Was the British empire a bad thing?

Answer 1

no... it still has effects today, like a lot of people speak English.

it also served a common good purpose, the defeat of Hitler in World War 2, you have to admit that without the British empire, Hitler could of won the war.

-Yes and no.

Being part of an empire has advantages. Also disadvantages. It can lead to the demise of cultures and also to the stifling of the development of cultures, but lets focus on the real bad part.

The creation of the British empire involved bad things. It was created as much through warfare, destruction, Propaganda, manipulation, totalitarianism, terror tactics, crime, drug dealing, as it was through innovation, engineering and great legal and financial systems.

Any empire is created in a bad way. Empire entails a group of people ruling over others after some form of conquest. Usually what was already established might have had to be cleared away so the culture of the imperialist may take over.

There is perhaps an argument that England mostly conquered territory that was not "civilised" (not inhabited by advanced white European peoples, etc.) thus some might say it had some divine purpose of bringing advanced culture to those places.

Obviously down the line there are lots of advantages in being part of an empire, however anyone who does not want to admit that it was also evil in many regards, suffers greatly from delusions of moral grandeur.

A very useful perk that England obtained through creating a global empire, was a great monopoly over world media. This meant that Anglophone nations had and still has a lot of power over how modern history as well as the role of the British Empire in that history is to be perceived by the peoples of the world today.

The British Empire did not simply spawn from thin air. Like any other empire, it had to be forged.

This means that the BE was created through hundreds of wars, implying destruction, plunder, oppression, terror, brutality and everything else you would normally associate with the other empires that get thrashed in the media so regularly. However this is seldom given much attention.

Traced back to its roots, England needed the British Isles to be united, so it could compete with the larger and more powerful European nations. This meant invading and conquering Ireland, Scotland and Wales. This eventually resulted in the demise of their language and culture to a great extent. The British Empire was born out of this.

Apart from all the wars of conquest, the BE also got involved in a great many wars across the globe to strengthen its political position and to weaken future rivals. Creating a world Empire required constant treading on heads. Entering into the poplar pursuit of empire building, was to enter into a dirty game, that every nation played to some extent at some time. Many of these wars are sold today as having been participated in purely for noble, humanitarian reasons. The best example is the coveted WW1, which is a little diluted in the minds of many Anglophones. The war was fought mostly for imperialistic reasons; the fear that growing German influence would encroach too much upon that of the empire, also the undesired prospect of Germany replacing England as the arbiters of European affairs. The involvement of the BE contributed to the severity of the conflict and also turned it into the world-wide war that it was. The result of the treaty of Versailles and the taking of all of Germany's colonies was that every single person in Germany (even their colonists who wanted no part in the war) was severely punished collectively. This led to an infuriated and desperate Germany, and thus Hitler. Thus, it goes without saying that the British Empire was not above being self serving and doing some extent of bad. However, to Anglophone people this particular and more realistic history is usually presented a little sugar coated.

The British Empire fought against Napoleon, Germany, Russia and Japan amongst others, because these nations wanted to: increase their territory, influence and future cultural prosperity through invading, conquering and oppressing/dominating others.- Basically the same stuff England had to do to create the world wide British Empire. It sounds like a war between mafia families.

The South African Dutch for example, had their free states and colonies annexed three times in a row by the British, the last time resulting in a war, which they lost, and the Anglicisation of Southern Africa.

So even in modern times the BE was not all good. Even after WW2 the BE did some bad things to protect its interests. Take Kenya and the Suez crisis as examples.

The point is, the British Empire brought innovation, technology, useful international language and enormous opportunities to various nations, as well as many other good things. But the other side of the story can't simply be ignored. Simply because the end result after many years of Empire Building is something that can be favoured, it does not mean that the bad that went with creating this empire should not be taken into account.

So the answer should always be that it was like any other empire. Good and bad. That there would be one super influential group of people, with the largest world empire, was an inevitability. All of history was a constant battlefield on which the ultimate victor, the British Empire, was eventually crowned.