And this is what passes for history?

I was chatting to ria_saakshi a while ago about her family history, as it's quite an interesting one. Her ancestors were amongst those who fetched up on these shores as a result of the British figuring out that combining aggressive trade and a debt-financed standing army was a recipe for success before anyone else, and a personal view of history is something I'm always up for hearing.

Her great-grandparents were originally from the subcontinent. The thinking in the family was that as the youngest there was little land or inheritance available and therefore a limited future. Her Great-grandfather was therefore attracted to an offer made by the British to manage farmland in different parts of the Empire.
It was not exactly explained that the terms were a period of indentured servitude in return for the land, or the fact that you would be enforceably quarantined for months...

However, the big difference, she told me, between the British and every other bunch of Imperialists of the time - the French, Germans, Italians, Americans, Japanese, Russians - was that once their contracted period of service was complete, the British paid up as promised. Her grandparents got their patch of jungly land to clear and farm and begin the slow climb from indentured servants to respectable middle-class farmer-dom.
As it turned out, the climb was rather faster than anyone expected because after a certain amount of slashing, burning, and digging it turned out that the land they'd been given had a gold mine on it.

So Imperialism worked out pretty well for them, all things considered.

I was reminded of this the other week whilst I was watching How God made the English, a documentary series about the history of the relationship between the English and religion. It's not actually a very good series - it's quite lightweight and rushes through history without pausing for breath or giving enough detail to allow you to get a real understanding of the subject - but it was informative enough. Anyway, as the narration talked about the British Empire, he hit the point where his voice took on a sombre tone and he said how being an unrivalled power led to a risk of arrogance and high-handedness which sometimes led to dark results.
I wondered which example he'd pull out to illustrate this - the Amritsar massacre? Concentration camps in South Africa? The complete annihilation of the indigenous people of Tasmania? It's not like they aren't there if you go looking. But no. The example he used to illustrate the arrogance and high-handedness of the British Empire was the supression of the transatlantic slave trade by the Royal Navy. Some expert in international law was wheeled on to explain how this should have been done within a framework of treaties with other nations and how it just wouldn't be allowed now.

I couldn't help but think; if you're going looking for dodgy stuff the British Empire - any Empire - did, you can find it. But the Royal Navy going out and stopping the wholesale transportation of entire peoples from Africa to the freedom- and democracy-hating United States to work in slavery isn't it. Historically, I can't actually think of a better use of empire by anyone, not just the British. He may as well have added that giving gold mines to random landless Indians was right out of order too.

Tsk.