Imperial apologists disavow the violence of the British Empire in two main ways: 1. They dismiss wars of conquest as ‘Queen Victoria’s small wars’. There were relatively few casualties compared to the South African and World Wars. But the killing of hundreds or a few thousands of

people in any one Indigenous community was often enough to shatter a relatively small society and deter further armed resistance. Furthermore these wars were almost continual in the C19. In 1879 alone British forces conquered AmaXhosa, Griqua, Bapedi and AmaZulu in SA as well as

invading Afghanistan for the second time. These wars demonstrated a disregard for the lives of people of colour. In 1856 for instance Bowring had Cantonese civilian districts shelled every 10 minutes until the Qing governor accepted his terms (he didn’t).

2. British violence was also disavowed in the iconography of colonial warfare. Think of the most famous paintings of Rorke’s Drift, Isandhlwana and the sole (white) survivor of the first British Invasion of Afghanistan reaching Jalalabad. All show redcoats under siege, defending

barricades, forming squares, escaping with their lives, after being assaulted by savage hordes. Wars of imperial conquest overseas became the thin red line defending itself at home. So systemic violent conquest never appears in imperial apologists’ absurd balance sheet of

the British Empire’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’ points.