Should the empire really be a source of pride?

The Empire has crumbled and Britain’s power has largely evaporated. The problem today is not that
our national feelings about the British empire are too positive or too negative, but that we know too
little of the actual history to make a sound judgment. How can we ask people to take pride in, or feel
regret about, a history that is hardly taught in schools and little explored elsewhere? The Empire has
become reduced to the abolition of slavery, the building of the Indian railways and some vague talk
about the rule of law, British values and the spread of the English language.Somehow, without being
colonised, the Japanese managed to construct a national railway that carries some of the fastest, most
punctual and comfortable trains in the world. My guess is that India would have managed something
similar without us.
British missionaries and colonial administrators did confront or end terrible practices, such as the ritual
burning of widows in India and the superstitious killing of newborn twins in my native Nigeria. But the
same empire, whenever it encountered indigenous resistance, acted with incredible brutality.
The British Empire, like every empire in history, was created to enrich the imperial mother country, not
to realise some vague civilising mission. It would have been the greatest aberration in world history had
it been otherwise.
Yet we still, somehow, convince ourselves and expect others to believe that this nation set aside its
own financial interests, ignored the desperate plight of the British poor and dispatched great fleets of
ships and vast armies of soldiers and administrators across the oceans to attend to the material welfare,
educational aspirations and future mass transport requirements of the indigenous peoples of Asia and
Africa.
Our future relationships with the former colonies – which are now critical trading partners – demand
that we wake up from this fantasy.
By David Olusoga, theguardian.com, 2016

Read the article. Present the point of view of the journalist and explain the positive and negative
aspects of colonization.
According to its author, why was the Empire created? 
What is the matter with the opinion people have of the Empire? What did you learn about race and power
relations in colonial India?
Why is the issue of the Empire still sensitive today?

GRAMMAR - The passive Voice

1. Passe ces phrases à la voix active ou passive.

1. In Asia, settlements were created by companies like the East India Company.
2. In 1776, thirteen colonies in North America declared their independence.
3. Colonies gave Britain raw materials.
4. The war drained Britain financially. It also lowered its prestige in the eyes of its colonies.
2. Traduis ces phrases en français.
1. When peaceful protesters defied a government order and demonstrated against British
colonial rule in India in 1919, they were blocked inside the walled Jallianwala Gardens and fired
upon by Gurkha soldiers.
2. In 1947, Cyril Radcliffe had to draw the border between India and the newly created state
of Pakistan during a single lunch.
3. Former education secretary Michael Gove has said the British Empire should be taught in
schools, while Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said children should also be taught about the
suffering it caused.
4. The American India princess Pocahontas was taken hostage by Jamestown colonists in
1613.
5. In 1883, the Parliament of the United Kingdom abolished slavery.
6. The Slavery Abolition Act made the purchase or ownership of slaves illegal within the
British Empire, with the exception of “the Territories in the Possession of East India Company”,
Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Saint Helena.