The British Empire has advanced to a new conception of autonomy and freedom, to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity by allegiance to one Crown, and co-operating in all that concerns the common weal.

Since the beginning of recorded history there have been Empires. According to some estimates in excess of 255 empires. (Ref: Wikipedia) and each has left its mark upon the World, for better or for worse - both for the people who lived at the time and those who followed. The benefit of hindsight sometimes sheds a new or clearer perspective, but should not be used without care.

It was with Henry VII following the examples of Spain and Portugal in the late fifteenth Century  that the seeds of the British Empire were sown. Following the impact of the Reformation in  England, Queen Elizabeth I continued with her grandfather’s foreign policy in the New World. It  was with her successor King James I that saw the flourishing of colonies in North America starting  with Jamestown and, with the economic success of British international enterprise from the  seventeenth century onwards, the British Empire grew to colonise areas of North America and  the West Indies.  

With the United States of America winning its independence from Britain in 1776, the expansion  of the Empire looked East to India, parts of China, Africa, India and Australia. Following the defeat  of Napoleon in 1815, the British Empire was unrivalled in its global power for over a century.  

 A Legacy that is Good and Bad.

There will always be things of which the British Empire should be ashamed but there are also things of  which the Empire should be proud:  neither can be forgotten. It has to be remembered that there  were other empires simultaneous with the British, such as the French and German Empires as  well as Dutch and Portuguese Colonies. While the British Empire undoubtedly benefitted from the exploitation of slaves, it was the first empire to abolish slavery and began to establish the human rights programmes which  we still see in use today. 

The legacy of the British Empire is indeed marked by other significant failures such as its  exploitation of resources belonging to native peoples as well as the use of force to maintain its  rule. These cannot be undone: the perpetrators of such activity are dead and gone, and it is not  right to charge the children with the sins of the fathers. Yet, Britain was herself the victim of such  plunder under the Romans, Vikings and Norman invaders. History provides us with a means of  learning what examples should not be followed and to see how we are shaped by what we go  through. We cannot undo the suffering of times past but we can seek to bring good out of that  suffering so that no-one goes through such an ordeal again. These are values that served the  United Kingdom well, notably in the Second World War where the virtues of determination and  optimism in the face of great danger were forged.  

The history of the British Empire is not wholly negative. It is also by marked by its significant  successes such as its education programmes which have sought to improve the personal  prosperity of the people in its colonies, the prohibition of inhumane practices such as suttee  (forcing a widow to throw herself on her husband’s funeral pyre) and its provision of refuges for  the religiously persecuted. Historians are divided about how the legacy of the British Empire  should be judged: some such as Amartya Sen see the Empire as an oppression, others such as  Niall Ferguson see it as a benefactor to its colonies. The truth is always seen through the  prevailing worldview of the day which colours how we view historical events: this worldview  exists, however, as a result of the values that the British Empire once cultivated. We judge the  British Empire by the standards it set up for itself.    

The end of the Empire and the rise of the Commonwealth  

The British Empire did not fall apart due to conquest or revolution but mainly due to an unstable  economy and reaction against the oppression of the Nazis and Communists following the Second  World War. The British Commonwealth of Nations was created in 1926 with the intention that  member states within the Empire should be self-governing and free to make their own decisions  rather than appeal to the sovereignty of the United Kingdom.  

After the Second World War, Great Britain was practically bankrupt. With civil unrest growing in  India and the Indian National Congress under Mahatma Ghandi pressing for independence, it was  decided in 1948 to grant that independence and allow India to be free from British Sovreignty.  Following several other crises, such as the Suez Crisis in 1956, other nations within the Empire  sought independence and received it. The Commonwealth received its formal constitution in the  London Declaration in 1949 in which member states were declared “free and equal”,  demonstrating the commitment of the British Empire to peace and respect for its member states  and former member states in its own dissolution. Many see the handover of Hong Kong to China  in 1997 as the formal end of the British Empire but it leaves a worldwide legacy in culture through  the widespread use of the English language, sports and systems of government which are  respected globally. 

 In Great Britain, the retention of honours such as the British Empire Medal, the MBE, OBE and  CBEs shows that the country still values its heritage as an Empire. It allows us to reward those  values that the Empire sought to promote and encourage others to cultivate what was indeed  good about the Empire and to battle that which was not. Many would like to see the British Empire  removed from the honours but to do so would be to deny its existence, warts and all. Like the  Monarchy, the British Empire is slightly anachronistic, but the values that it seeks to promote are  values that belong in each and every time. To embrace the British Empire, like the Monarchy, is  not to accept its failings but rather to take one’s place in its history and to own it, shape it for the  better and spread the common good across the nations. The Empire may no longer exist, but its  values have outlived it and deserve to be sown in the hearts of human beings the world over.