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.

You want the horrors of the British Empire, you could read up on the suffering the British inflicted on the Indians. It is appalling.

@derxa the reason why you don't use wikipedia as a source is that most articles are written by white middle-class men from English speaking countries.

YABU, but while the British had the biggest empire, most western European nations were colonial powers to some extent. The Spanish, French, Dutch and Portguese all behaved pretty appallingly. Even "plucky little Belgium" has an pretty bad record, and they only controlled a relatively small area of Africa.

But I don't think any of them played as a big a part in the slave trade as Britain, or benefited as much from it.

And the end of the Empire is within the lifetime of many of us, although it was called the Commonwealth by the time I was born. Some of the South Pacific territories didn't get independence until 1979. A former boss of mine was the last attorney-general of one of them and spent a couple of years out there helping set up the new constitution and run the first elections.

Iirc, the last of the Carribean nations got their independence around the same time, and I think Zimbabwe may have been even later.

Do we expect Germans to be permanently in shame and constantly apologising? Of course not.I personally feel nationalism is utter nonsense and coming with that is the sense that anyone having to apologise for past actions of people from their own country, just because they are from the same country, is total nonsense. Why would I be more responsible for saying sorry/feeling shame for the actions of someone long dead from my country than anyone else in the world? Just because we both come from the same country? Nonsense.

Except that every other European country (at least the old guard) think that they are exceptional. Ever met a French person or an Italian?! Even the most left-leaning have an innate sense of superiority.

I agree that we should look and learn from the past. Colonisation of the “Wild West” is a particular eye-opener. However, I am not going to feel guilty, as that is going down the slippery slope to sins of the father, punishing the offspring of, say, a burglar. Looking at my family in the 1930s, I can’t say they were the beneficiaries of the Empire. Those at the bottom of the heap struggle with the collective guilt ethos.

[quote Bumpitybumper]@Acrackineverything
Do you understand that for the Irish, and for many others around the world, the UK is the ultimate villain?
It's interesting that you use the current tense. For how long will the UK be the "ultimate villain"? Centuries, millennia, forever? What is the "UK" anyway? The common British peasant was hardly living their best life in the 19th century and would have had no influence over foreign policy. So we are basically talking about a ruling elite who are long dead. Yet a century and a half later, you are willing to characterise a country of over 70 million people as the "ultimate villain".[/quote]
Your PM is now threatening the Good Friday Agreement to bully in the UK’s way

All negotiations that have happened recently meant nothing, the UK by the voice of its PM is acting like a bully on the table.

In the other side, the Irish are furious - rightly - about the attitude.

There is a very real risk of a new civil war and a new phase of Troubles 😭😭😭

The German people have worked really hard to acknowledge their past and they don't have statues to prominent Nazi's in their town squares. We could learn a lot from the way they teach their history.

Afterthought: I suppose I should really have included the Italians, too, although they came late to the imperialist party and I think only had a couple of colonies in north and east Africa.

They kind of started the whole slavery business though, a couple of thousand years earlier.

Do we expect Germans to be permanently in shame and constantly apologising? Of course not Of course not indeed but do they sing Nazi songs, do they keep telling everyone about all the wonderful things the third reich did? They rightly aren't proud of what happened and they don't try to justify it, they don't say the experiments that doctors did shouldn't be regarded as horrific because medical science was improved because of them. They don't claim glory for the American space programme although German scientists contributed to it with knowledge they gained in the war.

The British would do well to follow their example. It seems like the British want the glory of the Empire without any acknowledgement of the evil that was done.

The Roman and mongol empires you are referring to are ancient empires. Still horrible yes but thousands of years ago and yet ours were within the last few hundred years.

I'm British and proud to be British and I don't think it's a case of being punished by our ancestors past... BUT we do need to stop showing just the 'positive' side to our history. We need to teach children about the British empire from ALL sides. We especially need to be taught what the English did to both the Irish, Welsh & Scottish. No we can't go back in the past and change it but we can educate the nation about it.

@derxa the reason why you don't use wikipedia as a source is that most articles are written by white middle-class men from English speaking countries. Really? Who cares. My quote was a factual one. No opinion in it.

[quote RedRumTheHorse]@derxa the reason why you don't use wikipedia as a source is that most articles are written by white middle-class men from English speaking countries.[/quote]
And can also be edited by anyone who fancies it.

[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]
Time is an enormous difference though. The impact of the British Empire is still being felt, every day, politically, socially and economically. So comparing the impact of our time in the Roman Empire with that is entirely meaningless. Deflecting from the 'Nigerian Empire' suggestion with reference to the Roman Empire is, again, meaningless. The legacy for us of our Roman occupation has long since settled into our own culture because time will do that. We now have the ownership of it. However the impact now on us of Nigeria invading us 150 years ago would be profound.

