the legacy of the British - for better or for worse?

Looking back at history textbooks, in Malaysia, the British were the bad guys who took our land, and our property, and our right to rule and basically cheated the Sultans and the rulers half blind. they were the 'penjelajah' who 'mengamalkan dasar pecah dan perintah' and basically made life miserable for everyone concerned, if we are to follow the version given in our history textbooks (which are boring and pedestrian, but that's besides the point)

but i wonder whether it was really that bad...

my mother got into a heated argument with her Sejarah Nusantara lecturer as to whether the British were as black as the books said they were. she said that if not for the British, we wouldn't have the sort of progress we had today. and her lecturer shot her down, and said they were liars and cheats. and almost failed her. well, she got through in the end, anyhow.

but the point of the matter is that, approaching our 50th birthday, the question still remains whether the British were indeed the terrible colonial masters they were, or did they bring any good to this nation, at all?

i may be a product of the school system, and ergo, learning 'sejarah' right from Form 1 up to Form 6, where i took history as an elective, but even after reading all of that, i still agree with my mother that the British may have ruled the land for quite awhile, but without them, there would be no real progress.

just take a look at our educational system, adapted from the British system, and even more significantly, missionary schools which have produced among the best and brightest in this nation. also consider our political legacy of democracy, which but for the British, would remain an unreachable aim, owing to the entrenched Sultanate system. at this point, it pays to remember the words of Winston Churchill - that democracy is the worst of all forms of government, except for all the others. and i cannot forget the fact that because of their capital and investments, our country was able to develop and grow to where it is today.
i am not about to get into the question of how they profited or not, because the issue at hand is whether their rule brought any positive benefits for Malaysia as it is now.

in a nutshell, the legacy of the British is a reality, and i am on the side that it was for the better. there were of course, negative consequences, but on the balance, leaving the country in the hands of the Sultans or Yamtuan could not really have done that much better, hypothetically speaking.

i will end this with a statement - renaming roads isn't going to change history. far better to accept the road names as part of what made Malaysia, and get over the whole post-colonial hangover. it's time to move on.