Let's restore some British pride
Thanks to countless movies, TV series, media posturing, anti-white brainwashing and just plain ignorance, there appears to be a culture of consensus that British colonialism was thoroughly wicked, and as a nation we should feel ashamed of our past.
Most of the British people with this view did not live in the colonial era. I did, albeit at the tail end, as I was born in the 1950s. I also lived for six years of my childhood in a recently-independent former colony. So if you feel like ranting at me after reading this article, please remember that you were not actually there, and most people today have no idea what the world was like at the time.
According to the propaganda, the native people of the British Empire spent their time cowering in terror and oppression. Of course there were instances of this, and some stories of terrible cruelty. But the world was a different place then, with practices everywhere that would horrify civilized people today. Some are still continuing, such as the stoning of adulterous women, cutting off hands for stealing, beheadings in the street, and female genital mutilation.
The British colonial rulers actually outlawed some particularly cruel practices, such as the Hindu tradition of Sati, or enforced widow suicide.
India was originally not considered a colony but a trading partner, through the East India Company. Most websites which mention this company write mostly about slavery and military rule. But oppression was not at all the reason for the company becoming militarized. Here is a less biased version of the story www.thoughtco.com/east-india-company-1773314.
As explained on that site, the French were aggressive in trying to break up the British trading partnerships with the Indian princes. Militarization was the result of fending them off.
Slavery
Slavery was not invented by “white people”. It has existed since pre-biblical times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Egypt. Britain was the first nation to abolish slavery, thanks to member of parliament William Wilberforce, who also set up the world’s first organization for the prevention of cruelty to animals.
The Boer wars, 1880-81 and 1899-1902 were overshadowed by World War I, and are now largely forgotten. Again, most websites show an anti-British bias, with accusations of concentration camps and cruelty to prisoners. The causes of the wars are largely obfuscated. But if we look at the UK parliamentary records from the time, it is clear that the Dutch (Boer) colonials were using African slaves, including children. One of the reasons for Britain sending troops to that region was to put a stop to this.
I highly recommend reading The Great Boer War, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was present as an observer of the war, and gives a detailed account of the whole process.
I find his book heartbreaking. Conan Doyle describes how the Boers again and again hid themselves on hilltops and simply fired on British troops that were travelling through the valleys, massacring them with just a few strategically-positioned men. The incompetence of the British Command—none of them professional soldiers—was legendary, much the same as told in the famous story of the “Charge of the Light Brigade”.
Eventually the Boers were rounded up and put in prison camps, to stop them from forming armies. Farms were destroyed to stop Boer armies from getting supplies. Perhaps the prison camps were indeed run with some of the cruelty that we would expect from such a terrible war, but calling them concentration camps is a smear aimed at bringing to mind a Nazi-type cruelty for which there is absolutely no evidence.
Benefits of colonialism
I am proud to belong to a nation of humanitarian people, and would love to see a propaganda reversal, showing how British colonial rule, working in harmony with the missionaries, brought modern civilization, Christian values, infrastructures such as roads and waterworks, education and free health care to so many countries. All these benefits became unaffordable to maintain after Britain’s coffers were drained by World War II, so peaceful democratic systems were put in place before the colonials relinquished power.
Nigeria gained her independence in 1960, the year my family moved from England to Nigeria. I saw no oppression, and no military. Nigerians, British and Americans happily coexisted.
My father worked in a hospital, teaching Nigerians how to diagnose diseases using a microscope. Nigerian natives came to the hospital with their ailments, and received free treatment. Thanks to the British, even in the 1960s there were already medically-qualified Nigerians working as doctors, whose parents and grandparents still lived in native huts, leading a traditional lifestyle. I have many happy memories of that time.
Britain is still one of the world's biggest foreign aid donors, and donates 0.5% of gross national income to global health and humanitarian work.
When other countries such as the United States criticize Britain for colonialism, I suggest they look in their own backyard. While the British were educating Nigerians, Americans were stealing land and conducting nuclear tests on living people in the Pacific Islands. And then laughingly named a piece of swimwear after the island they had destroyed.
I will leave you to watch this shocking clip from Australian journalist John Pilger.
This video is an extract from a longer 2016 film documenting the Clinton/Obama preparations for a war on China
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