Alternate View

For John, BLUF:  It is always valuable to go back and review one's assumptions.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Is the British Empire Largely Misunderstood?

Here is the sub-headline:

A new book examines the cherry-picking involved in the modern castigation of imperialist countries.

From The American Conservative, by Mr Casey Chalk, 15 August 2019.

Here is the lede plus two:

Several years ago, while on a business trip to New Delhi, I remarked to an Indian colleague, a Hindu, on the beauty of his country’s Sansad Bhavan, or Parliament House.  “Yes,” he remarked, “though we Indians didn’t design it.  It was the British.  And Taj Mahal was built by the Muslim Turkic Mughals.  None of the best architecture in this country is truly Indian.”

I was a bit shocked by his frank willingness to appreciate his country’s debt to former conquerors.  Later, after I noticed a worn copy of P.G. Wodehouse on his office desk, he acknowledged that he and his Indian colleagues all loved British literature above any other.  Perhaps, I surmised, imperialism’s legacy is not as black and white as we are often told.

This is the central argument of University of Exeter professor of history Jeremy Black’s new book Imperial Legacies:  The British Empire Around the World, which, according to the book jacket, is a “wide-ranging and vigorous assault on political correctness, its language, misuse of the past, and grasping of both present and future.”  The imperial legacy of Great Britain is also, in a way, an instructional lesson for the United States, which, much like the British Empire of the early to mid-20th century, is experiencing a slow decline in influence.

I am not saying colonialism was a good thing, but those who extracted the better parts from it have benefitted.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff