The British Empire is something to be Proud of

You are right that the key concern in this debate is the morality of it all. However, the history matters greatly. You mentioned that we can't used the history to answer questions concerning whether actions in the past were right or wrong. This is true however if we don't have a historical discussion then we are unable to actually evaluate actions in the past and so have absolutely nothing to base our moral discussion on. In this debate I feel that sadly all that has happened in the historical discussion is that a narrative of "murder by the British" has become the face of what the empire was. We seem to only be arguing over the very bad bits whilst ignoring the good things that were done. I want to address your point on slavery because there is a lot of nuance relating to Triangular Trade. Firstly, the British Empire never was involved in the trade itself. The British state harboured and permitted slavery. However, slavery was entirely conducted by private corporations and individual plantation owners. Shipping routes were policed by British ships and plantation countries were protected by British troops. Pretending that somehow the British Empire directly conducted slavery is completely, demonstrably untrue and very disingenuous. On slavery, Britain abolished in 1807 and outlawed continued servitude in 1838. Furthermore, slaves were legally free in Britain since the 1772 Somerset case. These actions I argue were very moral actions. Britain and its empire were clearly well ahead of their time both morally and philosophically. To have the moral backbone and insight to go alone in the world, subsequently depriving your still very poor country of a massive source of material wealth, is a remarkable feat that does not get enough credit. Following this, the British navy was crucial in literally destroying Triangular Trade and forcing other European countries to stop their trade. On to the example of genocide. What needs to be made very clear is the difference between individual acts of racial murder and state-sponsored genocide. Genocide has become a very loose term recently which is a shame because it deeply undermines the genuine victims of such horrible crimes. The individual racist murderers in Australia of course killed aboriginal people because of race however to claim that this means the Empire is guilty is a kin to arguing that one racist killing on a British street is evidence of state-sponsored murder. The native populations were at war with the British forces (mainly actually local civilians and not the state) and thus this cannot be confused with genocide. If some historians argue it was genocide then I disagree. There were individual acts of race-based murder but no evidence of an institutional strategy to ethnically cleanse Australia. I have no doubt war crimes were committed though. One thing that actually does not get credit is that the British Empire was one of the few Empires to always keep records of what it did. Acts of murder and exploitation were always written down. This is one of the reasons why we know so much about the misconduct of British soldiers during the MaoMao uprising in Kenya. In this sense, there is an element within Empire that says that we should make sure we make people accountable and try to keep watch on our behaviour. In other words, there is an element of "blind justice" within Empire - this is truly unique to Britain at the time. Onto the development of countries. You are right. In a hypothetical situation one can never be sure that had colonial rule not been there then they would be worse off. However, we can look at the realistic alternatives to British rule. What we do know is that there was a" Scramble for Africa" and if one power had not taken it then another would. Indeed, India surely would have fallen to the French, Dutch or Portuguese since they all had colonies there and all were struggling to control it. There is no doubt that in the context of colonialism that imperialism was inevitable. So, to an extent, we can say that the British Empire was likely, on balance, the best thing to have happened to that country. Since we are discussing an individual empire and not overall colonialism, we cannot say that they should not have been colonised in the first place. Furthermore, just look at the evidence for positive British actions: roads, railways, parliaments, police forces, laws, justice systems, schools, hospitals, organised religion as well as western thought and philosophy. The list of positive introductions to colonies are evidence that good things happened to these countries. Therefore, colonial rule did aid the development of those countries, significantly. Now onto the morality. I want to ask the question: what is good? How do you know something to be good? Is it just a gut feeling or is it because you know bad? I do not subscribe to the belief that the British Empire was a lesser evil. I don't think the debate should be framed in this way. However lesser evil really is good in the sense that the only thing that you can compare it to is bad. This is the only way we can rationalise it. It you have an alternative then go ahead but ultimately you have to revert back to absolutist tactics of just listing things that "feel" wrong. The way we quantify best possible achievement is the same method that scientists often use. We work to compare if our lives have gotten any better at all over a time period. If they have then we know that we are still not reaching that utopia. But if there is no improvement in our material lives then we know that we are just about there (don't even try to bring up the middle ages and then the enlightenment!). The British Empire does bring us closer to this. It was the most advanced and developed system in the world that spread its achievements around the world. It committed crimes but it also did many, many good things. Those crimes are minor setbacks but since the positive achievements brought us closer to a utopia for FUTURE GENERATIONS then the crimes (however bad) are wrong but not enough to not constitute and improvement. Since there will be more people in the future than there were hundreds of years ago (GG4GN), crimes are allowable as long as the utopia is brought to us by the British Empire (which did much more good than harm). Now, I know that my point on the "ethical mindset" is a bit of a stretch. Firstly, the SS did know that what they were doing was wrong but in many cases they did it anyway through hate. We also need to be careful not to compare this to the mentally ill who may believe that whatever they do is right. I'm talking about a society in which there is free thought (unlike Nazi Germany) and in which there is a belief that a level of exploitation is tolerable or that racism is not that bad. Look, I also believe that a society which believes in bad things makes those actions bad. But my point was that the people weren't that bad themselves. And in that sense, I am proud of the people for having some kind of moral philosophy (however flawed it may be). In the same way I think that those who came up with the 10 commandments (however flawed some of them are) were good because they tried to have some kind of moral code and stuck to it. In this way, the British society was doing a good thing and so I extend that to meaning that the empire (which was ultimately built around them) was principled and righteous. To an extent, I am proud of the citizens who made up that Empire. To summarise, the British Empire did the world a great deal of good and was far better than any realistic alternatives. We know that it introduced so many good things to other countries and that this ultimately brought the world closer to a goal of happiness and wealth. Britain was well ahead of its time and brought a level development to us much faster. In this way, I am proud of parts of Empire and very un-proud of other parts. On the whole, I think that we can be proud of it as the whole system was generally good for our world. By your logic, can I be proud of any system that has ever existed. Are you glad that the Roman Empire existed? Do you think that the Roman empire was good for the world?