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Comment by anexprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

Whilst Kenya was an undoubted low point of the British overseas territories, it's chilling to think they were markedly better behaved than the French and especially Belgian colonies in Africa.

Quite how any of these were able to rationalise such behaviour, and so comparatively recently, whilst claiming to be civilised beats me.

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Blood and repression is the norm for empires, from Sumeria down through. The new thing is being ashamed of it.

> The new thing is being ashamed of it.

Which is a development I very much welcome.

Being ashamed of something you had no possibility of being complicit in, is perhaps psychologically maladaptive. Unless by shame, you mean an opportunity for performative ethnomasochism as a means of virtue-signalling.

Hm. Lots of people believed that the British Empire was absolutely fantastic. In reality, though it brought lots of trade to Britain, I don't think there was much interaction with the Empire for the normal person on the street.

If they had actually known what atrocities had been committed in order to get them that rubber or cotton would they have been so happy about it? I think modern shame is very much the product of modern access to information.

(To counter that point, most people can reasonably be expected to know where their bananas and palm oil came from and they still buy them)

> If they had actually known what atrocities

Lets put the atrocities to one side for a moment. We should also consider the fact that in many cases colonial invasions put into place highly extractive political institutions and extractive economic institutions. That's relevant for the long term. In almost all cases, the colonial governments put into place winner-take-all environments. That meant, if you were willing to be the corrupt puppet native leader, and were willing to supress your other natives at all costs, then you got to be "King". The structures created in those colonial countries still maintain such winner-take-all society which results in authoritarian/dictatorial leaders.

Well the first phase of the British Empire was much more about the trade than repression and saw abolition of suttee and slavery. Early treaties attempted to preserve native rights. Intermarriage was relatively common, as was some immigration into the UK.

The later "benevolent empire" phase, broadly around the time of the Opium wars, saw the repression, misrule and attempt to civilise these places. That saw more separation. This was the phase that saw concerted efforts to add infrastructure, schools, hospitals and such.

The goal of the British Empire, as with every empire, is to exploit the empire to the benefit of the ruling country. Everything else is white washing.

The first phase of the British empire was roughly from the time of Queen Elizabeth to the start of the Seven Years War in 1754 (or up to 1688 if you want to use the Glorious Revolution as a division point). This is precisely the period when the British were among the world's most active and enthusiastic slavetraders. The abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire was obviously a bright point in its history, but it's worth pointing out that this happened two hundred years into the British Empire's lifespan, not at the beginning.

> it's chilling to think they were markedly better behaved than the French and especially Belgian colonies in Africa

I'm somehow suspicious of this claim. There's some circumstancial evidence that make me think that Belgium's crimes were more exposed.

For instance, compare the death tolls of the railways in the two Congos.

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