It's impossible to know. You would need to be able to predict how that country would have evolved over the last number of years without British involvement. Comparing it now to how it was when it was colonised by the British is pointless.

I don't think it is. I think comparing British freedom at the time to the freedom in the native society is totally fair.

And countries don't evolve in a vacuum. Many countries would have adopted British ideas of freedom just through observation.

is this a new revisionist rhetoric being pushed all of a sudden? I keep hearing the same arguments in Spain about how they brought freedom to the Americas

I understand being unconformable with one's country's past, but the mental hoops to try to get some justification to colonization is so strange.

Even if (and that's a BIG if) those societies ended up "freer" let's not fool ourselves, not a single country went to colonise another for hundreds of years to make it freer, they went there to exploit it. If 500 years later that country is in a better shape now (again a BIG if), that's an unintended side effect.

> not a single country went to colonise another for hundreds of years to make it freer, they went there to exploit it.

Generally speaking the colonisers established their colonies to access natural resources, being new agricultural techniques to undeveloped lands, and engage in trade. The culture of the coloniser naturally came along with them.

Even if there were no specific goal of bringing freedom that may still have been a side effect.

yeah, but that's what I mean, if it's just a side effect then how is it relevant to the whole "illustrious history" of the UK comment which was defended by saying that the colonies are now "freer".

How is that an argument? If I enslave a group of people, force on them my language so they can follow orders and 500 years later that language opens doors for them, how am I "illustrious"? it's a side effect of an inhumane act.

Trying to twist this so my history doesn't make me uncomfortable is historical immaturity.

Ok I'll play - Ireland?

> Propose one colony where the indigenous society was freer

So the assertion is that being colonised increased their freedom?

Yes, considerably.

Arguing that labour camps, apartheid, the raping both literal and figurative as well as outright genocide that occurred were justified because people today are "freer" (IYO) is a stretch.

I don't know man, but arguing for a process that discriminated against people on the basis of their color is something that I thought was a thing of the past. I guess I was wrong.

Native American populations.

India

Legalized caste system