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Easy to romanticise it and forget exactly how the empire came to be - war, theft, violence, slavery, murder. Maybe it's breaking up because the tactics that put it together are no-longer acceptable.

That's no different from any other empire.

I didn't notice k-mcgrady suggesting that we romanticize any other empire, either.

> Find me an older partnership than that one (yes, I know it hasn't always been friendly, but still).

If you want to characterize the time since the Acts of Union as a pure partnership and just ignore the itsy-bitsy flare-ups like the Jacobite rebellion and the Battle of Culloden (okee dokee) you're only talking three hundred years. It's not such a long time.

I'm not sure what the Jacobite rebellion of Battle of Culloden are off the top of my head, those aren't taught in history classes in America, but I've always been taught starting from James I in 1603 when the same king ruled the two lands. Being a partnership doesn't require being one combined country, having the same head of state seems like pretty close relations.

But if unsuccessful civil wars are allowed to disrupt the unity of a nation, hell, America has only been a country for like 150 years, not 250. The American Civil War was a lot bloodier than the Battle of Culloden.

> I'm not sure what the Jacobite rebellion of Battle of Culloden are off the top of my head, those aren't taught in history classes in America

You are overgeneralizing, and in any case, that's not an excuse when the examples are pointed out and Wikipedia (for starters) exists.

I absolutely love that you jumped at that first sentence and had to criticize me without even reading the rest of my post. Because I went on to talk about it after I read the Wikipedia article. Go back and finish reading.

If sharing the same head of state is the criteria, then Canada and Australia (and several others) are still in a partnership with the United Kingdom. :P

Here's a great BBC series if you want to get up to speed on the issues involved:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nz3b7

Best crash course into the history of Scotland if you don't have the time or patience for official history: "Tunes of War" by German heavy metal band Grave Digger:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunes_of_War

Quite why a German band would make a whole album paying tribute to the history of Scottland defeats my understanding but it's a good album and, in all seriousness, is a great way to get an idea about Scottish history if you don't have the time to read actual history books, or, I guess, wikipedia.

Say, this bit of lyrics is from "Culloden Muir":

  I walk alone through burning towns.
  My sword is in my hand. 
  But the battle has been lost.
  And there is nothing to defend. 
  At Culloden in seventeen forty six.
  Scotland's fate was sealed.

  ... 

  The rising was in vain.
  We were a people free and brave.
  Heroes stood tall.
  But history is merciless.
  Now we are doomed to fall.
  The battle of Culloden.
  The end of Scotland.

Gives you a bit of an idea, doesn't it?

Peter Watkins' Culloden (1964) is worth watching, not just because of its commentary on the battle but because it serves as a prescient commentary on modern media:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW8bhB5oxQI

> Man, what happened to the people that created the British Empire?

They died. Like, a long time ago.

> Is this what Great Britain is now? Just the bottom half of a tiny island in the North Sea?

No, Great Britain is, and always has been, the island itself, whether or not it happens to be politically unified (which, most of the time that name has been around, it hasn't.)

It comes from the French name (Grand-Bretagne) which distinguishes the island from Brittany (Bretagne) in France.

Other way around. Bretagne in France was named after (celtic) britonic settlers from Great Britain who fled the invading (germanic) anglo-saxons. The "Great" denotes that the Island is larger than Ireland (which is "little" Britain).

Wikipedia: > The Greco-Egyptian scientist Ptolemy referred to the larger island as great Britain (μεγάλης Βρεττανίας - megális Brettanias) and to Ireland as little Britain (μικρής Βρεττανίας - mikris Brettanias)

A very odd comment.

England and Scotland are not a partnership and have spent much of their histories at war with each other. Scotland formed the UK with England because they were bankrupt.

And the UK are not "closing their borders because they're scared of the outside world". They've decided to leave a trading union that doesn't allow them to control their borders, in which no elected person can introduce new legislation, and in which they are not allowed to negotiate their own trade deals.

You seem very much to have "bought the hype" here.

England and Scotland (as well as Wales and Northern Ireland) are very clearly a partnership. There is significant imbalance therein, but that doesn't render it nonexistent.

And the UK is very much flapping about with little idea of what it is doing and why. Immigration does seem to be the biggest concern - but there is little evidence as to why it is the biggest concern.

