One of the tricks I came up with back then: Look up any Wikipedia article on US involvement in Latin America. Change the language from English to Spanish. Same topic. Sometimes vastly different reality.

I do it regularly (across a couple of languages other than English) when reading about current events, cultural artifacts, political entities, and most of all history.

And who you ask -- eg. the homeless living in unimaginable slums might give a different answer.

That said, most of the colonies fought hard for getting rid of the British.

We've basically semi-privatised a lot of our schools under the academy system - they are run like businesses and have a lot more freedom over the curriculum leading to all sorts of horror stories.

I also went to a Catholic faith school so I think there was already good reason to be honest with history. England was not very kind to Catholics either - apparently a BBC show demonstrates this quite well.

My learnings about the empire have been through personal curiosity. At first, the whole "largest empire in history" was a curiosity. The more I learned, however, the more disgusted I became.

Educated? India's literacy rate in 1947 was 12%

Look at british literacy rate when they became a big empire. https://www1.umassd.edu/ir/resources/laboreducation/literacy...

Even though it might be because of industrialization and not colonization, India could have industrialized faster without being a colonial subject.

Not really. Locals would build it as well, just maybe later. Technology spreads disregarding the governments or countries.

Technological advances secured West’s domination over much of the world for centuries, despite having smaller population. Competitors were brought to submission using superior technology — China (Opium wars), Native Americans, Japan (WW II) and nearly every case I can think of.

So, sooner is massively better than later.

I find it the most disgusting aspect of my country and its people. Nationalism at its worst.

The same argument can be made for the Roman Empire. Empires of the past are looked down on because they are a unified machine of violence, a center of evil we can point to and hate.

Creating civilization is brutal, but the alternative is much scarier. A world of tribes and decentralized violence & oppression toward no end. Just as much pain, but not recorded, all in vain.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You can't put all European countries in a single pot here, only a small part of them were leading empires. Most of other countries/nations were incorporated in empires against their will and suffered greatly too.

So what "most other nations" are left, except for some easterns states?

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe

And that not all the people them were happy patriots, sure - thats common in empires. (and I don't like empires btw.) But the ordinary person was pretty much pro empire at that time. And that meant also conquering and ruling other nations and people.

Firstly, Europe is not a country, it is a continent of countries and many did not partake in colonialism. Referring to Europe as one homogenous group is one reason Americans are derided, because it is ignorant.

Secondly, the US has an unhealthy superiority complex and considers itself exceptional among all other nations, despite being pretty much the same as any other Empire that has existed in the past.

The fact that (to an outside observer) they consider themselves immune to the weakness that destroyed previous superpowers is another reason they are derided, because those weaknesses are pretty apparent to anyone who isn't a flag-waving jingoist fanatic.

Thirdly, those countries that did engage on colonialism no longer do and the people living there today have basically nothing to do with it. They deride Americans because they are in fact engaging in colonial-type practices today, despite the lessons of the past.

It is an exception (I speak as a European). It was the last of the great powers, and the first to figure out that a loan is a better weapon than a gun. The American empire is qualitatively different from all European empires.

> They deride Americans because they are in fact engaging in colonial-type practices today, despite the lessons of the past.

Don't kid yourself that Europeans just happened to learn how immoral empire is at the exact moment their empires fell apart. It's more like the Americans figured out (lucked into?) a better form of empire, and nobody could compete with their first-mover advantage.

We'll see if China can outcompete America at its own game, I guess.

Aren't you being just as ignorant when you talk about Americans as one homogeneous group? Just because it is one country doesn't mean each state isn't as distinct as every country in the EU. Alabama and Oregon are as different as France and Slovakia.

>Secondly, the US has an unhealthy superiority complex and considers itself exceptional among all other nations, despite being pretty much the same as any other Empire that has existed in the past.

There are places in the US where a lot of people feel this way, but in my experience the majority don't feel this way. At least where I live most people have traveled extensively outside the US and don't feel superior. Again your are ignorantly lumping all Americans together and imply that we all feel the same way when really it's just a vocal minority in certain states.

>Thirdly, those countries that did engage on colonialism no longer do and the people living there today have basically nothing to do with it.

That doesn't mean anything. White Americans today have basically nothing to do with black slavery, yet we still have to face the consequences of what white americans did in the past. In fact I've research my family history down every line back to when they came to the new world, and I know for a fact that none of my ancestors were involved in slavery. But as a white american I don't get a free pass on slavery just because I can prove I and mine had nothing to do with it.

Likewise, as a European, you don't get a free pass on colonialism just because it wasn't you specifically that participated in it. People today are still suffering as a result of your past colonialist actions and policies.

Right having, companys to do it for you, with support of bribed locals- moral advances- they are basically more abstraction layers to the horrors.