Joss Wood

These are the five greatest achievements of the British. One small island explained gravity, made war on the slave trade, built the machine age, gave the world its common language and governed the largest empire in history. 5. Science. Newton's laws, published in 1687, steered Apollo 11 to the Moon 282 years later. Faraday gave us electricity. Darwin explained life. Fleming's penicillin has saved an estimated 200 million lives. 4. Killing the slave trade. No great power had ever made war on it — until Britain. The Royal Navy boarded the slavers with cutlass and pistol, seized around 1,600 ships and freed 150,000 Africans. 3. The Industrial Revolution. Watt's engine, Arkwright's factory, Stephenson's railway, Brunel's iron ship. By 1850, one island made around half the world's iron and two-thirds of its coal. 2. The English language. 1.5 billion speakers. Every pilot on an international route must be certified in it. When the world talks to itself, it talks in ours. 1. The largest empire in human history. A quarter of the world's land. Parliaments, trial by jury and the common law — and when the British went home, nation after nation kept them. They did not wait for the world to change. They went out and changed it. Be proud to be British. Our ancestors gave the world all five. Our children are rarely taught one of them with pride. I'm changing that, one story at a time, and I can't do it alone. Stand with me as a Guardian: thestoicenglish.com/guardian…

The British Empire was the greatest work of human civilisation this world has ever seen. It outlawed the slave trade and then hunted it to extinction across every ocean on earth. It put the rule of law on six continents. It built the railway, the telegraph, the modern world. And when it left, India, Canada, Australia and fifty more kept the lot. That is not conquest. That is inheritance. A quarter of the land on earth. A quarter of the people. Run from one wet island. Now ask what it did with that reach. Not what it took. What it built. It built the law. Around a third of the world's people live under legal systems descended from English common law. The presumption of innocence. Trial by jury. A judge who can rule against the government and keep his job. It built the machine age. The first intercity railway. The cable that joined Europe and America. By 1902 a telegraph ring circled the entire world, landing only on British soil. It built the knowledge. Newton. Darwin. Faraday. Turing. Berners-Lee. The machine you are reading this on is, from the physics up, a British invention with foreign parts. And it built a war on the slave trade. No great power had ever made war on the trade — until Britain did. Sixty years. Around 1,600 ships seized. Around 150,000 Africans freed. Around 2,000 British sailors dead doing it. Then the thing that proves the case. Every empire before it ended in fire. This one chose to go — and the nations it freed kept the lot. The courts. The parliaments. The language. Then they formed a club with the country that had ruled them. Fifty-six members. Four of them were never British at all. Former French and Portuguese colonies asked to join. Nobody applies to join the empire of a tyrant. Was it perfect? No empire is. Fine. Now name the empire that did better. Name the one that bled for sixty years to end the slave trade. Name the one whose former subjects kept its courts. Name the one that packed up and went home. There is one. Nobody keeps the chains of a master. They keep the gifts of a builder. Fifty-six nations kept them. That is the verdict — and it was not ours. It was theirs. Others apologise for our history. I tell it — properly, from the record, without the guilt. If that's what you want more of, stand with me: thestoicenglish.com/guardian… #history #britishempire