Home Cultural Issues Other Cultural Issues Prager 5 Minute Videos If You Live in Freedom, Thank the British Empire | 5 Minute Video
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If You Live in Freedom, Thank the British Empire | 5 Minute Video

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Was the British Empire a good or bad thing for the world? To put it another way, is freedom a good or bad thing for the world? Historian and author H.W. Crocker III explains why we may want to rethink the British Empire’s bad rap.
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Script:

Over the last 400 years, what power has done the most to spread the ideals of limited government, an independent judiciary, certain inalienable rights, and free markets?

That power would be the British Empire. It was Britain that gave these ideals to the United States. It was the British Empire, the largest empire the world has ever known, which made these ideals global aspirations.

It was the British Empire, along with America, that defended these ideals in two colossal world wars.

Freedom was an Englishman’s right—and wherever he went, he took that right with him. Whether he was an English colonist in America, governing himself through a locally-elected assembly; or an English adventurer, like Sir Stamford Raffles, creating the free-market city-state of Singapore; or an English officer, like T.E. Lawrence, leading Arab tribesmen against the Turks, the British always thought of themselves as liberators, as bringers of freedom.

The British believed the final and necessary justification of their empire was a moral one. The British kept the peace; they brought sound, honest administration; and they insisted that basic moral standards were honored.

The British did not try to nation-build in the way we think of it now. They were under no illusions about making Arabs or Afghans or Zulus into Englishmen. They were more than content to leave people alone, to let them be themselves, to govern them with the lightest possible hand.

In American history, we remember this when we think of the British Empire’s so-called “benign neglect.” We can see it throughout the history of the British Empire. Think about the vast territory of the Sudan—it was governed by 140 British civil-servants. Even Gandhi praised the British Empire, paraphrasing Jefferson, saying that he believed that the best government was the government that governed least, and that he found that the British Empire guaranteed his freedom and governed him least of all.

In the defense of freedom, the empire drew moral lines. No power did more to abolish slavery and the slave trade in the modern world than did the British Empire. The British treasury spent enormous sums to liberate slaves and compensate slave-owners in the Caribbean. The Royal Navy had, as a primary duty, the eradication of the slave-trade—and, in fact, abolishing the slave trade become a major factor driving the expansion of the British Empire.

The British enforced a Pax Britannica, putting down pirates, taming headhunters, and keeping the peace between previously warring tribes and religions. While respecting—and often ruling through—local leaders, the British still insisted on certain Judeo-Christian moral standards. They were not, in that respect, multiculturalists. They had a firm sense of right and wrong. When Sir Charles Napier was confronted by the practice of suttee – widow-burning – in India, he told the Brahmin priests involved that he understood it was their custom. But the British had a custom, too: They hanged men who burned women alive, and their goods were confiscated. So, if the Brahmins insisted on continuing their tradition of widow-burning, then he would insist on following his British tradition of hanging the murderers of widows. Widow-burning in India soon ceased.

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Tags AmericabritainBritish Empiredennis pragerEnglandfreedomHistoryHW Crocker IIIlibertyprageruUnited Kingdom
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38 Comments

  1. if i was ever asked for a clear example of historical revisionism and propaganda i think I'd reference this video because jesus, the worst part is that this is how just pragerU normally do business but this time they flew too close to the sun

  7. Don't get me wrong Brits had good ideas good enough to convince my great grandpa and millions of others to fight for the and die for a king they never saw they built the idea of our beloved nation etc.

    Don't forget they were imperialist bastards who took our fertile highlands to grow tea and made our ancestors work as servants in their own lands.

    This video is disgusting Mr Dennis usually I agree with you on many things but this is where I draw the line

  12. FALSE!
    British Continued Slavery well after 1833/43;

    INDIA: Indian "Indenture" (Bonded Slavery with a different name) + Devadasi+ Cantonment Women+ Zamindari System+ Penal Slavery+ Criminal Tribes "Special" Resettlements+ Famine "Relief Camps"
    (**WITH THE EXCEPTION OF "INDENTURE", ALL WERE ABOLISHED AFTER INDEPENDENCE.!
    AND "INDENTURE" ONLY GOT ABOLISHED BECAUSE IT IS WAS ECONOMICALLY TAXING NOT MORAL GOODWILL.)

    AFRICA: Forced Labour on plantations via taxation, Forced Labour on infrastructure via unable to pay the tax, Forced Labour in the mines, Mau Mau Detention Camps

    AND AS FOR THE "WEST AFRIA SQUADRON"
    – Brits compensated the Slave Owners, not the Slaves
    – The "Freed" had to wait in ships for months because of the awfully slow British bureaucracy
    – After they got out of the ship, on either St Helena or Sierra Leone, THEY GOT PULLED INTO FORCED LABOUR. THIS CONTINUED UNTIL THE 1950S!

    AND AS FOR SATI;
    1.) Centuries prior to the British, in nearly all cases, the practice of Sati dramatically changed. Foreign Invaders were killing Indian men, so their widows had two choices. Burn herself alive, or get abused. (Jauhar)

    2.) By the time of the British, Sati was not widespread, and I mean NOT widespread. Literally the opposite. Throughout the Eras of the Mughals, they had tried to ban Sati.

    3.) Peshwas banned Sati throughout their domains in 1800

    4.) Shri Swami Narayan was campaigning against Sati in 1801.

    5.) Hindu Maratha kingdom Savantvadi banned Sati in 1821

    6.) Christian Missionaries campaigned to ban Sati!… in order to forcefully assimilate Indians to Christianity…

    7.) Ram Mohan Roy, Indian royal who joined the EIC, campaigned for the banning of Sati in Bengal. Later, the British, UNDER PRESSURE FROM RAM MOHAN ROY, banned Sati in Bengal.

