" Glorious and Righteous movement of freedom and enlightenment" ??? you've been reading too much Niall Ferguson.

Maybe it was a great thing IF one happens to be a white Englishman from the upper classes but i doubt many others would agree with you besides power worshiping toady types.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jun/28/comment.britishidentity

"Ferguson's 'history' is a fairytale for our times which puts the white man and his burden back at the centre of heroic action. Colonialism - a tale of slavery, plunder, war, corruption, land-grabbing, famines, exploitation, indentured labour, impoverishment, massacres, genocide and forced resettlement - is rewritten into a benign developmental mission marred by a few unfortunate accidents and excesses."
nicely put Priyamvada Gopal

at best maybe you could say it was an evil tool of Imperialist oppression that built railways.

I think both statements are wrong. The Empire was, naturally, more than just marred by a large number of terrible episodes, but India does owe allot of its current economic prowess to the railways it could never have had without the colonialism under the Victorians, and we cannot disregard the effect that the empire had on the outcome both world wars, particularly the first. I should say that it is impossible to say that it was either good or bad, but rather just say it was what happened and it enabled much of the technology and society that we have today, but at the expensive of much suffering.

It is always fruitless to label something as good or as bad when it was something that defined everything we have today.

This question will just have the same answer as "was the Roman Empire good or bad"
Some people will say it was good as it brought technology and "civilization" to the world, while others will say it was evil as it was based on slavery and opression of its people.

The British Empire did a great deal of good for the world during its existance and it actually set up most of what we now consider to be our financial institutions and world trade.
Also if the Empire had been unambigosly good, then all of America would still be a colony rather than a seperate country, the same as the rest of the commonwealth.
And by the same token, if the Empire had brought the people it ruled nothing then there would have been rebellions far sooner than there actually were and the Empire would quite quickly have failed leaving Germany, France and Spain to pick up the pieces.

Basically I agree with Ghostmaker, you cant label the thing itself good or bad, you can only label its deeds and even then only one by one.

Every Empire is bad. British was, and it resulted in Pakistani-born terrorists, among other things. They appeared much later, after the Fall of the Empire.
It still remains to be seen what will turn up after the Fall of American Empire. Which is also inevitable, eventually.

(I don't claim to be an expert of this time period, so do correct me if I'm wrong about anything.)
I'd like to point out that the only colonies that rebelled were the thirteen north American colonies in what we now call the United States. These colonies rebelled not due to oppresion of their culture (since a lot of them were Englishmen anyway) but over tax disputes. Britain was left virtually bankrupt after World War II, and Europe was in ruins - these are the reasons that the colonies were given independance.
And Ghostmaker does raise a good point - the Empire cannot be labelled as good or bad, it is a mix of both, but what we have to discuss is whether one outweighs the other?

Re-reading that last post, I've realised that it sounds as though I think the American colonies were granted independance as a result of WWII.... I meant to say that the other colonies (such as Australia and Canada) were granted independance later, as a result of the World War...

well as an englishman it gave me tea and curries and places to go on hoilday where they speak english so its all good :p

im not an expert of the English Empire either but i think that
"only colonies that rebelled were the thirteen north American colonies"
is a mind boggling statement. im not sure were to start with that one, umm the Indian mutiny, the very long running Irish rebellion, the many slave revolts in the Caribbean, the boer war in south africa, Mau Mau Uprising in africa the list goes on. you seem to be under the impression that the British empire ran only 3 colonies- the States,Canada and Australia when in fact about the Britsih empire covered about one quarter of the worlds land mass and one quarter of its population.

I dont think its possible to to separate the British empire a being somehow different from other empires. Im sure the french imperialists waxed lyrical about how their enlightened ways helped Algeria and the romans did the same as have all empires throughout history.

It was pretty impressive that the sun never set on the British Empire for a while...

Ok, apologies for my ignorance. I was aware of anti-imperialist movements in India and other such places, but I was saying that the only colony which successfully removed the British from power (that I was aware of) through violent uprising was the USA. Probably still wrong though ;)

you seem to be under the impression that the British empire ran only 3 colonies- the States,Canada and Australia
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I can assure you I am under no such impression, they just happen to be the only three I've mentioned.

Good or bad?

It was fabulous :)

Without it you wouldn't have the World's largest employer for example, Indian Railways.

There was definitely a lot of good, but not without bad pock-marks.

The British Empire exists in the same molecular soup as my nasal hair and, depending on your perspective, there is no real difference between one and the other.

From the perspective of a Canadian, I feel a fond kinship.

II have to say the majority of the responses to this thread make for fairly depressing reading. I'm surprised by how many people have been taken in by the dubious militarist glamour that the British Empire offered.

Throughout its existence the proponents of the British Empire
articulataed an ideolgy, centred on race, that presumed the inferiority of other cultures, languages and peoples, and took this to mean that any actions taken towards such people did not have any moral consequences. Wherever the Empire extended, and inclusive of the island of Britain itself, the British Empire subjugated or annihilated peoples, languages and cultures that challenged its authority or assumptions. If fostered brutality, division and inequality wherever it went and its abiding legacy is the numerous conflicts left in its wake.

