Is the British Empire Responsible for Many of Our Problems Today?
“Britain caused many of the world’s problems” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/8430899/David-Cameron-Britain-caused-many-of-the-worlds-problems.html), David Cameron argued in 2011 concerning the crisis in the Kashmir region. This sentence raised a lot of important questions for today: Is the British Empire responsible for many conflicts? And which conflicts did he mean? As the two main conflicts often associated negatively with the British Empire are the Kashmir crisis and the Palestinian conflict, in my opinion an erroneous association, the following passages explain why the British Empire is not the cause of these conflicts.
In my view, it is correct that the British Empire has left a legacy which is still visible today, for instance, in the partition between India and Pakistan from which the crisis in the Kashmir region derives. But the question is here whether this conflict could have been prevented if this region had not been under British control because, nevertheless, the conflict between the Hindus and the Muslims would have stayed. So, at least for this conflict today, Britain cannot be held responsible. They only tried to solve the conflict by proposing the creation of two different nations with their own territory in order to prevent a cruel conflict. However, they did not succeed and many violent fights between both religious groups took place. Consequently, I think, they have tried to seperate the two disputing parties peacefully without much success as it becomes visible through the Kashmir crisis today but they did not cause the problems which were the base for the conflict and even tried to prevent a partition which was mainly requested by Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.
Furthermore, there is the current dispute between the Arabs and Israelis today. This conflict did also rise from religious partition between the Jewish and the Muslims during the period of the British Empire. Many Jews immigrated at that time and tried to reestablish a Jewish country on Arabian territory. As the British tried to reconcile the two parties or at least to solve the conflict peacefully so that each party got an independent country for themselves, the British are not to blame for the following cruel fights in that region after their withdrawal. Additionally, history shows that the conflicts between two religious groups always result in violent disputes. Therefore, the British did their duty and are not responsible for the causes or the outcome of the Palestinian conflict either.
However, there are many other conflicts today which can have various causes such as the refugee crisis which is definitely not linked to the British Empire. These problems can be possibly traced back to other European powers or even to the United States because the latter gained and maintained a lot of control about the European countries through the financial aid after World War II (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/marshall_01.shtml).
As the two conflicts discussed in the beginning are some of the main conflicts today for which the British Empire is erroneously seen as the initiator (http://listverse.com/2013/03/12/10-ways-britain-has-ruined-the-world/), as I highlighted earlier, the British cannot be identified as the responsible forces for our conflicts today and, finally, there are also many conflicts which have different origins.
