The British Empire: A source for good or evil? January 2014 | Page 20

The British Empire a force for Evil by Thaïs Guichard & Elisabeth Ambourhouet The British Empire is shown as a wonderful thing that was great for the colonized peoples and brought them a lot of things. Under this “perfect image” there is an other reality, British empire wasn't only a force for good... The colonization had terrible impact on the native peoples. We will focus on how the british destroyed their culture. When the british colonized new land like Australia, Canada, Africa or India their brought their culture with them, and in some cases it made native's culture disappearing … We will work on two colonies : Australia and Canada. The British Empire a force for Evil The stolen Generation from Australia. Since the first contacts with British settlers in 1788, British realized that native Australians had a really different culture. They also realized that they didn't have the same religion (1) , so they tried to bring christianity to them . They decided to do that throught the Children “to make them more British”. That how the “Stolen generation” began to be taken from their family. Between 1909 and 1970 thousands of children have been taken from their family and sent to orphanages, boarding schools, or given to Christian association. Something more terrible is british wanted to impose their culture but they didn’t wanted to mix it with the native's culture, but white man did children with native women ( mostly they abused them). The half breed children were taken, officially to take care of them and integrate them to the british society but in reality they received the same treatment as the other children. Map of Australia Because of that some traditions and part of the native's culture disepear. The parents didn't had the opportunity to educate their child the way they wanted and some child never knew who their parents were after that. If you want to know more about the stolen generation you can google this link to hear their testimony. http://stolengenerationstestimonies.com/index.php 22 Inspection of St Joseph Orphanage in New Norcia Australia by the Governor Sir Charles