If anything, I'd suggest that Brexit is the result of the same phenomenon that elected Trump - a general dissatisfaction with the state of governance and a lack of options with which to deal with it. People are understandably frustrated and want to effect some change; it's easy to believe promises made to this effect.

Is it possible that you can prove literally anything there that you have said?

I'm not really sure how one could prove impressions about political events… it's certainly the impression I have from inside the UK though.

> and in which they are not allowed to negotiate their own trade deals.

And that is a bad thing how exactly? What trade deals does the EU lack that the UK would've negotiated, had we been free to?

There are obvious reasons why the EU negotiates as a block (the nature of the single market), and why the UK cannot negotiate trade deals with third parties until it exits the bloc - for example, it's unknown if the UK will have access to the single market after leaving the bloc, and any trade deals with (for example) the US or China could be incompatible until the terms are clear.

>> no elected person can introduce new legislation

Only the European Commission can introduce new legislation, however the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union vote to approve, or disapprove, any new legislation, and have the power to amend it.

The lack of legislative initiative of course is due to the fact that, initially, the EU was not a political union, and there is still strong resistance from nationalist factions within member states to the "ever closer union". Those are usually the same factions that complain of the perceived "democratic deficit" that is due to their own resistance to a closer political union.

Btw, dramatis personnae, the three legislative bodies of the European Union:

a) The European Commission, is made up of 28 European Commissioners, one for each member state, selected by the states' governments and approved by the Parliament. One of them, the President of the Commission (currently, Jean-Claude Juncker) is elected by the Parliament from candidates put forward by the European Council.

b) The European Parliament, is directly elected by the people of the EU member states in the five-yearly European Elections.

c) The Council of the European Union, is composed of ministers of the EU member states, normally each of them elected directly by the citizens of their respective states and appointed by their national governments.

> But England and Scotland? Find me an older partnership than that one

The Co-Principality of Andorra. Sure, there was a hiccup in 1812-1813, but it's hardly like the England-Scotland "partnership" hasn't had hiccups, and 789 years beats 310 years quite handily.

Even closer to home is the England/Portugal alliance, which started in 1373 and has run continuously since then.

Well, you've got me there. Good call.

Putting aside your condescending commentary, and disregarding for the time being your hysterical proclamations of closed borders, pray tell... What is it you feel my non-EU wife and I, both living in Edinburgh, are putting up with (or not, as you say)?

How great did Britain become due to the influx of foreign cultures? Would people eat Tikka Masala without Brits learning that style of cooking from the Indians? And would The Beatles have been what they were if they never visited India? Going back to Top Gear, like a quarter of the stuff they do is because of open borders between the UK and the EU. Sailing across the English Channel? Racing through the chunnel? When they visit the US they have to deal with visas and law enforcement and the threat of being deported just because they're foreigners.

I'm not even talking specifically about the EU, the glory days of the British car industry was pre-EU. But the UK seems like it used to be a land of big goals, populated by dreamers who would get things done, impossible things. And the UK today, shrinking back from the rest of the world, stands as a stark contrast to the nation that sailed across the seas and established the most successful colonies and invented the car and invented the computer and owned property on every continent.

I don't know what you and your wife are experiencing in Scotland, I've never been there. But as an outsider looking in, the Britain that exists today seems a lot more afraid of the world than the Britain I learned about in history class. You might think it's condescending or hysterical, but remember that the UK literally owned land on every continent, in Asia and Africa and North America and South America and Antarctica and Europe and Australia. And now they're facing down the prospect of losing Scotland.

I'm sure some people called the fall of the Western Roman Empire "condescending and hysterical" too.

The spirit & ingenuity is still there:

http://www.colinfurze.com

>Man, what happened to the people that created the British Empire?

They died, and their racist, slavemaking, mass-murdering Imperial ideals died with them, and good riddance to all of it.

The British empire ended slavey in my country.

And hence the British slavery is acceptable.

I neither said nor implied that. If that's your own opinion, make it clear because it's not mine.

But not "the people that founded the British Empire". And, if it's like most of the places where the Empire ended it, it was only after generations of using it for their own benefit.

And they sold slaves to my country, what's your point?

