Britain caused many of the world's problems

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Sure, but that was a function of its power and remains so, whatever power it has now. At least they ended the practice of execution by elephant.

When the Indians found out what a great dancer and singer Hitler was, they signed up in droves.

ruveyn

Roots of Aryanism topic

I am not surprised. This is one of those tongue in (ass) cheek discoveries.

Im no apologist for the British Empire since I live in a place that prides itsself on having broken away that empire.

But I dont see your point.

So the Brits messed up the zoning laws in south asia and left India and Pakistan with a real estate dispute.

Thats a crime against humanity?

And somehow that means we're all supposed to applaud Hitler?

Bush and Obama were both imperfect so- we should put Jeffrey Daumer in the White House, with Ted Bundy as his veep?

What is your point?

I get the impression that the OP is using the Lord Haw-Haw school of thought to make there point, then again its only a minority view.

I HATE YOU DAVID CAMERON!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!

If you're going to run a country why don't you try learning some common sense, you sick bastard!! !! !! !! !! !! !

I don't like Cameron or his politics BUT on this point I would have to defend him.

There are plenty of people in nations that used to be a part of the British empire that justifiably have a feeling of resentment for what was done to them personally or to members of their family.

Acknowledging that fact and apologising for the bad things that we did is good ethics and very good politics, it costs us nothing but a delusion of grandeur and delivers relief to people who still bear the mental scars from the wounds we inflicted.

Good on him.

I'm not an empire lover or hater, we invented concentration camps during the second Boer War, we did seriously nasty things to the Mau Mau in Kenya which is why Obama has a serious beef with having a bust of Churchill in his office. The Irish were rightly pissed off that during the potato famine food exports to England continued.

Try reading through this blog from Adam Curtis to see one of the more unpleasant things about Empire that we have conveniently swept under the carpet.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2 ... r_one.html

But that said, when the British ruled Rhodesia it was the envy of Africa. It had the best health service, education and infrastructure in Africa, it was Africa's largest food exporter. Today the only thing Zimbabwe exports is cholera, typhoid and refuges. Our troops are back in Sierra Leone, not because we invaded them with nouveau-imperialist intentions but because they begged us for help to bring peace to their country which had been torn apart by civil war.

I haven't met an Afghan yet that didn't want the British and Americans in Afghan. Ok, I've only ever met Afghans in Britain so that may affect their publicly expressed opinion, but I was talking to an Afghan guy a few weeks ago, I said I could understand the Taliban killing soldiers that are occupying your country but I couldn't understand wasting explosives on brand new schools that the enemy had built in your country killing your own children instead of on the enemy.

His reply was quite interesting, a lot of foreign aid pours into Afghanistan for development work, there are three ways to spend it.

1. Give it to the local warlord who will steal it and not build anything.
2. Build it yourself and pay the local warlord ten times the construction cost to not blow it up.
3. Build it yourself, don't pay the right warlord who will then come and blow it up.

He was totally in favour of us doing the job properly - killing Karzai and importing lots of British people to run the country.

And they call autistic people nuts...

Shouldn't we blame the Italians too?

And the French and the Spanish and Belgians and the Dutch and the Portuguese...


Come to think of it wasn't the founding story of America basically a continent wide genocide that gets conveniently brushed under the carpet most of the time?

When the evil foreign devils arrived in India they of course found a wonderful land where muslim, sikh, buddhist and hindu lived side by side perfect peace and harmony. Oh wait, nope just checked, they had been slaughtering each other just as much as the nasty white people in Europe had been doing for millennia.

Off topic, but they used to make us sing that at school. As you know, I'm from Manchester. Stupid Catholic school!

The school I went to had a lot of kids where were 1st, 2nd, 3rd generation Irish immigrants and the school had an Irish nationalist slant, as you can tell by the choice of school anthem. I'm not very Irish for a white person from the North-West of England. I'm about 1/8 Irish and 1/8th Italian, which I where I got my Catholicism from (you have to raise your children as Catholic in a mixed marriage). The rest of my family is English/Scottish/Welsh Protestant. Being the weird, misfit I was (still am) at a young age I rebelled against my school environment by becoming fascinated by Protestantism and Unionism. I was really Christian as a child too, but I wanted to switch church asap. I was also keen to assert that I was BRITISH (in caps) and proud of it.

Fast forward to my late teenage years. I was still very anti-Catholic and I go around praising the British empire and berating people who point out how bad it was. Then I got into studying the English Civil War. Then I read about what Cromwell did to Ireland and what happened afterwards. Then I stopped being such an idiot. It didn't happen over night, but I'm no longer a bigot (though I still hate The Church (tm) from an atheist's POV) and I'm pretty indifferent to my national identity, now. After all, it's just where my parents had sex

The British empire committed ethnic cleansing and destroyed cultures. It did good things but I won't deny the bad things it did.

Sorry for the long post.

Last edited by puddingmouse on 23 Aug 2011, 10:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Bollywood Hitler?

So has Spain. The wretched conditions in Central and South America have their historical origins with the Conquistadores.

ruveyn

Don't forget the :Litvaks.

The two most important British statesmen in world history were George Washington, and Mohatma Gandhi.

At heart, both were dyed in the wool Englishmen.
Both lead protracted rebellions against the British Empire.
But both were instrumental insuring the survival of British values in their respective newly freed countries.

The result was the two biggest and most successful democracies in the world today.

The british empire does have alot to answer for.

But it also also has alot to take credit for.