I think it's part of the picture, but like you I wasn't educated enough in the colonial period of British history to have any great certainty.

When we were very young it was the tudors and earlier, then there was a little social history where we covered things like the building of canals and the invention of the spinning jenny, the industrial revolution, enclosure etc, then Cold War history IIRC. Big blank spot where colonial history might have been. You'd think it might be relevant...