My point was it's ignorant to generalise an entire civilisation like that - one that popularised and enforced abolition world wide.

Can you name a major civilisation that was not trading, holding or capturing slaves during the time period the British empire was selling slaves to your country?

If I may be allowed to pick at that nit, which I personally find very annoying: we normally use "civilisation" to mean something bigger than an empire, or state, for instance "The Greek civilisation" but the "Macedonian Empire". Accordingly, the civilisation to which the British Empire belonged was the Western Civilisation (of which we are still a part).

And so, although the western civilisation led the movement to abolish slavery in modern times, the British Empire was not the first to do that. Other colonial powers came first- for instance, the French and the Spanish, etc.

Note that even on a civilisational level, slavery had been abolished before in various places, for instance by the Qin Dynasty in today's China, etc. Those were generally short lived but to be fair, it took a long time before the majority of the world stopped keeping slaves anyway, and abolition advanced with fits and starts.

And, unfortunately, some are still at it to this day, although not legally so.

nitpick away. but to counter nitpick - I can find no evidence of the Qin Dynasty outlawing slavery on any level.

I think it's also ignorant to generalize it as "one that popularised and enforced abolition world wide," given that it was one of the largest slave-trading entities of its time.

>Can you name a major civilisation that was not trading, holding or capturing slaves during the time period the British empire was selling slaves to your country?

No. But I would describe them in similar terms. We shouldn't mourn the passing of any empire, we should move beyond the premise that any country has any right to subjugate or plunder another out of a belief in their own racial and religious superiority. Whatever good the British Empire might have brought to the world, it often did while standing on the backs of cultures it considered beneath it.

Do you say good riddance to the dead ancient Greeks and their ideas? The Persians? The Romans? Good riddance to the Islamic Golden Age, and everyone in it? Are you glad Pythagoras and Plato, Archimedes and al-Khwarizmi are all dead?

These peoples all contributed a lot of the world, and were all avid practitioners of slavery, as well as their own "racial and religious superiority".

>Do you say good riddance to the dead ancient Greeks and their ideas?

Ideas, no, ideals, yes. Obsession over Greek and Roman civilizations held back the course of science, philosophy and ethics for centuries.

We can take the ideas of a few brilliant men for what they were while still consigning those empires to the rubbish heap of history where they belong. The world is better off for having the opportunity to move beyond the influence of those cultures.

And as an American, I would include my own country as well. You could list any number of benefits the United States has brought to humanity, in practically any field. But the world will still be better off when the US is no longer a superpower using overwhelming violence to reinforce its military and cultural hegemony.

Good riddance to all empires and superpowers.

> I think it's also ignorant to generalize it as "one that popularised and enforced abolition world wide," given that it was one of the largest slave-trading entities of its time.

Doesn't that make it all the more impressive? That they were a leader in abolishing something they were profiting from?

Why is this comment down-voted? It is absolute truth. British empire was racist, made Indians slave, and was imperialist murderous entity. Good riddance to it. I hate that India was ever colonized by Britishers. They brutalized the population and plundered the wealth.

> I hate that India was ever colonized by Britishers.

Did you prefer it when 'India' was colonized by the Mongols?

Or perhaps the post-Mongol period when hundreds of States ruled by greedy Princes fought amongst themselves?

I'm not apologising for the Empire but it's erroneous to believe that the British landed on the shores of a peaceful and harmonious landmass and suddenly imposed all sorts of previously-unseen nastiness.

Re-fuckin-tweet. It's a good thing that the world is different from how it used to be -- the past was full of injustices and suffering. Nostalgia for nostalgia's sake is poison.

Conquered lands are not exactly partnerships.

There are no Scots sitting in Parliament? There have never been any Scottish kings that ruled the British isles?

I don't think it was conquest. King James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne in 1606. Then, in 1707, after the ruinous failure of the Darien scheme bankrupted Scotland, both political establishments supported the act of Union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1707#Scottish_pe...

Darien might have been a mess, but there's far more to the story than just that. England was an actively hostile suitor to Scotland:

http://wingsoverscotland.com/weekend-essay-skintland-britnat...

I didn't meant to suggest it was amicable. Or even popularly supported on the Scottish side (it wasn't). I just meant it didn't happen due to a war of conquest.