One of the many great calumnies against European peoples, and the British in particular, is the mistelling of the history of Empire as some great criminal enterprise, raping and plundering the Earth for booty to bring back to Blighty. Stripping countries of their natural resources and condemning them to decades, or even centuries, of poverty thereafter. We are told that we "colonised" their lands making it only fair and proper that they should colonise ours now, which simultaneously represents payback, revenge, and an unalloyed blessing.
We are told that all of the world's current conflicts were caused by European Empires arbitrarily drawing lines on maps, with no regard for the composition of the ethnic and tribal groups who lived within them, by the same people who tell us that diversity is our greatest strength. If diversity is a strength in our countries, why is it not a strength in theirs?
Empire is given as the sole reason as to why we have more wealth than third world countries, and that we therefore have a duty to transfer some of that wealth back to them. The legacy of Empire will be used to explain and excuse failure in all third world countries from now until the end of time. This is, of course, hogwash.
Firstly let us address the issue of colonialism, which is often wrongly used as a synonym for Empire by those who like to use tricks with words to beguile people. To colonise is to send people from your ethnic group to a foreign land, with a view to forming settlements or colonies, in order to take demographic and political control of that land. The essence of colonisation is the transfer of people to achieve demographic change. The only significant countries colonised by the British were those which form the Anglosphere today. Namely, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Some of the richest and most desirable nations on Earth. We did this by sending settlers to conquer what had been barren wildernesses, sparsely populated by painted savages who had progressed little past the stone age and were armed with no more than spears and arrows. .Every country we colonised contained nothing worthwhile when we arrived. They were effectively vacant and there for the taking. It is absurd to suggest that our presence resulted in anything other than a considerable improvement over what had gone before.
One thing the British unquestionably did better than other colonial powers was to take our women with us. By doing so we were able to produce ethnically British children who were capable of building and maintaining a near perfect recreation of the motherland with its laws, customs, and values. Compare this to the Spanish, who largely left their women at home and simply bred with the natives, leaving behind a mixed race or "mestizo" people who struggle to maintain a recognisable facsimile of a European civilisation.
The bulk of the British Empire, i.e. everything other than the four countries listed above, was neither extensively settled by the British nor conquered by military force. Sure, we had to put down the occasional rebellion, but by and large the British Empire was a commercial rather than a martial enterprise. We did not seek to displace the native populations of India or Africa and replace them with our own. We provided a small governing and managerial elite to ensure that things could be run smoothly and that trade would not be hindered by the nepotism, tribalism or corruption endemic in those societies. We brought stable governance, law and order, and technology. We built infrastructure such as roads and railways. We gave them all the tools required to build a functioning country, things which took us millennia to develop and perfect. They embraced and welcomed British rule because it was infinitely preferable to what came before it.
At the height of the British Raj there were fewer than 100,000 Britons in India to govern a population of over 300 million. They could have kicked us out any time they wanted. They chose not to. As Afghanistan has proved, you cannot govern without the consent of the governed. We had that consent. Similar small British populations governed vast populations of natives throughout the Empire.Their rule was consensual.
The Pax Britannica ensured global peace for 200 years, We kept the Islamic world in check. No one starved in Africa when we ran it. Investment in Africa was higher during the British Empire than it is today, because law and order and property rights are of greater commercial appeal than idealistic nonsense from NGOs and a corrupt government that could seize your assets at any moment. The fall of the British Empire was the greatest calamity of the 20th Century. The direct cause of much of the global chaos we see today.
African countries which belonged to European Empires are richer today than those which were not. This is the true legacy of "colonialism". The former British colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore are some of the most prosperous places on Earth. When people try to blame the current state of Africa, without evidence, on the legacy of European Empires, I say there is a far more logical explanation.
Today we see teeming millions fleeing from Sub Saharan Africa and the Islamic world, clamoring to seek better lives in the countries which once colonised them. What they crave is good and stable governance, security and prosperity. This model is unsustainable. Our small nations cannot hope to absorb the billions who desire to live under our beneficent rule. I suggest that the only way to solve this seemingly intractable problem is to take up the white man's burden, to provide them with stable governance in their own countries, using the model which worked well for centuries, that of Empire.
