The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire Read Free

all of whom emerged as Europe’s empires retreated. The retreat of the British Empire was not progress—either for Western Civilization or in many cases for the countries achieving independence. In the case of Africa, certainly, independence has meant a dramatic, chartable economic regression relative to the rest of the world—not to mention savage wars and famines that imperial powers could have prevented or contained. There have been some independence success stories—not just the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, but Singapore, Hong Kong, and, it appears, India, South Africa, and Malaysia, and perhaps a few other locales where the vision of Britain’s empire-builders might yet be fulfilled. Many a Briton thought it his duty, in the words of the scholars Lewis H. Gann and Peter Duignan, “to carry civilization, humanity, peace, good government, and Christianity to the ends of the earth.” 9 That duty still exists for those who want it, and perhaps it would repay our study to see how Britain’s imperialists actually did it.

    A 7-Step Timeline of British Imperialism
    1. Twelfth Century: Henry II, armed with the authority of the pope (an Englishman as it turns out) and armed in traditional fashion as well, attempts to bring English civilization to Ireland, a process still underway nearly a millennium later.
    2. Fifteenth Century: First English voyages of exploration to reach North America led by that redoubtable Englishman John Cabot, better known as Giovanni Caboto of Genoa (though he did sail from Bristol under the royal authority of Henry VII of England).
    3. Sixteenth Century: English ships begin trading on the coast of Africa, and enter the slave trade. Sir Francis Drake attempts to impress the benefits of free trade upon Spain’s colonies in the New World by plundering them. Sir Walter Raleigh fails to establish a lasting colony in North America.
    4. Seventeenth Century: Spain’s education continues at the hands of the likes of Morgan the pirate. English planters move into the Caribbean. England grants charters for colonists in North America. The East India Company sets up shop in India.
    5. Eighteenth Century: Britain acquires New France (Quebec) in the French and Indian War, removing a great threat from the American colonists. Britain asks the colonists to help pay for the war—which of course amounts to tyranny—and rather than pay taxes, the Americans drive the red-coated tax collectors from their shores, and then pay higher taxes to their own government. Canada is willing to pay taxes to Britain and stays in the Empire. The British East India Company proves so efficient that it ends up ruling large swaths of India.
    6. Nineteenth Century: Britain bans slavery and the slave trade and sets the Royal Navy to war against the slavers. Britain establishes anti-slavery bases in Africa and the Gulf States. The empire expands into the Far East through enterprising young Englishmen of the likes of Stamford Raffles and James Brooke. Britain takes
responsibility for India from the East India Company. Britain becomes responsible for the government of Egypt and the operation of the Suez Canal (built by the French). South Africa becomes a major British interest and mining magnate Cecil Rhodes dreams, and helps to achieve, a British Empire in Africa that stretches from Cape to Cairo.
    7. Twentieth Century: Britain wins two World Wars, helps create the modern Middle East out of the wreck of the Ottoman Empire, and after 1945 beats a relatively hasty retreat from India. In 1956, the United States, out of anti-imperialist prejudice, backs the anti-Western Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser against wartime allies Britain and France during the Suez Crisis, encouraging further European retreat and further aggression by Nasserite pan-Arabist radicals who topple the pro-Western government of formerly British Iraq. Britain shows how to defeat Communist insurgents through a