As for Britain giving up its ownership: To this date formally England lays claim to a whole bunch of places that they have colonized and in some cases it has gone to war to keep that situation as it is.
That the UK gave up India is a pretty complex affair but you can bet that the 'let's fight' option was only taken off the table when someone did some basic math.
Whether or not the invaded countries got 'enormous benefits' is immaterial, we do not live in the alternate universe where India was not a British colony, in which universe India may have been better off or it may have been worse, we simply can not know.
All we do know is that in this universe we (nowadays) take a dim view of such colonization, including those colonizations in our collective past. That some countries were 'not as bad' as others and that they left the places they invaded (and usually plundered) in some ways in better shape is imo immaterial to that.
> As for Britain giving up its ownership: To this date formally England lays claim to a whole bunch of places that they have colonized and in some cases it has gone to war to keep that situation as it is.
Examples in post Suez history include?
"Other places" do not exist unless you name them. Even the Chagos Islands, the UK's most questionable overseas possession, have only been fought over in the courts.
Any actual places?
Yes, all of Europe was engaging in the monster known as colonialism.
That doesn't make it any less morally repugnant.
> it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars
It gave up its ownership only after being devastated by two World Wars.
> By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable, but a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits - rule of law, economic infrastructure, transport networks etc.
None of these things couldn't have been achieved without the British. And all these things came with a cost.
This justification has been used for colonialism time and time again. We saw this last year in Ukraine. It doesn't make it right.
e.g. Colonialism in India was an incredible amount of good luck and some wily statesmanship, and not due to lack of technological progress. Once the country was colonized, the British had an ulterior interest in preventing industrial development and the concomitant economic progress.
Those "benefits" stopped innovation and progress of their own cultures. And it led to the present day of conflict between traditionalists and progressives, slowing harmonious progress indefinitely. The traditionalists would have eventually progressed to a more "civil" society in a different way. And then we would have a far richer diversity than today's system.
http://www.amazon.com/French-Intifada-Between-France-Arabs/d...
As an example, Japan nor China was never colonized, they were totally ass-backwardian to late 19th century and appear at least to foreign eyes quite modern nowadays.
And as for Britain "giving up" their claims, they simply couldn't afford to keep India after the Indian military rebelled, and without India, they simply had not enough colonies to make profitable quickly after the devastation of WWII.
I must come to Britain's defence here - it's behaviour was normal in those times but it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars. That was pretty amazing.
By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable, but a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits - rule of law, economic infrastructure, transport networks etc. Being invaded (not just plundered) by major cultures has generally had good benefits - in the long term - for the invaded nation as they get a lot of the characteristics of the stronger nation.
Again, keep in mind that this is not the modern way of looking at things, which is why we have the United Nations and other international organizations.