[tgarma1234]

Yes one of the great quirks of European history is that the British Empire is not held in the same esteem as the Nazi empire. The British Empire was bizarrely racist and killed tens of millions of people worldwide. Maybe even more than that if you include the promotion of slavery as a business on global scale. England is so lovable now though.

[JetSetWilly]

Except it was the British Empire that persecuted slavery and brought to an end the slave trade far in advance of other nations.

What people forget is that the norms of the past are not the same as the norms of today. At one time, slavery was normal across vast swathes of the planet. That it isn't today, is in part due to a moral revolution that took place in Britain and resulted in a policy change by the British empire - despite its own commercial interests - to abolish slavery and the trade in slaves, even while nearly all other countries in the world at the time were totally fine with it.

[linuxkerneldev]

> Except it was the British Empire that persecuted slavery and brought to an end the slave trade far in advance of other nations.

I think you may not be aware of the graylevels within that statement. It is true that the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolished the African slave trade. But you need to know the details to realize why the powers that be allowed that to happen. Also, it is worth mentioning that while the same 1833 act made an explicit exception for territories possessed by the East India company. Further, slavery was replaced by indentured labor. This is why you find large populations of non-African slave descendants in many countries. If you've ever vacationed in Trinidad, you'll notice lots of Asians (Indian, etc) people. They got there because their ancestors were brought as indentured labor to replace African slaves. In many cases, as is still occurring today in places like Qatar/UAE, indentured labor is just a #define for slavery.

[mercurial]

I'll point out that slavery was abolished by the French government following the Revolution (though the slaveholders obviously fought tooth and nail to prevent the law from being applied), before being re-instated by Napoleon (under pressure from his wife, I believe).

[pjriot]

Once the economic advantages were outweighed by the political disadvantages.

"while nearly all other countries in the world at the time were totally fine with it". I guess this depends on how you define "country", but lets take it to mean the majority of a population. I'll give you that countries benefiting from the slave trade were clearly fine with it. I sincerely doubt the populations being enslaved were though. (their opinions count right?)

[JetSetWilly]

That's the very thing I am talking about. Britain was the first country in which it was a massive political liability to support slavery, and the first country in which the opinions of ordinary people mobilising and campaigning against slavery actually mattered and made a difference.

You can cast this in cynical terms as self interest, but you can do that with any action by any state in history - Britain is hardly unique there.

[pjriot]

I don't think its being particularly cynical to say if the industries supported by slavery had not been supplanted somewhat (reducing their political power) then slavery would have continued apace. Politicians have proven adept at taking advantage of popular movements when suitable.

Its basic economics. Had the ruling elite deemed it necessary I'm sure Punch could have been commissioned to print all manner of xenophobic cartoons about subhuman slaves and their barbarism in order to justify the practice further.

This isn't to diminish the efforts of the anti-slavery movement or the individuals involved.

*Edit: Also, yes, this is not unique to any country at all. I'm sure there are a myriad of examples of slavery within any of the countries that Britain colonised throughout history.

[keyboardwarrior]

very dark yet very accurate

[gozur88]

I'm not sure you realize just how ubiquitous the institution of slavery was prior to the 19th century. Those "populations being enslaved" themselves had slaves when they were strong enough to take them.

Slaves made empires (true empires) possible because captive people are a net positive for the conquerors. You could conquer your neighbors and... sell them to pay for the war, which isn't the case today. Outside Syria, I guess. When the Roman Empire was at its peak citizens could pay their taxes with only two days of work per year.

[blahi]

No, they didn't count. That's the whole point.

[Ressuder]

I find it curious how some people seem to not believe in moral relativism. Do they not recognise that by doing so they are saying that they themselves are "evil" and immoral?

If you look at the contemporaries of the British Empire they do not stand out as exceptional either good or bad morally. Meanwhile, if you compare the Nazis to their contemporaries they do however stand out (though not nearly as some people might think).

To me it seems rather cruel and unfair to label someone or something as "immoral" if they are acting within the limits of accepted and expected behaviour in their environment.

[RodericDay]

This is an ultra-conservative mindset. By only judging people according to what their contemporaries were doing, you basically relieve pressure from questioning the mores of our own day, since we rest easy knowing we will be judged according to what was "normal" for us.

I find it ethically very dubious. Certainly many people committing atrocities have been "going along with the flow" of their own local environments.

[Ressuder]

That's absolutely untrue. It does no such thing. All it means that as long as you're acting within the norms of our times you're morally neutral. Who has ever aspired to that? "Are you a moral person?" -> "Well, you know. At least I'm not immoral. I just barely pass the bar lowest bar for that". The future will look back at people who pushed beyond that, just like we do today, even if even those people will be (at best) morally neutral on many other issues.

Bartolomé de las Casas, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi etc, all of these people are looked back upon with great respect because of their morality - but the truth is that none of them would seem like morally great people today. They stand out because they pushed further on certain issues compared to their contemporaries, not because their thoughts and actions would stand out compared to ours (other than that they would seem very backwards and immoral concerning a lot of things).

[keyboardwarrior]

I think the mindset is valid but the people behind it are inconsistent, if your locale is being around indignous african people. Then killing and enslaving them kinda goes against the whole "act local" thing.

Thereby making them immoral by their own standards. You cannot export your sense of locality to somewhere else, i dont think thats how it works.

[alimw]

> England is so lovable now though.

Clearly you feel that anybody of this opinion is in error. Does everyone who posts an article about the nastiness of the (historical) British Empire feel the same way? There are quite a few come up on Hacker News. To me it doesn't seem like England is perceived as lovable at all, in fact I can't imagine where you got the idea.

You mention the Nazis, but I don't think I've ever seen a post about those guys. It's almost as if one needn't hold modern-day Germans accountable for the crimes of their forebears? What a strange idea.

[hx87]

By that standard, every empire ever should be held in the same esteem as Nazi Germany. After all, almost every change of dynasty in China involved tens of millions of deaths.

[rusabd]

British concentration camps predated Nazi's

[JetSetWilly]

British concentration camps weren't created for the purpose of mass extermination.

[_Codemonkeyism]

First you're obviously right.

It is difficult though to distinguish neglect from intent sometimes, with "The vast majority of Boers remaining in the local camps were women and children. Over 26,000 women and children were to perish in these concentration camps. [...] The inadequate shelter, poor diet, bad hygiene and overcrowding led to malnutrition and endemic contagious diseases [...]"

[fit2rule]

You're right. Genetic manipulation programs were created for that purpose, instead. Hitler looked at the "White Australia Policy" and decided he could improve it:

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

[rusabd]

You mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp ?

[pjriot]

Coca cola wasn't created for the purpose of providing a refreshing beverage.

[maze-le]

Yet, the british never worked their prisoners to death or conducted mass killings on an industrial scale.