Which were the worst empires of the colonial age?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

(Didn't include the Scandinavian "empires" because who gives a crap?)

Personally I go for the French, Belgian, British and Spanish empires, but a decent case could be made for the Russian, German, Austrian, Japanese, Portuguese and Ottoman empires as well. So much choice!

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Whichever one was smallest, as it obviously failed in its mission.

[ingemann]

The Ottoman one of course.

[DavidB.]

Belgian, French, British, and German.

[Hydera]

Most former french colonies except for Quebec have been huge economic failures.

[dead0man]

Belgian, Spanish, French and Belgian

<you said Belgian twice>

I like Belgian

[tpfkaw]

Well the Japanese are clearly the objective worst, having caused a death toll in the many tens of millions, the bulk of which occurred in the span of under 10 years. Lots of weeaboos here, it seems. And after them the Spanish were the biggest human rights violators, especially if you care about the slave trade and all that. Then I picked the Ottomans, as the only ones who actually posed a threat to Western civilization itself, and the Russians, who were dead-set on destroying their own civilization.

BTW, the period when the Congo was under Belgian sovereignty (as opposed to the preceding Congo Free State period) was by far the best period in its history.

[Extrabase500]

British/Ottoman.

[mencken]

Seriously, why does everybody hate on the British empire, especially given how unsavory their competition is? Is it because they were the most successful at empire-building, or because they actually left something of a legacy of competent governance in a fair proportion of their former colonies?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Seriously, why does everybody hate on the British empire, especially given how unsavory their competition is? Is it because they were the most successful at empire-building, or because they actually left something of a legacy of competent governance in a fair proportion of their former colonies?

Don't want to be biased to the home side

[Clark Kent]

Japanese, Spanish, Belgian, German

[VPH]

British, French, Spanish, Belgian

[ingemann]

Seriously, why does everybody hate on the British empire, especially given how unsavory their competition is? Is it because they were the most successful at empire-building, or because they actually left something of a legacy of competent governance in a fair proportion of their former colonies?

They left a legacy of competent governance in places where they replaced the natives with Europeans, if we look at comparative colonies (like Ghana/Ivory Coast) they're no better than the French and in come cases worse (Nigeria/Cameroun). Yes former British colonies do better than most, but that was because the British took the best places. As for South and South East Asia, the former British colonies run from deep incompetence (Burma/Pakistan) to very competent (Singapore), but while the French former colonies run from incompetent (Laos) to competent (Vietnam), the Dutch have competent (Indonesia) and USA have somewhat incompetent with Phillipines. It's really hard to come with some universal conclusion from that.

[Frodo]

The Belgian Empire (which consisted solely of the Congo) was the worst of the worst.  

[ingemann]

Seriously, why does everybody hate on the British empire, especially given how unsavory their competition is? Is it because they were the most successful at empire-building, or because they actually left something of a legacy of competent governance in a fair proportion of their former colonies?

They left a legacy of competent governance in places where they replaced the natives with Europeans, if we look at comparative colonies (like Ghana/Ivory Coast) they're no better than the French and in come cases worse (Nigeria/Cameroun). Yes former British colonies do better than most, but that was because the British took the best places. As for South and South East Asia, the former British colonies run from deep incompetence (Burma/Pakistan) to very competent (Singapore), but while the French former colonies run from incompetent (Laos) to competent (Vietnam), the Dutch have competent (Indonesia) and USA have somewhat incompetent with Phillipines. It's really hard to come with some universal conclusion from that.

The US also has Puerto Rico and Guam which are decently competent.

I was talking about south and south east Asia, but as for PR and Guam, they're bad examples, because they're still American territories. I can tell you that Greenland are more well functioning than the vast number of former colonies around the world, but that's not because Denmark was a superior colonial empire (we were in Greenland, but that was for entirely different reasons;)), but because they're still in union with Denmark and we upkeep their living standards, without that it would be impoverish and deeply dysfunctional state.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Japanese, Belgian, Spanish

[Halgrímur]

(Didn't include the Scandinavian "empires" because who gives a crap?)

Personally I go for the French, Belgian, British and Spanish empires, but a decent case could be made for the Russian, German, Austrian, Japanese, Portuguese and Ottoman empires as well. So much choice!

This seems like a deliberately contrarian choice (the West was worse than the rest..), or an emphasis on scale (but then Belgium shouldn't be included). I am actually in doubt whether the Belgian qualify (the Congo Free State wasn't a Belgian enterprise as such, lots of hired hands to do the dirty work, many of them Scandinavian). So the Spanish (the conquistadors were not nice people..), and then in no particular order the German, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese - if measured as "cruelty per inhabitant". The Portuguese were as big slave traders as the British and bigger raiders (incl. in Brazil), and they used forced labour much more. Japan is unavoidable if only for Korea. Russian colonization was ruthless and totally disregarded human lives.

Austria wasn't an empire in the same sense as the others and clearly the most benevolent of them all. Despite all its flaws the British was the least bad per inhabitant of the rest (but of course created more total suffering than almost any other due to its size).