A Long Way

In the eyes of many British citizens the Empire was the greatest thing there has ever been. They fail to see the faults in it.
One example, I already wrote about, is the Amritsar Massacre in 1919. Even the Prime Minister James Cameron is one of the people who seem so see the Empire in a "yes but" way: Yes horrible things happened but we left a legacy to the world - or something like this.
When Cameron visited Amritsar in 2013 he said that "Im my view, we are dealing with something that happened a good 40 years before I was even born". This might be true, that Cameron himself had nothing to do with the shooting of innocent men, women and children. Still many million Germans today weren't alive for the time of the Nazi regime. Still we feel sorry, we are ashamed of what happened and we apologize, whether we say so or pay respect or money to Israel and jewish people. Not having been born for a crime commited by the own country doesn't excuse us from apologizing and feeling ashamed and sorry.
To me it seemed like James Cameron, who was the first PM ever to visit Amristar, wanted to put a lid on this part of the Empires history. It happened a good 94 years ago and what's past is past, was what I felt Cameron was thinking.
But history can only be stopped from repeating itself if we look at it critically. Many British people lack this criticism. They tend to see the Empire and all that happened in the colonies in a generally sugar-coated view.
James Cameron did pay his respects at Amritsar and deemed it 'monstrous' by quoting Winston Churchill from 1919. Still he found again a 'but' in all this: "I think there is an enormous amount to be proud of in what the British empire did and was responsible for." He still acknowledged that not everything was good, that the British did while ruling over India but there was always that little silent 'but' in his speech.
Many Britons are proud of their Empire and I think that there are things to be proud of but also there are a great lot many things that they should acknowledge and be actually ashamed of.


Source: David Cameron defends lack of apology for British massacre at Amristar - The Guardian - Nicholas Watt - 20.2.2013

"Some of them [former British colonies] may have problems that can be partly attributed to their colonial past, but they all owe their existence as states to the British Empire"
This quote from a Newspaper Article, written by Stephen Glover for the Daily Mail is in my opinion more than controversial.
It is true, that many former British colonies owe the fact of them being a state to the British Empire but it seems completely oblivious of the fact, that the British Empire did in fact not collect colonies for the sole purpose of spreading democracy and to civilize the residents of said countries.
The British Empire needed or wanted colonies, because of their raw materials or their potential for them. In Britain it is close to impossible to grow cotton and before North America became independent in 1776 Britain could very well obtain their cotton from North America.
After they lost their colonies in America, they turned to India for cotton, because it had the perfect climate for growing this product.
Glover himself states in his article that not everything the British did in India was good : "Of course, bad things were done. Even by the standards of the time, British retaliation after the 1857 Indian mutiny was excessive. The British did little or nothing to ameliorate severe famines in India in the late 19th century"
Right in the next paragraph he writes about how India became what it is today due to British rule and help. It is nonetheless true, that Britain did a great part in the development of India to the economic power it is in today's world but the tone of Glovers article devaluates the crimes the British commited while ruling over India.
Only one example from many is the massacre of Amritsar, where the consequence for Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer was that he had to leave the army. Due to his, and his men's actions 379 people were shot and he simply had to leave the army.
This is only one example of the sometimes truly ruthless rule of the British in India. Therefore in my opinion the general, somewhat praising tone of Mr. Glovers article is not adequate and leaves out various important emphases.

In 1922, just after the end of WWI, about 1/5th of the worlds population (at that time about 458 million people) were part of the British Empire, the largest Empire in history. Nearly 1/4 of the earth belonged to the British Empire and so the sun never really did set on it. It was so widely spread across the planet and different time zones that in some part of the Empire it was always daytime.
One of the earliest British, if not the first, so called colony was Ireland. The settlement in Ireland began in the 16th century. It can still be seen today that the colonization of Ireland was not all good. This however is not just a feature of British colonies but of nearly every colony of every country, whether it was a German, French or Spanish colony. This is only understandable, who would rejoice if foreign people came into your land and claimed it theirs, forced you to believe in their religion and work for them in nearly slave like conditions.
One of the worst examples for this might be the slave trade where people with darker skin where treated inferior to people with lighter skin.
People from Africa, where enslaved by traders from Europe and shipped off to North America under horrible conditions. If they survived the trip they had to work for white 'masters' in America and were treated and sold like cattle.
In exchange for the slaves the traders brought lots of raw material like sugar, tobacco and cotton back from the New World to Europe. There they manufactured them and shipped the new products off to Africa, where they were traded for new slaves again.
The effects are still visible today with racism all over the world. Even after WWII in the USA, although slavery had been forbidden since December 1865, there was still racial segregation in the USA because people with dark coloured skin were still seen as inferior.
So the British Empire, in my opinion was very enriching for the British but less so for the countries they colonized.