The British Empire's Legacy

I thought my first blog post should showcase my views on the deceased British Empire.

At its height in the early 20th century, the British Empire accounted for over 25 percent of the worlds surface area, and roughly the same amount of the world’s population. Even though that empire is reduced to nothing more than a handful of scattered islands, and ceremonial monarchies in its former Dominions, it has left a legacy far greater than that of Rome’s. Almost a billion people have a working knowledge of english, capitalism, the most sucessfull and dominant economic system owes its sucess not necessarily to the Americans, but to the British. It was the dutch who first embraced it, but the Britsh were responsible for its rise to dominance in the 19th century.

Democracy even though ‘invented’ by the Athenians, is one of the most enduring legacies of the British Empire. Even when revolutionaries in Paris were sending Louis XVI to the guillotine, across the channel Britian had a constitution guaranteeing individual freedoms and elected parliaments for centuries. some of the worlds most sucessfull and oldest democracies were fomerly part of the Britsh Empire, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and the United States all owe their democratic traditions in some form or another to the Britsh Empire.

I will not deny the fact that the empire was founded on slavery, economic explotation, and ethnic cleansing. However, it must also be noted that it was the British who first saw the error of their ways. Here in Canada, their is a lot of bad feelings over the conquest of Quebec and the expelling of the Acadians, but it must be noted that the British evetually allowed them to retain their language, religion, and even legal code (Quebec is one of the only jursidictions in the former empire whose legal system is not based on Common Law).

Many would counter this by saying that many of the ‘non white’ parts of ther former British Empire are not enjoying the benefits of personal and economic liberty. It must be noted that Zimbawe (formerly Rhodesia) was the breadbasket of Africa, exporting food. They had the highest literacy rates, one of the highest life expentancy rates and one of the higest income rates in all of africa, it is becasue of the tyrant Robert Mugabe, not the British Empire that that counrty is in disarray, but thats another story.

Just ask yourself this question, imagine a world if empires like the Third Reich (Nazi Germany) had reached the level of global dominance that the British once held?