I've been trying to be quiet, but I take umbrage at our continuing to mention the British in with the others.

In the first place, the Pax Britannica was the greatest empire this planet has ever known, and it was the most even handed and most altruistic and even self sacrificing empire ever in history.

The most important thing you need to be aware of is that it was largely an accident which, once promoted, could not be retreated from.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand...these places were deliberately colonised and later imperialised.

However, the Indian subcontinent and Africa were initially accidents. Much of the old empire was acquired as a result of European conflicts (India, Tanzania, the Cameroon, South Africa) or attempts to save stupid white people from themselves (Bengal, Kenya, Egypt).

As late as the 1700's you will notice correspondence and legislation that makes it clear that economic opportunity was the biggest reason for the empire.

However, by the time you get to Queen Victoria, you notice an entirely different attitude. There was a substantial but vocal political minority who felt the empire and "paternalism" was a moral mistake...but how do you get out of it?

Even as these same people were saying, "We need to stop this" they found themselves expanding the empire in consequence of wars of various kinds. The British were always very mixed up about this, and the images you get on TV about a British upper class that had a single-minded attitude about the White Man's Burden and that it was crystal clear....well, it's just not right.

The wars that subjugated the Zulu, the Ashanti and the Masai were wrong...but what else could they do? You already had these Dutch, Irish and English colonists out there and they were your responsibility...what do you do? They've already been there since the 1600's and on their own, protected for a long time by private corporations that were now either defunct or entirely outclassed by the massed armies of the opposition.

So, what do you do?

You might be weirdly entertained to know that the British elevated the defeated chief of the Zulu and the Ashantikene to the level of "king" in the British constitution. They and their nations continued to have certain inalienable rights in the imperial system, and colonists out to make their fortunes frequently found that their own Crown would end up on the side of the indigenous population instead of the white man.

Mohandas Gandhi several times publicly thanked God that his pacifist campaign was mounted against the British system because, as he said, any other system would have slaughtered him immediately.

Many of us are also talking about the British system as if it were a creature of several hundred years ago. The Empire and Commonwealth did not even reach the height of its territorial responsibilities until 1921 (George V), and the continued peacful existence of the Commonwealth and its ability to release and acquire new states entirely peacefully is testimony that the Commonwealth should probably not be mentioned in the same breath as the previous unsuccessful world systems.