The British empire gets a pretty nasty rap these days, seems to me the Victorian Britons especially are blamed for almost every negative social trend in the modern day. While it is not the focus of my study I've always greatly enjoyed reading about the empire, quite frankly my reading has just confused me further.
Empirically speaking the British empire would appear to be among the, if not THE most beneficial government to have graced the earth! The positive changes the 2nd empire brought to being, from the abolition of slavery to the popularisation of education, emancipation and individualism to worldwide levels has little parallel on the global stage.
I honestly cannot understand it, so hopefully one of you chaps can explain. Especially when Britians imperial record is compared with, say, that of Germany or Belgium.
The basis of my thought on the matter rests on the works of Ronald Hyam and James Lawrence, with a sneaky peek or two from that cheeky populist Fergusson.
Everywhere the British empire went, they set up institutions that systematically privileged themselves to the detriment of those whom they colonized. You give them credit for ending slavery, but don't forgot that the British were instumental in creating, spreading, and maintaining slavery before that. British colonialism in North America and Australia entailed the expropriation and in some cases extermination of native peoples. Their rule in India may have featured the construction of a (pretty small) educational system, but it also featured violent conquest, economic exploitation, explicitly racist administration, and famines. By pointing to the apparently benevolent aspects of colonialism, you're adopting uncritically the language of the colonizers, who justified their actions by claiming that colonized peoples at best needed "guidance," at worst were not even humans.
Even if British rule was benevolent (it was not, but let's just assume), they still represented an alien, conquering force. In this way, they violated their own rhetoric of freedom and self-determination. They are in substantial portion the authors of misery in places like India. This is not to say that everything in India was terrific before British rule or that many conflicts would not have come about without British rule. But, when you rule a place for two centuries and thoroughly remake its institutions, you bear responsibility for their legacies.