You may have heard that British colonialism is evil itself. Or maybe not quite? Did you know that it was mainly British colonialism that strongly contributed to the abolition of slavery?
Pictured: One king, one flag, one fleet, one empire.
European imperialism
Since the dawn of history, some countries have invaded other countries. Such imperialism seems to be a natural feature of all cultures in the world, not just Europeans. Red-skinned Indians conquered other North American tribes treating the vanquished as subhuman, and African tribes brutally murdered and enslaved other blacks, not to mention Chinese conquests or Islamic genocide in India. Europeans, on the other hand, through their constant need to develop and compete – and their technological superiority – have only elevated this natural, human imperialism to a worldwide level.
However, European culture is one of the few civilizations in the world that can look critically at its own achievements. On the one hand, this is a wonderful characteristic of it, which allows it to correct its mistakes and develop further. On the other hand, it is possible to fall into the excessive self-criticism so fashionable recently in Western Europe and the US, when one exaggerates one’s own faults as much as one exaggerates the merits of other cultures at the same time.
What was British colonialism?
Many of the European states had their own colonies, that is, they managed to conquer some overseas peoples. Indeed, Europeans usually just wanted to exploit the natives by brutally suppressing any sign of opposition – for example, Belgian King Leopold II created his private state in the Congo, where he slaughtered several million people, not only out of terror, but often out of sheer sadism1.
British colonialism, however, was different. The British, of course, also wanted to make money – they imported natural resources and works of art (although here the question arises whether they would have survived to this day at all if they hadn’t found refuge in the British Museum) and forcibly imposed their ideas on the colonized nations. But in addition to this selfishness, they were also guided by the beautiful idea that they would bring civilization to the world. They organized an efficient administration, introduced modernization, built roads and schools, and raised the general standard of living of their subjects.
They also endured barbaric customs. In Europe today, there is perhaps a belief that “who are we to tell others how to live” and “all cultures are equal.” The British colonialists did not share such a view.
It was the British colonialists who just outlawed in India the tradition of killing unwanted children (those already born, usually girls) or the ritual of burning wives at the stake after the death of their husband. Such are the mean imperialists who do not respect the “richness of cultural differences.” In addition to this, they introduced a system of food storage, thanks to which India ceased to be plagued by disease and famine (Indians did not kill rats or mice), and the population of the population increased under British rule from 170 to 450 million.
What good did British colonialism bring?
People often think that slavery was invented by British colonialists. Nothing could be further from the truth!
When the English began building their “empire over which the sun never sets” in the 17th century, slavery had been gone from the British Isles for some 500 years. This does not mean that British merchants did not engage in the lucrative slave trade, but if such a slave escaped his master on English territory, he became a free man1.
Meanwhile, slavery flourished in Africa. It was dealt with mainly by Muslim merchants, for whom trading infidels is not a bad thing at all (as is their unfair treatment). During the Industrial Revolution, however, the British decided that they would once again “tell others how to live” and abolished slavery in their colonies.
British government ransomed and freed all slaves of the empire
Interestingly, they did it in a very civilized way, legally and without bloodshed. The British government decided to simply buy up and free all the slaves in the entire Commonwealth (that is, at one point, almost 70% of the planet).
As you can read in a popular post on the Internet:
- ’In 1833, Britain used 40% of its national budget to buy freedom for all slaves in the Empire. Britain borrowed such a large sum of money for the Slavery Abolition Act that it wasn’t paid off until 2014. This means that living British citizens helped pay for the ending of the slave trade with their taxes’.
Unbelievable?
Inquisitive Internet users checked this information with the British tax authority, which confirmed the veracity of this information. This means that the slaves were freed with money from my taxes as well! :
West Africa Squadron – the world’s most expensive moral action
To do all this, when the British outlawed slavery, they actively began to counter it. To do this, they established the West Africa Squadron, a British naval squadron that guarded the coast of Africa. It is estimated that between 1808 and 1867 the British colonialists, as it were, freed 150,000 slaves in this way, which about 1,600 English sailors paid with their lives.
According to some American political scientists, it was the most expensive action driven by ethical motives in modern world history3.
Should the English pay repatriations for slavery?
Nevertheless, it is often heard that the English should pay reparations for slavery. While the suffering of slaves has no price, and every person subjected to such inhumane treatment should be compensated, such a discussion would have made sense two hundred years ago, but surely now? Does it really make sense to demand an apology from one great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchild?
What’s more, the money is supposed to flow from the taxes of all Britons. However, few of their ancestors had anything to do with the slave trade. Many of today’s residents of the British Isles are immigrants, or even descendants of freed slaves – should they all pay too?
It can be said then that it is not a question of affecting the individual, but entire countries, after all, repatriation from the English is mainly demanded by the Caribbean states. But the fact remains that if the slave in question had stayed in West Africa, his descendant would have been much poorer (per capita income there is less than two thousand dollars a year) than his descendant in the Bahamas (more than $34,000!), not to mention the American descendant (more than $85,000)!
Moreover, following this mode of thinking, the Spanish should also demand repatriation for the years of occupation by the African Moors, and the people of the Balkans for the millions of children taken into jasir under the Ottoman Empire. Why, too, is no one also demanding reparations from the African states themselves, which supplied Muslim and Arab merchants with slaves already captured, and had even more slaves in their African courts than they shipped across the Atlantic? Not to mention repatriations from the middlemen themselves, who were engaged in this practice hundreds of years before the advent of the British Empire.
