The British Empire (or any Empire): Good or bad?

[King Henry V]

I have just read Neil Ferguson's controversial book Empire, where he is rather pro-Empire and says that Britain made the modern world. Do you agree with him and say some empires do bring some good, or is all colonialism evil?

[Mouzafphaerre]

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No GAH, no vote!
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[Duke Malcolm]

Good! Too bad it was dis-membered...
Perhaps we could have taken over the world, and make World Peace under the British crown.

[RollingWave]

As most things in life and in the world past and present... it brought both good and evil

[cunctator]

I prefer a empire that integrates all conquered regions properly over any compilation of nation states. My problem with the european colonial empires is that the people of europe had seen themselfs as superior compared to the native people of the colonies. Also this colonial empires have done a very bad job to integrate the new colonies into the motherland. Even the territories mainly populated by people of british seperated over the time.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Long Live Imperialism!! Rule Brittania!! Personally, i think that the British Empire was an incredibly good thing. After all, we gave those countries hospitals, roads, schools and once we left, they didn't have a clue how to run it all, and now look were they are. Africa used to be a fairly rich continent under the European powers, and now look at it. Poorest continent on Earth.

[Adrian II]

I have just read Neil Ferguson's controversial book Empire, where he is rather pro-Empire and says that Britain made the modern world. Do you agree with him and say some empires do bring some good, or is all colonialism evil?

I know this is impopular, but I think that in a sense Britain and France 'made' the entire modern world by laying the intellectual, physical and institutional groundwork for the dominant establishments, values, knowledge, and economic principles that govern us today, from banking and postmodern philosophy through space exploration and genetics. You'll forgive me for waxing epic at this late hour, but Europe is indeed the cradle of civilisation. And eighteenth century Britain and France are the spatio-temporal navel of mankind. Everything that came before was a mere prelude, everything that came afterwards was a mere sequel. Now hang me.

[Byzantine Prince]

Well Imperialism is great! (provided I'm the emperor of course )

Otherwise I vote for an imaginery GAH! large enough to devour the Earth.

[streety]

Nobly diplomatic of you m'lord Adrian II but, IMHO, a tad too positive about the French side of things.

Oh, and I know that there were a few worse dictators than Napoleon. Stalin for one! But I picked Boney and Hitler because, unlike Stalin and some others, Napoleon and Hitler tried to take over the World - and I'm only talking in terms of true World-politics of the kind seen during the development and duration of the British Empire, and the fact that at times we stood alone against these two regimes.

As to French imperial asperations, I read somewhere that the main reason the British Empire succeeded and the French did not, was because the British inherited and ever afterwards built on the Dutch East India Company trader-system approach and most British colonies made a profit and attracted people to them. By contrast the French approach was primarily about territorial gain and hardly any were successful in business terms, nor attractive to emigrants.

That's not to say I think the British Empire was all good. If there's one distasteful "event of Empire" I would pick out of our past it would be when, after defeating the Boers in South Africa, we then gave them hegemony over the country and the blacks therein - blacks who had fought freely for us (and for the liberty they'd enjoyed with us at that time) - when we knew damn well that the Boers were a deeply racist group. We did the biggest ever dirty, when we could have ensured equality

[sapi]

Pax Romana...

[Adrian II]

(..) at times we stood alone against these two regimes.

You've never stood alone against a strategic opponent since 1066. And the funny thing is around 1800 you had more in common with Napoleon than with the Russian, Spanish, Italian and German allies with whom you fought him.

By contrast the French approach was primarily about territorial gain and hardly any were successful in business terms, nor attractive to emigrants.

European colonial or imperialist ventures in the nineteenth century were hardly profitable at all. They were considered a strategic necessity, not an economic one, and trade did not happily follow the flag anywhere. The Dutch for instance have mostly lost money on their West Indies possessions, though the profits of the slave trade through these possessions more than made up for the loss. The whole history of western imperialism has been rewritten ten times to incorporate the apparent political, strategic and economic inconsistencies that transpired during research. I don't pretend to have a last word on any historic development of such magnitude, but I always thought that between the Foreign Legion in Africa and the Michelin rubber plantations in Indo-China the French colonies attracted a decent number of emigrants.

[streety]

Well, the picture certainly isn't a simple one, Adrian II, I'd readily agree. But I'd beg to differ that we ever had more in common with Napoleon than his other opponents.

And though we had several friends to defeat the likes of Napoleon and Hitler, we were also at times "effectively alone" against them. And my main point being that without the British Empire, either or both Napoleon's or Hitler's regimes could and probably would have taken over the World, or a big chunk thereof. BTW, I take it you're joking somewhat about the Spanish and Italian's help in either of those situations! Pretty useless allies -when they weren't actually on the other side - where they weren't much use there either....

And as to the Russians and Germans: even the Russians had an effective agreement with Hitler to carve up Eastern Europe, and only entered the war a couple of years later when Hitler invaded them. And as to the Germans, well, the Prussians helped crucially at Waterloo, but then they ganged up all the other german states into one country and gave us Hitler, which sort of cancels things out.....

Oh and BTW, I was talking about the Dutch East India Company, which we inherited through the House of Orange in 1688, not the Dutch West Indies, and we made plenty of money thank you, but ploughed a lot of it into building those countries up too.

As to other Empires - well Sapi, all the Romans ever did was give us pizzas, central heating and orgies. I mean, what use is that? We Brits gave the World tea, er, from India......
Rule Britannia