“It’s much more complicated than that.”
Yes it is. But the Irish simplify it down to “Britain = always bad”, so I see no reason why they cant get the same treatment themselves.
“We tend to forget that the British Empire was not a benign affair committed to the spread of human rights and democracy (sure it was better than the French).”
I dont forget it. The Empire was simply a very large, very successful trading cartel. Individual Britons were very interested in the spread of democracy and human rights, but the Empire was smart enough to realise that you can take the donkey to water, but its a bad idea to force it to drink. That’s what American foreign policy (espec under FDR) gets wrong time and time again. If people want to live in a particular way...thats their prerogative. You may think they are wrong, and stupid, and even self-destructive...but its their choice. You are promoting individual freedom, after all?
“The Irish have a long and bloody history under British rule. There was the Potato famine and the Irish War of Independence (1919 - 1921).”
That is not the point I am making. Oppression, slavery, blood and injustice are a fact of Human history. Tragic, and stupid, but a fact. Over the years the Irish have had their fair share of it. Let me be generous...more than their fair share. The problem is that while other peoples have a vague folk memory of past wrongs, the Irish drill stories into their children from knee-high. Whereas other peoples put a dignified little monument at an old battlefield, the Irish raise a massive museum on it. Whereas other peoples have a commemorative plaque on the site of a massacre, the Irish make a shrine on it. They never forget the past, consequently they never forgive the past, and therefore they are forever shackled by the past. I’ve been to Ireland. I’ve seen all this. It’s a disgusting sight - an entire nation with a martyr complex. Well, I am NOT buying into it. I am not, I WILL not feel guilty for the alleged misdeeds (and these stories lose nothing in the telling) of folk who might have been my ancestors.
“Let us not forget that it was the Americans that forced the British and French to promote human rights and democracy outside their home countries (they didn’t do it willingly).”
What do you mean? Like slavery for example? Americans would have been happily shipping slaves in the early nineteenth century if the Royal Navy hadnt stopped the practice. Or are you referring to the dismantling of the empire after WW2? Yeah that worked well...many of the new countries are real standard bearers for human rights and democracy right up to this day.
Churchill famously said (1942) that “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”
The British were right to stop slavery, but FDR and Eisenhower were also right to insist that Britain and France should abandon their Empires. If Britain was as dominant as the US was after the Second World War, I have no doubt that She would have expanded her empire.
Dismantling the Empire was the right thing to do. True, you get monsters like Idi Amin, Mugabe and probably everyone else in Africa. But you also get stellar success stories like Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, Malaysia and India. Would Singapore have been better if it was still under British rule? I doubt it.
It is to the credit of FDR that he did not seek to expand the territory of the United States (unlike Stalin and Britain after the First World War).
Contrary to popular opinion, the British Empire was a very badly run affair. The average annual growth rate between 1820 and 1950 of British India was a miserly 0.12%, this pales in comparison with the average annual growth rate of independent India. In fact, Britain is doing better today economically than She did as an Empire.
Any robber baron can seize raw materials at gun point and transfer them to the home country for processing and sell the finished products to citizens of the home country and colonials - and at the same time ensure that finished goods from low cost competitors like US and Japan are kept out through an elaborate system of tariffs. The real genius is in influencing people and trading with them without taking undue advantage. That is the genius of the United States.