Finally, if the problem of slavery is so important to activists calling for repatriation for African-Americans, etc. why don’t they rather focus on the problem of slavery, which is still practiced today in many African and Muslim countries. Even today there are still 50 million slaves in the world1 – wouldn’t it make more sense to bend to their fate?
Are the rich always bad and the poor always good?
We all grew up on the legends of Robin Hood, in which the people in power are always the bad guys. The rich have always come to power and wealth in an unholy way, while the poor and oppressed are always the good guys in these tales. Interestingly, it’s a very British idea (after all, Robin Hood prowled the Nottingham area), and Charles Dickens wrote his “Christmas Eve Story” in a similar vein. Freedom, equality, human rights – these are all Judeo-Christian, European ideas that are even today still foreign to many people on earth.
Social trust, which is built through respect for the other and his rights, backed by a fair judiciary, seems to help a lot in building a rich society. It is a healthy culture that seems to be the most important factor in wealth, not a “history of exploitation.” And while too much bureaucracy is nothing exciting, an efficient and transparent state is something extremely valuable – a treasure that most people on earth today can only dream of.
Do you live in Europe? You are a mega lucky person!
In Europe today, we live in the best conditions that man has ever created. Even if the situation is not ideal, by its very nature, it probably never will be, so there is no point in comparing the actual situation to utopias that have been sucked out of our fingers. The fact remains, however, that never or nowhere in the history of mankind have the rights of women and minorities been so respected, never has there been so much tolerance, freedom, justice and equality of opportunity and equality before the law, never has there been such good access to education and medicine and social welfare than there is in Europe or America today.
Anyone who complains that we live in a racist capitalist hell today should, like my anarchist friends, go on vacation to Africa – it helps a lot to catch a proper perspective on one’s situation and cures a lot of irrational sentiments from the fables of Marx and Rousseau! In addition, the practical advantage of such a solution is that a person stops complaining and feeling sorry for his fate!
Or perhaps it even begins to protect all the good that we owe to European civilization, because many poor people coming to our continent do not necessarily have a wise idea of its future…. and, unfortunately, usually rather such “cultural enrichment” in the long run leads to a situation because of which they wanted or had to flee their homelands. The problem is that Europe is our only home, and if we naively squander its future, our children will have nowhere to return to….
Is Africa poor because of the English?
We often encounter the argument that Africa is so poor because of its colonial past. If this is so, why, for example, does the average resident of the former British colony, Singapore, today earn twice as much as the average Briton? Ethiopia, on the other hand, never succumbed to colonialism, but is today one of the poorest countries not only in the world, but even in Africa itself. Maybe the problem is much deeper than a temporary period of colonialism in human history, and it’s more about industriousness and culture and – yes, yes – honest capitalism that allows individuals and entire countries to get rich and develop.
When the British withdrew from India (actually because they were fed up with colonialism, not because of Gandhi!) the country was richer than it later was after decades of independent rule. What’s more, social inequality increased, not decreased, despite – or perhaps because of – the country’s near-communist policies1. We unfortunately see a similar situation in South Africa today.
The second argument is that Europeans are so rich because they got rich from the colonies. Again, it’s hard to take this argument seriously if you look at Portugal, which disappeared from the map at its colonial peak, or Spain, which also wasn’t helped by South American gold and silver. As the English adage goes:
- “ill-gotten gains never prosper”
That is, “profits obtained fraudulently do not build wealth.”
Let’s leave the past in the past
Not to mention that countries such as native Poland and the Czech Republic never had slaves or colonies, but today are among the richest countries in the world. Moreover, both of these countries were under foreign imperial rule for long periods of their history. After independence, as long as they were under the evil communist system they were poor, but since capitalism was introduced there, within a few decades these countries rebuilt their wealth and returned to the group of first-world countries. This happened not because they themselves now began to exploit anyone, but because the citizens of these countries worked hard, and many idealists made sure that the system in them worked well, instead of explaining all their mistakes by past injustices.
Of course, many bad things have happened in history, but what has happened will not go away. You can’t look back indefinitely, because every country or race has always done something wrong sometime in there past. Such historical reckoning and demands for reparations will never end. How many years back will we look? 10, 100, 1,000 years? All that can be done is to learn the lessons of the past and focus on building a better tomorrow for future generations.
Therefore, the next time before you automatically side with the weaker one, consider whether perhaps the people in the more difficult situation are not most responsible for their situation themselves and only blame everyone around them for their problems, instead of correcting their own mistakes that are the cause of their difficulties!
PS: If you’re already doing well in English, I recommend on YouTube this leaked conversation between historian Bruce Gilley and the brilliant journalist Douglas Murray on European colonialism (and the comments under the video!). I also recommend this crotchety defense of British colonialism by historian Hedel-Mankoo. And if your English isn’t good enough yet – keep reading!
Why is English the world’s language?
One of the undeniable consequences of British imperialism is that almost the entire world speaks English. Of course, over time this has been compounded by the rebellious English colony in North America and the continent from which the English have made themselves a prison at a safe distance from home, namely Australia.
Anyway, wherever you go, everyone there speaks English. So whether you consider British colonialism a disaster or something positive, it’s worth learning to speak English fluently!
Of course, the best way to learn English is through the app and the Speakingo web course!