial development for the UK.[/quote]
If you want an example of a legacy of conquest and colonisation that is still having an effect on Britain today, try the Norman Conquest. It's effects are still around in legal and political systems and many many minor ways - how many of you have children named William, Henry or Emma, as opposed to Aethelflaed, Beorhtric or Wealdmaer?

@strivingtosucceed I was born in Banjul, Gambia.

Though I am worried now, have my posts been hard to understand before?

notfeelinggreattoday
"Also why do people think current goverments should apologise for things done 100 years ago ."

Because it's the right thing to do.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Sorry_Day?wprov=sfla1

It doesn't take back what's been done but it's a sign of trying to improve and be better going forward, not collectively pretending it didn't happen. There's a reason for the phrase "the Brits are at it again".

@feelingsareweird its also nonsense to blame the british empire for all that is bad in the world over and things take time to change , we live in such a different world today than we did before , its changing at a much faster pace due to technology evolving so quickly
But with history there are always 2 sides to every story and much of it none of us has a relative that lived through it , so we can only learn by whats on paper but we were not there
We can not judge 10 years ago by todays standards even , things that happened 10 years ago may not seem right today

But even if we go back to the 1950s who on here was in any position to do anything about it?

I am old and even I wasn’t born in the 50s let alone old enough to campaign or do anything about it.

The people who could are now either very very old or dead.

What exactly would you have me do?

Or are you just asking people to be ashamed which does no one any good

@RuggerHug is it just the uk goverment you think should apologise ? Or do you think all those countries involved should
If so be a lot of apologising going on around the world , and how far back shall we go ?

The world is a completely different world to when I left school in the 70s

So much has changed. Even growing up and being told what the 21st century would look like. The reality (apart from flying cars) is so much more advanced

Any of them but we're talking about the British government here. They are still threatening peace here because of misguided pride wrapped in ignorance. Obviously I'm not saying all British people, in case that isn't clear.