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is this a new revisionist rhetoric being pushed all of a sudden? I keep hearing the same arguments in Spain about how they brought freedom to the Americas

I understand being unconformable with one's country's past, but the mental hoops to try to get some justification to colonization is so strange.

Even if (and that's a BIG if) those societies ended up "freer" let's not fool ourselves, not a single country went to colonise another for hundreds of years to make it freer, they went there to exploit it. If 500 years later that country is in a better shape now (again a BIG if), that's an unintended side effect.

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> not a single country went to colonise another for hundreds of years to make it freer, they went there to exploit it.

Generally speaking the colonisers established their colonies to access natural resources, being new agricultural techniques to undeveloped lands, and engage in trade. The culture of the coloniser naturally came along with them.

Even if there were no specific goal of bringing freedom that may still have been a side effect.

yeah, but that's what I mean, if it's just a side effect then how is it relevant to the whole "illustrious history" of the UK comment which was defended by saying that the colonies are now "freer".

How is that an argument? If I enslave a group of people, force on them my language so they can follow orders and 500 years later that language opens doors for them, how am I "illustrious"? it's a side effect of an inhumane act.

Trying to twist this so my history doesn't make me uncomfortable is historical immaturity.