@QueenofAsgard

I agree with you entirely OP and don't accept any guilt or shame for the behaviour of my ancestors. I certainly won't be joining in with agreeing how dreadful a nation we are on the back of it. For such a supposedly shit country it's surprising how many people want to come here isn't it?

Sure thing, all the people want to come here because you've destabilised their own countries governments, ransacked their minerals, stolen their oil, raped their women and turned their tribes against each other.

The fact that you can't (or won't) see all of these as a direct result of the British Empire's meddling in other countries is rather worrying. No-one is expecting a personal admission of guilt, but we are expecting an acknowledgement at least.

A century and a half later? What are you basing that number on?

But to answer how long will the UK be the "ultimate villain"?, it's generally until something worse or more impactful comes along. That hasn't happened yet for many former colonies, except when they've become their own worst enemy - apples not falling far from the tree and all that. We can see this most in places that were colonized repeatedly - earlier colonizers don't tend to be the issue even if we can see their impacts remain on society.

I mean, look at American media, still uses a lot of Nazis and Russian Communists, lots of people still use Commie as like the biggest insult - now will a sprinkling on Islamic terrorists and Muslim insults- and none of even colonized the US. It's just who has had the biggest impacts on public imagination.

For such a supposedly shit country it's surprising how many people want to come here isn't it?

As an immigrant to the UK who paid thousands to be here, I fucking hate this argument with a passion. A lot of Americans use it and the related "if you don't like it, leave" which shows a real lack of understanding of how this all works. My immigrating here was not some green light on the UK's behaviour or past.

Immigration isn't about going to the best country. Most people can't just rock up to whichever country they want. It's often 'the one we have enough ties to to have a decent chance of getting in that's least likely to completely fuck us over'. The choice of the UK has burned a lot of people because it keeps changing immigration laws and applying them retroactively. There is also the issue that many stories about the UK abroad are false, and the UK helps perpetuate those myths (as do many other countries).

Yeah, the UK is better than a lot of other places, partially because the British company and corporations fucked shit up, partially because other countries and their corporations fucked shit up, and partially because that's a really low bar of standards when we look at the world. That doesn't mean it doesn't have problems in its past and present.

I agree that apologizing and guilting people is unhelpful, and all countries - and empires - have shite - but we can't tackle many of the issues of today without understanding of the shit in the past and present and until the empires are actually in the past - not brought up for today's Brits glory - it can't be considered there (which I thought was the part of the main argument, that the atrocities of empires of the past shouldn't be ignored in comparison to more recent ones...)

@LakieLady

St Kitts and Nevis achieved full independence on 19 September 1983.

[quote derxa]**@derxa the reason why you don't use wikipedia as a source is that most articles are written by white middle-class men from English speaking countries. Really? Who cares. My quote was a factual one. No opinion in it.[/quote]
If you are arguing historical points it actually makes a difference in what sources you use.

For those that feel shame for Britain’s past. Is it there in the back of your mind each day.

Are you making reparation by sending everything you earn to support families in “the colonies” and you live with your children in one room and hope for hand me downs to clothe you.

Or do you put food in the table ahead of helping these poor oppressed people to make up for Britain’s past

Or is it just words. Do you only feel shame on threads or when someone else mentions something like this because it has just popped into your mind.

FWIW my immediate family only came to Britain in the very late 30’s escaping the Nazis so we have a great deal to be thankful for and couldn’t care less about colonial history.
My family like others who made the journey were just wanting a safe haven

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.

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.

Its how the world worked then lots of countries participated in things today we obviously know is wrong, countries traded their own people even
If britain didn't have a the biggest empire then someone else would
The most important thing about history is that we can look back and learn from it both good and bad and not repeat the bad things
I won't be made to feel guilty for something my ancestors may or may not of done as i didn't live in that time and the world was very different in many ways
Even now each country looks out for itself ,just as most of us do on a personal level most days if we are actually honest .

@turnitonagain

The Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya where British soldiers detained raped and beat thousands of local people was in the late 1950s - that’s in my parents’ lifetime.

Crack open a history book, this isn’t ancient history.

The Mau Mau also committed genocide against their own people, including a massacre at Lari and the killing of unarmed women and children, most famously a 6 year old boy called Michael Ruck who was panga'd to death with his parents and a black farm worker who tried to protect them.

Your description is disgustingly one sided.

I'm more ashamed about the Iraq war and our involvement in the Middle East.

@Notfeelinggreattoday - I won't be made to feel guilty for something my ancestors may or may not of done as i didn't live in that time and the world was very different in many ways

Nobody is suggesting you should feel guilty. Guilt and recognising the past are two very different things. I don't think anyone should feel guilty about historical events they were not involved in.

However, feeling pride in the past actions of your country that involved murder, subjugation, exploitation and repression is equally unacceptable to my mind.

’The issue is it isn’t being looked at critically at all, if anything the British Empire seems to be held up as something great, something to be proud of.‘

This ^