Mark Reckless

The Empire suppressed the self-immolation of widows and female infanticide in India and female genital mutilation in Africa. It moderated the disruptive impact of the inevitable arrival of Western modernity upon very unmodern societies in North America and especially Australia. It created regional peace by imposing an overarching imperial authority on multiple, warring peoples—unifying, for example, much of the Indian subcontinent. It promoted a worldwide free market, protected by the Royal Navy, that gave native producers and entrepreneurs in India and West Africa new economic opportunities. It made foreign investment attractive by reducing risk through establishing political stability and the rule of law. Consequently, Australia’s gross domestic product per capita became the highest in the world by 1890, and by 1914 India was the world’s fourth largest textile-producer. The Empire built canals in India, bringing five times as much land under irrigation as the Mughals had in the 18th century. By 1900 it had figured out how to prevent food shortage escalating into famine there and went on to fight disease in tropical Africa. It provided a civil service and judiciary that was generally and extraordinarily incorrupt. It introduced liberal ideas and liberal institutions of a free press and representative government to places that had never known them. New Zealand was the first country in the world to grant the vote to men and women on equal terms, in 1893, and by 1935 electoral democracy had been established in Indian provinces. From May 1940, when France fell, to June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, The British Empire offered Nazi Germany the only military resistance—with the sole exception of Greece. Inspired by the ideal of the Commonwealth, it helped to plan and realise the League of Nations after the First World War and the United Nations after 1945. And it brought up three of the most prosperous and liberal states in the world—Canada, Australia and New Zealand—and gave birth to one more, the United States. Significantly, there is evidence that all of these former members of the British Empire are among the least racist countries on earth. Read our latest here: nigelbiggar.co.uk/p/empire-a…