1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:08,340 Over the last 400 years, what power has done the most to spread the ideals of limited government, 2 00:00:08,340 --> 00:00:13,660 an independent judiciary, certain inalienable rights, and free markets? 3 00:00:13,660 --> 00:00:16,800 That power would be the British Empire. 4 00:00:16,800 --> 00:00:20,720 It was Britain that gave these ideals to the United States. 5 00:00:20,720 --> 00:00:24,540 It was the British Empire, the largest empire the world has ever known, 6 00:00:24,540 --> 00:00:28,720 which made these ideals global aspirations. 7 00:00:28,720 --> 00:00:34,150 It was the British Empire, along with America, that defended these ideals in two colossal 8 00:00:34,150 --> 00:00:36,220 world wars. 9 00:00:36,220 --> 00:00:41,640 Freedom was an Englishman’s right—and wherever he went, he took that right with him. 10 00:00:41,640 --> 00:00:46,859 Whether he was an English colonist in America, governing himself through a locally-elected 11 00:00:46,859 --> 00:00:52,489 assembly; or an English adventurer, like Sir Stamford Raffles, creating the free-market 12 00:00:52,489 --> 00:00:58,880 city-state of Singapore; or an English officer, like T.E. Lawrence, leading Arab tribesmen 13 00:00:58,880 --> 00:01:06,160 against the Turks, the British always thought of themselves as liberators, as bringers of freedom. 14 00:01:06,160 --> 00:01:12,360 The British believed the final and necessary justification of their empire was a moral one. 15 00:01:12,360 --> 00:01:17,860 The British kept the peace; they brought sound, honest administration; and they insisted that 16 00:01:17,870 --> 00:01:20,890 basic moral standards were honored. 17 00:01:20,890 --> 00:01:25,200 The British did not try to nation-build in the way we think of it now. 18 00:01:25,200 --> 00:01:31,000 They were under no illusions about making Arabs or Afghans or Zulus into Englishmen. 19 00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:36,300 They were more than content to leave people alone, to let them be themselves, 20 00:01:36,300 --> 00:01:39,840 to govern them with the lightest possible hand. 21 00:01:39,840 --> 00:01:44,720 In American history, we remember this when we think of the British Empire’s so-called 22 00:01:44,730 --> 00:01:46,720 "benign neglect." 23 00:01:46,720 --> 00:01:49,640 We can see it throughout the history of the British Empire. 24 00:01:49,640 --> 00:01:58,240 Think about the vast territory of the Sudan—it was governed by 140 British civil-servants. 25 00:01:58,240 --> 00:02:03,860 Even Gandhi praised the British Empire, paraphrasing Jefferson, saying that he believed that the 26 00:02:03,860 --> 00:02:07,840 best government was the government that governed least, and that he found that the British 27 00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:13,400 Empire guaranteed his freedom and governed him least of all. 28 00:02:13,400 --> 00:02:17,660 In the defense of freedom, the empire drew moral lines. 29 00:02:17,660 --> 00:02:22,640 No power did more to abolish slavery and the slave trade in the modern world 30 00:02:22,640 --> 00:02:24,600 than did the British Empire. 31 00:02:24,600 --> 00:02:30,080 The British treasury spent enormous sums to liberate slaves and compensate slave-owners 32 00:02:30,090 --> 00:02:31,499 in the Caribbean. 33 00:02:31,499 --> 00:02:37,400 The Royal Navy had, as a primary duty, the eradication of the slave-trade—and, in fact, 34 00:02:37,400 --> 00:02:43,060 abolishing the slave trade become a major factor driving the expansion of the British Empire. 35 00:02:43,060 --> 00:02:49,560 The British enforced a Pax Britannica, putting down pirates, taming headhunters, and keeping 36 00:02:49,569 --> 00:02:54,329 the peace between previously warring tribes and religions. 37 00:02:54,329 --> 00:03:00,170 While respecting—and often ruling through—local leaders, the British still insisted on certain 38 00:03:00,170 --> 00:03:03,019 Judeo-Christian moral standards. 39 00:03:03,020 --> 00:03:06,700 They were not, in that respect, multiculturalists. 40 00:03:06,700 --> 00:03:09,660 They had a firm sense of right and wrong. 41 00:03:09,660 --> 00:03:14,660 When Sir Charles Napier was confronted by the practice of suttee – widow-burning – in India, 42 00:03:14,660 --> 00:03:18,580 he told the Brahmin priests involved that he understood it was their custom. 43 00:03:18,580 --> 00:03:23,340 But the British had a custom, too: They hanged men who burned women alive, 44 00:03:23,340 --> 00:03:25,360 and their goods were confiscated. 45 00:03:25,360 --> 00:03:29,980 So, if the Brahmins insisted on continuing their tradition of widow-burning, then he 46 00:03:29,980 --> 00:03:36,300 would insist on following his British tradition of hanging the murderers of widows. 47 00:03:36,300 --> 00:03:39,500 Widow-burning in India soon ceased. 48 00:03:39,500 --> 00:03:44,910 But we don’t have to dig far into history, into the abolition of slavery and widow-burning, 49 00:03:44,910 --> 00:03:49,400 to find the British Empire on the side of moral right and freedom. 50 00:03:49,400 --> 00:03:54,680 We can think of events within our own lifetimes or those of our parents and grandparents. 51 00:03:54,680 --> 00:03:59,940 When we think of the two deadliest threats to freedom in the twentieth century, we generally 52 00:03:59,950 --> 00:04:03,269 think of Communism and Nazism. 53 00:04:03,269 --> 00:04:09,280 But how many remember that in 1940, after the Hitler-Stalin pact, and after the fall 54 00:04:09,280 --> 00:04:17,070 of France, one power, the British Empire, stood alone in mortal combat against the combined 55 00:04:17,070 --> 00:04:19,820 tyrannies of the world. 56 00:04:19,820 --> 00:04:26,480 Even where the British have merited criticism, as in Ireland, there is more to the imperial story. 57 00:04:26,500 --> 00:04:31,640 During negotiations to create the Irish Republic, for instance, British Prime Minister David 58 00:04:31,650 --> 00:04:37,110 Lloyd George, who could speak Welsh, reminded the Irish nationalist and Gaelic extremist 59 00:04:37,110 --> 00:04:42,500 Eamon de Valera that the Celts never had a word for "republic." 60 00:04:42,500 --> 00:04:46,820 It was an idea given to them by the English. 61 00:04:46,820 --> 00:04:48,820 This is our own history, too. 62 00:04:48,820 --> 00:04:53,620 If you love America, you should also love the power that gave us our sense of inalienable 63 00:04:53,620 --> 00:04:57,120 rights—rights traceable back to Magna Carta. 64 00:04:57,120 --> 00:05:02,740 It all started in America with the British Empire, a great, liberty-loving empire. 65 00:05:02,740 --> 00:05:08,900 It is the empire’s legacy—the English-speaking world—that remains the great global guardian 66 00:05:08,900 --> 00:05:10,540 of freedom today. 67 00:05:10,540 --> 00:05:14,140 I’m HW Crocker for Prager University.