Totally agree, the British Empire has a lot of blood on its hand,
but compared to its forebears and contemporaries it did abolish slavery, a tradition that has roots as old as humanity itself.
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.
My point is this, none of these people ever make a point of how much freedom they had, because after a couple hundred years they stopped, quite like the the brits like to.
It's pretty baffling tbh.
Anyone: criticises the British empire.
Brits: after several hundred years of brutal trans Atlantic slave trade, we stopped. Hurrah!
> My point is this, none of these people ever make a point of how much freedom they had, because after a couple hundred years they stopped, quite like the the brits like to.
The others he listed didn't stop voluntarily - their empires either collapsed or found themselves at the mercy of another that likely also practiced slavery. As he said, slavery was the default. The UK itself was getting raided by Barbary pirates just 200 years before the Slavery Abolition Act.
Unlike the Romans or the Mongols, the UK made a choice to stop, and they did so, at massive cost, because their values changed. They actual made actual progress, and thus are hated by many calling themselves progressives.
But hey, they stopped doing it, after a couple hundred years so let's everyone give Britain credit.