[microgood]

Peace and freedom don't just drop out of the sky.

True, the British may have brought peace but they did not bring freedom.

And you can't compare the British Empire to some idealized concept of political perfection in your head.

I do not. I am just pointing out that the British intent was not to spread freedom and peace to the world. The intent was to exploit their colonies for riches and resources for the British Empire. The fact that others eventually benefited from that is great, but there are two sides to their Empire that should be acknowledged.

Though a more extreme case, there are those in Russia trying to whitewash Stalin now. So I think we need to be loyal to the complete story when discussing these historical events.

[AnAmericanMother]

This is the same argument between capitalism and socialism.

"Oh!" say those who say they simply want to "see two sides" - "Capitalism is EVIL because it is motivated by GREED. Those nasty entrepreneurs don't go into new markets to spread the wealth to the deserving consumers! Oh, no, they go into new markets because they want to exploit them for their own benefit! Oh, the horror!"

Guess what -- if there's nothing in it for the people who are going to invest their time, their money, their lives in opening new markets, then they aren't going to bother. If the East India Company hadn't been able to make a profit, it would have gone home. And then you would still have a bunch of warring little states on the subcontinent run by despots in many cases far from benevolent, all hampered by a sclerotic system that kept a majority of the population in squalor and burned women to death.

The alternative . . . whether it's rapacious tribal conflicts or the dismal gray command economy of socialism . . . is much worse.