The British empire ended slavey in my country.

But not "the people that founded the British Empire". And, if it's like most of the places where the Empire ended it, it was only after generations of using it for their own benefit.

And they sold slaves to my country, what's your point?

My point was it's ignorant to generalise an entire civilisation like that - one that popularised and enforced abolition world wide.

Can you name a major civilisation that was not trading, holding or capturing slaves during the time period the British empire was selling slaves to your country?

I think it's also ignorant to generalize it as "one that popularised and enforced abolition world wide," given that it was one of the largest slave-trading entities of its time.

>Can you name a major civilisation that was not trading, holding or capturing slaves during the time period the British empire was selling slaves to your country?

No. But I would describe them in similar terms. We shouldn't mourn the passing of any empire, we should move beyond the premise that any country has any right to subjugate or plunder another out of a belief in their own racial and religious superiority. Whatever good the British Empire might have brought to the world, it often did while standing on the backs of cultures it considered beneath it.

> I think it's also ignorant to generalize it as "one that popularised and enforced abolition world wide," given that it was one of the largest slave-trading entities of its time.

Doesn't that make it all the more impressive? That they were a leader in abolishing something they were profiting from?

Do you say good riddance to the dead ancient Greeks and their ideas? The Persians? The Romans? Good riddance to the Islamic Golden Age, and everyone in it? Are you glad Pythagoras and Plato, Archimedes and al-Khwarizmi are all dead?

These peoples all contributed a lot of the world, and were all avid practitioners of slavery, as well as their own "racial and religious superiority".

>Do you say good riddance to the dead ancient Greeks and their ideas?

Ideas, no, ideals, yes. Obsession over Greek and Roman civilizations held back the course of science, philosophy and ethics for centuries.

We can take the ideas of a few brilliant men for what they were while still consigning those empires to the rubbish heap of history where they belong. The world is better off for having the opportunity to move beyond the influence of those cultures.

And as an American, I would include my own country as well. You could list any number of benefits the United States has brought to humanity, in practically any field. But the world will still be better off when the US is no longer a superpower using overwhelming violence to reinforce its military and cultural hegemony.

Good riddance to all empires and superpowers.

If I may be allowed to pick at that nit, which I personally find very annoying: we normally use "civilisation" to mean something bigger than an empire, or state, for instance "The Greek civilisation" but the "Macedonian Empire". Accordingly, the civilisation to which the British Empire belonged was the Western Civilisation (of which we are still a part).

And so, although the western civilisation led the movement to abolish slavery in modern times, the British Empire was not the first to do that. Other colonial powers came first- for instance, the French and the Spanish, etc.

Note that even on a civilisational level, slavery had been abolished before in various places, for instance by the Qin Dynasty in today's China, etc. Those were generally short lived but to be fair, it took a long time before the majority of the world stopped keeping slaves anyway, and abolition advanced with fits and starts.

And, unfortunately, some are still at it to this day, although not legally so.

nitpick away. but to counter nitpick - I can find no evidence of the Qin Dynasty outlawing slavery on any level.

And hence the British slavery is acceptable.

I neither said nor implied that. If that's your own opinion, make it clear because it's not mine.

Why is this comment down-voted? It is absolute truth. British empire was racist, made Indians slave, and was imperialist murderous entity. Good riddance to it. I hate that India was ever colonized by Britishers. They brutalized the population and plundered the wealth.

> I hate that India was ever colonized by Britishers.

Did you prefer it when 'India' was colonized by the Mongols?

Or perhaps the post-Mongol period when hundreds of States ruled by greedy Princes fought amongst themselves?

I'm not apologising for the Empire but it's erroneous to believe that the British landed on the shores of a peaceful and harmonious landmass and suddenly imposed all sorts of previously-unseen nastiness.

Re-fuckin-tweet. It's a good thing that the world is different from how it used to be -- the past was full of injustices and suffering. Nostalgia for nostalgia's sake is poison.