Then we come to the things under European control. Europe can develop its society and culture because a city like London can not only stay relatively untouched, but it sucks all the resources that it needs from its empire. This is at the cost of those colonies. Once the UK leaves, it leav itself richer and the countries not only poorer financially, but culturally.

One of the benefits of being an Island with a formidable navy. On sucking up the resources; it's not like this was happening on a truly massive scale before the British acquisition of India and on your point regarding leaving the colonies poorer, I'll touch on this later.

Local traditions have been crushed, religions persecuted, people enslaved. How can you expect them to develop like Europe? That's not fair.

Many of those traditions needed to be crushed and by the time we granted the colonies their independence, slavery had been banned for over a century. There were no living people at that point who had been enslaved by the British, the victims were all dead and, moreover, most of the countries from where the slaves were taken were not British colonies. Also, we have allowed a considerable amount of people descended from slaves to settle in the UK.

It is objectively better to be treat gays like normal people. However, the Western world forced anti-gay morality on its colonies.

Britain didn't force anti-gay morality on it's colonies per se, that was the missionaries. That's the fault of Christianity, and religion generally - they can all fuck off and we've more or less stamped that out in our part of the world, other countries should take notice.

That alone prove that the civilization isn't any better of worse. We are more tolerant, but that's only because we've had the time and the riches to develop that.

No, it does, that was a century ago and believe it or not we developed a HELL of a lot in that century. I'm willing to say that our civilisation is objectively better today than it was 100 years ago.

I do believe that if Iraq is facing a catastrophe because of past British actions, Britain has a responsibility to help since Britain is currently still benefiting from those actions.

The problems with Iraq are as much the fault of the Saudi's as they are of the west, not to mention the people themselves. The collapse of the Iraqi army in the face of IS can be directly linked to the incompetence and tribalism of the Maliki government, they also bear a lot of the blame. The US also pulled out way too early, but they will never have to face the refugee fallout of that decision. And what exactly are the benefits of Iraq that we are still reaping?

Sometimes. But that was for the good of Britain, not for the good of the land. I don't think that's to be admired.

They inherited all of that infrastructure when they gained their independence, it's not like the colonies (current population) didn't benefit at all.

What you shouldn't be proud of, however, is the earlier defense and promulgation of the transatlantic slave trade.

I'm not, and I never said I was but I think the fact that we were the leading force responsible for ending it (globally) more or less makes up for it.

Because those countries are not doing that well. Britain proposered. You can point and Turkey and say karma got them, but karma never really got Europe.

Here we disagree, I don't think that, if you are in the business of punishing people for past transgressions, you give them a free pass because they are dealing with other shit - where do you draw the line between countries doing well and countries struggling? Turkey's not that poor... and neither is Oman. Brazil also seems to on the up.

You were impplying what I've seen so many people ouright say: gushing pride in their civilization, with a refusal to be ashamed because they didn't do it. That irks me. You should not feel the pride without the shame.

Have you ever been to Europe? That's not the prevailing opinion here, we can't stop apologising for our colonial past, to the point where it's very rare to see people displaying gushing pride over their history. Everyone I know bears the shame, to an unnecessary degree imo.

this is the history of every great civilization.

It was a requisite part of the development of civilisation, unfortunately.

But again, you are right now benefiting for those crimes still.

Not to the extent that, I think, you imagine.

I think you have a moral responsibility to help the children of the people that your forbears conquered.

We do, we give a lot of money in foreign aid, have taken in a lot of non european immigrants and we invest a hell of a lot of money in the developing world, which, after all, is the only way we're going to get these places to develop. Just giving them handouts solves nothing.

I do rail against those crimes, but these refugees aren't in Qatar right now; they're in Europe. Europe has to come up with a response regardless of what the UAE decides to do.

They are not in Qatar because the Qataris are a bunch of racist bastards that look down on their Levantine brothers. Europe is coming up with a response, several EU members have offered to take Syrian Refugees (including the UK in spite of it's other immigration pressures). Aside from the Syria's regional neighbours, Europeans are the only ones doing anything about this humanitarian crisis; the US, Canada, Australia, NZ and everywhere else, rich and poor, are doing very little to assist.

Morality isn't time-based. I'm not a relativist either. It's wrong to massacre the inhabitants of a region for gold now, it was wrong then as well.

While in an absolute sense, morality shouldn't change, it's absurd not to recognise that societies evolve, humanity strives forward and the values of people change. Europe values at the time were no worse than anyone else.

Why do you think that is? Europe put a bunch of tribes together, called it a country and left. I don't know what it would look like today, but maybe if Africa had been left alone, it would've progressed along the same paths as Europe.

That's not actually true. The division of African states makes much more sense than what was done with the ME, and how was this to be avoided? There is no perfect partition of Africa. The modern world (sadly) requires borders and that's what the people in colonies wanted, they didn't want to be part of some african superstate, so what would you have us do?

Africa would be at least half a century further behind where it is today without the effects of colonisation, as depressing as that is.

You also seem to think that we, in Europe, walk down gilded streets and live in palatial splendour, from a some massive horde of gold that we plundered over all those years. What was plundered was spent, invested in both the colonies and the metropole - and SO much of it was obliterated by German bombs.

This continent fought the two largest wars in human history, back to back. We destroyed ourselves and had to rebuild from the ashes and rubble. The vast majority of the wealth that Britain 'plundered' from her colonies was slowly transferred across the Atlantic to the US through the course of those two conflicts. We bankrupted ourselves in a futile attempt to preserve a balance of power in WW1 and then did it again to save the rest of the continent (and ultimately the world) from fascism in WW2 - I think that we paid a very dear price in the last century, and so if you want to restore to our former subjects the booty we took, I'll point you in America's direction, because they've got it.