I grew up in Bangladesh where in school history classes or outside, we've been taught about British India with the an overlying theme that the British colonialism was unambiguously a bad thing and we're all very glad that it's over. I would assume that any country that was once a British colony takes a similar view.
But recently I've been wondering how do the British view their own colonial past? How is this topic taught in British schools? Do you also think that British colonialism was a bad idea, something to be ashamed of? Do think that British rule wasn't that bad and the very negative view of it is a bit unfair? Do you wish that things had gone over a bit better and you still had an overseas empire?
Britain is politically diverse, has a large population that comes from its former colonies and retains an intellectual elite that is largely composed of the descendant who benefitted from Empire. As such, there is no real consensus. As a Brit, I think that there is validity in the statement that Britain furnished many of its colonies with infrastructure and institutions it would not otherwise have possessed upon independence (the most commonly used example being India's railway system). I think there is a generally known idea that massacres and atrocities occurred, but what those were are generally not known. For example, few people in Britain would know about the concentration camps in South Africa, the persecution of natives in Australia or the humanitarian disaster for which Britain is partly responsible in India/Pakistan immediately after their independence. I think this is partly a case of sweeping it under the rug, but also the result of other European neighbours committing arguably worse, certainly more public atrocities (Germany within Europe, Belgium in the Congo, Spain and Portugal in perpetuating slavery long after Britain banned it, Italy in Abyssinia). Basically, there is an acknowledgment that bad stuff happened, but a perception that the Empire also furnished former colonies with infrastructure and stability. And that the bad stuff that happened is comparatively tame when looking at our European counterparts.