A good sentiment, though I'd quibble about the use of the word "moral" here. It's a shame there isn't better developed terminology, but the social norms and standards of the Victorian elite were quite far from anything I would term moral. Selfish, oppressive, iniquitous, abusive, racist, hypocritical, and worse. This was the culture that spawned and supported numerous physical and cultural genocides against native populations around the world. The culture that was so iniquitous it gave rise to the backlash of Marxism and totalitarian communism which had such a disastrous impact on humanity in the 20th century.
The Victorians can hardly be singled out for conquering and enslavement, given that was pretty much the norm for human history to that point. Victorians are saints compared to roman times, and the Romans themselves were honourable compared to what went before.
Actually, the concept is most often associated with Rousseau in the 18th century. What the Victorian era had as an advantage was steam powered printing presses to spread uniform cultural concepts (regardless of their veracity or value) over broader areas more quickly. I'm glad we're finally living in an era that has gotten past that.
And an empire with the world's largest military, ruled by a despotic aristocracy which had made most of its money from slavery, drug running, and land + resource grabs in distant countries.
"Moral" is perhaps not quite the most apt word.
>I'm glad we're finally living in an era that has gotten past that.
We haven't. The product has become American Neoliberal Capitalism instead of British Imperial Capitalism, but it's now sold on the Internet and through Hollywood and the media just as aggressively as the Victorians promoted their idea of culture to the world.
> And an empire with the world's largest military, ruled by a despotic aristocracy which had made most of its money from slavery, drug running, and land + resource grabs in distant countries.
Calling the ruling class of the British Empire a despotic aristocracy is a very big stretch, or better a contradiction. Despotic regimes have non-existent or vestigial aristocracies, e.g. the Ottoman Empire or most Chinese dynasties. The Russian Empire had an aristocracy had what looked kind of like a Western European aristocracy but a service nobility functions very differently from one where the nobility have independent power bases. For much more on this Francis Fukuyuma's "The Origins of Political Order" is excellent. In brief there are three political classes in pre-modern societies, the monarch, the high nobility and the gentry/bourgeoisie. The peasantry are irrelevant because they can't coordinate so their numbers are moot. A strong civil society with rule of law that binds the king/state as well as other actors emerged only in Western Europe. If the law binds the king he's no despot, and it did. In Britain, Scandinavia and the Netherlands the king allied with the gentry, in France and Iberia, with the nobility but their power was constrained.
Imperialism did contribute to the power of these states, more to the noble class than the country as a whole but it was not where that power ultimately came from. It came from growth in economic productivity and the organisational capability it made possible. The British Empire was not planned, it was the product of absurdly huge differences in capability. It was acquired over centuries by men on the spot chasing personal glory and advancement.
This is not to deny the slavery, drug running and land and resource grabs but they are frankly secondary. The Royal Navy was the force behind the destruction of the slave trade. The British parliament abolished slavery within the British Empire over the protests of some very rich and well connected domestic interests. The opium trade and the immiseration of India were enormous crimes but the capability preceded the crimes and was only possible because of it. Britain's wealth was not built on the Empire, it was built on trade, commerce and industry.
Excellent comment. While the American revolution and American Civil War is well known[1], the British Civil War and the Glorious Revolution are probably not given the attention they deserve. If you look closely at history, you can see similar patterns: despotic monarchs run out of money, give more power to the nobles in return for taxation rights. Nobles use their new power to restrict the absolute powers of the monarch and then the monarch and nobles struggle. Britain was the one country where the nobles were successful in restricting the absolute power of the monarch and continued the tradition of sharing power, bringing democracy to Western Europe after a long time.
Anyway, that was completely off topic. I agree that the British Empire, while most certainly not the most moral or fair, cannot be characterized as despotic.
[1]: Perhaps I hear more about it because I currently live in the US. Not sure about how popular that part of history is in the rest of the world.
Actually I was referring to the ability for barely researched stereotypes of past or foreign cultures to spread and become a moral cause. That's been going on for centuries all over the globe. It picked up speed with the industrialization of information exchange, and now we can all laugh at how stupid the Victorians, the Communists and the American Revolutionaries were without ever having to consider they were successful for some reason or another.
> The noble savage is another Victorian invention.
Are you sure? I would have expected them to take the opposite view of "savages", namely the Hobbesian view that their lives were "nasty, brutish and short".
I don't think that physical and cultural genocide is exclusive to the Victorian era. How much difference is there in reality between the Victorian drive to civilize and Christianize, and the modern Western impulse to ram "democracy" and "freedom" down the throats of unwilling societies at the point of a gun? If anything, they were a lot less hypocritical than we are.
Would the middle east also consider the difference positive?
Hell, the NATO bombings in Serbia happened just 15 years ago. That was pretty damn close to home for some of us. I have many friends who remember the bombings.
I am really happy that Slovenia was able to secede from Yugoslavia without NATO bombings. Although I do remember hiding in the cellar one night when the sirens went off. Luckily no actual air raid occured.
Hmm, so the Victorians were " Selfish, oppressive, iniquitous, abusive, racist, hypocritical, and worse". I'm curious, you mention "numerous physical and cultural genocides against native populations around the world", can you give me a similar critique of one of these native populations? Pick one. Describe their morals and social norms for me.
