What Musk conveniently fails to omit is that the British empire was, before abolishing slavery in the 19th century, the driving force behind the transatlantic slave trade, which involved 12 million people being transported as slaves to the Americas with 1.5 million dying on board the ships...
It is true that slavery pretty much always existed BUT the transatlantic slave trade was unique in its scale: there are no other examples in history of millions of people being transported like cattle as slaves across vast distances, dying in such immense numbers.
Also, unlike many earlier forms of slavery, the transatlantic slave trade was incomparably more dehumanizing and racist. No other system ranked people with such rigid racial hierarchy and deliberately separated people from their families, languages, and cultural heritage. If you compare this to say, slaves in ancient Greece, ancient Egypt or the Roman empire, you'll see that slaves often had more defined roles in society, could sometimes own property, could be freed and rise up to prominent roles in society and weren't necessarily seen as inherently inferior based solely on their race. Just a few examples: Aesop, the famous Greek storyteller was a slave who was eventually freed due to his wit and wisdom. Or Epictetus, the famous philosopher during the Roman empire: he was born into slavery but managed to rise up to become one of the most famous thinkers of his time. Or in ancient Egypt Tiresias was a slave who became Chief Minister to Pharaoh Amenhotep III.
So saying that the British empire was a "force for good" because it abolished slavery is like saying it was a "force for good" because it "ended colonialism", when it was the very worst colonial power to ever walk the earth... Hard to give arsonists brownie points for extinguishing their fire... And, by the way, in this instance they only extinguished it because of tremendous pressure and revolt, not out of some moral awakening...
And speaking of colonialism, that was THE big atrocity of the British empire on an even far larger scale than slavery: according to research by economic historian Robert Allen, in India alone British colonialism killed north of 100 million people (blogs.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/20) That's just India: the British had around 120 colonies at its peak, including much of North America, where it drove the genocide of the native population, probably the very worst genocide in history...
And this - colonialism - was truly unique in human history: never before had ideas of racial superiority been used so extensively to justify the domination and exploitation of entire peoples. With the consequences of it still the cause of so much human suffering to this day, from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (ultimately a direct consequence of British colonialism) to what's currently happening in Sudan (the artificial borders drawn by the British in Sudan completely ignored ethnic and cultural differences).
So no, very much no, the British Empire was NOT "a force for good".
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Elon Musk
@elonmusk
Not many people these days know that the British Empire was the driving force behind ending the vast majority of global slavery.
Slavery or de facto slavery was standard practice throughout the world from the dawn of civilization until a few hundred years ago. It is even x.com/thinkingwest/s…
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