1.Was the British Empire a force for good - Essay Example

nostalgia for a more civilized and benign Greater Britain through television programs, such as, This Sceptred Isle and Empire’s Children, while print critics openly condemn it as a blood-stained autocracy (Brendon, 2007). Historian Lawrence James argues, ‘ploughing a familiar furrow,’ but we should always be proud of the Empire that established stability, progress, and beneficial institutions in colonies. In this research paper, I tried to define British Empire’s role as good or bad and conclude that it was neither good nor bad, but complicated.

One must argue that why there is controversy about it. Mainly, vast range of British Empire and its lasting impact epitomizes a period in which all of the non-Europeans were dominated by Europeans. Another reason for controversy about Empire is its vastness that defies simple summary, and therefore, perspectives on it also vary outrageously. It is possible for Empire’s admirers or opponents to pick some examples in order to prove that British rule, by and large, was good or bad, and its legacies as beneficent or demonic.

Some assert that it was an engine of modernization, while others believe that it was a vehicle of exploitation (Jackson, 2013, p.4). As decolonization of European Empires precipitated in the 1960s, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that, “…It was nothing but an ideology of lies, a perfect justification for pillage; its honeyed words, its affection of sensibility were only alibis for our aggressions” (cited in Jackson, 2013, p.4) while Niall Ferguson argues that British Empire was better than the other empires from the same period.

The record of British Empire is not untarnished by any means, but it gave us global trade and the rule of law (cited in Jackson, 2013, p.4). In an effort to explore Empire’s credits, one may lead to the idea that British Empire was a liberal empire. It was established on the principals classically enunciated by Edmund Burke, who asserted that colonial government was a