Quote Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult View Post
Oh, I totally agree.

I can send you the top academic article on that, if you want. By David Eltis, who produced a CD-rom in the '90s featuring every single slave voyage as a database.

He said the UK in 1834-40 became the first society in human history to confer non-enslavable "insider" status on the whole of humanity.

It's a great article to be able to cite if you wanna wind up lefties.

In the two WWs we were acting in our national interests - the same two that have guided our FP since Liz I. Namely making sure at least some of the channel ports were in friendly hands and stopping one power dominating the continent.

The fact that we happened to lose our empire as a result doesn't mean this was a magnanamous gesture.
That rather depends on your concept of 'national interest'. I would argue that in both wars we could theoretically have come to an accommodation with our despotic foes that would have saved us an awful of of blood and treasure. However, our political system, sense of ourselves, public opinion, the nature of our enemies and various other honourable factors made that impossible and drove us to make war despite the cost. That is not a magnanimous gesture, but it is a function of our civilisation and one that served the world well.