The idea that you shouldn't judge it good or bad is preposterous. Our interpretation of the past is central to how we form our views in the present. I would hope that everyone on these boards would be comfortable with calling the third reich a bad thing. Nazism was in essence a reformulation of the same impulse and ideology that instructed the British Empire. Fascism happened to occurr at a time when democracy and equality were embedded in societies and where communications media and international institutions had advanced to a greater extent than had previously.been the case. This is why contemporary societies found it so repugnant, even if it was just one more iteration of Empire. Mussolini and Hitler were also very proud of their acheivements with trains.

One more thing...the characterisation above, of British rule as somehow being generally accepted by the people it was imposed upon is entirely false. I would be surprised if there was a single country where resistance was not offered to it.

Good Riddance!

I'm glad I started this topic. I've learnt a lot about my heritage - thanks to everyone who posted so far.

Mick, I would point out that the British Empire achieved rather more than either Hitler or Mussolini, both of whom offered very little genuine advantage to their peoples and attempted mass genocide, whereas the Empire only killed those who stood against it. Whilst it is true that the Empire had a very ugly record, it is not equivalent to fascism. Nor I should say was the empire as bad as the expansion West in America.

In my view the one thing that defends the empire is technology. Under no empire has so much been made possible, and the telephone, which I rate as arguably the most important invention to date, was made possible by it.

If the British didn't do it, someone else would have.

It was pretty good as empires go. A lot of territories joined willingly (today's Gulf States, SOME parts of Africa, etc.) and Britain let them leave willingly.

The empire was created mostly for economic reasons. Britain had a long term policy of free trade and acquiring colonies was mainly to get access to raw materials without paying tariffs. Of course the British got caught up in the disgraceful Scramble for Africa, but the more pragmatic leaders always knew that the empire as directly ruled territories was ephemeral.

If Britain had its way, it would have had stronger control over the Dominions and thus a more relevant Commonwealth. It's that this wasn't attempted to be forced on the subject peoples, like by Portugal and to an extent France, that makes the British Empire good. It died the right way.

Let's not forgot that although it was largely built on the slave trade, it was also one of the first european nations to abolish it. Also migration to the United Kingdom from it's colonies increased substantially as the Empire began to dissolve. If Britain was so oppressive, I don't think they would have wanted to come here.

A very interesting thread... I did a paper on this subject at University relatively recently, so I will return when I have more time to think about my reply.

However two comments spring to mind:

Mick said this: "Nazism was in essence a reformulation of the same impulse and ideology that instructed the British Empire"

Denzel73 said this: "Every Empire is bad. British was, and it resulted in Pakistani-born terrorists, among other things."

I would disagree with both of them rather wholeheartedly! To compare Nazism, an abhorrent system that believed in the superior race, and the extermination of lesser races is fundamentally wrong. The British Empire was the first to outlaw slavery in 1833, for example, when it was far from 'trendy'. As for the Pakistani terrorists, I'm afraid I don't know enough about the subject, but from what little I do know, it is that the terrorism was homegrown, not as a result of the British Empire.

As for the history of the Empire as a whole, it is difficult to judge simply because of its vast size and the timescale it encompassed. Certainly, there were examples of inexcusable actions - the creation of concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer war for example.

However, Britain did act in what it believed to be best. Abolition of slavery, bringing medicine and technology to its colonies. It secured commerce and trade routes, improved education for its colonial subjects and stood up to the largest tyranny of all - the rise of the Third Reich alone when the rest of the world was in its thrall.

It is impossible to prove one way or another, or to cherry pick examples from history to show one side of the argument, and not the other.

I have more to say on this when I have a bit more time!

And remember that it lasted for over a century after the end of the slave trade.

Few Empires can be said all bad and none can be said to good for every body. As Empires go the British was better than most. You did not wipe out entire cities as an SOP like the Mongals did thoughout Asia, or send millions to the arena to die as Rome. They like most empires secured trade routes, tribal warfare was suppresed, and technology and order was brought to areas that lacked it. It depends on who and when you ask if it was worth the cost.

Dubrovnik Republic was the first to outlaw the slavery, in 1750-ies...

British empire is responsible for much of today's political problems, including terrorism in its former colonies, Israeli-Palestinian problem, instability in Nigeria... and I could go on counting for many, many lines of text... Just accept it, and see what can be done about it, century or so later...

So Rome's to blame for the Crusades and the Spanish for civil wars in Latin America?

No, the people who actually participate are the ones at fault.

Just as the people who abuse children are partly responsible for their traumas as the adults, so are the empires responsible for the damage done in their colonies, for generations to come...

That's faulty logic. You can't throw a father who beat his son in jail when that son kills people thirty years later.

Denzel, you massively over simplify today's problemns. The Israeli-Palestinian problem can be traced back to the Holy Roman Empire, parts of Africa were positively tribal before the conquest, let alone unstable, and terrorism is also based on the Crusades as much as on the Empire, and equally on American policy too.

warsprite "send millions to the arena to die as Rome"

you might want to change that to thousands