    8.) Except… recent research has disputed whether Sati was actually practiced there in any notable way.

  13. As an Indian who knows the real bloody history, this video reads like the sickest satire ever. These white supremacists suffer from a terminal case of delulu about their ancestors who they think were bada$$es, warriors, conquerors, leaders, alpha males etc. which makes them think they have a superior DNA. But in reality their ancestors were cunning and sly AF. Instead of using strength and brute force, they used conniving and unmanly tactics such as feign friendships, goodwill etc to the well meaning people of other countries or races, use their trusting nature to divide them further (divide and conquer) and make them sign fake business deals, slowly conquer piece by piece and escalate their authority, starve, imprison and massacre those who revolt. Those peace loving angels looted trillions of dollars from India and exported our grains to their ww2 soldiers starving and killing millions of Indians. We all know what Americans did to the blacks and natives. Your ancestors saw anyone with a darker skin shade as inferior. I would argue they were not even human (an accusation they would slap on us because of our darker skin tone) because they had no heart. Your ancestry is nothing to be proud of. You should be ashamed of yourselves that it’s 2024 and you still propagate “white man’s burden”.

  18. Prager trying to convince us that we should be thankful to British Empire for our freedoms brings this verse into mind "Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed."
    Bottom line, freedom come from knowledge of truth of God not from the might of any government or empire.

  19. The people of the Africa have been "divided and ruled" over by outsiders for centuries. Because it is easier to divide people based on personal differences, than it is to unite them, based on what they have in common. Strategically ambiguous rulers make use of this, for own advantages. In the era of empires, first Rome/Constantinople in North Africa, then during the era of Western imperialism the seat of POWER playing these games changed to the USA/Europe, then after the 1950's as European colonialism's power decreased, Africa was the "playground" during the Cold War. Moscow was taking on the role of arming the resistance.

    Now the intention is simply to avoid unity in Africa and the ME, in order to "rule" over the dissent which is classical "divide and rule". Today, all African dissenters, including some of Africa's own greedy corrupt leaders, are ALL tools. Endless wars, constant dissent.

    Insert "levers" of lies, mistrust…

    Create favorites: favoratism…

    Point the finger, everywhere else…

    Divide and Rule.

    Oldest trick in the book…

    Who wields the POWER?

    Who has had (in all historical cases in Africa and the ME) the GEOGRAPHICAL ADVANTAGE of being able to "reach" all the other little "buck catchers" (tools, and other Roman-era style instruments of POWER), but could not be "reached" itself, because of a geographical-, technological-, organisational-, military-, strategic-, political advantage at any given point of a historical timeline?

  27. Literally every nation has benefited from contact with the white man. They upgraded in technology, science, increase of life, and received the gospel. Are we perfect? No. The way Britain caused famine in Ireland and genocided civilians in Germany was inexcusable.

  29. Are you on methamphetamine?
    A. The moral justification was used by China to invade Tibet to "develop" it. Google Operation Himmler and you have a similar answer.
    B. Liberators? Seriously? Britain's biggest export is Independence Days. Britain ruled their colonies with barbaric oppression.
    C. Ah, yes. Governing with a "light hand." India was the world's largest economy when the British East India Company was set up (23%). In 1930, Britain had coincidentally gone from around 1% of the global economy to its largest, while India was at 2%. (I said 1930 as Britain's resources were drained by WW2). On the note of WW2, the Bengal Famine of 1943 was the largest in Indian history, killing 3 million, for essential resources were diverted to already well-supplied Western Front soldiers. Around 50 million Indians died in famines due to British mismanagement in what can only be described as a colonial Holocaust. The Marquess of Salisbury said that "India was to be bled." The economy and industry were imperially screwed over and tariffs favoured British industry. The civil services were nearly entirely British. Brits were also given legal favor, while Indians were brutally treated for the smallest crimes.
    D. Let people be themselves? British education was built to make subjects as British as possible.
    E. Gandhi said that in 1915. He began involvement in Indian independence in 1917. Even without this footnote, it's obvious this information has been taken out of context, mostly because he LED THE INDIAN INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT.
    F. Sati was not abolished due to a perceived dedication to improving the people. It took massive upheaval across India by reformers such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy for the British to turn it illegal. They were extremely lax in enforcing said law, which didn't have much of an effect because sati simply… wasn't common. Indians, shockingly, had common sense before the British came along. And keep in mind, Queen Victoria didn't let women speak in her court without being in the presence of their husbands.
    G. Now here's a note on Mr. Crocker himself. On the 13th of April, 1919, one Colonel Dyer blocked the only exit and fired upon a crowd in the Punjabi park Jallianwala Bagh who were either peacefully protesting the arrest of two nationalist leaders or just celebrating the harvest festival of Baisakhi. 400 were killed and an additional 100 died jumping in the central well to escape the barrage. Keep in mind, these are British estimates, with actual casualties most likely in the thousands. Crocker describes him as a war hero dedicated to fair play, justice, and decency, and called the peaceful crowd a revolting mob. Crocker's not only a moron, he's racist.
    P.S. The Soviet Union was the machine that broke the German back. They took 95% of casualties in Europe, and both bore the brunt of both Nazi atrocities and the startling, crushing, devastating victories that broke the NSDAP. Dwight D. Eisenhower said Georgy Zhukov, the Marshal at the forefront of the Allied victory, was owed more than any other man by the UN, and no one else could have won in Europe but Zhukov.
    P.P.S. Credit where credit is due: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtNLVPxR67U

  30. Thank you for standing up for Britain 🇬🇧. In the UK I can no longer say I am proud to be a Briton. Quite frankly I am proud of the UK. We spread freedom and we’re the first to free slaves. Viva Britannia 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧.