British Prime Minister David Cameron was in Pakistan last week and was asked for his view on Britain’s role in settling the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. To this rather unremarkable question, Mr. Cameron gave a remarkable answer: I don’t want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place."

Talk about odd. The prime minister took a routine question from a Pakistani college student and transformed it into an assault on the former British Empire. Notice, the prime minister even expanded his answer beyond Kashmir, inferring that the British Empire was responsible for “so many of the world’s problems.” Of course, British imperial rule, which reached its zenith in the late 19th century, certainly was not above reproach. But to say it is responsible for “many of the world’s problems” reveals a stunning ignorance, or blatant rejection, of the facts of history.

The more accurate method of gauging an empire’s quality is to consider its fruits, and especially the extent and importance of its contributions to human civilization, including its colonies. By this standard, the British Empire is unrivalled.

Consider global trade and commerce, a phenomenon we take for granted today. No nation or empire in history has done more to promote the free flow of goods and capital around the world than Britain at the height of its empire. It was England’s prosperity in the 18th and 19th centuries, thanks to the Industrial Revolution and rapid economic growth, that created its insatiable appetite for raw materials for industry and for luxury items. Overflowing with cash, English bankers went on a buying spree.

The colonized responded, often eagerly, working harder and faster—building, sowing, digging—to sell their wares and get their cut of English wealth. As England’s demand for goods grew, so did the gush of money flowing into the colonies, and the trade between the colonies and England. Between 1750 and 1914, the total value of global trade increased fivefold. During the 1800s, global shipping tonnage grew from 4 million to 30 million tons, thanks primarily to Britain’s promotion of free trade. When piracy became a problem, the British Navy stopped it. When new laws and policies were needed to promote free trade, British lawyers responded.

Critics say that the explosion in world trade did not benefit the poorer nations, but rather that it resulted in the exploitation of the colonized. Not true. Consider Zambia, an example cited by Harvard historian Niall Ferguson in his book Empire. Zambia’s gross domestic product per capita is currently 1/28th of Britain’s, meaning the average Zambian is 28 times poorer than the average Briton. In 1955, at the end of colonial rule, Zambia’s gdp per capita was one seventh of Britain’s. Since the British left, Zambia has gotten four times poorer, compared to Britain. “The same is true of nearly all former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa,”
Read more... HERE

Return To Index Page