Today, it is fashionable to put imperialistic ideas down. Self-flagellation is rife among Brits in this new age of racial equality. If you don't rubbish imperialism, you're a racist. Let me make one thing abundantly clear - I am not a racist. I believe that every nation has a right to it's own national identity, and that every country should be allowed to govern itself as independently as possible.
But there is another side to the independence coin. No matter what you believe, there is one stark fact which remains - most of the countries which were ruled by Britain at the height of the empire are actually better off now than they would have been. Take India, as a prime example. OK, India may be struggling to fight a population explosion,but India is no longer a country to be ignored - despite grinding poverty in many areas, India is getting richer by the minute. They certainly don't qualify as third world any more. There are many complex economic issues involved in this, but I suggest that it is largely due to the legacy of British empire building.
You can say that we exploited our colonies, stripped them of national identity, strangled independence, dumped on them. All this is true. Sadly true. But there is another side to the story. What many people prefer to forget is that Britain dragged many of her colonies into the twentieth century, when they might otherwise still have been residing in the nineteen hundreds even today. And not just in issues of domestic comforts - Britain brought democracy to the colonies. You may laugh, and rightly so. We didn't exactly govern the empire in the most democratic of ways. But the colonies respected Britain, and, not entirely surprisingly, fell over themselves to adopt our system of government when they were granted independence.
You probably think that everything I have just said is hypocritical gibberish. I'd like to hear your view. Is the
demise of imperialism a tragedy or a triumph?
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