I was under the impression that British schools still teach that colonies actually benefited from British occupation. Looks like you went out of the way to learn the reality. Kudos!
One of the tricks I came up with back then: Look up any Wikipedia article on US involvement in Latin America. Change the language from English to Spanish. Same topic. Sometimes vastly different reality.
I do it regularly (across a couple of languages other than English) when reading about current events, cultural artifacts, political entities, and most of all history.
And who you ask -- eg. the homeless living in unimaginable slums might give a different answer.
That said, most of the colonies fought hard for getting rid of the British.
We've basically semi-privatised a lot of our schools under the academy system - they are run like businesses and have a lot more freedom over the curriculum leading to all sorts of horror stories.
I also went to a Catholic faith school so I think there was already good reason to be honest with history. England was not very kind to Catholics either - apparently a BBC show demonstrates this quite well.
My learnings about the empire have been through personal curiosity. At first, the whole "largest empire in history" was a curiosity. The more I learned, however, the more disgusted I became.
Educated? India's literacy rate in 1947 was 12%
Look at british literacy rate when they became a big empire. https://www1.umassd.edu/ir/resources/laboreducation/literacy...
Even though it might be because of industrialization and not colonization, India could have industrialized faster without being a colonial subject.
Not really. Locals would build it as well, just maybe later. Technology spreads disregarding the governments or countries.
Technological advances secured West’s domination over much of the world for centuries, despite having smaller population. Competitors were brought to submission using superior technology — China (Opium wars), Native Americans, Japan (WW II) and nearly every case I can think of.
So, sooner is massively better than later.
I find it the most disgusting aspect of my country and its people. Nationalism at its worst.
The same argument can be made for the Roman Empire. Empires of the past are looked down on because they are a unified machine of violence, a center of evil we can point to and hate.
Creating civilization is brutal, but the alternative is much scarier. A world of tribes and decentralized violence & oppression toward no end. Just as much pain, but not recorded, all in vain.