Discussion On Whether The British Empire Brought Civilization To Its Colonies

The empire on which the sun never sets. This sentence is very well-known and literally true. The British Empire was quite large that it was always day time somewhere in the empire. In 1921 British Empire reached its peak and ruled over 520 million people and conquered 37 million square kilometer which means a quarter of earths total land. The empire roughly consisted by Canada, Cyprus, Australia, New Zealand, center, east and south Africa, some parts of Persia and Afghanistan. Their expansion started with The King Henry and his navy improvements to bring goods, spices and slaves from colonies. Ground road was very dangerous but sea ways was safer and cheaper. British Empire decided to widen their fleet to spread all around the world. The empire did not just take the goods. They also colonized land which they discovered. Colonization means; the action or process of settling among and establishing control over locals. The question is, 'did British Empire brought civilization to lands which they colonized?'.

Everything the light touches is our kingdom, say the British. They are actually proud of their ancestor’s political behaviors. What if we say, British Empire enslaved and murdered viciously thousands of innocent people while colonizing. As I mentioned before, British colonies were very large. For instance, after colonizing center and South Africa, they started to capture natives and took them to the Britannia or wherever slaves are sold. Slaves were named ‘’Negro’’ and used for household, plowing the cotton fields even fighting against their will. In 18th century, slave owning was a thing. Whoever has too many or strongest slaves were considered powerful. In that era, it was sign of wealth. It is estimated that 12. 5 million slaves transported to America and Britannia and approximately 46. 000 slave owner is Britannia. Does it sound civilization?

For instance, world has witnessed aboriginal massacre or sounds more like genocide. Australia was first discovered by Dutch sailors. They called it new Holland. It all started when British captain James Cook arrived to the island. He seized east coast of the island and named new south wales. British Empire usually kidnap and take slaves for the slave owners but this time it was different. In 1788 brits found Port Jackson City in Australia. According to the records 68. 000 British moved to the new land. Between 1880-1890 it reached its peak by 278. 000. At first, it was not a problem for aborigines to share the land. After some time, British started to mine spread. They wanted to take aborigine’s lands and enslave them. Aborigines started a riot after that. That was the beginning of aborigine genocide. They had only spears and boomerangs to fight. It was never as strong as British’ gun powdered rifles. Systematic carnage followed and over 250. 000 aborigines were murdered. The saddest and most touching part is, later checking on aborigine’s history from their own records, they had never been fought each other and had no idea about what war is.

British kept on going. If you haven’t made up your idea there are a lot of historical events like aboriginal mass slaughter. One of them is ‘’Amritsar Massacre’’. In 1919, in British’s colony India, a British woman was riding a bicycle. She thought she was molested by locals and reported it to the General Reginal Dyer. He immediately enacted and order that says every Indian has to kneel and crawl in the street that action had occurred. When locals started to protest General Dyer, he showed up with his 50 fully armed men and started to shoot protesters with their machine guns. That they 370 Indians were shot and killed, over 1500 was wounded. General Dyed reported afterwards and said; insurgents started first. Surely it was a lie. When general was dying he was asked why did he had made locals bend the knee. Cruel general said, they bend a when they pray their gods, so they should bend towards us. From that historical event shows British ego, hatred and crimes against humanity.

I have always been against to mandatory and colonialism. British Empire has never brought civilization or anything good for local people. British only brought pain, suffering and bloodshed.