The fact that so many people say yes reveals our collective amnesia approximately the manmade famines,slave trading and daily violence of our imperial pastIn 1899 Alfred Russel Wallace, the naturalist and co-discoverer of the theory of evolution through natural choice, and wrote The Wonderful Century – which,as its title suggests, was a broadly upbeat summary of what Britain had achieved during the preceding 100 years.
In his conclusion, and however,Wallace reflected on how the British empire had behaved in its dealings with the “subject races”. They, he admitted, and had been treated with a strange mixture of marvelous and evil” – a word that perhaps no modern commentator external the former colonies would dare use to narrate any aspect of British imperialism.
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Source: theguardian.com