A toast to the British Empire.

Let us count the ways.

A friend kindly sent this item along, a posting in Quora in which a British subject, Mr Andrew Sutcliffe, provides answer to the blindingly silly question: “Why do Brits on Quora glorify the UK’s past so passionately[?]”

Before posting Mr Sutcliffe’s worthy reply, your Tatler, an 11th generation American, would like to post his own answer to the question in question. The UK’s past is glorified because of all the empires in recorded history, and no doubt those earlier, the British Empire was not only the greatest in suze, but in administration as well. Unlike any empire in the past, the British, when taking on a new territory, sought to improve the lot of its inhabitants via, inter alia, crushing tribal warfare, establishing education, a functioning civil service, basic civil amenities like clean drinking water and roads, and the greatest of its legacies, the the fairest legal system the world has ever known. It would be hard to top those accomplishments and likely they never will be.

Now then, to Mr Sutcliffe’s superb reply, slightly edited via the use of links for brevity.

I seem to recall that we had something to do with the Westminster Ideal of democracy, and were one of the first nations to ban slavery, and may have had something to do with steam engines and railways, jet engines, penicillin, radio, television, the reflecting telescope, the modern toothbrush, the agricultural revolution, the tin can, the Thermos flask, the hovercraft, the pneumatic tyre, the Bessemer Process, the Mackintosh coat, the telegraph, the chocolate bar, the fire extinguisher, the Cats Eye in the road, the ATM, the World Wide Web, the hydraulic press, the barrel lawnmower, the light bulb (I know this is contentious but Joseph Swan just pipped Thomas Edison to the post), the first electric motor, the underground railway, the modern sewage system, Portland cement, the flying shuttle in weaving, tarmac roads, the safety (i.e. modern layout) bicycle, soda water, the telephone, the power loom, the arc lamp, the match, vaccines, the first cloned animal, the military tank, and did I mention the abolition of slavery? Perhaps I should mention it again, as in the newspeak of the modern woke world we are given very little credit for this. In this respect please see

Efunroye Tinubu

and

Bola Tinubu

and see, if to your surprise, some questions may suggest themselves to you. And please apply the cynical, mistrusting eye and thought processes of those who seek to denigrate the British and all their works and ask yourself how the biggest slave trader on the West Coast became a national hero with the largest square in Lagos City named after her. And whose family run Lagos State.

In the meantime, we dismantled the largest empire the world had ever seen, and did so at the request of the inhabitants: only the USA (the creation of which we may also take, somewhat ashamedly, some credit for) ever fought and won a war of independence against us. And then went on to create a Commonwealth of Nations which nations not even former members of the empire seek to join.

We also helped to defeat German Militarism in 1918 and Nazi Fascism in 1945.

But now we are assailed by the baying bullies of the left. We did nothing good, Churchill was as bad if not worse than Hitler, pictures of victims of inter-ethnic violence are mis-labelled as victims of the Bengal Famine,

These people above were killed in fighting between Moslems and Hindus, it’s an old, old, old story. They were not starved by the British, yet again and again on Quora newly minted racist fascist Indian nationalists make that claim. And they forget that the British banned suttee and stopped thuggee.

I’m fed up with neck-beards and creatures with bits of carpet woven into their hair trying their best to undermine and destroy something so much better than they are that if the British Empire wiped its arse on these people, it’d improve them beyond measure. And I will disable comments because I do not want to get into slanging matches with the hopelessly mentally enfeebled.

Your Tatler, aka Bickerstaff, especially applauds Mr Sutcliffe’s observation that horrors as seen in the photograph above would never have occurred in British colonies, at least not if they could possibly have been stopped. Incidents like that resulted in the aftermath of the adults leaving the room, leaving tribalists and putative nationalists in charge, who unleashed their fury on all those they despised, that is those who were different from themselves.

We need look no further than our own country to see nascent examples of such hideous behaviors occuring here.

God save the King.

With thanks to Fr Rutler.