Why was the history of British Empire full of racism and racial segregation?

[Perkele23]

[Curmudgeon]

Relative to WHAT? As far as Empires go, and there have always been Empires, the British one was rather benign. Seriously, compare it to:
--The Spanish
--The Portuguese
--The Dutch
--The French
--The Russians
--The Germans (and I mean the Kaiser, not the Fuhrer)
... where racial divisions were even more present.
and the European Empires *themselves* were quite tame compared to:
--The Japanese
--The Mongols
--The Mughals
--The Aztecs
--The Incas
--The Mayans
--The Zulus
--and we could go on and on.

[InfoBot]

Primitive times, primitive minds. Why did we used to boil people alive? Why did we used to allow children to go to war or work down the mines? Societies evolve and there is no country without its shady history. It just happens that Britain's was on a much larger scale, having built the largest empire in history.

[19magic]

Not completely a lot of what the British empire did was tame compared to other empires which is quite an achievement considering the size of the empire.

[JimRSmith]

Do you realise that there were Indian MPs in the House of Commons in the nineteenth century? You can hardly claim they were denied opportunities.

[Soteris]

Two reasons really. One is that when they came to different part of the world they were not as advanced as the British were and also because building this idea of superiority is the same as actually being superior and being able to reap the rewards for this.

Basically if everyone thinks you are so great because you are British then you can do basically anything you want and that is pretty sweet, and if they dont let you just bop them over the head with your massive military or navy.

So yeah.. Aside from their pride it was actually a very efficient strategy to keeping control over their oversees territory and something that all colonial powers partook in.

[Hans902]

Because - in short - we White Men then thought we where God's gift to earth and that Black people where inferiour. And the British slavers needed an excuse to sleep at night because of the many people the shipped away and the families they tore apart and the many people who's God-given freedom they usurped.

[LegateLanius]

Because as a society that believed themselves to be superior, they felt that it was their right to bring civilization to the uncooth savages. They practiced Imperialism and with it felt the need to control the masses by installing their own people and also settling them there. Most Empires were the same way.

[wankiam]

same reason any empire was before it. the romans or ottomans were not exactly nice to everyone. best to learn from the past and move on rather than resent brits because our forefathers did some shady shit

[BigBadBo]

Expanding a country is about dominating other lands and acquiring there resources by force. Its not a pretty or ethical thing. It has nothing to do with racism...