which was / were the most shameful act(s) of the British Empire?

Question

to caffeinat , I want to hear what people in general think about the topic , not historians with Phd as you put it. ater all this is called Yahoo answers , not Phd answers.

Answer 1

The excuse of it being an empire really doesn't excuse any of it. They wanted all the glory of the empire but didn't take on any of the responsibilities - the Irish famine being a case in point. They don't even have the excuse of empire any more, and yet the atrocities continue (Iraq). Even worse - it is being done in my name as a British citizen!

Answer 2

I would say the only shameful act of the empire was alowing its decline.
All the non white former colonies have dissolved into civil war and famine despite recieving a 10 000 year advance in development.
Most of the comments in earlier answers are ridiculous cliches bandied around by the misinformed liberal left who have never picked up a history book.
England has given the world more benefits than any other empire in history,any "shameful acts" would fade into insignificance against them.

Ken livingstone,george galloway,and any other britain hating ignorant ,uneducated halfwits thumbs down here>>>>>>

Answer 3

The opium trade springs to mind. The widespread availability of the drug by the mid-nineteenth century was in no small part due to the expansion of the British Empire into India. With the conquest of India Britain soon realized that the sub-continent could be utilized as a new source for the drug. In 1830 permission was granted from London to extend the cultivation of the opium poppy in India. By 1832 a report commented that “the monopoly of opium in Bengal supplies the government with a revenue amounting in sterling money to £981,293 per annum” To create the basis for this huge trading mechanism, whereby opium could be imported cheaply by Britain, and exported profitably to China, vast tracts of agricultural land were turned over to the growth of the opium poppy. In fact the profitable export of the drug to China was worth so much to the British Empire that two Opium Wars were fought, from 1839-42 and 1856-58, to preserve this valuable source of income and trade.

Answer 4

Please see my sources below for background on what I am about to say!

Remember, it was an empire!

And before the British Empire there was the Roman Empire, the Spanish and Portuguese empires, at the time of the British Empire, all European nations were expanding into Africa and beyond...

It always gets to me when someone (in my experience usually an ignorant 'plastic paddy' Irish American who has never been to Ireland or even read a history book but has 'Hollywood history') goes on about the British Empire. If only Britain had an empire, why do they speak French in Indochina? Why do they speak Spanish and Portuguese in Latin America? What about the Belgian Congo, Italian Lybia, German Namibia?

And BTW, as for the slavery comment, it was the British who outlawed slavery first.

This is one of those troll questions that could go on forever, you'll never reach a consensus.

For example, one of the answers blames the British for the potato blight. It wasn't the British who created the potato blight, it was nature.

Of course, having said that, certainly the British government was responsible for the effects of famine, and could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives by simple measures.

Regarding Australia, the British didn't 'invade' Australia, we colonised it. Of course, the aboriginal people were treated badly - but they were a stone age culture that was not developing. Consider if no one had colonised Australia, is lit likely that the Aboriginal people would have developed?

As for the United States and the comment about 'taxation without representation', well, at the time, in the UK there was taxation without representation too. The taxation on tea was to pay for the armed forces protecting the 13 colonies from French invasion...

Regarding China, yes the Opium Trade did make many British traders very rich, and the opium wars were a stain on our wonderful colonial history . But Britain wasn't the only country exploiting China. France started a war against China, and all of Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Loas) was ceded to France in perpetuity (having been invaded by China 1000 years previously!). Also, the Chinese governernment (hardly a democracy itself) would only accept silver bullion for tea, and it was impossible for the British to pay for so much tea in silver. This led to the opium...silver... tea triangle.

Like I say, this could go on forever, and for every atrocity (yes there were many thousands worldwide), I could give a benefit. For every shameful act by the British, I could give a shameful act by the French in Indochina, by the Spanish in Central and South America or Asia, by the Portuguese in the Americas and Asia, by the Dutch in Indonesia, by the Italians in Libya, by the Germans in Namibia, by the Portuguese and Spanish in Asia...by the Dutch in South Africa....

Unfortunately for us Brits, we just had the biggest and most successful empire, rather like the United States now has a worldwide empire of American interests, influence and money.

Answer 5

The British ruling classes bought and sold humans to further their own material possesions.

The memory still lives on today though. Did you know that the founders of Barclays bank were one of the first to offer credit to people trading slaves?

http://www.antislavery.org/breakingthesilence/slave_routes/slave_routes_unitedkingdom.shtml

Answer 6

the most shamefull act the british have ever committed was colonizing the unite states in a very ineffective way by forcing the principals of taxation without representation upon the colony which eventually led to the revolution an the los of thecolony t the american revolutionarys

Answer 7

The genocide they imposed on the Irish in 1845 to 1849 in refusing to aid the the potato famine, killed 1 million people and made 1.5 emigrate, reason why they are hated so much still a hundred and fifty years later

Answer 8

Nothing near as bad as the shame full act's of the people of the countries they invaded back then. Most where engaged in tribal warfare, with atrocious acts of barbarism, on their own people and their enemies.

Answer 9

Imperialism.

Answer 10

The way we treated the irish, unforgivable, no wonder they hate us and will probably so so for generations to come. They are probably loads of shameful acts and i don't want to know, empire building is often bad.