You're viewing a single thread.
Brought law and order to the world. Education. Infrastructure. Destroyed the slave trade. Brought stability and prevented genocides. Created governments. The industrial revolution. Science. Large parts of economics and free trade.
You forgot to mention, looted hundreds of countries.
But isn't it nice of them to let the Greeks go to see the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum whenever they want for free?
Is there no admission fee for the British Museum? I've never been outside the US, but I would have expected a basic £5 fee.
No, it's free except for special exhibitions. That's one of the few compliments I'll give it. That and the curators themselves really know their stuff. There's a YouTube series where they talk about their areas of expertise. But they don't get to decide what the museum has acquired and what it is willing to give up.
I'm pretty sure India had law and order and infrastructure long before the British invaded and colonized it. And Britain benefited from the slave trade for a long time before working to abolish it.
As far as prevented genocides, I'd ask an indigenous Australian how they feel about Britain preventing genocide.
Honestly, I'm willing to give Britain the slave trade bit. Slavery is ancient, and choosing not just to break free of it, but to actively work for its suppression across the world, deserves some credit, at least.
The rest, though? Y I K E S
Really? We still don’t have law and order and infrastructure in India. Also we weren’t a country called India before the British came.
Weird, because I've seen pictures of India and it looks to me like there are things like roads and rails.
Also, I never said there was a country called India before the British came. Would you have preferred it if I had done a big list of all the kingdoms they conquered? I felt "India" was faster.
Man, I didn’t mean to rub you in the wrong way. Just saying our infrastructure basically sucks, it’s all great in the first year and then crumbles. Almost all of our railroads are from the British times still sustaining, and roads have just recently started to be good but even then after a bit they’re not in good shape. Look at what happens to any of our cities when it rains for a couple of hours.
On the history front, you’re right to have thought of referring it as India before it was India, though it still feels that as states we are so disconnected at most times that we should reflect on whether are we even a country or just some kind of loose alliance held together by the corruption of politics.
In any case, I didn’t mean any offense to your comment, just added on some of my own sarcastic comments.
Edit - forgot to mention, in terms of law and order, our law is pretty good, but it’s not enforced at all. People could blame corruption, but it’s probably the system and also the population vs resources. For example, cops are paid a pittance and they need to pay bribes to get good posts and they then recover those bribes by taking bribes…
I hope you forgot to put an /s at the end of your comment
That's like saying communism brought up living standards for eastern Europe (It didn't)
And don't go down voting thinking I am some Englishman or American I live in eastern europe
(it did though)
Ask any person who lived at the time and why did Lithuania break of the USSR if it was so good
Ask a serf from
tsaristimperial (for the pedants) Russia?You do know there's a period of independence between Tsarist Russia and Soviet domination, right?
Calling them emperors for a little while but not changing anything else isn't anything like independence
Yes, all those things would have been accomplished sooner if the British had stayed on their own little island. I agree.
Probably not, to be honest. It's like a chaotic attractor, isn't it. I'm not a moral relativist, so I can't discount the suffering it created. But we tend to do that when looking at ancient history. It's pretty clear a specific version of "industrial civilisation" was spread globally, and the epicentre was Europe, and disproportionately the UK. It's just too recent to view objectively or with a historical lens for most people. That's fair enough. Now its bastard offspring the USA is the major cultural hegemon and the economic consequences of that are staring us directly in the face, with most people choosing to ignore it. And who knows what will happen next?