Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Good or Bad

In Niall Ferguson's introduction he raises the question of if the British Empire was a good or bad thing. He states that nowadays the British Empire would be considered a bad thing. One reason being the involvement in the Atlantic slave trade.
This being that in 2001 during the United Nations Conference, slavery and the slave trade had been deemed as "a crime against humanity". Colonization had been considered to be part of slavery.
This seems like a statement Parson would have agreed with. Parson, being not a fan of Empires and Colonization would have readily supported this statement. But the decision of an Empire being good or bad shouldn't lay solely on the fact that they had slavery and partook in slave trades. It should factor in how they acted with other nations, wars, and most importantly how they treated their citizens.

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