the british empire past and present

The British Empire can be felt today - and there's still much to discuss:

"I get angry when I hear the word 'empire'; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds me of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised."^[61]

Jay Doubleyou: british commonwealth ... british empire

The British Empire was not necessarily the 'best':

If Napoleon had remained emperor of France for the six years remaining in his natural life, European civilization would have benefited inestimably. The reactionary Holy Alliance of Russia, Prussia and Austria would not have been able to crush liberal constitutionalist movements in Spain, Greece, Eastern Europe and elsewhere; pressure to join France in abolishing slavery in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean would have grown; the benefits of meritocracy over feudalism would have had time to become more widely appreciated; Jews would not have been forced back into their ghettos in the Papal States and made to wear the yellow star again; encouragement of the arts and sciences would have been better understood and copied; and the plans to rebuild Paris would have been implemented, making it the most gorgeous city in the world. 

The First World War of 1914-1918 was the first mechanised war and the slaughter that was on an industrial scale touched every village, town and city in Britain and beyond. The sheer size of the British Empire meant it was able to meet the demands of this new type of warfare with an almost inexhaustible supply of troops and material, and after four years of carnage, the empire, along with its allies, emerged victoriously. By the end of the war, the British Empire was battered but still standing, whereas the Ottoman, Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian Empires had all collapsed.

Jay Doubleyou: revolutions, empire and war

India, surprisingly, does not loom large in the history taught in most British schools. This is not simply a matter of children having the wrong idea about the two centuries of exploitation that financed the British empire and many of its wars; often, they have no idea at all. Even the victims — or, more properly, their descendants, the nearly 2bn people of the Indian subcontinent — have only a hazy notion of the horrors inflicted during the colonial period.

Jay Doubleyou: inglorious empire - what the british did to india

The head of the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of nations has ruled out a free trade deal with the UK until at least six years after Brexit and taken a sideswipe at the idea of a new British trade empire. The ACP chief, Dr Patrick Gomes, condemned “reactionary” Whitehall talk of a second era of British colonialism – dubbed “Empire 2.0” – and poured scorn on the government’s trade strategy.

Jay Doubleyou: inglorious empire - what the british did to india

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