Would it be fair to say that the English was the least brutal empire?

[777]

my common sense tells me that ALL empires did wrong specifically in cruelty, power corrupts, especially when you don't have more than one voice, like earlier history, or nazism & communism until recently.

 

[Genji]

This is like comparing which pitbull was the least offensive after an attack from several.
All colonizers were brutal. But from what I've read the Portuguese, Spanish & Belgians were the worst of the worst.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Considering that I usually come across as just as devoted an Anglophile as the next American, I'm surprised by the negativity in my last post.

I can't argue with whoever said that the Brits simply didn't know what they were doing when they carved up the Third World into imaginary "nations" and expected the people trapped inside those borders to become compatriots overnight.

The problem is that they just did so frelling much of that carving. Africa, the Middle East, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and a few other places are still reeling from their heavy-handedness. And we are still stuck trying to find a way to undo the damage. In aggregate those sad countries hold one fourth of the world's population! And perhaps three fourths of the world's poorest people! And most of the world's craziest national leaders!

If you're going to have an empire upon which the sun never sets, you're signing up for an incredibly huge obligation to posterity... and they really blew it.