Some were just different takes on life and the world, and some were very old and worthy of respect. That they lost these and that they lost some languages and religion is a tragic loss.

Being old does not make something worthy of respect, also, I don't view the loss of those languages or religions as anything worth getting upset over : they are interesting from an anthropological point of view, but the don't add anything of actual value to humanity.

but your own culture is grand because it was allowed to develop. Europe did not let these native cultures develop.

I'm sorry but no. You can give cultures all the time in the world to develop, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will achieve anything meaningful.

Europeans were not balanced. They believe all their cultures were superiors, and went about making them the global culture. That had positive aspects, but it also led to entire civilizations being lost.

All cultures of great nations have considered themselves superior, it's not a European feature - what is, however, is the introspection and self criticism inherent in (modern) Western civilisation. I think that many of our Western values should be the global culture.

One of the things that you fail to realise; while you criticise the loss of those other civilisations, is how much worse the world could have turned out. European people were in a position to create a much nastier world than we have today, but they didn't.

But they won't take notice. They were not allowed to grow into that, and now they have it in their heads that gays are bad. You cannot separate religion and culture at this stafge, missionaries went ehre with the express permission of the state because they thought it was right. This European cultural practice was objectively worse than the African one, but it ws enforced regardless.

This pales in comparison with all the objective barbarism, superstition and warmongering that Europeans mostly ended on that continent. Your attitude complete absolves other people of moral action on their part, reducing them to children and implying that they are incapable of behaving rationally.

You had a century of internal stability and resources from all around the world. The colonies had none of those.

You vastly overestimate those resources, they are trivial compared to the world produces today. You can rail about how the people of the time were treated, but in terms of value extracted from those places, it was a negligible amount in the long run and more than enough was left there for those people to build their own societies. Most of the UK's growth and development does not stem from the Empire (although much of it does), how do you think that places like Poland, Norway, Switzerland and so many other European countries that didn't have great empires managed to build advanced societies and cities?

All of those countries took a turn in being opressed. Turkey lost everything short of Anatolia.

Oh come on, we lost everything short of the British Isles (and a handful of tiny overseas territories). Moreover, in 'losing' the rest of her empire, Turkey butchered her considerable Assyrian, Armenian and Greek populations, people who had been inhabiting the Anatolian pain for MUCH longer than the the Turks.

I mean, I'm basing my opinion partly in the sub. I've seen this be expressed multiple times.

The threads, and opinions, on this sub tend to vacillate between racist/xenophobic and hopelessly tolerant. Like the rest of reddit, it is not representative of society at large.

I don't think modern Britain exists without those crimes. Those resources were very important.

That's where you are wrong; Britain might not be quite as developed as it is today, but neither would the rest of the world - that period dragged humanity forward. British culture would still be more developed than most others.

All of the Western world should pitch in more than they are right now. Europe's just unlucky enough to share the border.

We don't share a border though, there are other countries and a sea between us and Syria. When has this every happened before? Entire refugee columns marching across continents to seek asylum, because they don't feel like they are getting enough from the otherwise safe countries that are harbouring them? There is no precedent for this, and while I do think that we have an obligation to help them, the entitlement that some of these refugees display is absolutely disgusting.

And those values could be monstrous.

And your point should then be that all of humanity had monstrous values at that time. Europe was not especially monstrous.

From the pov of the European model for the nation-state, yes. But they didn't have nation-states yet. Maybe they could've developed something different; confedarations, alliances, etc, but nope. European model for everyone.

Again, it's a 'what if' game and it's pointless. Moreover, it hopelessly tries to absolve those societies for the problems they have. How much time needs to elapse between the end of Imperialism before we say, okay you can't just blame the white people anymore, a lot of this is your fault.

I hold no such illusions, but you do live better than damn near everyone else.

That is largely due to cultural, rather than historical, reasons.

The culture that you build, the society that you built, the knowledge that you acquired stayed. You lost materials, but this society came from these materials. That's how Germany recovered so quickly; you can't bomb knowledge.

You could safely let go of the empire because you already got what would make you great again.

Pfft, like that's ever been a reason for any nation abandoning Imperial ambitions.